https://www.thequint.com/news/india/shwetambri-sharma-sit-member-on-kathua-rape-case
This is an interview with the young, tough-minded woman homicide detective in Jammu who cracked the case of the murder of Asifa & discovered that other police officers were involved in the crime & the cover-up.
https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2018/04/14/the-anti-imperialism-of-idiots/
This is a cogent essay by Leila Al Shami, the co-author of “Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution & War,” about the corruption of the antiwar movement particularly in the US & Europe. The Assad regime, in alliance with foreign militaries, has brought the Syrian Arab Spring uprising that began in 2011 nearly to collapse. It’s only a matter of time. The postmortems of that revolution will be as cacophonous & divisive as the debates between fascist propagandists for Assad & rightwing opponents of Assad who stand together on a militarist solution to the crisis.
There are parts of Al Shami’s analysis which I don’t agree with, the least of which is her reference to the ‘western antiwar movement’. This concept posits a schism between the US & European antiwar movements & antiwar movements elsewhere in the world. A substantial antiwar movement does not exist anywhere now because of equivocations about militarism. You cannot build an antiwar movement anywhere if you are not coherent, consistent, & intransigent against war. Outside of small rallies in Kashmir, there have been no noteworthy protests against foreign intervention in Syria. During the Vietnam War, in Palestinian solidarity, & during the Women’s Marches of 2017 & 2018, solidarity & unity were international in scope, with coordinated protests in hundreds of cities on every continent. If US antiwar activists played a leading role, it was only because the US was the primary aggressor in Vietnam. If there is no such unity in antiwar action now, it is because of the long-time political & theoretical corruption & deep-rooted sectarianism of the antiwar movement, the hold of Islamophobia derived from the so-called war on terror, & the alliance of Stalinism with fascism. Anti-Semitism, masked behind anti-Zionism, also plays no small part in this.
Where Al Shami’s analysis fails is in her equivocations, which she quite candidly admits, about US military intervention into Syria. She can’t see a solution outside of a military one. But why do her frustration & inability to see other options lead her to consider the US Pentagon as playing a role in advancing a popular revolution against dictatorship? She doesn’t have to know US military history; she need only look at what the US is doing right now in Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, & in fact, Syria. Where does she think the US coalition has dropped over 100,000 bombs & missiles in Syria since 2014? Just on ISIS targets? She need only look at the role played by the US in reversing the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya. They played a central role in buttressing dictatorship in those countries & are doing so in Syria, albeit in a disguised strategy.
She ends this valuable essay with a question: what is to be done to stop the slaughter of civilians in Syria? That is not a question that can be left hanging in agnosticism & equivocations. If we want to stop the carnage, we have to counter fascist & Stalinist analyses with elaborations about the character of the Arab Spring uprisings. We have to focus defense campaigns against the incarceration, torture, disappearances of thousands of dissidents in all of those countries, including Syria. We have to demand the immediate, unconditional cessation of bombing in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, & Syria & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from those countries. We have to rebuild an international antiwar movement on a principled basis of opposition to militarism & support for the oppressed who rise up against dictatorship. The one thing we cannot do is be equivocal about war & revolution.
The pro-Assad antiwar movement held rallies yesterday in several US cities. They’ve been scheduled for months to protest the March 30th, 2003 occupation of Iraq & fell coincidentally on the day the US, UK, & France bombed three chemical weapons facilities in Syria. The antiwar movement is now run by sectarian pro-Assad political forces so I considered whether the focus on Iraq would make it possible to attend without also appearing to endorse Assad along with Syrian & Russian bombing in Syria. My conclusion was that they would have pro-Assad speakers & placards & after the military triumvirate bombed Syria, those speakers would take political prominence, whipped into a fury against US regime change in Syria. The problem is not their opposition to US coalition intervention but their support for Assad & for Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians.
Anti-Assad political forces are making a spectacle of themselves in trying to respond to the pro-Assad rallies by minimizing the destruction of the triumvirate bombing. The worst war mongers among them are calling the bombing insufficient & want a sustained bombing campaign of the kind Syria & Russia are carrying out, only against Assad. They don’t think Russia & Iran have a right to intervene in Syria but think the US does. This negates over 150 years of antiwar opposition to US & European colonial intervention in other countries.
It’s hard to define the politics of those who oppose Assad but consider the US Pentagon an agency amenable to social revolution in Syria. In the end, those marching for Assad & those marching against Assad all end up together in the dead-end camp of militarism. There is another option: standing opposed to all military intervention. Principled activists demand the cessation of Syrian, Russian, & US coalition bombing in Syria & the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign military forces from Syria.
Saw more than a few placards at the justice for Asifa rally calling for the death penalty for her murderers. As long as Kashmir is under Indian rule & military occupation, as long as India engages in hanging, massively disappearing, summarily executing, & torturing Kashmiri dissidents, as long as Indian troops engage in mass rape & sexual violence with no justice in sight, it seems injudicious to sanction India to take the life of anyone. They will reserve that sanction for killing Kashmiris & those from oppressed castes, not for punishing rapists & murderers.
The musician Roger Waters, who has distinguished himself by his support for Palestinians (& often by his misogyny in doing so), stopped his concert in Spain to claim the White Helmet rescue workers are a fake propaganda construct for terrorists. Apparently he finds the slanders of Assad propagandists more persuasive than several exposés of the propagandists. His commitment to Palestinians is genuine. His understanding of the Assad dictatorship stinks of libertarianism & corruption. There is no nicer way to say that. Shame on Roger Waters.
Protesters at the justice for Asifa rally yesterday in Srinagar, Kashmir:
(Photo by Basit Zargar)
A small girl at the Srinagar rally yesterday demanding justice for Asifa–holding a doll representing Asifa & all children oppressed for gender, ethnicity, religion, caste, or class & those living under occupation.
(Photo by Faisal Khan)
This man is at the rally yesterday in Srinagar demanding justice for Asifa. The doll, which others also carried, represents little Asifa & protection for all children against violence from gender, ethnic, religious, caste, & class oppression. Gender violence under the occupation of Kashmir involves harassment, assault, mass rapes where demands for justice go unheard. So the case of Asifa resonates profoundly with the struggle against occupation & the call for azadi that a new society without such violence can be built.
(Photo by Faisal Khan)
Palestinian Mohammed Matter on US, UK, & France bombing Syria:
“I feel like vomiting on the existence of all those who support the American, British and French aggression on Syria just because they hate Asad. I hate Asad and the Russians as much as you do! Maybe a bit more since I’ve experienced wars, death, siege, bombs, refuge and poverty! I also had the chance to meet Syrians & listen to their stories in Greece, Germany and Turkey. Yes, I can’t wait for the day to see Bashar Alasad gone but I will never ever support any aggression on any country especially if the aggressor is fucking Trump!”
Help us out with this, Assad propagandists: how do three overnight bombing sorties fit into US regime-change strategy?