This is a long investigation of Uyghur persecution by the Chinese government in East Turkistan (what the Chinese regime calls Xinjiang). Since the genocide is being justified or denied by Stalinists & Assadists with a fury, it’s important to understand the Uyghur point of view so that propaganda & genocide denial roll off our backs like water off a duck’s ass. The investigative reporter is Australian Sophie McNeill whose reporting on Syria has enflamed Assadists who call her a committed jihadist.

https://www.facebook.com/abc4corners/videos/429208781004357/UzpfSTE2MjUyMjkwNjE6MTAyMTY5OTI3MDAwODI3ODI/

Not to be shallow, but it’s clear my Facebook friends are among the best looking on social media. Am I just a magnet for hotties or is the whole damn human race (with the exclusion of politicians) a good-looking lot?

“History will remember that the Regime/Russian criminality took mercy on nothing. Not a human being, a fledgling bird nor a rock on the ground….It is our hope that what will shine greater in the annals of history is the respect for life the White Helmets paid every living thing they encountered. Even motherless hatchlings give them a moment for pause & prayer.”

Photo from Kafriya Town, Idlib province, after Syrian airstrikes yesterday.

–Tweeted by the White Helmet rescue workers

How do you like Trump, dumb as a stump, telling two Black women, one Latina, & one Palestinian woman who are members of the US Congress to ‘go back’ to their ‘corrupt’ & “broken & crime infested” countries before “telling the people of the United States…how our government is to be run”? One of the women was born in Michigan, one in Massachusetts, one in New York. Only Ilhan Omar was born outside the US but is a war refugee from Somalia.

His racism & misogyny are only made more detestable by his stupidity & the low level of his nationalism & hatred.

In July 2014, as Israeli bombs rained down on Gaza, BDS activists waged an aggressive education campaign with American rapper Talib Kweli who was scheduled to perform at an Israeli musical festival in August along with other prominent rappers. Kweli honored BDS & canceled his participation though at the time he did not seem well informed about the Palestinian struggle. He is however a political thinker very much involved in the struggle against police violence in the Black community.

He became well-informed about the Palestinian struggle & by 2017 was debating BDS on social media with Remedy, a Jewish Zionist rapper also from NYC. This month, he was asked to renounce BDS in order to perform at the Open Source Festival in Düsseldorf & when he refused his tour of Germany was canceled. Since May 2019, an official statement passed by the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament, declares BDS to be anti-Semitic. In response to being disinvited from the festival, Kweli said: “…what they’re saying is support for BDS is hate speech. Well, how? Show me on the BDS platform where there’s hate speech. You can’t, it’s not there, so let’s move to the next point. Are you saying that support for BDS is hate speech because you say that BDS supports Palestinian organizations that have committed terrorism? No, you can’t say that, either.”

In an interview, Kweli compared the pedagogical but aggressive treatment he received from BDS activists in 2014 to those he received from Zionists when he canceled the Israeli performance. He said, “The worst trolling I ever got in my life was when I canceled that Israel show. The Zionist trolls came at me….the pushback from the BDS & the supporters of Palestine that I got was…fierce. People were frustrated with me, people were upset with me, but for the most part, that community was respectful in their critique of me. It wasn’t any, “You’re a n*****, you’re a coon, you’re a monkey.” But when I canceled the Israel show in solidarity with BDS, I got called n*****, & monkey, & all types of sh*t from these Zionist trolls, & it immediately made me feel like I’d made the right decision.”

(Photo of Talib Kweli)

It’s worth reposting this beautiful tribute by Rollie Mukherjee to Kashmiri women’s leading role in the struggle for azaadi. Just a simple google search will show hundreds of photos of Kashmiri women protesting. They lead the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons. They play a leading role internationally in the campaign against sexual violence in war, occupation, & genocide. They are central to one of the most important freedom struggles of our times.

“this painting titled “unframed ‘histories’” depicts a Kashmiri woman with a mike. She is not a mute beautiful showpiece as represented quite often. She is a reminder of the horror & wounds they are made to exist with. She is a speaking agency, speaking aloud to the whole world & thus breaks the patterned “way of seeing” of the Indians. The kashmiri design in this painting acts as a trope for peace & unity on the one hand & on the other hand sneer at how its beauty is relished & their pains are cornered & erased.”

Turkish president Erdogan is a big talker when it comes to genocide, another master of the empty gesture. In 2015, an estimated 25,000 Rohingya refugees were turned away from asylum in Thailand & other countries & left to float in rickety boats in the Andaman Sea. Not a single navy sent a fleet to rescue them although Erdogan in one of his big-talking moments promised some Turkish naval boats. There’s no report that any Turkish boats ever showed up & still no accounting for the lives of thousands of Rohingya refugees. During the height of Burma’s 2017 genocidal assault on Rohingya Muslims in Arakan/Rakhine State–a genocide armed & politically supported by China–Erdogan did some more big talking & sent his wife for a media tour of Cox’s Bazar refugee camps. It’s not certain how much actual aid Turkey has ever delivered.

In February of this year, the Turkish government issued a statement calling China’s forcible “assimilation” & concentration camps for Uyghurs a “great shame for humanity.” On his recent state visit to China, Erdogan told Xi Jinping that Uyghurs are ‘living happily in Xinjiang’. Not even six months & our big talker goes from forcible assimilation in concentration camps to ‘living happily’ in concentration camps. What changed his mind? Realpolitik recognizes no principles, especially those of human rights. In truth, Erdogan heads a regime as repressive as the Chinese regime. His big talking does not express his commitments but the political expedience of the moment. Shame on his sorry ass.

(Photo of Erdogan meeting with Xi Jinping from SupChina)

Last Saturday, there were a couple tiny gatherings of the Assadist/Stalinist antiwar cult demanding “US out of Venezuela & Iran.” Since the US is doing some serious saber-rattling against those two countries, it is certainly appropriate to protest. But the real US wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, or the genocidal Syrian & Russian bombing of Idlib were not even mentioned. The Assadist/Stalinist antiwar cult insists that Syria & Russia have a right to bomb because they are defending Assad’s right to self-determination & anyway they’re only bombing terrorists. Those gatherings were tiny & will continue to get tinier because their politics are entirely corrupt, if not also politically deranged & squarely rooted in the Islamophobic “war on terror.”

Because Syrian & Russian bombing of Idlib is so sustained & genocidal, my posts have focused on that & I have been unable to pay sufficient attention to the struggles of Kashmiris, Palestinians, Rohingya, Uyghur, & others–not to mention the monstrous wars in Afghanistan Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Libya. Those struggles are all extremely urgent & my inattention is not to suggest they are not. All of these struggles are anyway connected in the so-called ‘war on terror’ which is a euphemism for the modern form of colonialism.

This video report by Basharat Amin is about how the Indian government uses vandalism & destruction of homes as a weapon of occupation & colonialism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL3hI91ggxg&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR1X7heRHDUVGUJfkpIDSugqjzlIYJAx02dNicudIoqASfPBiryCCzMc-LY

The Facebook accounts of Kashmiri photojournalist Aasif Shafi continue to be censored. His photojournalism sites with over 150,000 followers were simply deleted. Anyone who follows his work knows he is a serious, committed journalist, not an inflammatory instigator. Please follow his page to show political support for his work & to express outrage at Facebook’s continuing censorship.

https://www.facebook.com/aasifshafiofficial2/