This is a lovely article about the unsung freedom fighters in Kashmiri history but it’s true everywhere—both in history & in the present—that hundreds of thousands of people have given their lives to & for justice & human freedom. There is no place for cynicism about the human race because it gets us nowhere. Beware the icons since they are often those who have done the least.

http://www.wandemag.com/zahir-ud-dins-book-conversational-side-kashmirs-history/?

Like a natural disaster, Indian occupation forces demolish family homes under the guise of routing or punishing militants. That is very like Burmese genocidaires & Israeli occupying forces demolishing entire villages in attempts to exterminate an entire people. Utterly heartbroken & shattered, a Kashmiri women is sitting on the rubble of her house destroyed by Indian army.

A friend posted an article about Britain approving a farm that breeds puppies for animal testing. Detestable! But in response, someone commented “This is sick! Why can’t prisoners who are in for life be used as guinea pigs & do all your experiments on them?” That could be called an Auschwitz mentality. It doesn’t matter if the prisoner is there for stealing a car, smoking a joint, or murder & rape. A human being is a human being & we never consider them objects to be violated. That would make us lower than concentration camp guards.

A moving moment in the emotional lives of other animals as a sheep dog is comforted by one of the flock after he fought the wolves.

Kevork Almassian (rhymes with Rasputin) is the founder of Syriana Analysis & a prominent Assad propagandist. He’s the go-to guy for Assad propagandists Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, Tim Anderson, & is acknowledged as an invaluable source on the Arab Spring by Vijay Prashad. With the exception of Prashad (who is just politically lost), it is not gratuitous to identify all of those with fascism. They have not been shy about speaking on platforms organized by fascists, about associating with anti-Semites & Islamophobes like David Icke, or in eulogizing dead fascists as Bartlett did a member of Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident (PEGIDA).

Almassian is a Syrian Christian who proclaims proudly by Twitter, on Syrian Analysis, on RT, & anywhere he can find a platform that he loves Assad & the Syrian Army & hates the Syrian Arab Spring uprising which he calls an Islamist rebellion against a secular democratic system. In 2015, he migrated to Germany from Syria saying he moved for economic reasons & not because of the war. Since hundreds of thousands of Syrian war refugees are denied asylum in Europe, many speculate that Almassian was dispatched there on behalf of Assad. In truth, if one has money, it is possible to immigrate almost anywhere.

Since arriving in Germany, Almassian associated himself with the German Alternative Party (AfD), one of Germany’s several far right extremist parties. It is as close to fascist as they can get despite attempts to mask their most virulent politics. They are rabidly Islamophobic & have associations with PEGIDA, are anti-Semitic, Zionist & pro-Israel, homophobic, anti-feminist, anti-immigrant. Almassian is making news because he’s on the staff of AfD member Markus Frauenmayer who recently became an MP in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German Parliament. Frauenmayer once served as a spokesperson for AfD president Frauke Petry who among other unsavory views promoted shooting down immigrants on the border. Almassian continues to campaign for Assad. It’s of a piece.

We don’t care what kind of associations Bartlett, Beeley, Anderson have. They’re political lowlifes who sing for their supper for the Assad dictatorship. But we would like to know what people like Prashad, Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, & the entire corrupted international antiwar movement think about associating themselves so closely with European fascism? Are they comfortable with that?

Do they squirm a little that their allies are the most reactionary, hateful, & violent forces in world politics? Are they going to delete all the Almassian articles, the Syriana Analysis videos, the RT interviews which they posted so they can take distance? Or do they think such contradictions are just the dialectic of history doing its thesis-antithesis-synthesis thing? We suggest they reexamine their counterrevolutionary views & stand with the Syrian Arab Spring uprising rather than the Assad dictatorship.

(Photo is Almassian/Rasputin)

This shell-shocked six-year-old girl in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria waiting to be rescued by White Helmets from the rubble of Syrian & Russian bombing must be who fascist & Assad propagandist Kevork Almassian referred to as “Islamist terrorists” when he tweeted, “The Syrian Army sends text messages calling on civilians in the countryside of Hama & Idlib to leave before an imminent military offensive against the Islamist terrorists.” Or was she one of the tens of thousands of civilians who didn’t receive the text? Under her knee you can see the hand of her three-year-old sister who died because she also didn’t receive the text or was mistaken for an “Islamist terrorist.” Their one-year-old brother also died, as did a cousin.

It’s not too late for reluctant Assadists taken in by “regime change operation” propagandists to rethink their support for Assad & for Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians. Even the best of people make whopping misjudgments in politics. Rather than turn a colossal misjudgment into a monstrous betrayal, it is wise to reconsider that position & stand with the Syrian Arab Spring uprising by opposing the Assad regime & all foreign military intervention in Syria.

(Photo by Anas al-Dyab, White Helmet)

Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar was absolutely correct when she said we are being forced to swear allegiance to Israel. There are already laws in 26 states mandating that in employment & government contracts. Now Democrats are formulating a bill in response to Omar denouncing antisemitism & equating it with criticism of Israel. The US Congress, Zionist groups, & the evangelical right wing will eat her up alive if we do not begin to form local, state, & national coalitions to oppose these arrant violations of civil liberties & Palestinian justice. For those who think international politics have nothing to do with American workers, the Congress & Zionists have effectively yoked Palestinian justice to the Bill of Rights.

A very good article about how Indian war propagandizing ignores the Kashmiri struggle against occupation & colonialism & becomes all about Pakistan.

http://www.wandemag.com/kashmir-but-no-kashmir/?fbclid=IwAR1dAQgnRi_jBjAC7xTv7hPLHC_g_mvC0uGGxwbDygJULMTDmA4Sfmrparc