It’s been eleven days since the last US attack on a Taliban target in Afghanistan which took place whilst the US-Taliban peace negotiations were going on in Qatar. Now it’s been just five days since the peace agreement was signed that the US launched an airstrike today on the Taliban for an assault on an Afghan military checkpoint. One of the conditional provisions of the so-called peace agreement is that the Taliban & Afghan government work out a power-sharing arrangement. Will the Taliban attempt to negotiate that arrangement whilst bombing the Afghan army? Just how gullible are we being asked to be?
Daily Archives: March 5, 2020
Cisco Systems denies the report in the Indian journal The Print that it is working with the Indian government to build a firewall against VPNs in Kashmir. A company spokesperson said, “Cisco strongly supports free expression & open communication on the Internet….We do not customize our products in any way to enable censorship.”
Cisco was however exposed in a 2008 Wired report showing the company collaborated with the Chinese government to build the ‘Golden Shield’, also known as the Great Firewall of China, to enable censorship & surveillance by the Chinese government.
“Resistance isn’t terrorism”
Free Kashmir.
(Photo by Kamran Yousuf, circa March 2019)
When I claim the Afghan peace deal between the US & Taliban is an electoral charade on Trump’s part, it is because the provisions of the so-called peace agreement, which excluded the corrupt Afghan government from deliberations, are conditional & impossible to accomplish, especially the provision requiring a power-sharing arrangement between the Taliban & Afghan government. The US & its allies have major plans for the region & will not withdraw their forces before the colonization & capitulation of Afghanistan & other countries is realized. Unless international political pressure forces their withdrawal.
Some knucklehead just accused me of trying to build a ‘multinational corporation of solidarity’ against militarism. Multinational corporations aren’t exactly my organizational model. But I am indeed, along with many others, trying to build international solidarity to oppose militarism against Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Yemenis, Palestinians, Rohingya, Kashmiris, Libyans, Somalis, Iranians. In that commitment, I have not achieved the status of CEO but more that of a pariah among my fellow activists who have become Assadist & Stalinist cultists. That’s not the price one pays for commitment. That is the commitment to stand, come hell or high water, with those sustaining war, occupation, & genocide. You can disagree with my views but you will not be allowed to mock me on my wall, as I do not tolerate it in my work.
When you post the laugh emoticon on a post about slaughter, I take it as a gesture of contempt & assume the level of political debate required, if you disagree with the post, is over your head. The ones most guilty of that on my posts have been Hindutva ideologues. You may want to reconsider such gestures if that is the company you keep.
If Turkish bombers give some relief to the civilians of Idlib against scorched earth bombing by Syria & Russia, we would be wrong to get on our high-horse with denunciations of Turkish militarism even though its role in Syria for the past nine years has been entirely counterrevolutionary. But it’s a different thing entirely to promote Turkey’s bombing of Syrian warplanes as humanitarian or as a progressive development that should have started years earlier. Popular revolutions are not fought nor won with bombers. Never have been, never will be. Militarism is not the character of revolution.
Foreign intervention in Syria by Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah, US-coalition forces has altered the character of hundreds of ground militias & strengthened the Islamist element, not unlike how Assad fostered the Islamist current to strengthen al-Qaeda & generate ISIS. Most books about the Syrian conflict address this problem, but only tangentially. In her book, “No Turning Back”, Rania Abouzeid discusses the problem only somewhat & says she could write an entire book on that subject. Someone needs to write that book because understanding the role & influence of foreign financing, training, & deploying of militias is essential to understanding the fate of the Syrian Arab Spring. Assadist propagandists have been able to smear the Arab Spring as entirely ‘Islamist head-choppers’. It was extremely effective propaganda because it confused & undermined solidarity by stroking the ignorance & hatreds fostered by the ‘war on terror’.
Those who believe that bombers conducting humanitarian interventions on behalf of popular revolutions against tyranny are the only thing that can save the Arab Spring uprisings have no faith in popular revolution but only in militarism.
Photo is partisans of Arab Spring drawing graffiti in city of Kafar Takharim, Idlib.
(Photo via Mona Albakkoor on Twitter)
In Arundhati Roy’s ‘This is our version of the coronavirus. We are sick’ speech, she said: “The morgues are full of the dead. Both Muslim and Hindu, including a policeman and a young staffer of the Intelligence Bureau. Yes. People on both sides have shown themselves capable of horrifying brutality as well as unbelievable courage and kindness.” For all her eloquence, even Arundhati Roy cannot get away with portraying self-defense against genocide as ‘horrifying brutality’. She cannot get away with portraying genocide as two-sided communal violence.
Kashmiri Mir Laieeq responded to her comment by saying: “So “Casteless” Arundhati Roy endorses the bullshit “both sides” narrative peddled by the sections of media; being a writer she waxes some ‘eloquence’ and doesn’t hyperventilate like TV anchors. The rot certainly lies deeper because the very idea of India is based on an inherently violent, carefully crafted lie. Right-wingers on the other hand are busy exposing this rotten core as glaringly and as brutally as possible.”
The #Refugee #Crisis
#Syrians flee to #Greece for #safety and are #welcomed with #violence.
By Mir Suhail Qadiri
“The politics of denying genocide continues. Delhi Police is refusing to release dead bodies from mortuaries. Bodies are lying in burnt buildings and in drains; Delhi Police is preventing these from being collected and identified. This is being done to give a thoroughly distorted number of deaths.
Also, as in all other cases of genocide, “official numbers” are not to be believed. We can never know the “actual number” of deaths. Such is the nature of genocide.”
–Heba Ahmed