Category Archives: News

Bernie Sanders charges BDS with “some” anti-Semitism to cover for his Zionism

Sanders (Matt Mills McKnight:Getty Images)

Last Monday, Bernie Sanders was asked by Chris Hayes on MSNBC if he agreed with Hillary Clinton that the political force behind the BDS movement is anti-Semitism. “I think there is some of that, absolutely,” he responded. Really!? We’d like him to elaborate on that very serious charge. What evidence does he have, what sources can he quote since he has kept himself 100 miles away from the movement & doesn’t know squat about what is going on? In fact, the movement, led by Palestinians, eschews anti-Semitism & polemicizes against it.

He went on: “Israel has done some very bad things, so has every other country on earth.” What a wimpy-assed defense of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, carpet bombing, occupation, massive incarceration of children & adults without charges, & land expropriations! With all the resources of a senatorial staff, is that the best he can do?

But there’s more wisdom from our man: “Israel has got to be defended, has a right to exist, but you cannot ignore the needs of the Palestinian people.” What needs are those? Does he have a clue? Is self-determination excluded? He called for the US to be more even-handed in how it deals with Israel & Palestinians. How would that work? How would the US balance off over $4 billion a year of military aid to Israel? Would it stop bankrolling the occupation, settlements, & bombing? Would it even just stop calling Palestinians “terrorists”?

Turns out Sanders didn’t miss much for not being present at AIPAC; he had an even bigger audience on MSNBC.

Cut through this stinking morass of apologetics & honor the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel. Buy nothing with a barcode beginning 729.

(Photo by Matt Mills McKnight/Getty Images)

Uber-populist Hillary Clinton will join the Clooneys at a fundraiser next month hosted by billionaire & Uber company investor, Shervin Pishevar. Tickets will be $353,400 for a piece of Clinton’s soul. There’s so little left to mortgage since Israel & Haim Saban already own her.

The next day, the Clooneys will have another fundraiser at their LA mansion for the discounted rate of $33,400 a piece.

Every time George opens his mouth to talk politics & war-monger, his sex appeal drains through the floor. He’s now riding on empty & can start looking for grumpy old man roles.

Aung San Suu Kyi: nothing but a two-bit supporter of genocide against Rohingya

Suu Kyi at Husain interview

In 1973, the satirist Tom Lehrer said, “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.” The Nobel prize was jointly awarded that year to Kissinger (then US Secretary of State) & Lê Đức Thọ, a Vietnamese general & leading political figure, who declined it. It would have been grotesque, even criminal to accept it since the US was then engaged in carpet bombing North Vietnam.

The award has always been a discredited honorific for colonialists & war makers beginning with Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, an instrumental figure in colonizing the Philippines, Cuba, & Puerto Rico for the US; & in 1919 with Woodrow Wilson who took the US into WWI fought among European powers & the US over the colonial division of the world.

The Nobel committee throws in do-gooders once in a while & genuine leaders ever so occasionally but mostly it has the political merit of toilet paper. When they threw in a rookie like Obama, they must have thought he showed promise as a war-maker. He has not disappointed those hopes. When they chose Aung San Suu Kyi, the Myanmar dissident, they must have known she was open to compromise not only with the military junta & neoliberal plunder of Myanmar’s natural resources but with the gruesome ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.

Suu Kyi received the award in 1991 while she was under house arrest but could not travel to receive it until 2012. Whilst she traveled to Norway to pick up the thing, there was a violent onslaught by the regime against Rohingya which she remained quiet as a mouse about. Commentators were mystified; some thought her silence was equivocation, others thought her afraid to speak out. Well if a Nobel peace prize winner can’t speak out against butchery, who the hell can & what is the purpose of receiving the damn thing if remaining silent about monstrous human rights crimes is part of the bargain!?

What wasn’t understood is that Suu Kyi’s silence was consent; at no time has she ever expressed scruples or outrage at the mob violence against Rohingya, the concentration camps for Rohingya, at forcing thousands to flee to Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, or in rickety boats on the Andaman Sea. When asked about it, she denies there is a genocide & resorts to double-talk & evasions. She doesn’t come across less smarmy than any other corrupt politician whose names are legion.

Now a book titled “The Lady & The Generals: Aung San Suu Kyi & Burma’s Struggle For Freedom,” by Peter Popham, exposes what is behind the double-talk & it comes as no surprise. The book describes an anti-Muslim outburst by Suu Kyi after an October 2013 interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today program. The interview was conducted by Mishal Husain, a British woman of Pakistani descent & a Muslim.

Husain pressed Suu Kyi on the issue of ethnic cleansing & repeatedly challenged her to condemn anti-Islamic terrorism in Myanmar. Suu Kyi refused & under pressure lost her composure–that presumed Buddhist serenity that masks her indifference to genocide. Following the interview, she was heard to mutter, “No one told me I was going to be interviewed by a Muslim.” No one told her that her comments would be overheard & used against her either–not to discredit her; she’s done that all by herself–but to clarify where she actually stands so admirers can get past adulation to a realistic evaluation of her political character. It’s a case of chickens coming home to roost.

Photo is Suu Kyi with her mad face on during the Husain interview when she was being cornered & couldn’t weasel out of it.

(Photo is screen shot from BBC video)

Who you’re demonizing when you demonize refugees

Yasmeen Mohammed, 11, from Eastern Ghouta (Muhammed Muheisen:AP) Mar 25 2016

Just so we’re all clear on who is being demonized by opponents of refugee rights to asylum: about half of the 4.8 million Syrian refugees are children. This is 11-year-old Yasmeen Mohammed from Eastern Ghouta in Syria, now living in a refugee camp near the Jordanian city of Mafraq. Yasmeen said, “All I want is to go back to my school in Syria & see my friends.’”

The Jordanian monarchy is hardly a model for refugee rights since it denies asylum to all Palestinians fleeing Syria & has now partially closed the borders to Syrians. But with a population of 8 million people, it had taken in nearly 630,000 Syrian refugees as of October 2015. According to the European Union’s own figures, in a population of 508 million, EU countries received just over one million asylum applications but of course many were declined, many have been deported, refugee camps have been forcibly dismantled & residents made homeless. How many the EU has actually accepted is uncertain but some reports claim it is less than the country of Jordan.

According to UN refugee agencies, there are more than 43 million refugees today–over 15 million had to flee their home countries & another 27 million are displaced within their own homelands. More than two-thirds of the world’s refugees have been in exile over five years, most with no end in sight. Palestinians (an estimated 5 million) have been refugees for 68 years. There are also millions of Afghans, Iraqis, Somalis, Congolese, Sudanese, Rohingya from Myanmar, Colombians fleeing war, persecution, ethnic cleansing.

Actually, the UN figures are conservative since one has to register with the UN to be counted. Tens of thousands fall outside official UN designations & receive no assistance. And of course, those fleeing sweatshop economics or land expropriations orchestrated by the IMF & World Bank are considered “economic migrants,” are denied any rights at all, & are seen as undocumented invaders.

This is the world according to neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism.

Immigration is a human right. Open the borders. We stand with little Yasmeen, not with racism, ethnic cleansing, & war.

(Photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP)

Poetic tribute to Atta Muhammad Khan by Zoya Khan

Atta Muhammad Khan

This tribute to Atta Muhammad, the gravedigger, was written by Zoya Khan:

*****
Kashmir-Where barren land turn into unmarked graves

Annals of Kashmir
The Unspoken, the Unheard
Seven thousand buried in
the unmarked graves of the vale.

Militarisation and repression knocked your doors with bullet ridden bodies
dead and half dead .
The world slept , you awoke
Atta Muhammad, the land tiller
acclaimed and acknowledged
the nameless dead in the silent nights.

Annals of Kashmir
The Unspoken, the Unheard.

Barren lands turned into unmarked graves
Chitarnar or Chahal, Sopore or Pampore
Every slit and cut , bleeding wounds
Opened their red and purple lips.
Atta Muhammad, now the gravedigger
heard and buried
their painful adieu to cold world.

Annals of Kashmir
The Unspoken, the Unheard.

Bundles of broken and chopped dreams
left souvenirs, not all , but few with you.
Wailing fathers and lamenting mothers
recognised and recollected
their shattered hopes and sighed .
Atta Muhammad, holder of unspoken memoirs
lies in deep slumber forever and ever.

Annals of Kashmir
The Unspoken, the Unheard

You and me pass by the weeded unmarked graves
Srangor and Malkh’sh, Atta Muhammad
You shall live in tearful n longing eyes.
Seven thousand bleeding pages
maimed and throttled annals.

Annals of Kashmir
The Unspoken, the Unheard.

(Photo is Atta Muhammad)

http://thekashmirscenario.com/…/atta-muhammad-the-gravedig…/

Tribute to Atta Muhammad Khan, Kashmiri farmer & gravedigger who defied Indian occupation to tell the truth

 

Atta Muhammad, gravedigger

There are extraordinary people who should not pass without being honored for their courage & profound human decency. Atta Muhammad Khan, a farmer & gravedigger, died on January 11th, 2016 at the age of 73 in his hometown of Chahal Bimbyar, Kashmir.

Atta became well-known in Kashmir following the release in 2008 of a report on mass graves by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP). So far APDP has been able to document the existence of 7000 unmarked graves but the government has no records to show the identity of those buried.

The occupying Indian army would commandeer gravediggers to bury those it had murdered. Atta testified he had buried 235 unidentified bodies–all of which were bruised, defaced, bullet-ridden, or decomposed, including a six-month baby girl. He gave them all a proper burial & when possible he & other community members would retain belongings of the deceased to help identify them when their families came looking for them. As a result of this work, Atta suffered mental & physical trauma.

In a statement at his passing, the APDP hailed him for giving the deceased the dignity they deserved & said: “Atta Mohammad was amongst very few people who came out in the open to testify as witness. He was perhaps the only grave digger who did not mind being identified by his name publicly despite being intimidated by the police. He was very keen that his testimony should have been used by the government for conducting a credible investigation into the phenomenon of unmarked graves in Jammu & Kashmir.”

Photo is Atta Mohammad. May he Rest In Peace. Our deepest respect.

(This is the APDP report for those who would like to read it:http://www.europarl.europa.eu/…/DROI_080716_FactsUgrounden.…)

The little dog who adopted me a few weeks back was not neutered & his little biological imperatives were beating like a drum. This made him a problem around my as yet un-neutered nubile females. If I ran an errand or went out, they all had to come along.

Today, I took him to the low-cost clinic for spaying & after examination they told me he appeared to have problems requiring blood tests. I explained I was short of dough right now & asked if the tests could be held off a few weeks. Instead, they said they would cover the cost of tests & any meds required. Turns out he has heart worms, anemia, & an infection caused by mosquitos. Despite the fact that I’ve given him a least three flea baths & nightly comb him for ticks & fleas, they told me he was flea-infested. Who knew you can’t see them?

Useful information for fellow residents of the RGV: They told me that as a rescuer, I can apply for vouchers at Palmview shelter to get no-cost spaying for my females. They also told me that throughout the month of April they are offering free spaying to stray & feral cats.

My immense gratitude to the RGV Low Cost Spay Neuter clinic.

CBS news is all about the peril that is ISIS. Worse than the bubonic plague, training agents to prowl the world spreading hate & blowing things up. Personally I don’t see the difference between ISIS & the US presidential candidates.

Refugees protest at Idomeni, Greece

Refugee protest at Idomeni (REUTERS:Alexandros Avramidis) Mar 24 2016

When the obituary of the EU is finally written documenting its inglorious existence & celebrating its demise, this photo should be included.

What a poignant & galling historic sarcasm that refugees whose lives were devastated by US & European bombers must stand supplicant at the locked down borders protesting that they are not terrorists & apologizing for a terrorist act committed 1,300 miles (2090 km) from where they stand.

Open the damn borders. Immigration is a human right.

(Photo by Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters)

Children refugees protest at Idomeni, Greece

Child protester at Idomeni (AP Photo:Darko Vojinovic) Mar 24 2016

Let the children of war speak for themselves.

This is a boy at the Idomeni camp (near the Greek-Macedonian border) which aid agencies have evacuated citing security concerns. Is it because they are afraid of starving refugees or of Greek riot police who will soon enter the camp for forcible deportation to Turkey?

Immigration is a human right. Open the borders.

(Photo by Darko Vojinovic/AP)