Just read a report in Indian media from May 2017 that India has purchased stink bombs (also known as skunk bombs) from Israel for use against protesters in Kashmir. Stink bombs, which smell like decomposing bodies & raw sewage, can be dispensed from water cannons. India already uses purple dye shot from water cannons against strikers in Kashmir to identify them with color; since the odor of stink bombs takes days to disperse from persons & things, it will be another way to identify protesters & to isolate them.

There are other later reports that say Indian “perfumers” & scientists have developed a distinct non-lethal stink bomb with an “unbearable” odor that will not affect the health & lives of protesters. Just like they promised about the pellet guns which have killed, disfigured, blinded thousands of protesters.

The CRPF, the Indian paramilitary force, says it has 60,000 personnel deployed in Kashmir out of the total Indian occupying force of 700,000. An Indian official said: “We have used chilli grenades, plastic shell tear smoke, stun grenades, colour-smoke grenades, rubber bullets, dye-marker grenades with skin irritant & multi-tier teargas launchers, but they did not yield the desired result. Let’s see how the stink bombs work out.” He forgot to mention pellet guns & live ammo also used against unarmed protesters. Or are they claiming such an extensive & lethal arsenal is necessary against stone pelters?

There are no reports from Kashmir that stink bombs shot from cartridges or water cannons have yet been put in use but Indian officials claim they have already been tested in India–& of course they will be used in India against protesters once their use has been practiced & perfected on the protesters of Kashmir.

(Photo of Indian officer shooting tear gas by Danish Ismail/Reuters)

If you find yourself agreeing with the nimrods who respond to the attack in Charlottesville by denouncing liberals rather than by denouncing white supremacist violence & the backhanded support for it expressed by Trump, you are a libertarian redneck. Do me a favor & unfriend me.

Any friends have the names of high-powered lawyers specializing in international law from a human rights perspective?

A valuable article about the use of music as resistance in Kashmir:

http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/QjaZpx1ldnOWY08phRjIVI/When-stones-turn-to-song-in-Kashmir.html

“Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” which came out in 1979, was considered a Black national anthem in disco form. The song is an assertion of Black optimism about ending racist oppression–though it came out several years after the US government launched the so-called War on Drugs which criminalized drug addiction & eventually led to the incarceration of tens of thousands of Black & Latino youth for drug use–many for life without the possibility of parole for smoking a joint.

It was an extremely successful bait & switch operation by attributing drug dealing to Black youth “narcoterrorist” gangs & taking heat off international bank money laundering & CIA & government officials up to their eyeballs in trafficking. It was a political campaign that effectively reversed many consequential gains of the civil rights movement.

Civil rights for Blacks, Latinos, American Indians & other persecuted nationalities remains one of the most important struggles in the US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=RDVuAZTWGfQTs&v=VuAZTWGfQTs

I wrote this originally in 1992 for a Harvard student publication & updated it in 2007 for a Black community newspaper. At the time it was published, it was mocked as naive hogwash but it is now accepted as political reality:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/mary-scully/the-war-on-black-youth/267267043287137/?hc_location=ufi

Perhaps we should allow refugees to describe what is redeemable in the European Union (EU). But then so many thousands of them can never speak since they have drowned in the Mediterranean. For working people fleeing war & sweatshop economics, the EU doesn’t so much broaden international cooperation as it proves a death trap.

These little kids are Afghan refugees in Islamabad, Pakistan. Although media has an almost complete news blackout on the war in Afghanistan, we do know that civilians continue to be bombed & continue to die, including children. War reporting is so paltry that they don’t even have journalists of the embedded kind whose souls are mortgaged to the military & parrot what the military tells them. It’s likely a media policy, in league with the US government, to blunt active public opposition to the war.

But as the 16th anniversary of the Afghan war approaches in October, we should keep in mind that it is children just like these, including refugees & those unable to flee Afghanistan, who suffer most from the war. It is our historic obligation to render solidarity to them.

US out of Afghanistan.

(Photo from 2014 by Muhammed Muheisen)

While the US government cavalierly plans out an escalation of the murderous war in Afghanistan, we should remind ourselves that the European Union does not consider Afghans to be war refugees & denies them asylum. Afghanistan is not included in the Muslim ban under Trump but under Obama, the US had only accepted about 97,000 Afghans. There are nearly 3 million Afghan refugees, most in Pakistan & Iran, with 1.5 million internally displaced within Afghanistan living homeless or in squalid makeshift camps.

This is 12-year-old Liaqat, an unaccompanied child refugee from Khogyani, Afghanistan, living with other refugees in a dilapidated, abandoned warehouse in Belgrade, Serbia where they spent the winter, unable to move forward to asylum within Europe.

No to US war in Afghanistan. Out now!

(Photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP)

Afghanistan is known as the “graveyard of empires.” I haven’t investigated where the Afghans earned that reputation but after almost 16 years of US-European war & unspeakable war crimes too gruesome to describe, we could only wish that were true & that they would be able to bring US military power to its knees.

But in this day & age, when the US is armed with high-tech savagery, missiles guided by racism, & no moral restraint, it isn’t likely unarmed Afghan civilians will be able to defeat the Pentagon & hired mercenaries. For that, a massive, international antiwar movement with frequent & consistent mobilizations coordinated to act as one mighty force is an absolute imperative. Just because media does not post on US-European-Australian wars, we cannot be lulled into thinking not much is going on. Thousands of air strikes take place every year mostly on civilian targets like schools, hospitals, homes, mosques, fields.

Those of my generation know building such a movement is possible because we built them for other wars, we collaborated with others around the world to march on the same day with the same demands against the same wars. Today, reactionary sections of the US antiwar movement say we can only oppose US intervention, not Russian or Iranian. That’s to cover for their support for Russian & Syrian bombing of civilians in Syria. But around the world, on every continent for generations, progressive forces understood that war & occupation are an international matter & must be opposed regardless of who drops the bombs.

War is never just another issue in a litany of injustices. It is always the preeminent issue to actively oppose.

Yesterday, 16 civilians, including women & children, were killed by a US airstrike in Haska Mena district of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. Eight members of one family were killed. Another eight people, four from the same family, were also killed as they were walking in the area during the strike. The dead were not recognizable & were carried away in bags. This follows an incident about two weeks ago when another US airstrike in Haska Mena killed eight civilians & injured ten others who were gathered for a religious ceremony.

The provincial police spokesman, who’s paid or threatened to talk stupid for Afghan & US military authorities said ISIS fighters were holed up in civilian houses & when the US bombed the houses they tried not to harm civilians. Maybe they could elaborate how it’s possible to bomb a house to take out ISIS but leave the civilians in the same, or even the next room unharmed? The police official said 25 ISIS fighters had been killed in the airstrikes. See how US-emancipation works out? More civilians get killed than ISIS fighters. And that is not a collateral accident but the very intention of the US war in Afghanistan.

US-NATO & mercenary forces out of Afghanistan now!

(Photo is funeral at Haska Mena today after yesterday’s airstrikes)