Since the beginning of the Syrian Arab Spring in March 2011, the Assad regime has subjected tens of thousands, including women, children, Palestinian refugees, to arbitrary arrests, unlawful detentions, forcible disappearances, torture including rape & sexual humiliation, death by hanging. The gulag is an extensive network of secret detention facilities, what Human Rights Watch calls “an archipelago of torture centers” scattered throughout Syria. Hundreds of thousands have passed through these torture centers since 2011. Nearly 128,000 have never emerged from Assad’s gulag & are presumed to be either dead or still in custody, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights.

This is a video about 25,000 photos called the Caesar collection taken within Assad’s prisons by a military photographer who defected. He said the bodies of prisoners arrived in such numbers that they ran out of refrigerated units in the morgue & began dumping them in the garage where army vehicles were repaired. For those who question the veracity of these photos or for propagandists who claim they are staged, there is also the testimony of thousands among those who survived the gulag on whom Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Syrian Network for Human Rights & other Syrian human rights groups have based their investigations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=20&v=eQni3qn6GIU&fbclid=IwAR2ucK6rC1YnLFNjnbTwlHZRH42vPMFkR-ZTzl8yRRDD2g3sX-UbOPKraxA

A Syrian woman runs with her infant to escape Syrian & Russian bombing of Idlib including with barrel bombs (oil drums filled with explosives & shrapnel). The corrupted antiwar movement does not just remain silent on this carnage but supports it, marching lockstep with Assad propagandists & other fascists. It’s all over for that so-called antiwar movement. Time for them to limp off the stage of history into oblivion.

Stop bombing Idlib!

(Photo by Amer almohibany on Twitter)

This is a scene on May 26th from Syrian & Russian bombing of Idlib where today they are bombing several cities & towns. The corrupted international antiwar movement has not held a single protest against this carnage nor has any of them said a single word of protest. If you go to the social media walls of leading figures, they are talking about a US threat to the Galapagos, defending that abandoned embassy in DC, the candidacy of Tulsi Gabbard or Bernie Sanders, the vagaries of British electoral politics, denouncing the Hong Kong protests as anti-capitalist malcontents, the latest publicity stunt of Medea Benjamin to make herself the center of attention.

For so long we hoped the carpet bombing of civilians, the endless massacres with barrel bombs, Assad’s gulag where thousands have been tortured & hung to death would bring people to their senses & reawaken their political principles to oppose the bombing of civilians & repudiate their political degeneration calling for self-determination for a dictator. But they have dug in their heels & continue to support dictatorship & death squads over the Syrian Arab Spring uprising.

A new principled antiwar movement must be built & the time to start doing that is now, even if it’s one person at a time standing against this carnage.

Stop the bombing of Idlib!

(Photo from MMC)

We should take a moment to honor the protesters of Kashmir who, like Palestinians, are vilified as ‘jihadis’ but brave the threat of arrest, disappearance, torture, disability & disfigurement by pellet guns, or death from live ammunition to fight one of the most important freedom struggles in the world.

Borrowing from the Latin American political tradition to honor those in Kashmir who have died fighting for freedom: Presente! You are here with us, you are not forgotten, the struggle continues in your name.

Go back India, go back!

(Photo from April 2019 protest in Srinagar by Sakib Makhdoomi)

When I criticize politicians, especially the presidential candidates, I make no similar imputations against those who support them. Excepting the redneck socialists who get on my nerves something awful.

At the UN Security Council, the US which has at least 60,000 refugee children in concentration camps, heatedly reamed China for its concentration camps for Uyghur Muslims. There’s no moral high ground here, only absolute corruption & barbarity.

The Dalai Lama did not apologize for his Islamophobic & racist comments about Muslim & African refugees but he did apologize for his comment that any female successor would have to be hot. He claimed it was a misunderstood joke which only compounds the insult. How many hundreds of times have women objected to misogynist insults only to be told they ‘couldn’t take a joke’? He should also understand that an insult to Muslims & Africans is taken as an insult to all of us. The criticism he is receiving is called pedagogy.

There’s a passionate intensity to the whole Brexit debate which I wish they would use to explain Fortress Europe & EU refugee policy which has caused the exclusions of refugees & the drowning of thousands in the Aegean & Mediterranean Seas.