At first, it seems perplexing that Stalinists & Assadists are making the defense of Julian Assange the very centerpiece of their political campaigning, even prioritizing it over war, occupation, genocide. In the political tradition I come from, war, occupation, & genocide are always the preeminent political issues, bar none. Censorship of journalism is directly related to them so campaigning for freedom of the press is incorporated into antiwar & solidarity work & does not drown them out of existence.

As important as the Assange case is, there is an element & a strong element of white supremacy where the victimization of a white journalist preempts & excludes any campaigning around the hundreds of journalists, including citizen journalists, from places like Iraq, Syria, Burma, Afghanistan, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, India, Yemen, Sudan, Brazil, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Israel, Egypt, who are arrested, disappeared, tortured, murdered by repressive regimes. Saying that does not negate the importance of defending Assange, no matter how detestable he is, but highlights that his case is only one of hundreds of journalists who are sitting in prisons, being tortured, or are dead because of their work. It has never been explained what makes his case special over the entire network of Rohingya citizen journalists who were disappeared during the genocidal siege of 2017, that of Kashmiri journalist Aasif Sultan who was arrested for sedition in August 2018 & is also suffering health problems in prison, that of Palestinian journalists shot at by Israeli snipers, or that of Mexican journalists hunted down like animals & forced to flee into exile.

Probably the main reason Stalinists & Assadists are so ardent about Assange is less about freedom of the press & more that his conspiratorial politics obfuscate the distinctions between journalism & propaganda–distinctions they want to obscure in order to discredit journalism, legitimize propaganda, & peddle lies as realities. It was once called the ‘Stalinist school of falsification.’ It is now their use of ‘war on terror’ ideology rooted in Islamophobia that justifies wars, especially Syrian & Russian bombing in Syria, & denies genocides like that of the Uyghur, Rohingya, & Moro Muslims.

This is a photo of Kashmiri Aasif Sultan being arrested by Indian occupying forces in August 2018. He is still in jail & there is presently no international campaign to release him.

(Photo from many Kashmiri sources)

Marc Nelson, the artist who drew this sketch from an eyewitness photo of a Syrian infant, wrote : “My friend Amer Abboush asks: “Is there a new weapon someone wants to try on the bodies of our children?” As the Nazis tested their bombs on Guernica, Russia tests their weapons on Syrian civilians.”

Stop the bombing of Idlib. They are civilians, not terrorists.

(Drawing my Marc Nelson on Twitter)

This is a farmer in Idlib whose fields are being targeted by Syrian & Russian war planes in a scorched earth bombing campaign now in its third month. He is not a terrorist. Yet the corrupted US antiwar group United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) issued a statement equating the Syrian Arab Spring uprising in Idlib in 2011 with terrorists, claiming Idlib is now a major enclave of terrorists & is governed by al Qaeda, & that all civilians, specifically Christians, had long ago been driven out.

The UNAC statement defends Russian & Syrian military intervention in Idlib & denies their use of chemical weapons but does not address the use of barrel bombs, carpet bombing, or Russia’s claim that it is testing out new advanced weaponry in Syria. Instead, the statement blames US & Israeli military intervention in Syria for the carnage in Idlib. The US & Israel have monstrous war crimes to account for in Syria & their military intervention should be denounced & opposed. But in the present bombing siege of Idlib, it is Syria, Russia, & Iran who must be denounced rather than supported so ardently by UNAC.

All of the UNAC statement reads as though it came from the Assad regime, from propagandists Eva Bartlett & Vanessa Beeley, or from one of the other far-right ideologues, like Kevork Almassian, who support the Assad dictatorship. Syria isn’t the first time in history that antiwar activists & socialists have supported war or opposed revolution against dictatorship but it may be the first time they did so with such utter sycophancy to dictatorship & marching lockstep with the fascist right, & with Islamophobes & anti-Semites.

Stop the bombing of Idlib. They are children, old women, young mothers, farmers, nurses, doctors, plumbers, laborers, teachers, electricians, unemployed. They are not terrorists.

Shameful statement by UNAC on Idlib: http://nepajac.org/unacsyria917.htm?fbclid=IwAR2EW7AmXvcX7Zs1XlXKaylElD5gy7iEZlCOaK4Drvar_9wX-SiXHjILzFY

(Sketch of farmer receiving medical care from an eyewitness photo by Marc Nelson on Twitter)

US refugee policy: a mother fords the Rio Grande River with her frightened child at Juarez across from El Paso, Texas.

“No one puts their children in a river or ocean unless the water is safer than the land”

(Photo from AP)

A video showing vandalism of a house by Indian occupying forces during a hunt to kill operation in Kashmir. What is surprising is that they didn’t also raze it to the ground.

https://www.facebook.com/livejknews/videos/2395581784018421/UzpfSTE2MjUyMjkwNjE6MTAyMTY5MzcwMTg0OTA3Nzc/

Just as they campaign for the Assad dictatorship using ‘war on terror’ rhetoric, Max Blumenthal & Ben Norton continue their campaign defending the Chinese government from charges of genocide against Uyghur Muslims. Norton just tweeted another denial of the genocide & claimed “the US, Europe, & Turkey want to break Xinjiang away from China & turn it into a colonial rump state to weaken Beijing.”

In their defense of repressive regimes, their justifications for war & genocide, their denunciations of popular protests demanding democracy, Blumenthal & Norton long ago began a move to the far right of Islamophobia & anti-Semitism & are at this point indistinguishable from it.

Images of children buried in cement rubble, killed, or injured in Syrian & Russian scorched earth bombing of Idlib are so disturbing that in respect to the children more are showing sketches rather than the photos.

They are children, not terrorists. Stop the bombing of Idlib.

(Sketch from an eyewitness photo by artist Marc Nelson on Twitter)

This report on Assad’s scorched earth campaign in Idlib is what journalism looks like, not the rubbish of propagandists who claim Syria & Russia are only bombing terrorists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQTcZdmm0J0&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2zsVSYQ-YiXlsCDp5x60zMU7bjPgwvoqPpeSYWlr0iNcVkDWUE-IFfco0

Syrian & Russian bombers continue targeting Idlib for 71 days in a row. The UN reports that 330,000 people were displaced from the region just during the month of May. The Syrian Network for Human Rights which monitors casualties reports that 544 civilians, including 130 children, have been killed in hundreds of bombing & ground strikes & that 2,117 people have been injured.
This is a sketch based on an eyewitness photo from an operating room in Idlib where bombing victims are being treated or declared dead.

Stop the bombing in Idlib. They are civilians, not terrorists.

(Sketch is by artist Marc Nelson on Twitter)

A CNN article has been circulating for a few days with the title “13,000 migrant children in detention.” The article is from October 2018 & was a statistical underestimation then. But now, it is dead wrong. Last week, the head of US immigration said the Border Patrol had arrested 60,000 children, both unaccompanied & kidnapped from their parents, in just forty days between May & June. That is 60,000 on top of the thousands already held in concentration camps.