Madiha Shakil Khan, among the eight who the Indian Home Ministry asked Twitter to suspend, received this message that one of her tweets was ‘withheld in India’. The fight for freedom of speech is integral to the struggle for human, democratic, civil, & national freedom & no one knows that better than Kashmiris who remain, now nine days, on a telecommunications lockdown.

–tweet from Madiha Shakil Khan @Red4Kashmir

Kashmir : In The Bloodbath of Its Native

The heaven of God
Is in the making of hellfire,
The Queen of beauty
Being harassed for years,
The cold breeze of Kashmir,
And white pleasing snow,
The blood of “JAWANS”
and the bloodbath of its native,
All are beheld and crying
With their heart out, Oh God!!!
We hunt down by politics of greed,
Wrapped coffins of soldiers
And burial of mortals
Both are victims and wounded,
Not the “power” of two boundaries.
They have mere words of
Empathy not courage,
They have everything but a
Soulful heart,
Oh, God! Keep us both
from this mouth of upheaval and turmoil.
Oh God! Keep the heaven on earth!

–poem by Salman Waheed

We should be looking at an economic boycott of Indian products which are sold by the thousands outside India. Health food stores, food & herb stores, clothing stores, fabrics, furniture, medications, gift items, Bollywood films. Amazon is a cornucopia of Indian products but Indian stores & products are everywhere. Where I live, I can think of at least six stores off the top of my head, not counting the health food stores which sell countless oils, herbs, Ayurvedic items, foods. What do people think about that? Who would put out the call? How would we organize it?

If I were the avatar or reincarnation of merciless Irish polemicist Jonathan Swift, the Indian government’s attempt to suspend me from Twitter would make sense & golly in a moment of vanity gone amuck I could let that go to my head. But my feet are solidly grounded & I try to harbor no delusions, especially if they could embarrass me. My honest explanation for why Indian Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba requested my immediate suspension from Twitter along with seven others is that I’m neither Hindu nor Muslim, nor from Kashmir, India, Pakistan. I’m a western political writer & activist with no vested interests in the Kashmiri freedom struggle except its claims to justice, its struggle against colonialism & occupation, its historic importance to the future of all suffering humanity, including the oppressed castes & Muslims of India.

What that tells me is not that I’m so damn important–& golly don’t I wish I could pretend I was–but that my links to political activists, my commitment to build a solidarity movement, my work to get other activists to #GoRedforKashmir & to educate about that struggle threaten the ability of the Modi regime to present it as a communal conflict or a ‘jihadi’ thing. Maybe the Indian government isn’t as confident of its policies in Kashmir succeeding as it pretends if it needs to shut down voices of support outside India & Kashmir.

Being banned in Delhi is better than the compromised Nobel Peace Prize. I shall strut & wear this honorific like a peacock & encourage others to also get banned by Delhi for #standingwithKashmir. Because if India is rankled & threatened by a handful of bloggers & political writers, we need to go for them en masse in the interests of Kashmiri solidarity & the victory of #Azaadi.

watch Kashmiri women protest amidst the siege.

reporter: why are you protesting?
Kashmiri women protestors:
we want freedom
(applause)
we are being repressed,
abused, killed
we have no eid,
we are mourning
we live under tyranny
what do we want? we want freedom!
the Kashmir we water with our blood,
that Kashmir is ours
Free Kashmir

Fascist, Assadist, & Islamophobe Eva Bartlett has posted some favorable comments on the Kashmiri struggle. Tulsi Gabbard’s Hindutva nationalism never bothered Bartlett until Gabbard called Assad a brutal dictator who used chemical weapons against Syrians. That’s when she turned on Gabbard, unlike most Assadists & Tariq Ali who is still promoting Gabbard on his wall. Bartlett’s primary propagandistic role is to support autocratic regimes & denounce popular protests as orchestrated by undercover operatives from the CIA & Mossad to bring about “US regime-change operations.” She’s presently in Russia denouncing those protests as organized by the nefarious forces of democracy. For a long time, Assadists have denounced the Kashmiri struggle, as they do the Rohingya & Uyghur struggles against genocide, as other cases of ‘Wahabi jihadism’.

Since Bartlett is a professional propagandist, we should soon enough see a shift in her attitude toward Kashmir because RT, one of her employers, has published a rancid piece by Indian nationalist Sreeram Chaulia titled “Operation Kashmir: Has Modi checkmated Pakistan?” making such statements as: “Over time, the halfway house existence of Kashmir as a state within India & yet a nation that does not emotionally belong to India failed to meet both India’s objectives & Kashmiri Muslims’ aspirations. Waves of anti-India uprisings & insurgencies, supported from across the border by Pakistan, kept Kashmir burning. Autonomy had become a slippery slope for separatism, jihadist extremism & alienation of Kashmiri Muslims from the rest of India.” To cover her ass in a propaganda shift, Bartlett will discover the hidden strain of ‘Wahabi jihadism’ in Kashmir that will allow her to shift allegiances openly to the Modi regime which is the natural habitat of all fascists.

The Washington Post has an article titled “India is precipitating a crisis in Kashmir. It’s time for the US to step in.” Like it’s doing in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Palestine, the Philippines, or has done in Honduras, Guatemala, Granada, Panama, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Nicaragua, El Salvador, & elsewhere? What exactly about US militarism does the Washington Post not understand?

#StandWithKashmir Birmingham, UK, August 10th, 2019.

Toronto #StandWithKashmir rally on August 10th:

Dallas #StandWithKashmir rally: