“J&K govt says it wants to attract Rs 500 crore to build IT sector in the UT on a day when 200 people have been booked for using social media through VPNs. Irony dies several deaths in valley every day.”
–tweeted by Bismah Malik @bismahmalik
Daily Archives: February 24, 2020
India will build townships (settlements) & Hindu temples–& probably claim to find Hindu temples in archaeological digs under mosques–in Kashmir. Just as Israel is doing in the West Bank & East Jerusalem.
Mr. Alhamdo (I believe a nom de guerre) is a schoolteacher & citizen journalist who reported from East Aleppo during the four year siege by bombers & ground forces that ended in December 2016 when Syria, Russia, Iran took over. Mr. Alhamdo calls it the ‘holocaust of Aleppo’. He continued in reduced circumstances & as a hunted man to report on social media after evacuation from Aleppo. Yesterday, he reported that after rockets hit hospitals next to his house & his children were crying in fear, he fled with his wife & children taking nothing but stopping to say goodbye to his in-laws. Syrian forces & their allies have Aleppo & the surrounding countryside completely under their barbarous control & are a serious threat to citizen journalists & partisans of the Arab Spring.
The problem is, there is no place for them to go in sub-zero temperatures. Syrian & Russian forces are shelling the IDP camps & Turkey & Jordan have sealed their borders against refugees. Of the 3.6 million who have managed to cross into Turkey, 20,000 have drowned in the Mediterranean trying to cross from Turkey to Greece to seek asylum in Europe. There are 6.7 million Syrian refugees overall & at least 7 million internally displaced persons. That is over 60-percent of the entire Syrian population. In what socialist scripture can we find this apocalypse described as liberation?
We wish Mr. Alhamdo & his family godspeed & believe he & other Syrian refugees will set the political & historic record straight against the monstrous lies of Assad propagandists.
(Photo from Mr. Alhamdo on Twitter, February 17, 2020)
Being on social media is a criminal act in Kashmir.
https://kashmir.today/j-k-police-files-case-against-all-social-media-users-under-uapa/?f
“For Sama” & “The Cave” are films from Syria which both received Academy Award nominations for best documentary 2020. Neither won but they are both remarkable films. Those who would like to witness the character of the Syrian Arab Spring can watch “For Sama” online on the link here; “The Cave” can be streamed on the National Geographic streaming app available on Hulu & other streaming sites.
“For Sama” won’t be remembered for its awkward camera techniques so much as for the journalist recording the underground hospital in Aleppo run by her husband, both partisans of the Arab Spring. Waad Al-Kaseab weaves her love story with Dr. Hamza Al-Kaseab as a love letter to their newborn daughter Sama. One can see the character & commitment of those who stood up to the Assad regime despite Syrian & Russian bombing. It’s a very moving, tender, & powerful story. They were the last to leave Aleppo when it fell to the regime in December 2016 after years of siege by bombers & ground forces.
“The Cave” is a more professional documentary photographically. It revolves around Dr. Amani Ballour, a Syrian pediatrician from Al-Ghouta who managed an underground hospital in that city whilst under five years of siege by Syrian & Russian bombers. Her life is a rebuttal of the ‘war on terror’ rubbish about saving Muslim women. The film is slow moving but also powerfully shows the character & commitment of partisans of the Syrian Arab Spring in their determination to live free of dictatorship & a police state. The most overwhelming segment is after the 2018 chlorine gas attack by Assad forces where children are brought to the hospital unable to breathe. It is after that when residents are forced to evacuate. Dr. Amani’s soliloquy as she evacuates stands out for its poignancy & poetic force.
The Al-Kaseab family now lives in exile in the UK & attended the Academy Awards ceremony, still committed to the Arab Spring. Dr. Amani & other medical staff from Al-Ghouta live in exile in Turkey. Both Dr. Amani & the film director Feras Fayyad were denied visas under the Muslim ban on Syrians but due to efforts by National Geographic, Fayyad was allowed to attend the Academy Awards at the last minute.
NY Times journalist Robert F. Worth wrote an article in the NY Review of Books titled “And the Oscar Goes to… A Simplified Story of Syria’s Civil War” which manages to miss the power of both films by asking ‘But what about the jihadis? Why weren’t they mentioned in the films?’ Muhammad Idrees Ahmad responded to that idiocy with an excellent article titled “Syria’s War on Screen: An Exchange.” Worth is taking a page from Assad propagandists in attempting to portray the Arab Spring as ‘jihadist’ when these films show they were present, not dominant.
Worth’s worthless article:
Idrees Ahmad’s response:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/02/17/syrias-war-on-screen-an-exchange/?
Most often, when I cite polemicists & political writers, I refer to US or European writers–as if they’re the only ones who have anything to say about issues. The problem is partly Eurocentrism, more parts language. If it isn’t translated into English, most of us don’t have access to it. It would be valuable to read analyses by non-English speaking writers about issues like evo psycho. Although those who’ve experienced the realities of white supremacy are less likely to be enthralled with its rancidities.
Evo psycho has become somewhat entrenched in media & academia since it so well serves the status quo to believe that inequality, racism, women-hating, capitalism, & other crap is dictated by human genes. But in my youth, when it was known as sociobiology, it was vigorously contested by politically articulate & astute scientists & polemicists like Stephen J. Gould (now deceased), Richard Levins, Richard Lewontin, Leon Kamin, Steven Rose, Hilary Rose, Ruth Hubbard, & many genetic scientists–most of whom are deceased or retired & most of whom identified with socialism. Gould & Lewontin in particular held public debates at Harvard & elsewhere with sociobiologists like E.O. Wilson, also a professor at Harvard. Most of these scientists have written very powerful books refuting sociobiology/evo psycho & many of their articles & polemics are available online.
Harvard was for a period the bastion of opposition to evo psycho but has now become a bastion of evo psychoism where Steven Pinker weaves his longwinded, misanthropic tracts about our genes. All of the polemics written by those opposed to evo psycho are brilliant analyses of how science is misused to serve power politics but if one has to choose, Gould would be first among them though he is not as polemically merciless as Lewontin & the others. I report this not to show off my library but because understanding the pernicious influence of evo psychoism is essential to the struggle against inequality & oppression.
In January, the J&K government issued an order to social media venues to curb ‘miscreants’ spreading rumors, fake news, ‘secessionist ideology’, or promoting illegal activities. Essentially, they were ordering Facebook, Twitter, & all the rest of social media to censor Kashmiris on behalf of the Indian government. Today, Kashmir police filed a general FIR against all Kashmiris who have defied that order & are ‘misusing’ social media.
From Samizdat literature under Stalinism to the citizen journalists of Syria & the prison memoir of Behrouz Boochani, we know those who stand against oppression will find ways to communicate. But we also understand that if we do not actively & publicly oppose the surveillance, censorship, & possible prosecution of Kashmiris for telling their truth on social media, then we will be dealing with this from our own governments. It’s that ‘First they came for Kashmiris on social media…’ thing writ large.
#StandWithKashmirisAgainstCensorship
#StandWithKashmirisForFreeSpeech
This thing created by a Hindutva guy may be amusing for an American woman on social security but it’s the demonizing misrepresentation Kashmiris, Syrians, Rohingya, Palestinians have to live with in their up-hill battle against genocide.
It is within this context–where Johnson & his staff openly support eugenics & the superiority of whites–that evo psycho Richard Dawkins tweeted comments supporting eugenics. His habitual & pathologically inflammatory pronouncements are only taken seriously because they dominate politicians, media, & universities. Some halfwits who think they’re progressive & are dazzled by academic credentials think he actually has something to say when he is only the PhD rendition of Bill Maher & Trump.
Evo psycho has never been anything but trash science which posits white supremacy, racism, women-hating, social hatreds of all kinds as rooted in our genetic makeup. It’s the old ‘human nature’ rubbish used to justify inequalities dressed up in longwinded academic blither. Dawkins promotes a supremacist ideology which was shared by the Nazis, openly expressing hatred for Muslims, women (especially feminists), & those with disabilities. He infamously once said it is immoral to allow Down’s syndrome babies to be born. He endorses pedophilia & has been photographed with other evo psychos traveling on Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane.
Dawkins’ defenders insist ad nauseam that his pronouncements are misunderstood when actually, for those without wooden heads, his white & male supremacy are crystal clear. He makes his comments not just as a narcissistic need to get attention but as an arrogant servant of the status quo. When what he has to say echoes Hitler, Goebbels, Johnson, Trump, et al, maybe he should be taken seriously as an ideologue of fascism.