Indian occupying forces ban all civilian traffic on the national highway of Kashmir every Sunday & Wednesday to allow for the exclusive movement of Indian military convoys. A commuter was allowed to travel on the highway today after being stamped on his hand by local authorities. Many Kashmiris commenting on this have pointed out the apartheid character of this & its repugnant affinities to the yellow badges that Nazis forced Jews to wear for identification.
We should not be discouraged at the outcome of Israeli elections since all the candidates were explicitly for apartheid & genocide. But the election results are a call to action since they reflect the hold of Zionism among Israelis. The responsibilities of solidarity increase significantly to help build Palestinian political power & change the balance of power to the advantage of Palestinians. Political power is very persuasive when it comes to changing political consciousness.
Someone tells me I “essentialize” war & militarism as inherent to the US government. After nearly 200 years of continuous US wars, invasions, coups, assassinations, occupations, genocides, who in the hell with half a brain wouldn’t?
Hopefully protests against Madonna providing the soundtrack to genocide will stick to the venality & loathsome character of her politics & that those who call her an “old whore” will be scorned as insulting to women & seniors.
After Netanyahu was reelected yesterday, Modi tweeted: “My dear friend Bibi, Congratulations! You are a great friend of India, & I look forward to continuing to work with you to take our bilateral partnership to new heights. @netanyahu.” Trump also tweeted his congratulations but the less said about that deadbeat, the better. The important thing is that this bodes not well for Palestinians nor for Kashmiris.
Last week, the US, UK, & France (all part of the US-coalition in Syria) proclaimed they are committed to holding the Syrian regime accountable for indiscriminately killing innocent men, women & children with chemical weapons. In comments on Twitter to mark the second anniversaries of Syrian chemical weapon attacks on Khan Sheikhoun & Douma in April 2017, the US State Department repeated its commitment to hold the Assad regime accountable for atrocities against the Syrian people by the use of chemical weapons.
Those proclamations must sound so stirring & heartfelt to the Syrian civilians of Raqqa who the US-coalition (including the UK & France) pummeled with white phosphorous in 2017; to the civilians of Mosul, Iraq who were buried in the rubble of US warplanes in 2016-2017; to the civilians of Afghanistan, subject for over 17 years to carpet bombing but especially after the US dropped the Mother of All Bombs in April 2017; to the people of Yemen who the US has been bombing since before the Arab Spring uprising in 2011; to Palestinians whose genocide is bankrolled by the US Pentagon for the past 70 years; to Somalis & Libyans & others subject to US war crimes.
When the US hands out human rights awards or condemns other regimes for war crimes, how can anyone repeat that like it meant something? There are tens of thousands of refugees penned up in concentration camps or stranded on the US southern border who testify to the utter criminality of the US government making it unable to distinguish human rights from war crimes. The US-coalition operation in Syria is not a “regime change operation” as simpleminded Assadists claim; it is part of the counterrevolution against the Syrian Arab Spring uprising. At no time, have US bombers pursued Syrian forces or attempted to deter them from bombing civilians. Under the guise of fighting ISIS, the US-coalition has killed thousands of Syrian men, women, & children, including with white phosphorous, & is as culpable in Syria as the Assad regime, Russia, Iran, & Hezbollah.
This photo is from Khan Sheikhoun Syrian chemical weapons attack on April 4, 2017.
(Photo by Alaa Alyousef/AP)
Can there possibly be a lesser evil candidate in today’s Israeli elections when they all support apartheid & genocide? Although it didn’t stop many socialists from endorsing Hillary Clinton as the lesser evil when she promised to escalate genocide against Palestinians.
There’s no need for me to set up an exploratory committee to see if I should run for president in the 2020 election. Someone has to stand for the oppressed without compromise or populist big talk. Expedience & lesser evil crap are no part of my nature. Nothing is too much to demand for working people.
In the 2016 campaign, my original running mate forgot principles by running with me while campaigning for Bernie Sanders. She may have hoped to sabotage my campaign but I simply dumped her & continued the campaign because it isn’t about me; it is about uncompromising support for those struggling for justice. Because, despite considerable limitations, this is a serious campaign, I would like a running mate & welcome suggestions, with the right of course to vet for suitability.
Within a matter of days, I will be setting up a social media campaign page.
When Socialist Action, a Lilliputian US cult around Jeff Mackler, first formulated its support for the Assad regime, it acknowledged he was a dictator. But by stringing together out-of-context quotes from Lenin they came up with a banal justification for supporting Assad & betraying the Syrian Arab Spring which Mackler, poisoned by ‘war on terror’ ideology, designated as “Islamist.” When Russia joined Syria in bombing civilians, Mackler & his groupies defended it & when Assad gassed civilians, they denied it. Calling themselves Marxists, they became full members of the “US regime change operation” cult. Now Mackler has written an article calling Ilhan Omar “retrogressive” for calling Assad a dictator. It’s a slippery slope from sectarianism & cultism to sucking up to dictatorship. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s the natural trajectory.