Palestinian artist Kamal Boullata has died in Berlin at the age of 77. I met him in 1970 as an activist in Palestine solidarity at the University of Minnesota. He was instrumental in educating me about the Palestinian struggle & in forging my commitment to it. He was a deeply intellectual person & has left an entire body of writings on Arabic art along with his magnificent body of art work & many political posters. I will be forever grateful to him for giving me a visceral as well as a political commitment to Palestinians. May he Rest In Peace.
Tulsi Gabbard said, “I will talk with brutal dictators anywhere in the world if I can prevent one of my brother & sisters in uniform from dying on foreign soil in senseless regime change wars.”
Sana Saeed of Al Jazeera asks, “Will Gabbard, who has supported Modi/BJP, condemn the Modi government’s bastardization of the Indian constitution & placing over 7 million under lockdown, revoking their rights? She’s said in the past she doesn’t “agree with all the practices” of the Indian government – what about this?”
One never knows what will set off a Facebook censor & incur a suspension but we’ve known for a long time that they target Kashmiris & their supporters right & left. Last year, I spent three months on suspension for offenses that amounted to nonsense, including one comparing the Palestinian & Kashmiri struggles. I’m blunt-spoken but hate is no part of my nature–at least if you distinguish sarcasm from hate. I want to #standwithKashmir & can’t be looking over my shoulder for the censors every time I make a post. If they nab me on some silly hate speech charge (like the Kashmiri video which 2,000 others also shared), please follow me on Twitter or on my blog. But above all, you can continue to read & share posts from: https://www.facebook.com/StandWithKashmir/?
Long before India’s current military onslaught, Kashmiri journalists have been fighting against political repression. One photojournalist came home one day to find Indian soldiers had surrounded & vandalized his home & terrorized his wife & small child. In August 2018, Aasif Sultan was arrested in a home raid & is still sitting in jail charged with “complicity” in “harboring known terrorists.” Others have been threatened, harassed, censored on social media. Journalists have held rallies demanding a free press but have to self-censor in order not to land up in prison on false charges. Now under the siege they have been completely silenced & there is every reason to be concerned about their safety. Even if they are not arrested under this martial law situation, they will be courting danger if they continue to do their work (which is one of the most dangerous occupations in the world unless you’re in the pay of the Assad regime or embedded with an army) when the siege is lifted.
Hindutva nationalists boldly expressing rape fantasies about ‘whiter’ Kashmiri women is of a piece with a 2017 rabidly anti-Muslim election speech in Uttar Pradesh where one of Modi’s boys called for taking Muslim women in India out of their graves & raping them. That’s intersectionality for fascists: hysterical & deranged nationalism, Islamophobia, racism, casteism, misogyny. Fighting the occupation of Kashmir is also of a piece with fighting that fascist crap in India.
