Condolences to the families & friends of the young US sailors who died when a navy destroyer collided with an oil tanker near Singapore. Traditionally, the US antiwar movement has not considered soldiers our enemies. That isn’t a tradition in every country, understandably in those under military occupation. But active duty soldiers & veterans have played a central role in educating against & protesting most US wars & that is also true among antiwar veterans of the Israeli army.

I have three brothers, countless relatives, & many co-workers who were in the military, including during war time. None came back the better but many came back opposed to war & often less racist. Veterans have a certain moral authority when it comes to denouncing the horrors of war.

The sailors who died in this accident were just barely in their twenties. They were working class kids who often enter the service to get skilled job training they couldn’t afford elsewhere. They aren’t our enemies but our brothers, sons, & fathers.

May they Rest In Peace.

Rollie Mukherjee is holding an exhibition & sale of 60 pieces of her art work portraying the Indian occupation of Kashmir, particularly highlighting the sorrow & resistance of Kashmiri women.

The exhibition & sale will be held in Kashmir in the first week of September with a major portion of proceeds shared between orphans & the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP).

Rollie’s commitment to Kashmiri freedom has educated & inspired thousands of people around the world. So please consider attending the exhibition & contributing. We can provide details of exactly when & where it will be held.

(Painting is “Unframed Histories” by Rollie Mukherjee)

This young Kashmiri man’s name is Shahid Bashir Mir. The story of his death isn’t unusual & that’s what makes it so outrageous. Reports differ on his age but most sources say he was 21. His dad, who is a carpenter, said his eldest son left home late Monday afternoon to buy cigarettes at a local shop. Some reports claim he left home Monday morning with a herd of sheep for grazing in the forest but he was a college student & not likely to be working as a sheep herder. They may have thought that because his body was found in the forest where the Indian Army was engaged in a hunt to kill operation.

When he didn’t return home, his family went looking for him & also filed a missing person report at the police station. When your son doesn’t come home in a country under military occupation it must be cause for considerable alarm.

This is where the story begins to fall apart & indicates the need for a formal investigation. Shahid was reportedly killed on Tuesday, the day after he went missing. That must have been determined by the medical examiner. Did the army kidnap him on Monday & hold him? Where did they kill him? Walking down the road? In crossfire somewhere? In the forest? Was he taking a shortcut to the cigarette store through the forest? Some reports also claim his face was disfigured with acid. His funeral photos show that something was done to disfigure his face. That would indicate torture or mutilation of a corpse. Those allegations have to be disproven or prosecuted.

Apparently the army notified the police on Tuesday that an unidentified body was lying in the forest & requested them to pick it up. The police later confirmed that no weapons were recovered with Shahid’s body. He was identified later by doctors doing the postmortem.

There were protests throughout the Handwara area in response to his murder & thousands attended his funeral. There’s no point asking why the army would execute a young man not engaged in any criminal or political activity. The number of young men executed when not engaged in militant activities, stone pelting, or protesting is an indictment of the entire occupation.

May Shahid Bashir Mir Rest In Peace. Our condolences to his family.
End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Photo is Shahid Bashir Mir)

Do you think Trump has the nuclear code? Or were they smart enough to give him a dummy code? If he has it, that imaginary deep state has to take him out & not in a soft coup but a hard one. They weren’t smart enough to keep him out of office so things are not hopeful. Make your final arrangements for meeting your maker. Amen.

What Hillary Clinton is saying about Trump stalking her on stage during one of the debates is actually quite important. Forget her stinking politics; she’s speaking honestly & expressing regret about keeping her composure whilst being sexually harassed by Trump on stage. She confirms the point that I make in this article: when you are old & gray what you will regret are those moments in life when out of fear, confusion, a desire to be polite, or in her case, a desire to appear tough, you did not stand up for yourself & let someone intimidate you. Never allow someone to disrespect you.

http://thegirlgod.blogspot.com/2015/09/ending-verbal-abuse-by-mary-scully.html

This is an account by a Rohingya refugee in Malaysia of the life of another Rohingya man. It is a story repeated for undocumented immigrants all over the US, particularly in the border region, & all over the world. Refugees are not pitiful creatures but human beings with sacred inviolable rights due them simply because they are human. Open the damn borders.
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“He is a Rohingya from Myanmar. He fled to Malaysia by boat because of persecution by Myanmar militaries. He is surviving in Malaysia more than five years. He went to UNHCR office many times since he arrived to Malaysia. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the opportunity for the registration and medical facility.

For his daily base, “He wakes up early to collect plastic and metal to sell. On a good day, he can make around RM30. But not every day is a good day. There are days when he only makes RM20,” He has been doing this since he arrived to Malaysia. He can’t find any job. He has a wife with five kids living in Batu 4. Apart from this, nobody helps either. What choices does he have on for his family?

As we know, Refugees in Malaysia are officially prohibited from working, so most of them seek employment illegally in order to support their families. This desperation places them in a perpetually precarious state where they are left at the mercy of their employers. Sometimes they are made to work long hours for cheap pay. Sometimes they fire from the job. Sometimes they are exploited. This is a problem repeatedly I raised everywhere.

Despite carrying valid UNHCR documentation, often face the risk of arrest by the authorities. Even though I have encountered with the authorities several times while I was working at restaurant as waiter and UNHCR as an interpreter in Kuala Lumpur & visiting some places. Often leading me to having to bribe police to escape detention for few days or 13 days until asking from UNHCR. “That’s become normal for Rohingya in Malaysia.”

This is the concrete life of Rohingya in Malaysia. we continue to live here. Struggling to keep our dignity as we fight to survive.”

Ziaur Rahman
Victim of Human Traffickers

(Photo is the fellow Ziaur is describing with his children)

Rohingya Means to Run All Over the World in Pain

Written by Ziaur, a Rohingya refugee exiled in Malaysia

I have been a refugee all of my life. It has not been easy being a Rohingya. It has not been easy being a refugee for almost twenty-four years in three different countries. It has also not been easy being stateless.

Being a Rohingya means to run, to run all over the world in pain …
Being stateless has meant that I have had no bargaining power whatsoever. Being stateless has meant that governments have continued to ignore my plight because of policies of non-intervention. Not only have governments done this, but most people around the world have also turned a blind eye.

Being a Rohingya means to run, to run all over the world in pain …

There are tens of thousands of us who have lost our strength and we can no longer fight against continuous cruelty. We are in exile. We have become both damned and unwanted.

Being a Rohingya means to run, to run all over the world in pain …

For how long will I be kept in this refugee life?
For how long will I be eaten by insects?
For how long will I be someone that you cannot see?

Being a Rohingya means to run, to run all over the world in pain …

I want you to acknowledge my right to exist, not as an unwanted refugee, but as a human being in a country where I can feel at home and call home, just like you. My fellow Rohingya refugees and I remain silent while we suffer torture, discrimination and harassment. We were once lost at sea on our journey to seek a new home, but we remain lost to this day.

Being a Rohingya means to run, to run all over the world in pain …

Ziaur Rahman

An article about the extraordinary photography of nine Kashmiris which oddly enough neglects to cite the work of Bilal Ahmad, Aasif Shafi, & Basit Zargar who are among the best photojournalists in the world. Is there some reason why photography is such a powerful artistic & political form in Kashmir? It’s in a league of its own.

http://withkashmir.org/2017/08/19/9-emerging-photographers-from-kashmir/

An Egyptian engineer raised the Palestinian flag in front of a pro-Israel rally at a university in South Africa. More information is not available but it’s a very dramatic moment.

(Tweeted by Palestine Information Center)

Oliver Stone, who has gone over to the dark side, recently refused to condemn Trump’s comments about Charlottesville because he claimed the deep state is a more serious problem than Trump. This is a piece I wrote about the deep state last January. I was familiar with the concept when it emerged in its current form since I had come up against it in studying Turkey. It has long been a common description of how the Turkish government operates & to my mind is rooted in Islamophobia & orientalism. That was my conclusion after studying it in Turkey so it is no surprise that those who employ it most, like Stone, are libertarian rednecks.

This is a post I originally posted about the deep state on January 28, 2017
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If you want to be politically au courant these days & still remain shallow you have to learn the lingo, especially the accusatory terms. Denunciation is the lion’s share of fashionable politics.

To be really cool but not give away the shallow depths of your understanding, these terms are de rigueur: neocons, neolibs, alt-right, alt-left, Deep State, color revolution. Most people don’t have a clue what they mean which is precisely the charm of using them. Nobody wants to look stupid by asking what the hell they mean.

Deep State has come into its own since Glenn Greenwald & Global Research use it now to claim the Deep State, defined as the CIA, defense industry, & corporations, is plotting to destabilize Trump’s presidency. Global Research, always on the cutting edge of nutty, goes further in suggesting that protests against Trump are a color revolution, meaning orchestrated by the CIA & Soros. Presumably the color of this one is pink, the motif of the Women’s Marches in the US.

The term Deep State originated in the 1990s to describe a clandestine network within the Turkish political system that conspires against popular democracy. It includes the military, judiciary, intelligence agencies, & operates mafia-style in collaboration with the CIA. The concept seems to be used most by foreign journalists with an Islamophobic distrust of Turks justified by libertarian nihilism & little understanding of how governments administer capitalism.

There’s no confusion why Global Research uses the term. It’s a right-wing libertarian cesspool which promotes the “New World Order” scenario of David Icke & Eva Bartlett that reptilian Jewish bankers called the Illuminati rule & are moving the world toward fascism. It isn’t that libertarians don’t see the class character of society but that they hold working people in contempt. To them, all substantive change comes from the nefarious forces of the Deep State & Illuminati.

Our man Greenwald may not advocate that reptilian anti-Semitic crap but he has zilch understanding of how capitalism & government relate to each other–a blind spot he has demonstrated more than once, especially in his campaign for Chuck Hagel as the lesser of evil US Secretary of Defense. Since when do progressives get involved in the selection of who administers US wars?

Libertarians & political fashionistas parrot the term Deep State because it appeals to their nihilistic suspicions that everything is fake & manipulated & it confirms their elitist, anti-Semitic prejudices that clandestine agencies & reptilian Jewish bankers run the world. When millions of working people enter the stage of history, they scorn them as manipulated by financiers & undercover operatives. To their minds, all revolutions & mass protests–from the Arab uprisings in Egypt, Syria, Yemen, & Bahrain to the Women’s Marches–are orchestrated by the CIA & Soros.

Who can reason with such madness? It’s political martyrdom to try.