The Palestine Information Center reports that in 2017, fourteen Palestinian children were shot dead by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank, Gaza, & East Jerusalem. There have been of course no fatalities among Israeli children at the hands of Palestinians. Talk to us again about the intransigence of Palestinians in resisting more phony-assed peace talks.

Burmese dissident Maung Zarni told CNN News that forcible repatriation of Rohingya refugees to the killing fields of Burma is like sending Auschwitz survivors back to the gas chambers.

#NoForcibleRepatriationOfRohingyaRefugees

One more essential thing about the #MeToo movement now under a barrage of misogynist attacks in media: sexual assault happens to millions of children & teens, both boys & girls, & including within their families. Where’s the due process for them? Or were they also confused between seduction & assault?

#BackOffMeToo

In an interview, Obama, playing the elder statesman, rued that so many of us get our news from social media & said it’s like ‘living in a bubble.’ Actually, many of us understand a lot of things a lot better from direct contact with each other rather than having news ‘translated’ & censored for us by vested interests. What would we know so well & so profoundly without Palestinians, Kashmiris, Rohingya, Syrians, Afghans, & others talking to us directly about what’s really going on? Fake news is not what concerns the status quo but the exposure of arrant media bias, especially on war, occupation, genocide. If that weren’t true, so many governments would not be trying so hard to censor activists & shut them out of social media.

On behalf of Irish-German Americans, I declare the Rhineland the homeland of my people since our ancestors left there over 3,000 years ago. Move over Germany, here we come with a pottery shard from your town with the words to “Danny Boy” written all over it. We’re coming home whether you like it or not.

Usually I’m reluctant to post videos because I suspect few actually watch them. But this is a quite useful video done by Syrians opposed to the Assad dictatorship which takes on the little cabal of corrupt US activists who visited Assad, partially at his expense & under his control, & came back a Greek chorus for his regime. They all claim that the handful of people they spoke to in Damascus are ardent supporters of Assad. With infantile credulity like that, who would trust their political judgement on anything?

When they returned, they spoke at a Syrian government forum at the UN to give the cachet of UN authority. Eva Bartlett, Assad’s own Ann Coulter, is featured here & her professional propaganda deconstructed quite capably. What kind of politics is it that consider a handful of westerners the authorities on Syria & drums out Syrian voices of citizen journalists reporting from bombing zones?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=21&v=KfY1Ga4oHUc

These injuries are the result of “non-lethal” pellet guns used against unarmed Kashmiri protesters. These are human rights crimes.

Stand with Kashmiris in demanding India end the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

Just so we understand the scale of US lies & cynicism about Palestinians refusing to participate in a peace process with Israel:

In the summer of 2014, in its seven-week carpet bombing offensive over Gaza, Israel (bankrolled & backed by the US) dropped the equivalent of six nuclear bombs on the enclave of 360 square km/139 square miles. Bomb & explosive experts say Israel used Drones, Apaches, & several other kinds of warplanes to carry out 8,000 air strikes (Israel admitted to 5,226) dropping flechette shells (illegal anti-personnel weapons), fuel-air bombs (which explode twice, including after impact), DIME shells (which produce shrapnel), & flechette shells saturated with uranium. They also used tanks & troops. More than 60,000 artillery shells of different sizes were fired at Gaza.

In August 2017, the UNRWA reported that 29 tonnes (64,960 pounds) of explosive materials have been removed from Gaza since 2014, including 149 unexploded aerial bombs. Israel continues to fly bombing sorties over Gaza. That’s called occupation & ethnic cleansing.

The last so-called peace process brokered by the US led to the Oslo Accords which surrendered Palestinian self-determination to Israel. Excluding the corrupt Mahmoud Abbas & the compromised Palestinian Authority leadership, Palestinians are not foolish enough to trust a US-brokered peace process to bring them anything but dispossession & apartheid.

Support Palestinians by checking every label to make sure its country of origin is not Israel & by demanding the end of all US & foreign aid of any kind to Israel.

(Photo is explosives littering Gaza from 2014 offensive.)

There’s a guy named Rick Heizman who portrays himself as an expert on Burma & has made it his mission to discredit Burmese dissident Maung Zarni & deny the Rohingya genocide. Heizman is a guitar teacher married to a Burmese woman. They live in San Francisco & occasionally travel in Burma. I’m no stickler for academic credentials to render authority but this guy has nothing to show any expertise except a head stuffed full of hate & lies about the Rohingya people. I had an unpleasant visceral reaction when I first came across his videos several years ago while studying the persecution of the Rohingya people. Heizman is to the fascist Burmese junta what Vanessa Beeley & Eva Bartlett are to the Assad dictatorship: groveling, sniveling propagandists & haters of Muslims. He’s all over the place now trying to defend the Rohingya genocide. Don’t just give him the bum’s rush if you encounter his filth; kick his stupid ass.