You see the word ‘libtard’ all over social media to insult liberals. You look like a damn fool demeaning those with learning disabilities to make yourself superior to others who may be more progressive in their respect for those with disabilities. Disrespectful or stupid is a whole other level of social disability.
Monthly Archives: May 2019
Eight southern US states have passed or are attempting to pass laws outlawing abortion claiming it’s to protect the sanctity of life. That’s about as despicable & dishonest as their claims that lynching thousands of Blacks was to protect the safety & virtue of white females. In Alabama, which has the most restrictive abortion law, there are calls from politicians & editors to ‘let the KKK ride again’ & bring back “old-fashioned public hangings” by racist mobs, which often included burning & mutilation. See how that sanctity of life thing works for women & Blacks?
Days like Memorial Day are alway disorienting for me. On the one hand, I refuse to glorify militarism or the ‘serving their country’ & ‘fighting for democracy’ thing since that is just war propaganda. But on the other, I’ve seen brothers, cousins, uncles whose lives have been permanently turned upside down by war. Some have come to understand the nature of war & what happened to them but others never could get it & still hate on antiwar activists like myself as though we were the reason for their suffering. I resolve the conflict by recommitting to antiwar activism, to supporting veterans’ benefits, & by including the victims of war–& not just US wars–in my remembrances of the day.
A young guy at the dog park today called me a ‘retard’ & told me I was ‘gonna get killed’ because my little Chihuahua mutts barked at his thoroughbred puppy. I might have used some harsh language with him but I didn’t stick around to see what he meant by ‘gonna get killed’. This is the US after all, where psycho-killers abound.
Fourteen-year-old Fazil Fayaz Malik is on life support in a Kashmiri hospital after being beaten in detention by Indian occupying forces. He was one of seven young boys arrested on Friday & held in an army camp near Soibugh village in the Budgam district for protesting the execution of Zakir Musa. They were allegedly detained for stone pelting which the Indian Army, exactly like the Israeli Army, is trying to turn into a capital offense.
Yesterday, protesters, including family members, protested the arrest & beating of young Fazil as well as another young boy who had been beaten in custody.
End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.
(Photo of Kashmiri protesters is Reuters file photo; it is not certain if it is from the current protests against the execution of Zakir Musa)
Hopefully, the Amnesty & Airwars report on the barbaric US siege of Raqqa, Syria will bring those anti-Assadists who call for a ‘humanitarian US military intervention’ into Syria to their senses. The US has been in Syria from the beginning of the Arab Spring uprising in 2011 on the side of counterrevolution just as it operated in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain against the Arab Spring uprisings in those countries.
https://raqqa.amnesty.org/?fbclid=IwAR29gEAL8YzHDh88uARtBysIaufvshm5CoE1k83PfGZ_P0Ee-gTJPmQQiPs
The welfare of children is the most important measure, one could call it the gold standard, for justice. That welfare, which is a human principle, is not circumscribed by national borders. But the US incarcerates refugee children in concentration camps, denies them medical care & schooling, physically, emotionally, & sexually abuses them. Bangladesh denies Rohingya children the right to an education which can give them not just a vision & dreams of a better life, but can help them understand how to fight for their human rights. That’s why education has always been a priority for the oppressed. It is not a coincidence that in Black Reconstruction in the US, it was former Black slaves who instituted free public education for all children. It is not a coincidence that free public & desegregated education is now under attack in the US. Education should be considered a fundamental human right for all children & any & every truncation of that right should be loudly denounced.
This is not a new issue for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh since they have always been denied access to education beyond primary schooling. Media reports claim it is a way to discourage any sense of permanent residential rights among refugees & that may play a part. But it is primarily a way to keep Rohingya refugees in a subordinate position, to discourage their fight for human & democratic rights.
Today is Memorial Day in the US, a national holiday honoring those who died in US wars. It’s a day of parades, flag-waving, & nationalism but not really to honor deceased soldiers so much as to glorify wars which are inherent to capitalism, especially in its barbaric phase. It’s unspeakable that Trump would pardon war criminals–the special forces, mercenaries, & Marines who murdered, tortured, desecrated the corpses of Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians, & others. But Trump (who got himself exempted from the military by claiming bone spurs), is not breaking new political ground here. Impunity for war crimes is a US political tradition going back countless wars. The US spends considerable effort brokering impunity agreements with puppet regimes it installs after occupation, most notably in Iraq & Afghanistan, & routinely short-circuits the sentences of those prosecuted for war crimes.
Since 2001, the US has spent $5.9 trillion for the so-called ‘war on terror’. A conservative estimate is that over 724,000 people have been killed in those wars & another 10 million forcibly displaced. This is not just a matter of war criminality by individual soldiers but of systemic culpability of the US government, better known as the US “military-industrial complex.”
There are few people in the world who retain any illusions about US militarism but those who do espouse the imaginary “humanitarian war” scenario. We can only scratch our heads in disbelief & contempt. One of the historic tasks of this generation internationally is to oppose US & all militarism under whatever guise it operates.
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-war-crimes-pardon-174647185.html?ncid=facebook_yahoonewsf_akfmevaatca
While governments continue to blither about an Israeli-Palestinian peace process (which led to the Oslo Accords legitimizing Israeli occupation & expropriation of the West Bank) & a two-state solution, Palestinians in their majority, especially the youth, no longer believe the bantustate solution is possible. According to a joint study (titled ‘Role of Public Opinion in the Resilience/Resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’) by the Palestinian Center for Policy & Survey Research in Ramallah & the Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University, only 43% of Palestinians now support a bantustate solution, even less than the 49% of Israelis who do.
In the photo, Palestinians are protesting a road closure by Israeli settlers near the Kfar Adumim settlement in the occupied West Bank.
(Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images)