Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Asra Nomani are testifying right now to a Senate Committee on Homeland Security hearing on “Ideology & Terror: Understanding the Tools, Tactics, & Techniques of Violent Extremism.” Hirsi calls Islam a “destructive, nihilistic cult of death” & her ranting goes downhill from there. Nomani is a detestable groveler & honoraria hound who campaigns against the veil & supports the Muslim ban.

Just wondering why the committee didn’t invite Rania Khalek, Max Blumenthal, & Ben Norton so they get some insights into Wahhabism. The roster of haters would have been complete.

The erstwhile socialists who defend Russian bombing of civilians in Syria by rooting through quotes from Lenin like he wrote scripture are advised to leave aside what they don’t understand & ask “what would Jesus do?” or “what would the prophet say?”

Somewhere along the way they took a wrong turn & began to identify socialism with realpolitik, sniffing contemptuously at principled antiwar activists as moralists in order to justify Russia & Syria carpet bombing civilians. Maybe if they go back to their catechisms they will learn that the basic rules of morality like “thou shalt not kill” are an advance in human civilization, not a bourgeois construct applicable only to fools.

Maybe one of the savants in the Hands Off Syria crowd or one of the libertarian think tanks could explain to us why Syria & Russia bombing civilians in Aleppo, Daraa, Idlib, Damascus is liberation but US-European bombing in Mosul & Raqqa are imperialist aggression?

Because from where sanity reigns it all looks like barbarism. It all looks like apocalypse & a living hell. And it should all be opposed without a single compromise to militarism, to the demented notion that bombers & special forces are agencies of liberation.

A child caught in the Mosul Apocalypse where the US is “liberating” with white phosphorous.

In reporting about the US use of white phosphorous in Raqqa, Syria, the NY Times suggested the accusations came from ISIS in at attempt to discredit “its enemies.” In fact, the accusations of white phosphorous use in Mosul came from Human Rights Watch & Amnesty International as well as ISIS, & in Raqqa from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights & the citizen-journalist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently which provided video documentation.

Human Rights Watch is still investigating what the distinctive signs of white phosphorous over Raqqa are–although, according to the NY Times, the US military acknowledges it is using white phosphorous “in accordance with the law of armed conflict.” The NY Times, scratching its ass in perplexity, said it’s not been determined whether the white phosphorous shells are landing in “populated areas.” Could they tell us what part of a metropolitan area with 340,000 civilians is not populated?

As for ISIS making such accusations to discredit “its enemies”, we’d like to ask why ISIS would bite the hand that feeds it? Why would ISIS be so ungrateful to the US when, according to a US Department of Defense report, the US has let over $1 billion of military equipment–mortars, assault rifles, humvees & armored vehicles–slip through its fingers to ISIS fighters?

The only principled demand is the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US & foreign militaries from Iraq & Syria. The US has no business being there. There is no such thing as “US interests” in the region; only the interests of Syrian & Iraqi working people matter where peace & justice are concerned.

Out now. No War. No Islamophobia.

(Photographer not identified; from Gazeta Monitor via Haseeb Rahman)

Raqqa Apocalypse, Emancipation US-style:

Scene from the US-led coalition “liberation” of Raqqa, Syria (160 km / 99 miles east of Aleppo).
The US is bombing with white phosphorous & has ground troops deployed to take out ISIS fighters estimated between 1,000 & 4,000 in a civilian population of 340,000.

Any questions about that deranged proposal for a US-imposed No Fly Zone? Defeating ISIS means cutting the weapons supply lines. But how can the US fight ISIS when according to the US Department of Defense it has supplied over $1 billion of weapons to ISIS fighters?

US & all foreign military forces out of Syria. End the bombing. End the war.

(Photo from Hkam Zahab)

UPDATE: Haseeb Rahman has shown a media report that this photo is from the Mosul Apocalypse where the US is also using white phosphorous on a civilian population of tens of thousands.

Jeff Sessions looks like a troll. We can forgive him for that, even accept him as a human species with full democratic rights, but when he opens his mouth he still talks like the fool that once said “I thought the KKK was OK until I learned that they smoked pot” & claims his anti-immigration views are “the Biblical ones.”

He belongs in Trump’s coterie but not in political office. Bounce him now.

Hopefully, the US bombing of Raqqa & its use of white phosphorous will put a decisive end to the call for a No Fly Zone in Syria & any notion that the US will or can play a humanitarian role in Syria.

Sooner or later, proponents of a NFZ have to recognize the counter-revolutionary role of the US in Syria & wherever else it deploys troops & bombers. Not to do so & to continue the folly of promoting US bombers & special forces as freedom fighters makes them part of the counter-revolution.

No to US & all foreign military intervention in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia.

‘The US must stop bombing Raqqa under the guise that it is targeting ISIS (daesh). The reality is that it is massacring civilians.’

–Carol Sughrue

So sorry I’m posting so much but there are a lot of things going on in the world that need reporting. A lot of the bad news involves war or violence against Muslims. Non-Muslims have to make our voices loud & clear about that.

“Zionist government blocked all entrances to prevent Palestinians from going to Alaqsa mosque!
People climbed the wall ♥”

–Mohammed Matter