Mary Scully Reports

Kashmiris would really have wanted to join the rest of the world in protesting climate change today. India has big plans to destroy the ecology of Kashmir. But if they had protested, Indian soldiers would have attacked them with pellet guns, tear gas, & live ammo.

Egyptian protesters are out in Tahir Square & other parts of the country demanding the removal of General el-Sisi. Those who wrote cynical postmortems on the Arab Spring or who denounced it for causing more problems than it resolved can now eat their words. The Arab Spring uprisings are not over until the Arab peoples say they are & such defeatism has not been forthcoming.

According to the Howdy Modi Facebook page, Walmart contributed to the Howdy Modi rally. Another reason to boycott Walmart as we also #BoycottIndia.

Paul Klotman, MD, the head of Baylor University College of Medicine welcomed Modi to Texas saying the college has ‘strong connections with academic & government agencies in India.” Keep that in mind when #BoycottIndia is up & running.

A protest in NYC on Tuesday, September 24th, against the Gates Foundation award to fascist Modi. This will be an opportunity to #StandWithKashmir at the same time as expose the nefarious work of the Gates Foundation in eugenics & environmental ruin.

Yet another US war crime against Afghans, bombing to death 70 farmers. One of thousands of war crimes in 18 years of war.
We can never make up to the Afghan people what they have suffered because of the corruption of the US & international antiwar movement.

Houston, Texas weather report two days before Howdy Modi rally: after a tropical storm slammed the state on Thursday, flights are cancelled, airport is flooded, roads are submerged, Texas governor has declared a state of emergency for 13 counties.

This is really a crisis for the residents of Houston but when it comes to Modi, are we talking karma here?

The Bangladeshi government just expelled two young Rohingya women from college because it denies education to Rohingya refugees. This isn’t the first time. Starting in January this year, its expelled scores of young Rohingya kids enrolled in Bangladeshi schools near the refugee camps. There is non-formal primary education organized by Rohingya within the camps but they aren’t allowed to go to high school or college. To get their kids into the secondary schools from which they were expelled, parents had to obtain false documents.

The struggle of the oppressed for education is one of the most pivotal & politicizing issues. In W.E.B. Du. Bois magisterial “Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880” (first published in 1935), he wrote about how newly freed slaves in the US South prioritized education & established the first free public schools for both Black & white children.

Rohingya refugees are going to be living in Bangladesh for awhile so the government cannot continue to treat them as sub-human. Allowing the Rohingya to work & go to school are elementary human rights. The Bangladeshi government can cry poor-mouth from now until the cows come home but if its economic system weren’t creating billionaires off the backs of child & sweatshop labor, it would have enough resources for education & other social services. And the world would be a lot safer for Rohingya refugees, especially the women & kids. Not to mention for the child & sweatshop workers.

This is a useful tutorial about the history of Kashmir’s relationship with India & about the political affinities between Kashmiris & Palestinians.

If New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern does not withdraw from the Gates Foundation award ceremony honoring Modi, it would not be an anomaly in her politics. It would of a piece with her call for censorship of free speech on social media rather than denouncing Islamophobic war mongering in media but especially with the deployment of NZ troops in the Islamophobic ‘war on terror’.

NZ has a long history of involvement in wars, including as an ally of the US in the Vietnam War. Currently, according to the NZ army, the country has forces deployed under the guise of the Islamophobic ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Mali, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Korea, Sinai, South Sudan, Timor-Leste. In honoring the fascist Modi, is Ardern going to maintain that he is, as he claims, fighting terrorism in Kashmir?