The corrupted US antiwar movement is holding forums on the persecution of Putin & Russia whilst Idlib burns. It isn’t just silent on Syria but has not organized a single action against US wars in Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya. That explains why it is now down to a handful of Stalinist hacks wringing their gnarled hands over the hurt feelings of Putin & the maligning of Assad. If you take a look at how the USSR operated under their tenure, you understand how they made the antiwar movement a parody & a mockery of antiwar principles.

Surely these little kids in Idlib will agree with the moribund antiwar movement that their trauma is “worth it”, as Madeleine Albright would put it, to prevent a “US regime-change operation” & win self-determination for the Assad dictatorship.

(Photo from Anadolu Agency)

From the mouthes of the children being bombed with Syrian & Russian barrel & incendiary bombs.

(Tweeted by Bonnie Kipperman)

“War isn’t in my past. It’s in my everyday. Day & nights. The nightmares aren’t always same but the place is the same: Douma. The emotions I felt during the nightmares are the same I lived already: fear, helplessness, & sadness. War is devastating. And I am not a child.”

–Syrian activist Ahmad@Ahmad1618A on Twitter

If you can’t figure out Tulsi Gabbard’s politics when she spells out her Zionism, Islamophobia, Assadism, militarism, & Hindutva nationalism over & over again on Twitter & has a web site with her voting record, perhaps political thinking is not up your alley & fairy tales are.

CNN has published a clear explanation for US, Jordanian, & Syrian joint responsibility for the humanitarian crisis facing 25,000 displaced Syrians in the Rukban refugee camp near the Jordanian border. The camp is in a US-protected zone only ten miles from a US military base, Jordan refuses to allow cross border deliveries, & Syria refuses to allow aid delivery in order to force residents to evacuate to regime-controlled areas where they will likely be arrested.

One of the major problems in building a Syrian Arab Spring solidarity movement was the misrepresentation of the role played by US-coalition forces in Syria. Assadists denounced a “US regime-change operation” while many leading anti-Assadists called for a humanitarian US intervention to defend the Syrian Arab Spring. There have recently been a few articles by anti-Assad supporters of the Syrian Arab Spring backing off their nonsense about a US humanitarian bombing campaign & giving a rational analysis of the role of the US-coalition in Syria. It was a major, almost unforgivable blunder to campaign for US military intervention as a means to save a revolution against dictatorship. In the case of Syria, it is proving fatal because it undermined the possibility of building a solidarity movement. Proponents of US humanitarian bombing claimed Syrians were demanding it so who were we to oppose it. Who are we? We are those who can connect the dots between the US wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, the US bankrolling of Israeli occupation & then make the connections with all the other US wars of the past many decades.

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

CNN article: https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/01/middleeast/syria-rukban-us-intl/index.html?

(Photo from Rukban refugee camp by Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images, March 2019)

Stephen Kinzer, a former writer for the NY Times, is as embedded with the White House as Bartlett & Beeley are with the Assad regime. Yesterday, he tweeted: “White Helmets are an arm of the terror movement in Syria. They are heroes to ISIS but not to any humanitarian.” The convergence between MSM & Assad propagandists is only apparent since MSM has always been the main venue peddling the Islamophobic ‘war on terror’ which is the heart of Assadist propaganda.

There is probably no more cynical & contemptible figure from the Assad regime than Fares Shehabi, a handler for Bartlett & Beeley, who posts photos of children killed by Syrian & Russian bombing & claims they were killed by rockets fired at cities by al-Qaeda terrorists.

Going through my old research projects, I came across one I did on the African origins of science & mathematics. There is considerable scholarship on this but it is isolated & has generated acrimonious opposition since the predominant history of science taught in universities has remained Eurocentric up to its white supremacist eyeballs since the Renaissance in Europe.

It serves colonialism & neoliberal plunder to depict African history as solely tribal. Most African tribal art, a magnificent aesthetic much drawn on by European artists, is displayed in museums of natural history as some form of primitive art rather than in fine art museums which are promoted as showcasing the art of ‘advanced societies’. The also magnificent art & architecture of the Nubian & other urban African societies is rarely shown. The Boston Fine Arts Museum has a gallery of Nubian art & several galleries of Egyptian art which they showcase. The Nubian gallery is just off an old entrance & the lights are seldom turned on. The intent, whether conscious or not, is clearly racist since Nubian art is easily mistaken for Egyptian & is also unmistakably Black African. When scholars speak of the origins of human civilization in Africa, they are not just talking about Egypt but all of Africa.

The huge numbers of African refugees fleeing neoliberal plunder & wars require us to seriously study African history, which believe me, is not easy unless you have a substantial book-buying budget. But there are many on-line resources where you can find scholarship on the immense contributions African societies have made to human knowledge. If you google African origins of science & math, you should find many resources & will find the study absolutely fascinating if not also politically crucial.

(Photo is facsimile painting from original depicting Nubians with a giraffe & a monkey in the Egyptian galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)