January 8th, 2020
Monthly Archives: January 2020
A disastrous impact on healthcare in Kashmir is only one of the social problems caused by locking down telecommunications.
Five months with no news from Kashmir & no means for them to communicate is reminiscent of Plato’s allegory of the cave. Eight million people chained, facing a blank wall, surrounded by armed men. India must have delusions it will terrorize Kashmiri resistance & wear down solidarity. We’re in it for as long as it takes for Kashmiris to win their freedom. Kashmiri resistance to this lockdown combined with Indian resistance to persecution of Muslims may do more to weaken Indian capitalism than strengthen it. Initially there was great concern that India had gone too far with the lockdown, that it might turn out to be a reckless blunder. That was before the attacks on Muslim rights & the mob assaults on unarmed students. There may not be a whole lot left of India when this is all over.
Kashmir event for those in Chicago.
by Kashmiri artist Mir Suhail Qadiri
In Assadist & Stalinist circles, ‘retired’ CIA, FBI, Pentagon, & US State Department officials hold pride of place & their interviews & articles are often posted as authoritative critiques of US militarism. They also promote a group of ‘retired’ British diplomats like Craig Murray & Peter Ford. The VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) crowd led by Ray McGovern (CIA), Coleen Rowley (FBI), & Ann Wright (Pentagon & State Department) are a group of these so-called retirees who collaborate with active duty CIA, FBI, & Pentagon officials. McGovern often posts analyses by ‘retired’ CIA officials as if they spoke in the oracular voice & not as discredited flunkies of US militarism. Democracy Now also draws on them for analysis. Legions of ‘retired’ CIA, FBI, & Pentagon operatives also show up in force at the New Horizon conferences in Iran, an annual gathering of hard-core fascists, holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, rightwing libertarians, LaRouche disciples, conspiracy nut jobs, Assadists (including Medea Benjamin, Abby Martin, Greta Berlin).
Not for nothing, these characters served as spies & military officers for decades while the rest of their generation drove CIA recruiters off campuses, organized protests against the draft, sued them for illegal surveillance (COINTELPRO lawsuits), marched against the wars these jamokes were orchestrating. And now we’re supposed to accept them as leaders & political analysts without questioning their views & motives?
Maybe before we take the word of these characters for good coin we should take a closer look at this phenomenon of spies & generals becoming born-again in their senior years. Is it possible or likely that hundreds of those involved in covert actions, torture, assassinations all simultaneously had a ‘come to Jesus’ experience over Iraq? Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, Panama, Granada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, didn’t disturb their consciences, but Iraq did?
Those of us from the 1960s generation of antiwar activists remember Phillip Agee, a CIA agent who became disillusioned with their nefarious operations & wrote a 1975 exposé titled ‘Inside the Company: CIA Diary’. He was considered a traitor, hounded from country to country by the CIA, evading assassination & prosecution, unable to find asylum, only able to find asylum in Cuba. So unlike the VIP treatment afforded this new batch of ‘retired’ spies & generals who live comfortably on their CIA, FBI, Pentagon pensions. In a generation when principled politics mattered, these spies would be allowed to march but they would never be given pride of place as leaders. The stench of covert criminality would follow them.
“The blackout in Kashmir is now the longest internet shutdown ever imposed in a democracy. It is part of a terrifying trend under the Modi government–including an anti-Muslim citizenship law and a purge of Muslim citizens in Assam. All who value democracy should be speaking up.”
–tweeted by Rep. Ilhan Omar @Ilhan
“Can express anything in India but the moment you talk about Kashmir, it’s over. This is why we can’t stress it enough: the fight against fascism in India must include the right to self-determination for Kashmir.”
–tweeted by StandWithKashmir @standwkashmir
Principled antiwar activists do not have a ‘messianic need to condemn countries targeted by US-NATO bombers’ as some have smugly claimed. We have an uncompromising commitment to oppose & organize against US military intervention & counterrevolution & for that end incisive, unequivocal political analysis is required, not mushy-brained sentimentality. That is the least we owe to the children of Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya.
(Photos of children from Idlib displaced by Syrian & Russian bombing from Anadolu Ajansi)