Sure do wish people would stop posting statements from the US State Department protesting human rights crimes in the world. As long as the US is in a perpetual state of war, with six wars presently going on, is threatening war against three other countries, & is running concentration camps for refugees which include physical & sexual abuse, the US government has nothing to say on human rights worth a rat’s ass. When they issue a protest, it makes a mockery of human rights.

Today, at least 60 persons were injured, seven seriously, in protests during an Indian Army hunt to kill operation in the Kulgam district of Kashmir. Indian Army officials report they have pulled back in their use of pellet guns against unarmed protesters but that is not what protesters say nor what the injury rate would suggest. If not with pellet munitions, bullets, or tear gas canisters, then how were those 60 people injured today?

In January 2018, Amnesty International India launched a postcard campaign & online petition to ban the use of pellet guns by the Indian Army. Who knew? In a statement at the time, an Amnesty spokesperson said “The use of pellet shotguns is inherently inaccurate & indiscriminate.” They certainly are indiscriminate but exactly what did Amnesty mean by “inherently inaccurate”? Blindness accounts for about 70 percent of the pellet gun injuries & there is considerable other physical & mental damage, including from disfigurement & lifelong pain & suffering. What’s inaccurate about that?

Ending the use of pellet guns will take more than an episodic postcard & online petition drive. It is in the interests of all of us to campaign vigorously against pellet guns–which have also been used in Egypt & against Arab Spring protesters in Bahrain–to protect the right to protest without being assaulted & disabled. If India can get away with their use in Kashmir, it will be only a matter of time before pellet guns are used against protesters all over the world. We need to begin to figure out the political & organizational form such an international campaign should most effectively take.

After the killing of Zakir Musa last week, the NY Times published an article with the headline “Violent protests erupt in Kashmir after Indian forces kill militant.” The suggestion in the title is that protesters were out of control & violent when the reality is that unarmed protesters were expressing opposition to profligate violence against them in hunt to kill operations & by firing pellet guns & other lethal weapons at them. The violence is entirely one-sided & will end with the withdrawal of the last Indian occupation soldier from Kashmir.

India out of Kashmir. End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

Photo is protest in Srinagar last week against the killing of Zakir Musa.

(Photo by Dar Yasin/AP)

A young boy in Idlib grieves his family buried under rubble from Syrian & Russian bombers. But, as the corrupted antiwar movement sees it, his losses are for the greater good of defending Assad’s right to self-determination.

(Photo from Syrian News)

All the Lilliputian socialist cults & sects that supported Assad, campaigned for his right to self-determination, & applauded Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians are facing their imminent demise. They weren’t in very good shape politically when they began their eclipse into Assadism by aligning with fascism. The antiwar showboaters like Code Pink & Cindy Sheehan who supported Assad (as well as Maduro & the Iranian regime) will only last as long as Medea Benjamin will keep bankrolling their stunts. But it won’t be long after they’ve lost their authority that they will lose their audience. Stunts always require an audience. The ‘retired’ State Department, FBI, CIA, & military officers (like Ray McGovern, Ann Wright, Colleen Rowley) who lead the antiwar movement in collaboration with their previous agencies (by the public admission of Ray McGovern) have it just where they want it: in its last throes as a result of betraying the Syrian Arab Spring uprising.

Some may see this denouement as a catastrophe. As an antiwar activist for now 53 years, I see this as necessary for rebuilding a principled antiwar movement rooted in grassroots organizing & without government agents functioning as leaders to betray it. It will not be easy to rebuild the antiwar movement but it remains the most imperative political task of our times.

It’s deplorable that there is so little media coverage of the Syrian & Russian bombing siege of Idlib & Hama. But it’s of greater concern that so few Assad opponents are posting about the murderous siege that has forcibly displaced a quarter of a million people. That leaves Assad propagandists to go hog wild portraying civilians being bombed as ‘jihadi terrorists’.

It’s only a matter of time before the last battle & the final defeat of the Syrian Arab Spring uprising which began with such promise in February 2011. There is no coming back from the betrayal of so many erstwhile socialists & progressives, from the complete corruption of the international antiwar movement which supported Syrian bombing of civilians & Russian & Iranian intervention. They will gloat triumphal at the victory of the Assad regime, at winning self-determination for a dictator, & will continue to polemicize as if they were champions of democracy rather than hollow, gaseous windbags. But it is also only a matter of time before their political betrayal catches up with them & they are forced to limp off the stage of history into permanent disgrace where they belong. You cannot betray the just struggles of millions for democracy & think you will get away with it.

All along, the only just demands were the cessation of bombing by Syria, Russia, & the US-coalition & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria. The international antiwar movement completely bombed out on their responsibilities.

Photo is children fleeing Idlib & Hama, May 1st, 2019.

(Photo by AFP)

There’s hardly anyone left for Assadists to condemn, especially when they identify the hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians being bombed in Idlib & Hama as terrorists operating in the region rather than civilians forcibly relocated from other regions after “liberation” by Syrian, Russian, & Iranian forces. Anyone who disagrees with or reports about Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians & hospitals is simply added to Bartlett & Beeley’s enemy list which now includes all of MSM, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the White Helmets, & Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) who have documented Syrian government bombing attacks on medical facilities & personnel from the beginning up to now.

Last week PHR issued this report titled “Destroying Hospitals to Win the War.” It will be difficult for Assad propagandists to manufacture nefarious associations for these nurses & doctors since the organization has a long history documenting violations of human rights & reporting the forensics of torture, sexual violence in conflict zones, mass atrocities.

https://phr.org/resources/syria-destroying-hospitals-to-win-the-war/?

It’s so fascinating how Assad apologists who defend Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians & hospitals with cluster munitions, barrel & vacuum bombs go all squeamish when it comes to those two chlorine gas canisters dropped by Syrian bombers on Douma in 2018. It’s even more fascinating how those apologists for dictatorship morphed into ballistic forensic specialists. Ballistic forensics is some serious science requiring specialized knowledge of physics, biology, trigonometry, chemistry, metallurgy. Perhaps with their intuited scientific knowledge these savants & Assad apologists can explain the forensics of the other 336 chemical attacks by Syrian forces using chlorine gas (91.5%), sarin, & sulfur mustard gas on civilians. That information, by the way, didn’t come from the Assadist bêtes noires Bellingcat or the MSM but from the Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute which found that 98 percent of chemical attacks were by the Assad regime on civilians. The other 2 percent were launched by the Islamic State.

It’s impossible to unravel the truth behind the OPCW report on Douma or what that leaked document by a dissenting OPCW engineer is all about. It’s impossible first because of the scientific knowledge required & second because it’s been through the hands of & misinterpreted by Assad propagandists with their claims to special intuited scientific knowledge. Does anyone with critical judgement really believe that Tariq Ali, Peter Hitchens, Jonathan Cook, Craig Murray, Robert Fisk, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, Caitlin Johnstone, Kevork Almassian, former Pentagon official Theodore Postol, or the crazy-pants at the World Socialist Web Site really have the scientific know-how to evaluate the forensics of those two canisters? But let’s give them those two chlorine canisters at Douma. Let’s go along with their pathetic, sorry-assed argument that the chlorine attack was staged by the White Helmets to discredit the Assad regime. What about the other 336 chemical attacks? Will they claim those were also staged by the White Helmets? What about the thousands of barrel bombs, cluster munitions, vacuum bombs dropped on civilians by Syrian & Russian bombers? Are they justified, as Assadists claim, in defending a dictator’s right to self-determination?

In truth, Assad apologists are making a federal case about those two chlorine canisters at Douma in 2018 to distract from the murderous Syrian & Russian bombing campaign in Idlib & Hama right now. Beeley & Bartlett continue to claim that the hundreds of thousands of civilians being bombed & displaced are terrorists operating in the region rather than civilians forcibly evacuated from other regions in Syria after “liberation” by the Syrian Army, Iran militias & Russian bombers & militias. Unfortunately, in Beeley & Bartlett’s flatulent trail are those like Tariq Ali & hundreds of other erstwhile socialists & progressives who bought into Muslim-hating ‘war on terror’ ideology & into the anti-Semitism that is so fundamental to Assadism.

Photo is rescue operations in Idlib on May 27 2019.

(Photo from EA Worldview)

There’s a fair amount of demoralized rubbish being published these days about the hopeless situation of Rohingya refugees which accepts their expulsion from Burma as a permanent fait accompli. With 1.5 million Rohingya living stateless in camps just in Bangladesh, they are obviously in an unbearable & untenable situation but it is only politically hopeless if they stop fighting against genocide or if we turn our backs on them.

Most of our countries are involved in Burma’s neoliberal investment binge. Some are providing military equipment or training. Earlier this year, the Free Rohingya Coalition called for a total boycott of Burma & a UN Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar recently called for cutting off all financial & other support to Burma’s military. Rohingya activists & their supporters continue to tour the world campaigning for Rohingya rights & demanding that the Burmese generals & the Suu Kyi regime be held accountable. If we simply accept the Rohingya genocide as a fait accompli rather than add our voices to the campaign against it, we set a political precedent where tyranny prevails by brute force while we act like whipped puppies at the expense of the Rohingya people. If the avalanche of demoralized articles are getting you down, it’s wiser to follow the work of Rohingya activists & organizations.

(Photo is Rohingya refugees working at a kiln outside Kutupalong refugee camp by James Nachtwey for TIME)

The seven soldiers directly responsible for massacring ten Rohingya men were released after ten months of a ten year sentence. The Burmese genocidaires had to release them since impunity for mass murder, mass rape, torching entire villages is necessary to maintain military loyalty & discipline. That is & always has been a feature of militarism. It is of a piece with India’s Armed Forces Special Powers Acts giving impunity to the Indian Army for the same crimes in Kashmir & with presidential pardons of US war criminals & the impunity agreements the US imposes on occupied countries like Iraq & Afghanistan. When young men are unleashed to act like savage beasts, they must be assured there will be no accountability before a court of law.

https://reut.rs/30MBhUD?fbclid=IwAR2miHqIDAUIfCU6VsQlnwZGeCtG7bVJ9CHjq_d2UByUy2cgl84g2CjCmZs