“When my eyes fell on this picture, I felt that the fire of Hell would burn us all without exception.” –Fareed Al

A forcibly displaced child from Idlib who Assadists & Stalinists call a terrorist: they have not uttered one word of protest against Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians or against Iranian, Hezbollah, Russian, Syrian ground forces displacing over 320,000 civilians in the past few months. Some say it’s because only US wars should concern us; others say outright that they support this slaughter to defend the Assad dictatorship’s right to self-determination. How did the international antiwar movement that stood by the millions on every continent against the US war in Vietnam become an Assadist cult that doesn’t even organize protests against US military intervention in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine, & enthusiastically supports Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah intervention?

Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces & mercenaries from Syria.

The news about concentration camps for Kashmiri kids is as disturbing & horrifying as images of Kashmiri kids disfigured & disabled by pellet guns. We really do need to keep the occupation of Kashmir at the top of the news.

“Scenes of horror from Idlib today after Syrian forces bombed a busy vegetable market.”

–tweeted by Middle East Eye

It’s certainly true that India is following the Chinese model for oppressing the Uyghur in setting up concentration camps for kindergarten children in Kashmir. But India is also drawing on Israel’s treatment of Palestinian kids, Burma’s treatment of Rohingya kids, & the US which incarcerates Black kids for minor offenses (some for life without parole) & has concentration camps for refugee kids. First they came for the children to break their spirits….

The telecommunications lockdown of Kashmir is about making damn sure we don’t know what Indian troops & corporations are doing there. India isn’t just punishing Kashmiris for their activism on social media but closing down the internet as a source of information to us about the Kashmiri freedom struggle. When there was an internet, we learned they were using pellet guns & live ammo on unarmed protesters, disfiguring & disabling thousands of kids. Imagine what they are doing when Kashmiris cannot report it.

400 Kashmiri youth, including little kids, have been lost in the legal system. Families don’t know where they’re jailed, if they’re being tortured, if they’re alive, if they’ve been disappeared. India is attempting to destroy Kashmiri resistance by targeting the children. In response, governments are expressing ‘grave concern’ & continuing to do business with India.

https://storiesasia.org/2020/01/16/where-have-400-youth-disappeared-in-kashmir-since-it-lost-autonomy/?

India’s top general Bipin Rawat (also pronounced Rudolf Hoess) reports that Kashmiri kids are being ‘de-radicalized’ in special camps. There have already been reports of thousands of Kashmiri kids jailed in Indian prisons, sodomized, & tortured in other ways. It is time to get serious about organizing a boycott of India before all of Kashmir is turned into Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, or Auschwitz.

https://www.newsnation.in/india/news/india-de-radicalisation-camps-911-cds-bipin-rawat-indian-army-251072.html?

By Mir Suhail Qadiri

Women of my generation were raised to be at odds with other women, to see other women as frivolous & shallow, as competitors for men. The highest compliment was to be told ‘you think like a man’. The women’s movement of the 1960s & 70s, now so ignorantly maligned, organized consciousness raising groups similar to group therapy where we each described our personal experiences growing up, the conflicts around sexuality, our relationships within our families, at school, & with men, employment discrimination. The narratives were very personal, even confessional, & very disturbing because of the violence all of the women sustained in daily life, even as young girls.

The primary thing we got out of these weekly gatherings was the complete breakdown of our estrangement from other women, a realization that all our lives were affected negatively by the same discriminations & violence, a sense of unity with other women. Distinctions of class & racist oppression were also made more than evident through these personal narratives about growing up female. Where do young women learn this today? Where do they learn to respect other women, to not be competitive with other women?