In the past, I’ve had my issues with the singer Miley Cyrus who despite considerable talent & intelligence relied too much on sexual exhibitionism for attention. But on The Voice talent show, she has shown herself to be extremely supportive of other women. She’s showing the very best of herself in encouraging & developing women singers. I’m loving that girl.

Judging by many social media posts, there are those who think it acceptable to torture ISIS prisoners of war or desecrate & dismember their corpses. That was also argued by many when Gaddafi’s corpse was publicly desecrated. This statement by Kashmiri Mir Laieeq is worth reposting again because it addresses the issue of the oppressed & human rights supporters holding themselves to a higher standard of humanity than fascists do. It’s a moving, powerful statement & the best rebuttal to those who would degrade their humanity in the name of revenge:

“indian state despite its grave, unspeakable crimes against us, has not been able to kill our humanity, it has failed to make hatred the defining virtue of our struggle, despite its beastly behaviour we have not turned into beasts, instead we have retained our dignity and ethical fabric, despite being victims of an atrocious war imposed upon us we have maintained our moral compass, the humanitarian gestures like rescuing occupying soldiers even when most of them have been acting like savages is a reflection of who we are and what we aspire to be! In all this lies the biggest defeat of this oppressive state and our greatest victory, it also gives us hope that a free kashmir will not be built upon pathological hatred of the other, but upon the ideals of human fraternity, dignity and brotherhood. Kashmir today even in one of her most painful times has a lot of lessons to offer to Indians and world at large: we are willing to sacrifice our lives to achieve freedom but we won’t lose our morality in the process, we refuse to slip into savagery and hatred despite the cruelest provocations like killing and blinding of our children. As for us, Azaadi is not a mere destination but a means towards a more humane, just and ethical society.”

This BBC video shows the staggering scale of the Rohingya flight from genocide:

https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/920645941476102144/video/1

Just so we’re clear: dancing or pissing on a war criminal’s grave is not the same as desecrating a corpse. It is refusing to be party to the eulogies. It is not our role to forgive those who have committed monstrous crimes against other human beings & it be would be a betrayal of those who have suffered to do so. Forgiveness too often masks indifference or apologetics. Justice is the demand of those who suffered & died; helping them achieve that is where we come in. Dance or piss away on Zahreddine’s grave.

Normally gruesome photos should be avoided but we need to confirm if mainstream media was correct in identifying this soldier as 56-year-old Major General Issam Zahreddine who was just blown up by a land mine in Syria & who is being grieved & heralded by Assadists & other fascists as a hero for gallantry on the battlefield? Is this the guy Syrian revolutionists call the “Druze beast”?

Does that gallantry include beating arrested protesters in the 2011 popular revolution against Assad’s dictatorship? Does it include blowing up US journalist Marie Colvin & French photographer Remi Ochlik in 2012? Does it include threatening Syrian refugees if they tried to return home? Does it include war crimes like those here where he engaged in torture of war prisoners & the desecration & dismemberment of their corpses? Can they explain why Zahreddine is gloating over the bodies of half-naked ISIS fighters in Deir ez-Zor? Did they come to battle with their pants pulled down or were their bodies desecrated?

Assadists & other fascists are brushing off his war crimes because they were committed in the interests of national sovereignty. The question is: national sovereignty for who? The Assad dictatorship or the Syrian revolution against him? The answer is: the torture of prisoners & the desecration of corpses are war crimes condemned not just by international law but by every standard of human civilization.

Good riddance to the general. May he rot in hell.

(Photo from General Zahreddine’s Facebook wall, May 16, 2016)

Jonathan Cook has amended, rather than retracted, his deplorable article to say he expected to be accused of mansplaining. Being a sophist along with being completely ignorant about but still opposed to feminism, he prefers we call it “richsplaining” so we don’t take offense when he suggests snidely that we don’t owe solidarity to rich & famous women who have been assaulted & raped.

Not content to leave bad enough alone, he goes on to say identity politics are “used like a bludgeon” that “just reinforces a tribal politics that neoliberalism can richly exploit as the modern equivalent of divide & rule.” So you see how it works in his disordered mind? When the oppressed organize to stop the assaults on their human & democratic rights, they are bludgeoning & acting tribal. How about we make an accusation of our own? When Cook demeans women who stand up against sexual assault, he is engaging in misogyny & he’s not the first to do so. Turkeys like him are a dime a dozen.

If identity politics are irrelevant & play into the hands of capitalist exploiters, can Cook explain the Rohingya genocide to us? Can he explain the countless attacks, persecutions, genocides against Muslims? The hundreds of thousands of Black & Latino kids in US prisons for smoking a joint? The extremes of violence & persecution against Dalits & other oppressed castes in India? The genocide against the Mayan people, involving mass rape of women & children? Can he explain a damn thing going on in this world where the identity of victims in war, occupation, & genocide are not relevant?
He needs to stop amending & defending his piece of rubbish article & get off his high horse. He would be better at writing “Memoirs of a Misogynist Know-Nothing”

My old neighbors/friends gave me a birthday party where I met an elderly friend of the family who has long suffered from sciatica. When I was laid off my factory job, I studied shiatsu (Japanese form of acupressure) intending to use it to pay my way through Chinese medical school. After 9/11 hit it was very difficult to make a living doing that so I was forced to withdraw from school. But I still practiced shiatsu on family & on the side with something of a speciality in sciatica. So I offered to give the woman a shiatsu–which I haven’t done for several years now.

I could not believe that I forgot some of the energetic meridians which I thought were etched on my brain–though I remembered those involved in sciatica. Shiatsu has been a life-saver in my life in recovering from the trauma of sexual harassment in the workplace & the death of my brother but I forgot how powerful it is. Even though my touch was rusty & my meridians somewhat off course, I could tell she felt overwhelmed by the experience. Mostly it’s the therapeutic aspect & science of acupressure but also it’s being touched in a non-sexual but comforting way. Touch itself is healing. For anyone suffering emotional trauma, it is near-miraculous. As it is for sciatica & other ailments.

Remember not that long ago when so many of us said we loved, not just liked, but loved “Legally Blonde” with Reese Witherspoon? Probably because the movie was so affirmative about women, working class & middle class, Black & white. There wasn’t a single woman character portrayed in a mean or hostile way. That’s the Reese we respect & stand with in her charges against the movie industry for sexual assault on her as a teenage actress. Though to be honest, we would stand with these women even if we deplored the roles they played or the politics they hold. We don’t have to agree with anything about them except that no one has the right to sexually harass, assault, or rape them. Period. On that issue we do not budge an inch. We don’t make apologies for standing with rich & famous women against assault. We would be shamed if we did not–& we will look to them as allies in building a movement addressing sexual crimes against women in war, occupation, & genocide.

The journalist Jonathan Cook is exasperated–‘truly’ exasperated, as he explains in his blog entry “Harvey Weinstein & the politics of Hollywood.” Cook was a respected analyst of Palestinian & Israeli politics until he came out as an Assad supporter promoting the anti-Semitic scenario, shared by fascists, of a “Greater Israel” plan to Balkanize the Middle East. Once you cross into political territory staked out by fascists & anti-Semites, you are compromised & useless. Cook concedes the Assad regime is a dictatorship but to justify his support despite the gulag, torture, forcible disappearances, bombing of civilians, he points out that Syria has social security & high literacy levels. Well, if there is anything that justifies bombing civilians it is certainly the ability to read. Cook considers himself a civilized man but thinks human rights are way overrated. He said it’s “tempting” to use human rights in Syria as the measure of which side to support but the conflict isn’t about human rights. It’s about Balkanization by Israel & to defeat that plan gulags & bombing civilians are a regrettable necessity.

Our man’s disdain for human rights explains his exasperation today. What’s frying his ass about the assault & rape charges against Weinstein is not that so many women sustained violence but that the “story perfectly illustrates how politically disempowering identity politics can be.” Human rights don’t concern Cook but identity politics do. Forget that it’s a non sequitur to transition from charges of sexual assault to identity politics but Cook has an axe to grind because he disdains the struggle for human rights, especially by the oppressed like women, Blacks, Latinos, LGBT. The more Cook talks, the more he shovels horse manure against the tide in a masterpiece of mansplaining. How have generations of feminists across this globe survived without this upper class twit telling us where we’ve gone wrong. He doesn’t appear to have ten minutes of political organizing in his resume but thinks women (not feminists, since he doesn’t believe in identity politics) should form trade unions. A guy who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow about political organizing could be forgiven for confusions about social movements but it would be enough if he just kept his mouth shut about things beyond his comprehension.

If there’s one thing feminism has excoriated brilliantly & without mercy, it is the divide & conquer tactic that tries to keep women pitted against each other, seeing each other as competitors. Feminism works tirelessly to break that crap down. Most of us have had it up to our eyeballs. So when Cook brings up Reese Witherspoon, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lawrence & Gwyneth Paltrow, we understand we’re supposed to cop an attitude toward them because they’re rich, famous, & don’t move in our social circles. To us, brother Cook, they are sisters & nothing you blither against identity politics means we will waver in our support for them against sexual assault & rape. What we will do is take their testimony & move forward to organizing a movement–of identity politics, no less–to expose & end sexual crimes against women in the workplace, in war & occupation zones, in genocide. If you don’t like it, brother Cook, you can stuff it in the same place you stuff your anti-Semitism & Islamophobia.

(Photo is Cook who supports dictatorship because human rights are overrated)

It’s one thing for Abhijan Choudhury to pose this troubling contradiction because it raises the issue of racism & its nexus with violence against women: “Can’t help but wonder, why did it take a bunch of famous millionaire women from Hollywood, with every possible comfort & luxury in the world that life can offer, access to lawyers & money & evident social support, to spark the ‘me too’ movement?

“Not a girl gang raped in Delhi, or a Dalit girl raped by an upper caste man in a remote village in India, or some other woman raped by a religious leader, or an ISIS sex slave raped spanning months, if not years, or a woman raped by UN peacekeepers in an African war zone, or the Iraqi men & women sexually humiliated & raped by US soldiers, or not even a Rohingya woman raped by Myanmar army soldiers, since that is currently in the news, not even the women Trump assaulted. Were all these other women not famous or rich enough?”

It’s an entirely misogynist & contemptible thing to refer to the women victims of Weinstein as “whiny little girls prostituting themselves to live in luxury.” They are white & Black actresses, not prostitutes, who were victims of sexual harassment, assault, & rape. Coming forward with deeply painful & courageous testimony is not ‘whining’ but a political protest. Feminism at its best & most uncompromising has a broad, inclusive vision which demeans no women because of gender, ethnicity, or class.

The testimony of privileged women exposing the scope of sexual crimes among the elite can be used to highlight the monstrous sexual crimes against unprivileged, mostly black & brown women & children including women of the oppressed castes in India & elsewhere; women under military occupation or in war zones as in Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq, the Congo, Somalia, Syria, & elsewhere; women subjected to genocide as the Rohingya & Mayan women; women subjected to forced sterilization all over the world.