Roger Waters is fearless & uncompromising in his support for Palestinians & BDS but will someone please kick his ass for his outrageous & intemperate misogyny? He does Palestinian solidarity no service by using women as an insult & shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this crap. He may be tough lounging in his palatial homes but Ahed Tamimi is a hell of a lot tougher sitting in an Israeli military prison. How dare he insult her gender!

In practical politics, not just ideally or romantically, solidarity with freedom struggles is not an act of noblesse oblige or some stinking pity thing. It is absolutely reciprocal. As war, occupation, persecution, genocide, & brutal exploitation expand & dominate the globe, none of us are getting out of this on our own. We’re in this together. A victory of the oppressed anywhere changes the balance of power to the advantage of the oppressed everywhere. Kids are at stake. All our lives are at stake. The future of humanity is at stake. We just have to learn forms of solidarity that are not episodic but as relentless as those of Palestinians, Kashmiris, Syrians, Rohingya, & others who refuse to bend the knee to violence & power.

Mehbooba Mufti, India’s chief minister in Kashmir, reported last month that in the past two years the government had arrested 11,290 stone pelters in Kashmir. She claimed that first-time stone pelters between 2008 & 2017 were released on amnesty with conditions that parents take action to prevent future resistance to occupation. What actually happened to most of these young people–whether they were released, detained, placed in administrative detention, charged with a crime, or are subjected to harassment or other punitive measures wasn’t reported. Except that Mufti did report steps taken to “wean” young people away from “anti-national activities & militancy,” including surveillance on social media & periodically shutting down the internet. Another measure is to impose restrictions on protests like those on February 11th, the day to commemorate freedom fighter Maqbool Bhat who was hung by the Indian government on February 11, 1984.

These are protesters, with a stone pelter in front, on February 11th in Srinagar to commemorate the life & death of Maqbool Bhat. May his legacy always inspire them in their struggle for freedom as he inspires the oppressed around the world.

(Photo by Faisal Khan)

The dignity of Palestinians who stand against apartheid & ethnic cleansing: 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi arriving in Ofer military court near Ramallah, West Bank, to face twelve charges in a kangaroo court for slapping two Israeli soldiers armed to the teeth.

The hearing on Tuesday was closed to the public & to journalists since kangaroo courts cannot tolerate too close a scrutiny. Her trial was postponed until March 11th. Reportedly, nearly 100% of all cases in Israel’s military kangaroo courts end in convictions.

International defense of Ahed Tamimi is part of solidarity with all Palestinian political prisoners, including children. Every year an estimated 500 to 700 Palestinian children are arrested & prosecuted in an Israeli military court, mostly for stone pelting which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. As of December 2017, 321 children were political prisoners in Israeli prisons where they are subject to abuse.

(Photo by Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

#FreeAhedTamimi
#FreeAllPalestinianPoliticalPrisoners

Growing up in the shadow of armed killers: Kashmiri boy & Indian soldier. No commentary necessary.

(Photographer not identified)

Many, if not most, photos posted on social media do not designate the photographer’s name nor even the date or place of the photo. As something of a stickler about such details, I spend a fair amount of time vetting photos on image search engines. It turns out that umpteen other sources do not vet either so the origins of the photo sometimes remain unclear. My primary concern is the time & place of photos.

A few have pointed out that the image of little kids in Gaza peeking through a bullet-riddled wall reflecting the shadow of an Israeli soldier is likely an artistic photoshop work, not a photograph. It’s regrettable that information & the artist who photoshopped the image were not identified. But once you point that out, which as a stickler I appreciate, please don’t belabor the point at the expense of overshadowing the devastating statistics of Palestinian deaths at the hands of Israeli troops.

Children playing in Kashmir: snow art imitates life.

Go home India. Get the hell out of Kashmir.

(Photo  from Kashmir Today)

In yesterday’s school massacre in Florida where 17 were killed & in five other school shoot-ups, an AR-15 assault rifle was used. In an apparent non sequitur, a so-called terrorist expert on the morning news called for more censorship on social media. She also said that while the AR-15 should not be in the hands of civilians, it is absolutely necessary for US soldiers overseas. Therein lies the problem. When ‘might becomes right’ at the barrel of a gun & s/he who carries the rifle has the upper hand against unarmed civilians, a poisonous national ethos festers that rots militarist societies at their roots. The historic mission of our era is to oppose militarism & root out that ethos from our consciousness & cultures. The future of humanity depends upon our commitment to that mission.

May the 17 kids in Florida Rest In Peace. May all victims of war, occupation, persecution, & genocide Rest In Peace.

Hopefully, the report by a former UN chief of operations that an estimated 60,000 rapes, including of children, have been carried out by UN staff working in its different agencies in the past decade will put a decisive end to the call for UN peacekeeping troops to protect forcibly deported Rohingya refugees & raise demands that they be withdrawn from those countries where they are deployed. UN troops have previously been accused of involvement in human trafficking & prostitution–not to mention the cholera epidemic in Haiti for which the UN refused compensation to victims & their families. This is the first time UN humanitarian aid workers & other functionaries have been accused of such monstrosities. No wonder so little humanitarian aid or political monitoring is accomplished by the UN. They are otherwise engaged in criminality against women & children. And this on top of the Oxfam scandal involving sexual crimes in Haiti & Chad.

#MeTooOnBehalfOfUNVictims

It’s absolutely shameless to recycle your own sarcasms but I am not above doing so & more than once. This is my February 14, 2016 obituary for the vile & reactionary Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia:

“I’m taken aback by the number of FB posts celebrating the demise of that guy on the Supreme Court–good old what’s-his-name. People are dancing on his grave; some are pissing on it. Women are in the lead. Some are hauling in chips & guacamole for a big drunken bash. Let me know if you think that’s appropriate funereal ritual for the judge or if we need to hire a mariachi band too.”