This is Part One of my article on Aung San Suu Kyi in Pakistan Today.

Part Two will deal with her denial of the Rohingya genocide.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/03/03/the-legend-of-aung-san-suu-kyi/

This fellow was rescued from a dinghy in the Mediterranean & is arriving in the port at Malaga, Spain in a rescue ship run by a private humanitarian organization.

One can only imagine the physical & psychic tension & exhaustion refugees feel on their journey & the release in these transitory moments when someone has reached out to help, not thwart them or endanger their lives.

We wish this man Godspeed on his journey to a more tranquil life.
No human being is illegal.

(Photo by Jon Nazca/Reuters)

This woman is part of a group that taxied to the US border with Canada near Quebec hoping to find asylum from Trump’s crackdown on Muslims & refugees. It appears that while Trump’s executive order was nullified by a court, his administration is implementing its provisions through administrative action & in hunting down undocumented immigrants.

Asylum for refugees, whether fleeing war or sweatshop economics, is one of the epic human rights issues of our times. Either we get human solidarity right or all humanity will pay the piper for a very long time. The good news is that hundreds of thousands around the world are rousing from political torpor to say in thunderous chorus: no human being is illegal.

(Photo by Dario Ayala/Reuters)

There are serious politics involved in closing Kashmir’s schools for several months while the occupying army was on a rampage.

But for the moment can we just feel the exuberance of these little girls on their way back to school to see their friends?

(Photo is by Basit Zargar)

One of the sweetest moments of my life was having this sung to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFF1wJN75Z0

The Assad Effect: China’s state news agency (Xinhua) is accusing western media of “fake news” for reporting about human rights crimes in China. Xinhua reported that the Chinese government sent “independent” teams to investigate claims of torturing political prisoners & found the accusations were fabricated.

See how that “fake news” thing works? Assad propagandists used it to such good purpose that everybody is getting in on the act–from Trump to Suu Kyi to the Communist Party of China. So now we know that when someone flaps their jaw about “fake news” it usually means they’re lying through their teeth & trying to cover up human rights crimes.

This victim of Duterte’s war on the poor with his head wrapped in duct tape & hands bound was dumped on a street in Pasay, Metro Manila in November 2016.

Duterte said: “When you kill criminals, it is not a crime against humanity. The criminals have no humanity. Goddammit.” That may be true for psychotic serial killers like Duterte & his officials but not to us. To us, they are brothers & sisters; they are our own & we take their executions very personally indeed. The shame & indignity of this man’s death adheres to the perpetrators, not to the victim.

Our fullest solidarity with human rights activists standing against Duterte’s death squads. Our deepest sympathy for the victims. May they Rest In Peace.

(Photo by Carlo Gabuco for Human Rights Watch)

These are detainees in Police Station 6 in Santa Ana, Manila. Imagine that human beings accused of a crime are housed in cages like this–worse than animals in a zoo. Duterte was asked about the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released today accusing him of inciting & instigating over 8,000 extrajudicial killings & denouncing the war on drugs as a war against humanity. Duterte answered: “When you kill criminals, it is not a crime against humanity. The criminals have no humanity. Goddammit.”

Phelim Kine, the HRW director for Asia, said “When we write this report, we write these things to be admissible to an international court of law. Everything in here has been reviewed by five lawyers. So this type of document means that at some point President Duterte has to worry about if & when he is going to retire & he might actually retire to a prison cell someday unless there is some serious 180-degree change in policy.”

Duterte & his officials carrying out this campaign should be prosecuted & placed in maximum security for the protection of Filipino working people. Vengeance is a good percentage of the law so it’s almost a pity that human rights activists don’t employ the same barbarism to punish human rights criminals as those criminals use against the defenseless poor. They would never place such monstrous criminals in a cage.

Our fullest solidarity with Filipino human rights individuals & groups standing against this barbarism.

(Photo by Carlo Gabuco for HRW)

These are Filipino children orphaned by Duterte’s war on the poor under the guise of a war on drugs. Small children & teenagers are also dying in the campaign as what Duterte calls “collateral damage” but it’s not certain at all if they were caught in crossfire or directly targeted.

It’s appearing more likely they are targeted since a bill has been working its way through the Philippine Congress to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 9-years-old to prevent “pampering” of children who commit crimes thinking childhood gives them immunity from prosecution & “knowing they can get away with it.” Duterte claimed in a speech last December that a whole generation of young children were becoming drug runners, thieves, rapists & must be “taught to understand responsibility.”

Since Duterte initiated the death squad war on the poor on July 1st, 2016, over 8,000 suspected drug users & street peddlers have been shot down in the streets like animals. That is 1,000 death squad victims every month & he said he is committed to continuing the campaign until his term ends in 2022.

Today, Human Rights Watch released a 124-page report titled
“License to Kill: Philippine Police Killings in Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs” calling the campaign a “human rights calamity for the Philippines,” accusing Duterte & his senior officials of ordering & instigating the killings, & saying poor communities were being “terrorized” by the death squad campaign.

Our fullest respect for human rights activists opposing Duterte’s death squads & our sincere condolences to the families who have so violently lost their beloved.

(Photo from Human Rights Watch)

George Ades from Nicosia, Cyprus is a popular Assadist blogger on Facebook. He writes mostly to glorify Russian intervention in Syria, defiantly using no verifiable sources & instead demanding the reader’s trust. Maybe that has something to do with the Cyprus-Russia deal made in 2015 allowing the Russian military & Navy to use its ports & bases for operations in Syria. Or maybe it’s because Russian state intelligence has extensive operations in Cyprus. It’s possible Ades has an inside track to some of those guys. Or maybe it has something to do with the financial relationship between Cyprus & Russia.

When the Cypriot financial system was on the point of meltdown in March 2013, the country got a eurozone bailout of 10 billion euro ($11 billion) with provisos that Cyprus institute austerity measures, privatization, & financial reforms, including stopping its financial operations from being used as a tax haven & for money laundering dirty money, mainly by a Russian clientele.

The financial rating agencies had unearthed byzantine financial relations between Cyprus & Russia going back to the break-up of the USSR when new oligarchs flush with plunder were looking for places to hide their booty. Moody’s estimated in 2013 that there was at least USD $62 billion of Russian money invested in the eurozone’s smallest economy as well as $40 billion loaned to Russian companies by Cypriot banks. Der Spiegel cited a report from German intelligence agencies claiming the main beneficiaries of the eurozone bailout would be the Russian oligarchs & companies.
When Cyprus exited the bailout program three years later in March 2016, allegedly after making reforms, about 30 percent of its bailout funds had not been used & it was called “one of the more robust eurozone economies.” Eurozone bankers & politicians were effusive about the miracle that was Cyprus.

Investigations emerged during the presidential campaign about Trump’s financial relationship to Cyprus where he has at least one company registered & is partnered with two gaming firms accused of bribery in competing for a license to open the first casino in Cyprus. The financial details of this partnership or whether Trump has personal accounts in Cyprus are not known since he refuses to release his tax returns.

What is known is that Wilbur Ross, Commerce Secretary in the Trump regime, also has considerable investment in Cyprus banks. In 2014, during the eurozone bailout period, Ross led a takeover of the Bank of Cyprus, the biggest bank in the country & made a Russian conglomerate with close ties to Putin & the Kremlin the second largest shareholders. Ross, who is Vice Chairman of the bank, appointed a Russian oligarch with ties to Putin to the board along with a former KGB associate of Putin. (The KGB guy is no longer on the board & now heads up an agriculture company owned by the Russian government.)

So back to George Ades: where he’s unequivocal about his adulation of Putin & Russia, he likes to play coy about his support for Trump like a lot of Assadists do. Maybe it’s time for him to come clean with his readers about who he is or who he represents. Is he just a blogger who meets Russian intelligence guys at the local bar & gets an earful of insider information after they’re half in the wrapper? Are they his secret source? Is he something more? Or is he just a schnook with really rotten politics?

(Photo is Wilbur Ross on left with the orange freak & Pence)