A collage of Palestinian women at the Great Return Marches going on for nearly one year now to demand an end of the Israeli blockade of Gaza & the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

It appears as if India will not imminently go to war against Pakistan. But the strident war mongering by its media & politicians has served its purpose to increase nationalist violence against Kashmiris working & studying in India & to legitimize a crackdown on activists in Kashmir where many have been arrested & will likely be tortured & incarcerated. It has also shown the weakness of antiwar mobilization in India & solidarity activism elsewhere.

The Kashmiri struggle is important for all humankind in the same way as the Palestinian, Uyghur, & Rohingya struggles: because they have not bent the knee to oppression & continue against all odds to end the legacy of colonialism & build societies suitable for human beings to live & love in. Just as the US Civil Rights Movement inspired freedom struggles around the world, a victory of these movements has the power to change the world for all of suffering humanity. That’s why their struggles to build political power against colonialism must be actively supported.

(Photo is Kashmiri women protesting in July 2016 during an uprising against the occupation, from Twitter)

Even now, after all the educational work Kashmiri activists have done on social media, most media coverage still refers to Kashmir as a “disputed territory” between the two nuclear powers of India & Pakistan, as if the Kashmiri struggle against occupation & colonialism did not exist. But such coverage cannot undo the work & the solidarity Kashmiris have built. The news blackouts & the lies don’t work anymore. The Kashmiri struggle is now recognized as one of the most important freedom struggles in the world.

End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo is Kashmiri woman stone pelter from Al Jazeera 2013)

Happy International Women’s Day to all my sisters & a special tribute to all those women, men, & children on the front lines of the struggles against war, occupation, persecution, & genocide. It’s a day to celebrate women’s particular contributions, usually as unsung leaders, to the monumental struggles for human freedom from injustice & inequality.

Happy International Women’s Day from Kashmir.

(Photo is Indian troops assaulting woman protester)

There’s a narrow range within which political women are allowed to dissent. But even within that range, deference & an obsequious posture toward males must at all times be maintained. The modern feminist says ‘screw that’ to all groveling.

A wounded little girl or a ‘crisis actor’ as Assad propagandists claim? A rescue worker or a terrorist as Assad propagandists claim? It’s not irrelevant that advocates of a US border wall claim refugee children incarcerated in detention centers put on long faces for photojournalists, only feigning misery to worm their way out of being deported. The evidence of children is so compelling that they must be turned into propagandists & manipulators by those who defend barbarism.

Assad regime forces have intensified bombing & shelling, including with the use of cluster bombs, of civilians, towns, residential areas, & markets in Idlib & Hama provinces. Hundreds have been killed or injured. This White Helmet rescue worker is attending the injured at a field hospital though fascist Vanessa Beeley would claim on behalf of the Syrian & Russian governments that he is waiting for the camera to go away to remove her internal organs for trafficking.
The only principled demands are for the immediate cessation of bombing & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria.

(Photo from National Coalition of Syrian Revolution & Opposition Forces)

This information simply blows me away since for years I have written about the repugnant “pickininny art” so prevalent & pervasive up to the Civil Rights Movement. The most common theme was Black infants suspended over an alligator pit. At no time did I imagine that Black children were actually used as bait for alligators. It is entirely of a piece with the war against Black youth that prevails today.

https://libertywritersafrica.com/how-african-babies-were-used-as-alligator-bait-during-slavery-in-america/?

Good article by Shahid Lone about how Indian military aggression in Kashmir reflects political weakness in crushing resistance to occupation & colonialism.

https://thewire.in/government/new-delhis-muscular-approach-to-kashmir-reflects-its-policy-paralysis?