Those who insist we not criticize the Iranian theocratic regime need to talk to Iranians, Syrians, Lebanese about Iranian military intervention in their countries. For that matter, they need to talk to Kashmiris, Indians, Palestinians about what it’s like living under a theocratic autocracy. This article is about Iranian political prisoners denied medical care in prison.
Daily Archives: February 24, 2020
Sadness from Paradise.
#Kashmir #conflicttrauma
by Mir Suhail Qadiri
A Palestinian man & his child show the scars of occupation: disabling protesters, including children, by shooting out eyes, shooting off legs & arms is a strategy of colonial occupation in Kashmir & Palestine.
(Photo via Moneeb Saada)
Palestinian activists stood with Kashmiris to protest India’s Hindutva Consul General speaking at Harvard University.
Internet ban, by Mir Suhail Qadiri
Assadists are showing videos of jubilation parades over regime & Russian forces taking over Aleppo & its countryside. No one ever said the counterrevolution wasn’t sizable, especially when 60-percent of the population is either in exile, in Assad’s gulag, living in IDP camps, or dead. A lot of people do very well in police states. They always need prison guards, executioners, torturers, profiteers. There are always a lot of people too afraid to defy dictators. But aren’t at least some Assad supporters uncomfortable with how much the cult of Assad is part of the jubilations? Kind of like the stuff around Stalin, Hitler, & Mao?
An article about the incarceration of Kashmiri teenagers & young men under the Public Safety Act (PSA) allowing indefinite detention without charges in Indian prisons far from Kashmir. Some have been reported missing; it is not certain they, as political prisoners & minors, are kept separate from the adult criminal population who are not just pickpockets but murderers, rapists, & nationalists.
Without ever saying one word about the slaughter of civilians in Syria but instead supporting the Assad dictatorship, including Russian, Iranian, & Hezbollah military intervention, Tariq Ali has posted the detestable article by Robert F. Worth in the NY Review of Books titled “And the Oscar Goes to… A Simplified Story of Syria’s Civil War.” In criticism of the films “For Sama” & “The Cave”, Worth impugns the Syrian uprising against the Assad regime as ‘jihadist’ & claims ” no side has a claim to righteousness” in the struggle of the Syrian people against a dictatorship & police state.
Ali, who posts the rubbish of fascist Eva Bartlett as the gospel truth, has likely not watched either “For Sama” or “The Cave”, about which Worth is writing his scurrilous accusations. Judging from his posts over the past several years, it is unlikely Oxford-educated Ali has read a single article, let alone a book, by Syrians & reputable journalists about the Syrian Arab Spring. Ali has chosen to stand with the counterrevolution in Syria, with the Assad dictatorship in defense of a police state. His lazy ignorance is no excuse nor can it be forgiven since the lives of millions of Syrians, Iraqis, & Palestinians are at stake.
Ali lost his political bearings a long time ago & is almost inertial in the laziness of his scholarship. If you are relying on Bartlett, a paid propagandist for Assad & Putin who is also a fascist disciple of David Icke, for your understanding of the Syrian uprising rather than the voices of Syrian revolutionists, you should consider openly admitting you no longer give a rat’s ass about politics even though it pays good honoraria. Show some political integrity. We no longer want to hear what you have to say about anything.
One of the most wrenching things in the films “For Sama” & “The Cave” about underground hospitals in Syria sustaining constant bombing raids was seeing how traumatizing it was when the bombs exploded for adults but especially for the children. All of them will have PTSD symptomology for the rest of their lives.
One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry that this young father named Abdullah from Idlib taught his four-year-old daughter Selva to laugh when they heard a warplane in order to protect her from the trauma of bombing. It’s a survival strategy likely to have profound, possibly deleterious affects on little Selva in her older years–God willing that she survives the carnage.
In the same spirit as the Syrian army leaves graffiti saying “Assad or we burn the country” when they rout partisans of the Arab Spring, this Russian soldier is painting “Aleppo is ours” on a wall in defeated Aleppo. Assadists & Stalinists call this ‘national sovereignty’ or ‘self-determination for the Assad dictatorship’. Russian intervention is not motivated by humanitarian concerns for the people of Syria since 60-percent of the population are refugees or IDPs & over half a million have been killed. When Putin presents his final bill to Assad for assistance in crushing the Syrian Arab Spring, it is likely the terms extracted will leave Assad little more than a figurehead in a Russian colony.
(Photo from Rusian Trad on Twitter)