Assadists & Stalinists claim there are no civilians left in Idlib, that only terrorists are being bombed by Syrian & Russian war planes. This little kid in an IDP camp is a refugee from the bombing of Idlib. Can any of those smart-assed apologists for war & counterrevolution tell us which faction of al-Qaeda this kid belongs to?
(Photo is from White Helmets, January 8, 2020)
There isn’t much to smile about in the devastation of Syria, but there is this delightful video of a little girl in an IDP camp dancing to a Shakira song.
https://twitter.com/nedalalamari/status/1214875459768459264?
Pentagon officials claim that Iran intentionally missed US troops at the two Iraqi bases in several missile strikes. It’s very like in 2017 when the US shelled Shayrat Air Base in Syria in retaliation for the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack. The Pentagon gave Syria & Russia advance notice so they could evacuate personnel, equipment, aircraft from the base. The 23 US missiles that landed of the 59 launched only did damage to empty airport hangars & some rusted-out equipment. It’s a dog & pony show since in Syria & Iraq, the US & Iran are on the same side to destroy every last vestige of popular resistance to dictatorship. We still don’t know if any Iraqis were injured or killed.
Thousands of people, many probably thinking they were progressive, liked & retweeted this racist crap by attorney Michael Avenatti, the guy who defended the porn star against Trump & who ran for president in 2016. White, male, & class supremacy are deeply ingrained disorders. Political power is the only thing that can knock it off its high horse.
Cigouave @Cigouave responded to the tweet:
“Iranians: proud human beings.
All other brown people and black people: deeply ashamed mud creatures.
Woke racism is the best racism.”
India has planned a two-day tour of Kashmir starting tomorrow for 17 envoys from the US, & unspecified ASEAN, Latin America, & African countries. Envoys from Australia, some Gulf nations & countries of the European Union have declined to participate in the guided tour but leave open the possibility of a future tour. The purpose of the tour in unclear. If it is primarily for propaganda purposes, the specter of eight-million people locked down without communications, check points, empty streets filled with soldiers, empty schools & shops doesn’t offer much possibility for positive reporting. If the purpose is investigative, the envoys would be allowed to travel & speak to anyone they chose, not be introduced & confined to Indian officials, military officials, & collaborators.
Is India seeking foreign investment for its ‘redevelopment’ plans in Kashmir? Are these envoys more like a kettle of vultures looking for ways to sweep in on the expropriation & unfettered exploitation of Kashmir’s natural & human resources? Keep the US envoy in mind next time Trump or the US State Department offer to mediate between Pakistan & Kashmir at the expense of Kashmiri self-determination.
Trump announced that there were no US injuries or casualties from Iran’s shelling of two US bases in Iraq. It doesn’t matter to Trump or the Pentagon but it matters to principled antiwar activists: were there any Iraqi injuries or casualties?
Graffiti on University Road, AMU in India, January 6th, 2020
“US-Iran cooperation against the popular uprisings is more fundamental than US-Iran conflict.”
–Henry Lowi
Without getting into the disputes about how ISIS came into formation & grew to such colossal importance, we should keep foremost in mind that it could not exist without arms supplies from those countries denouncing it. The Pentagon reported that one-billion dollars worth of US arms accidentally fell into ISIS control. Weapons from the US, UK, Russia, China, Germany, India, & France have provided ISIS with a substantial & lethal arsenal.
They exaggerate the dominance of ISIS, not because it isn’t a dangerous, fascistic military force but because if they want to destroy them, they need only stop the flow of arms. The US alone has thousands of troops, naval fleets, military bases in the Middle East & they can’t obstruct the movement of weapons to ISIS? Syria & Russia are bombing the crap out of Syria & Irani ground militias are prowling the country & even combined they cant stop the flow of arms to ISIS?
The most dangerous terrorist forces in the Middle East are US-NATO ground, air, & naval forces; Russian, Syrian, & Saudi-coalition ground & air forces; Iranian & Lebanese ground militias; Israeli air forces. It’s a deft propaganda strategy to shift the threat to ISIS in order to justify military intervention. ISIS is certainly fascistic & dangerous but it will fall like a feather when its weapons supply trail is cut off by the defeat of US-NATO, Russian, Iranian, Lebanese, & Israeli militarism in the Middle East.
Most Americans don’t have an issue with the people of Iran, nor certainly with those of Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia. We didn’t have an issue with the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians either. The US Pentagon pummeled those countries with bombs under the guise of stopping the spread of communism. Now they’re bombing the Middle East under the guise of the so-called ‘war on terror’. The difference between then & now is that the antiwar movement was international & principled, not reduced to a rah-rah cult for Assad & Putin as it is today.
That moment in April 1975 when Vietnamese regular & guerrilla forces routed the US military, forcing them to evacuate, was one of the most thrilling for antiwar activists & in fact for US soldiers who were known as an antiwar army because of their hostility to what the US was doing in Vietnam. The ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ of widespread opposition to wars became the dominant political ethos in the US.
The Pentagon worked tirelessly for years to overcome the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ using mockery, deceit, & military obfuscations like so-called ‘low-intensity warfare’ in Central America–guerrilla mercenaries along with regular US forces which were anything but low-intensity for the people of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua.
The point is that even the most sophisticated, high-tech armies in the world can be defeated. They create an aura of invincibility by the use of savagery like chemical warfare, barrel bombs, genocide. They have the ideological support of rightwing forces like Assadists, Stalinists, & socialists banging doors for Sanders rather than organizing antiwar mobilizations. But antiwar strength comes from the fearless commitment & resistance of Palestinians, Kashmiris, Indian Muslims, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, Yemenis, Bahrainis, Egyptians, Tunisians, Algerians, Somalis, Sudanese, Uyghur, Rohingya. Our most imperative political responsibility is to overcome sectarian differences & rebuild a principled & international antiwar movement that can stand with that fearless resistance & weaken militarism against them.