This is a panoramic view of the Great Return March yesterday in Gaza. Palestinian protesters carrying national flags are burning tires to prevent Israeli snipers from shooting them down in cold blood. You can see the Israeli armored vehicle & the outline of snipers in the hills. For what purpose against unarmed, peaceful protesters demanding the end of the blockade of Gaza & the right of return for Palestinians living in refugee camps? For what purpose other than genocide?

The UNHCR isn’t the most dynamic or aggressive agency in terms of advancing human rights but their recent claims that Israel ‘may be’ guilty of war crimes for shooting down unarmed protesters makes it easier to build the economic & cultural boycott of Israel–especially in a political climate where governments are attempting to outlaw support for BDS.

(Photo from VOA news)

An Indian paramilitary trooper “stands guard” in Srinagar. “Stands guard” over what other than India’s colonial claims? He looks like something from Silence of the Lamb. If you have to wear this level of protective gear against unarmed civilians whose sole weapon is rocks, perhaps it’s time for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian troops from Kashmir.

(Photo from AFP)

A Syrian man cries over the body of his young daughter who was killed by Syrian regime bombing & shelling in the town of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib province. The civilian death toll in Idlib since February 9th is now at least 42 according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Putin, who was holding a summit in Russia with Turkey’s Erdoğan & Iranian president Rouhani, said, “We should not put up with the presence of terrorist groups in Idlib.” Perhaps Putin could explain to us which terrorist group this little girl belonged to.

And the corrupted international antiwar movement dares call Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians a freedom struggle against a ‘regime change operation’. The only principled stand is to demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria. Any defense of the bombing of civilians is complicity in war crimes & in the crushing of the Syrian Arab Spring uprising.

(Photo from AFP)

Basharat Peer is the author of “Curfewed Night: A Frontline Memoir of Life, Love & War in Kashmir” & has been an oped writer for the NY Times since 2010. This is a quite good article & a useful synopsis of the ongoing political machinations over Kashmir & the current crisis of war mongering between Pakistan & India but to my mind does not hit hard enough at the Indian occupation which Peer estimates at half a million troops when it is closer to one million. Not hitting hard enough at the occupation & portraying Pakistan & India as equally responsible for the conflict in Kashmir allows for a certain amount of obfuscation over the root cause of the conflict which is Indian colonialism & the military occupation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/opinion/sunday/kashmir-india-pakistan.html?

A video about a young Kashmiri man recently killed when an Indian military helicopter crashed on top of him. He was the sole support of his family after his father died. Couldn’t Indian media stop war mongering long enough to express requiems for a Kashmiri civilian? Or do Kashmiri lives not matter as much as that wing commander who was downed?

https://www.facebook.com/DailyGreaterKashmir/videos/304450933575097/UzpfSTE2MjUyMjkwNjE6MTAyMTYwODUwMDE5OTA4OTc/

The time to build the hell out of Kashmiri solidarity is now with the threat of war looming. This is not a time to be intimidated into silence. War does not indicate that military states have the upper hand but that they are in crisis over how to turn back the rising tide & growing strength of popular resistance in Kashmir. The time for the Kashmiri freedom struggle to take its historic place can no longer be denied.

This is an excellent terse article about war mongering between India & Pakistan over Kashmir that completely leaves out any reference to Kashmiris, the military occupation, & their struggle against Indian colonialism.

As the authors point out: “There was a certain irony in calls by Indian officials & public figures calling for Pakistan to uphold the Geneva Convention in its treatment of the captured Indian pilot. In Kashmir, India has failed to apply not just the Geneva Convention, but much of international law for that matter. Kashmiris are still being jailed on political charges & used as human shields, while the United Nations resolution which mandates a referendum on self-determination to be conducted in Kashmir is yet to be implemented.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/kashmir-forgotten-190301213038382.html?

What are we to make of Duterte’s offer of asylum & citizenship to Rohingya refugees? This is where credulity does not serve politics but on the contrary becomes madness. The official accounting of deaths in his vigilante war against the urban poor was 11,000 after the first eight months of his regime. The media agencies keeping a daily accounting were likely terrorized into silence under threat to their lives. Under Duterte’s tenure–as under Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro, Putin, Assad, Xi, & others–vigilantism is emboldened & legitimized. In the Philippines, not just lawyers & farm workers, but journalists, environmentalists, & human rights activists have been arrested or assassinated. The many courageous Filipinos who stand up to protest such repression & violence are vilified as terrorists & underground communists.

Muslims in Mindanao & surrounding parts of the archipelago have fought against successive Filipino regimes & under Duterte sustained martial law & war in 2017. Duterte claimed that insurgency against repression in Mindanao was by ISIS-linked forces. They will continue to sustain persecution, massacres, mass rapes, & repeated military assaults despite the peace accord Duterte negotiated with the Moro Muslims last year. It is probably similar to the peace deal signed between the Taliban & the US in Afghanistan with betrayal of the Moro people written all over it.

Should the Rohingya reject the offer of citizenship? Of course not. But it remains to be seen what kind of asylum Duterte will provide them since discrimination against Muslims is a hallmark of Filipino rule as it is across the globe.

(Photo of Duterte from September 2018 from Reuters)

These are the young boys in Belfast who in 1983 walked me through the Catholic neighborhoods to photograph the many murals in solidarity with the hunger strikers in Long Kesh prison. They were my first encounter with stone pelters because every time a caravan of British armored vehicles passed by they would pelt them with rocks. When I left the boys I asked if they would like me to send them the photos. One of them answered, “No need to do that. Just tell the world what is happening here.”

Reposting this brilliant “Revolutionary Manifesto of 21st-century Hypocrites” about Syria by poet Musab Iqbal written in 2016:
*****
The “Revolutionary” manifesto of 21st-century Hypocrites
– Russian intervention is different from US/Nato intervention
– Russia has no imperial/colonial ambition (ever) unlike US and allies
– Iran-backed militias are not like US/Saudi-backed militias. Former unlike later is busy saving human lives with great empathy and kindness
– Assad is the most ideal democrat and any criticism of him and his power is sinful
– Assad army never shot or killed anyone, in fact Hama massacre never happened, there is no prison and torture center in Syria
– Syrian Army is personally trained by Gandhiji
– The world is made of binary. If you are not with us (Russia-Syria-Iran) then you are with them (ISIS-Al Qaeda- USA- Saudi etc)
– Celebrating death and torture is the most merciful and dignified revolutionary act
– Iran is defending Secularism and Democracy in Syria like it is doing in its own country
– Everyone is lying except PressTV, RT and journalists close to Assad regime
– Don’t criticize Syrian regime if you have not criticized all the violence in the world starting from Habeel and Qabeel (Adam’s son killing the other son)
– There is/was never political opposition in Syria, there were terrorists and there are terrorists.