“A few days ago I wrote that there is not much left to India and some people took an offense to that statement. I was asked to open my eyes. I had made that statement with eyes wide open and once again I see a diminished India whose very idea of idealism has been obliterated.

Look at those vice-chancellors running the so-called premier centers of education. One would have a hard time in differentiating between janitors and vice-chancellors. Look at those highest army generals who seem to be clones of RSS functionaries.

Look at those judges of the supreme court who put even khap panchayats to shame. I have seen the supreme court justices tearing down the laws made by the all powerful Indira Gandhi government. I have seen them declaring constitutional amendments passed by Indian parliament null and void because those would alter the basic structure of the constitution. I have seen judges pulling government merely based on news reports. Never did I see a judge indulging in banal rhetoric.

Look at those editors of newspapers who get drenched in their sweats while addressing Modi. I have seen editors like Frank Moraes and S. Mulgaonkar eviscerating governments of the day in their editorials and firing their journalists whom they perceived to be getting too cozy with government officials.

Is still there much left to India. How did that happen? It happened as the country discarded idealism and embarked on the notion of obscurantist nationalism and patriotism even if that meant unleashing atrocities against its own people. The excesses committed in the name of national integration in Kashmir and other places are being repeated everywhere. But no one can understand what India did in Kashmir in the name of that nationalism.

Once army generals would be war heroes and now they originate from the ranks of those who commit crimes against civilians of India itself. Is India still intact?”

–Rajiv Kumar

It should not be necessary to explain that when I condemn the anti-Semitism inherent to Assadist ideology & disguised as anti-Zionism, I am not supporting the state of Israel. It is an apartheid colonial state, more a military fortress, that violates Palestinian self-determination by its very existence. Visionary Palestinian political thinkers long ago proposed a democratic secular state where Palestinians & Jews can live in peace & equality. That is where I stand because it is the only workable, democratic, & humanitarian solution. Standing for Palestinians does not mean hating on Jews. The oppressed are never guided by the ethos of the oppressors. The tragedy & fatal flaw of Zionism was supremacist delusions that led them to colonialism as a solution to pogroms & persecution rather than human solidarity with others oppressed & colonized.

#WhatIdlibTaughtMe is that fascism does not always goose-step its way in with jackboots using the slogans of supremacy & colonialism (though sometimes it does, as in Kashmir) but also comes in under the guise of ‘anti-imperialism’ using the slogans of the ‘war on terror’ rooted in hatred of Muslims & Jews. It comes with banners denouncing US imperialism, Israel, & the ‘deep state’ whilst denouncing all popular movements for democracy as terrorists orchestrated by the CIA & Mossad.

#WhatIdlibTaughtMe is to hold to a principled opposition to militarism & to know the difference between fascism & democracy.

“As a Palestinian, Idlib (and Syria as a whole) has shown me who my true allies are. If you are ok with a criminal Assad regime oppressing people then you are just using Palestine for your agenda, fame or clout.”

#WhatIdlibTaughtMe #FightForGazaAndIdlib

–tweeted by Abdallah Awad @GreenWarrior93

(Photo is Palestinians at al-Quds, Palestine in solidarity with Idlib against the criminal Assad regime & its allies. Posted by Lina Shamy)

It’s not clear to moochocracy-haters why Harry Windsor deserves high praise for wanting to get off the dole & get gainful employment. The guy is 35-years-old. Isn’t it time he got a job & stopped partying & going from vacation to vacation? By the time I was 35, I’d already been working for pay over 22 years. Would you want to hang around a family of such disreputable characters, including grandma who talks in non sequiturs & trifectas, William with a royal pole stuck up his ass, flatulent, imperious, racist grandpa, & an uncle involved in sex trafficking & rape?

Harry isn’t going to get a job like the rest of us, the old 9 to 5 routine. Don’t take him for a fool. He isn’t going to get carried away with this proletarian thing & he isn’t going to cut the trust fund out of his life. Feudal class upbringing is a cult upbringing & our hapless Harry has never shown the rebellion or spirit required to break from that. Or do we forget his blackface & Nazi uniform escapades?

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, & everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

–from The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats

Millions of Indian workers were out on a a one-day strike yesterday for economic demands & against India’s ‘anti-people’ policies. It was an impotent gesture & street theater more than an exercise of the massive economic, social, & political power organized unions have. With an estimated 250 million workers out on strike, they have the political strength to bring the country to a complete halt until the Modi regime reverses all its neoliberal policies, abrogates the new citizenship laws, & ends the occupation of Kashmir. This is not to mock Indian workers but to criticize their leadership because a one-day strike does not seriously threaten Indian capitalism in its thunderous march toward fascism in Kashmir & in India.

(Photo of strikers in Mumbai by Paul Noronha)