No one in the political arena is above criticism. That’s the character of debate when understanding complex social & political problems is involved. Nevertheless, it’s hard to criticize someone like Ali Abunimah when he plays such a central role in Palestinian solidarity. His political judgements however, outside of Palestine & Israel, are often quite conservative. On the issue of the Assad dictatorship & the Syrian Arab Spring, including the role of Palestinian refugees, his politics are hopelessly mired in Assadism.

Not to insult his intelligence, but it seemed he was too influenced by such people as Ben Norton & Max Blumenthal. In fact, his father Hasan Abu Nimah lost his home in the West Bank after the 1967 War, became a Palestinian resident of Jordan, & served as a
career diplomat for the Jordanian monarchy for many years until his retirement. He has written several articles about Syria, all of which take a strong Assadist position. It’s likely that as a diplomat he had exchanges with the Assad dynasty & may even know them on a personal basis. What’s unfortunate is that neither Abunimah has grasped the problems faced by Palestinian refugees in Syria who sided with the Syrian Arab Spring. Many have been disappeared, arrested, tortured, & murdered in Assad’s gulag. Thousands have been displaced by regime & Russian bombing. Jordan long ago sealed off its borders to them as Turkey later did. The issue involved in their political blindness most likely has to do with class since Palestinian refugees in Syria could not go from being refugees into a diplomatic post.

Tulsi Gabbard did herself in with hard-core Assad propagandists several months ago when she characterized Assad as a ‘brutal dictator’ who used chemical weapons against Syrian civilians. Bartlett & Beeley & their disciples treat Assad like a demigod, not least of all because he signs their paychecks. Now Gabbard has blown it with the Medea Benjamin/Code Pink & Ali Abunimah type of Assadists by voting for H. Res. 246, the US House resolution which denounces BDS & swears fealty to Israel.

Not even a month ago, Abunimah was tweeting favorable comments about Gabbard like “I’m open minded about Tulsi Gabbard & skeptical about a lot of what’s being said about her. Some criticisms are fair & some are smears.” Days later he tweeted, “Tulsi Gabbard: end the wars & give everyone free, quality healthcare. What’s not to like?” Since Gabbard has been a Hindutva nationalist, General Sisi supporter, Zionist, & anti-Semite for a long time, there’s a lot not to like & it’s hard to understand what took Abunimah so long to catch on though it’s good he finally has. Now maybe we can catch him up to speed about Assad.

This photo of Gabbard with leading Zionists Miriam Adelson & Rabbi Shmuley from May 2019 was posted on Twitter & published in Haaretz & other media venues. What’s not to get about her politics on Palestinians?

(Photo from Rabbi Shmuley’s Twitter wall on May 5th, 2019)

“This Is My 21th Account I Created Today On 28/7/19. Dear Authorities Please Stop Censoring Me.”

–message to Facebook from Kashmiri photojournalist Aasif Shafi

Rand Paul, a Republican dirt ball much publicly admired & honored by Assadist Vanessa Beeley, has offered to buy a ticket for Ilhan Omar to return to Somalia so she will be grateful to now be an American. We leave it to American Assadists who look to Beeley as an authority on Syria & the White Helmets to worm their way out of that dilemma. They weren’t careful in their judgements so they are judged by the fascist company they keep.

The ruthless little stone pelter, three-year-old Palestinian Mohammad Rabee Alayan, who has one of the most high-tech, fully-loaded armies in the world up in arms. He could be sentenced to 20 years in an Israeli military prison for lobbing rocks at police & army jeeps. Israel should be facing Nuremberg charges for traumatizing a little guy like this.

Build BDS.

India has about 800,000 troops deployed to Jammu & Kashmir making it the most militarized region in the world with a ratio of nearly one soldier to every 15 residents. It’s hard to imagine the psychological magnitude of such an overwhelming fully-armed & hostile presence. At the request of the J&K state government, India is now deploying & airlifting in another 10,000 paramilitary forces on top of 10,000 additional forces deployed last February & 40,000 recently deployed for the Hindu pilgrimage to Amarnath. It would be safe to call this a massive provocation & a threat to public safety.

We should be afraid for Kashmiris & outraged that they, for the most part, stand alone on the front lines of oppression without international support. It should be our commitment to, at the least, educate others about their struggle against occupation & colonialism &, at the most, begin to build an active solidarity movement to support their struggle for political power.

(Photo of Indian troops from Reuters)

This very powerful image is from December 15, 2018 when Indian occupying forces opened fire at unarmed Kashmiris (in the Pulwama district about 45 km south of Srinagar) marching toward the site where three militants had been killed in a hunt to kill operation. Eleven Kashmiri civilians died & over 200 were injured. Medical personnel treating the victims said all of the injuries were to the head, abdomen, & neck, proving the occupying army intended to kill the civilian protesters.

Nationalism is so corrupting & hateful that in response to this photo, a Hindutva creep posted a cartoon depiction of independence leader Syed Ali Geelani manhandling a small child, with the inscription: “The dangerous teacher in Kashmir: terrorism plus stone pelting equals azadi.” Hindutva nationalism, Zionism, Assadism are on a continuum of political amorality that dehumanizes the oppressed. It’s a fatal amorality if not silenced by political power, as the US Civil Rights Movement demonstrated so powerfully.

This photo is a Kashmiri woman grieving over a civilian during his funeral prayers at Prichoo village in the Pulwama district.

(Photo by Javed Dar/Xinhua)

Mehbooba Mufti & Omar Abdullah are going at each other on Twitter. As chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir, Abdullah introduced pellet munitions & in her tenure as chief minister, Mufti endorsed their use against unarmed protesters. Hopefully they’ll clobber the hell out of each other since Kashmiris are done with them. May they rot in hell.

Twitter just suspended the account of the Russian embassy in Syria. One would be a fool to think they did it to monitor ‘fake news’ or advance the truth about Syria. Russia has several media venues to peddle their rubbish including RT, Sputnik, Tass, Pravda, Mint Press, Duran, Global Research, the buffoon Pepe Escobar, an entire stable of professional propagandists, & guppies like Ben Norton, Max Blumenthal, & Rania Khalek. It does not serve those who want to fight tyranny to have governments or social media censoring what we don’t agree with. We don’t have to read it, we do have to know what they’re saying in order to politically respond, & we are always most protective of human rights if we do not join with the jackass chorus demanding censorship. In the long run, it is the voices of social transformation who will be silenced if we do not stand for freedom of speech.

According to the White Helmet rescue workers, since the Syrian & Russian bombing offensive began on Idlib, Hama, & Aleppo on April 26th, 830 civilians, including 199 children, have been killed. Since the regime is targeting civilians, not terrorists, there is no report on the number of ‘al-Qaeda affiliated Salafi-jihadi terrorists” killed, if any. Media has shown precious little interest in reporting either the deaths of civilians or of terrorists–if they even know how to identify terrorists from freedom fighters.

Propagandist Eva Bartlett has written & reposted her RT rubbish several times about how White Helmets use children for propaganda purposes. Alas poor Eva has only been in politics for a few years & entered them as a professional propagandist for Assad based on her associations with demented anti-Semite David Icke. She has no political history as an independent activist, especially in antiwar politics. Her interests are solely in supporting the status quo of power & not the struggles of working people against injustice, inequality, & dictatorship. So she might not know, although she is masterful at lying through her ass, that photojournalists often focus on women & children because that is the most compelling way to tell the story of war, occupation, & genocide.

This photo is not a made-for-propaganda moment. It is White Helmets recovering & trying to save the life of a little girl buried by Syrian or Russian bombing of civilian neighborhoods, market places, farm fields in Idlib. If the White Helmets publish this photo, it is not to peddle lies against the Assad dictatorship but to show the character of the regime bombing offensive against civilians.

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

(Photo from White Helmets, July 30 2019)