A voice from the Syrian Arab Spring:

“Assadists
-mock victims and say they deserve it
-cheer for airstrikes and “nuking Idlib”
-claim everything is staged
-tell Syrians to “do their research”

“What research? My uncle was thrown in Assad’s prison for months for no reason and my cousins along with him. He rotted away in Assad’s dungeons with no space for him to even stand only bend his knees and crouch in a corner with bugs constantly crawling all over him and feeding on his skin and blood. It came to the point where he didnt even bother to flick them away. My uncle is a man who took care of his body, always been athletic, yet when he was released after months he was nothing but a skeleton. I dont even know the extent of the mental and physical torture he went through.

“One of my other cousins imprisoned was in Sednaya, the most notorious for its utter brutality and we dont even know if he’s still alive or not. What freaking research are you talking about shut your damn mouth. Its our own families and people who are dying. I’m tired. Leave us alone, you’re not Syrian, what do you want from us??? Go away cease to exist already.”

–From القهر on Twitter

The irredeemably corrupt Democratic Party does not deserve Ilhan Omar who has shown herself to be astute & uncompromising. Here she eviscerates in the nicest & most unsparing way a hateful, Islamophobic question about female genital mutilation.

https://www.facebook.com/NowThisPolitics/videos/2403120809907442/UzpfSTE2MjUyMjkwNjE6MTAyMTcwODUzMTM5NTgwNzE/

In reporting on the death of five-year-old Riham al-Abdullah who along with her mother Asmaa Naqouhl & three-year-old sister Reham died last week in a Syrian or Russian airstrike on a housing complex, the BBC said: “It has brought attention back to the war in Syria, where the Russian-backed government is trying to recapture Idlib from rebels & jihadists.” Now isn’t that an interesting perspective from a news agency bombarded by criticism from Assadists for bias against the Assad dictatorship. Now that BBC agrees with Assadists that it is ‘jihadists’ & not civilians being bombed in Idlib, not only have they found common ground but they are all still left to explain which jihadi terrorist group little Riham commanded.

Stop the bombing of Idlib. Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Russian, US-coalition (including Israel), Iranian, Hezbollah forces & mercenaries from Syria.

This harrowing moment is from a Syrian or Russian airstrike last week on a residential complex in Ariha, Idlib. The bombing caused the building to collapse & a young family to fall from an upper floor. Here the father Amjad al-Abdullah is screaming in horror as his five-year-old daughter Riham clings to the tee-shirt of her seven-month-old sister Tuqa to prevent her from falling off the ledge. Moments later, the building collapsed & both little girls fell five stories to the ground. According to White Helmet rescuers present at the scene, after saving her baby sister, Riham hit her head on a rock in the fall & died at the scene. Tuqa remains in critical condition but her mother Asmaa Naqouhl & three-year-old sister Reham also died in the bombing.

Meanwhile Assadist propagandists & their guppies in the antiwar & socialist movements ‘go about their doggy lives’ not just indifferent to this slaughter but exultant that by bombing civilian residences, markets, & fields, terrorism is being defeated in Idlib & self-determination for the Assad dictatorship is almost solidified. May they all rot in hell as they are stinking up the earth with their hatreds & stupidities.

Stop the bombing of Idlib. Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Russian, Iranian, US-coalition, & Hezbollah forces & mercenaries from Syria.

(Photo by Bashar al Sheikh)

The Islamophobia behind the so-called ‘war on terror’ is a quite versatile hysteria which doesn’t just serve in the Middle East but in parts of the old USSR, Southeast Asia, & in Africa which, despite the brutal attempts of European Christian missionaries, has a deeply Islamic character & history. There is no intention to abandon its use & great political advantage to inciting it. Exposing & opposing every manifestation of hatred for Muslims & excoriating every attempt to associate Islam with terrorism is essential, not a political exaggeration. Islamophobia is the ideology of the modern form of colonialism used to justify war, occupation, genocide. Name a country where that isn’t true.

Fascist propagandist Eva Bartlett posted a tribute to Assad which is far more temperate than her usual paeans to him & his anorexic but stylishly emaciated wife. Usually her & Beeley’s tributes to the Assads bring sycophancy to a level of groveling seldom displayed even by the servants at Buckingham Palace who wipe the asses of the British moochocracy. This time, as she anticipates the defeat of the Syrian Arab Spring with glee, she said “2019 is the year of proudly thanking President Assad for his steadfastness when nearly the entire world was against Syria.”

Alas poor Eva, the entire world was never against Syria. It was against the Syrian dictatorship. Assad propagandists talking arrant Islamophobic & anti-Semitic rubbish about “US regime-change operations” convinced the leading but corrupted & lazy-assed figures of the international left & the antiwar movement to side with dictatorship against the Syrian Arab Spring. These political corrupted lent their support to fascism & made sure there was no sustained international support for the Syrian uprising nor opposition to the massive bombing by Syrian, Russian, & US-coalition (including Israel) forces. The Syrian people are paying a massive price for that betrayal. Perhaps, as one final gesture, the corrupted buffoons could explain to us exactly which Syrians, other than the Assad regime & its class, benefited from bombing to defend the Assad dictatorship’s right to self-determination since millions are in refugee camps or living on the streets, millions are dead, hundreds of thousands are injured, & 100 percent are traumatized.

Stop the bombing! Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces & mercenaries from Syria!

(Photo of child in Idlib from White Helmets: one of those photos deemed too violent to post by Facebook censors)

Is this image from a Syrian on Twitter too violent for the White Helmets to post on Facebook? This small child is one of eleven civilians, including six children, who were killed in Syrian & Russian airstrikes on Ariha, Idlib. The youngest child killed was two-years-old. Many of those killed & injured in Ariha were among those displaced in Syrian & Russian bombing in other parts of northwest Syria.

If there is one thing we need to understand, contrary to Assad propagandists & their guppies, it is that Syria & Russia in league with their US-coalition allies (including Israel), are directly targeting civilians, the participants in the Syrian Arab Spring, in order to send a message to the rest of the world that any attempts to stand up against the prevailing political order will be militarily crushed.

Stand with the Syrian Arab Spring. Stop the bombing. Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces & mercenaries from Syria.

(Photo from MMC)

This child with the pacifier around his neck who survived Syrian & Russian bombing of Bawabiya village in the Aleppo countryside is a grim reminder that there were three million people living in northwest Syria which is being carpet bombed, including with barrel bombs & incendiary weapons. Fifty-one percent are children, 25 percent are women. Between 400,000 & 500,000 have been displaced since Assad & Putin launched their offensive on the region almost three months ago on May 1st.

Stop the bombing! Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces & mercenaries from Syria!

(Photo from Amenah Masri on Twitter)

Yesterday, Facebook blocked the Syria Civil Defense, popularly known as the White Helmets, from publishing any content under the pretext of “posting content containing violent images.” Unfortunately, violence is the nature of war. But in fact, the White Helmets seldom, if ever, post graphically violent images from their work of rescuing & recovering bodies from rubble while many others on Twitter post extremely graphic images of those dismembered in Syrian & Russian bombing.

Once again, Facebook allows Assadist propagandists & their guppies to ignore the carnage & portray the carpet bombing of civilians in Idlib as a fight against terrorists. Good to know just where Facebook stands on the Islamophobic ‘war on terror’ & the savagery against the Arab Spring uprisings.

If you don’t live under military occupation like Palestinians, Kashmiris, & Uyghur, you don’t really understand how pervasive a system it is. It isn’t just the presence of troops, roadblocks, check points, surveillance, home invasions, home destructions, bodily searches, forcible disappearances, arrests, torture, incarceration on framed up charges, rape, constant harassment but that there is no legal recourse to stand against any of this. If you attempt to take legal action, for example, if the Kashmiri men who were unjustly imprisoned for 23 years took legal action, they would almost certainly face retribution even worse than imprisonment.

Our response, as advocates of human rights, must be to educate broadly about what is going on & begin to build an active international movement to stand with Palestinians, Kashmiris, Uyghur, & others. The more we allow them to take the brunt & stand on the front lines of oppression without our solidarity, the more likely we will be confronting it in our own countries. But above all, the iron law of social transformation is an injury to one of us is an injury to all. Muslims have a more beautiful & poetic way of saying no human being is alien to us.