Eight White Helmet rescue workers were killed in Syria last week, buried in rubble like those they attempt to save. Four more were killed this week when their ambulance was hit by an airstrike.

We should take a moment to honor them for putting the lives of others above their own. Our condolences to their families & friends.
May they Rest In Peace.

(Photo is blown up ambulance that killed four, including three medical workers.)

Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, Tim Anderson, & all of Russian state media have been harping on the White Helmets since their formal organization three years ago, since they were trained in methods of rescue, elementary medical care, setting up field hospitals.

According to Assad’s stable of propagandists, the White Helmets are the master orchestrators of chaos & conflict in Syria, even resorting to killing children to make snuff movies, faking sarin gas attacks & blaming it on Assad, stealing baby corpses from morgues, & luring children with crackers in the suicide bomb attack on buses of civilians that Assad was forcibly relocating without protection.

But if the real problem in Syria, to their minds, is US regime change operations, why do they spend absolutely no time elaborating on how the US is operating to bring down Assad? Except for vague assertions about US-backed “jihadi head-choppers”? How did rescue workers pulling people out of cement rubble become much more treacherous in Assadist polemics than US bombers & special forces?

There’s a demented, obscurantist quality to Assadist propaganda, not unlike the Nazis against Jews, Roma, socialists, the disabled. That should be a red alert to critical minds but it appears to be the attraction. Does an understanding of this phenomenon lie in willful ignorance, the appeal of demon politics, or the mass psychology of fascism?

Eva Bartlett & Vanessa Beeley are embedded with the Syrian army again & report that everything mainstream media tells us about Syria is lies. They’re the only ones we can believe since they get it straight from Assad. He pays good money for their persuasive powers over the true believers who consider Global Research. Mint Press, & RT as the gospel truth. What about that doesn’t reek cult?

Hurts my feelings when you call me a monster for being a socialist–especially when there are so many different kinds. Some are monsters. Like the ones all gaga for Stalin & Assad. Some really want to make the world a better place.

We’re probably not meant to be friends if you think I’m a monster or if you can’t tell a monster from an honest activist. Feel free to say goodbye.

Forgive me for reposting this tribute to Phil Windsor but Maggie Gordon who shares my antipathies for feudalism shared it first:
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One simply cannot let the day pass without acknowledging the 93rd birthday of Phil Mountbatten, Betty Windsor’s consort whom she affectionately calls her “anus horribilis.” Our man actually has several last names in German & Greek because no one was willing to claim this unfortunate child even as a newborn–though it doesn’t really matter which name you call him since they all go back to the same set of trolls in the Black Forest. European moochocracy is an incestuous thing which has not belied the warnings of science in any way.

Phil is remarkable in that he’s been able to make it through over nine decades without accomplishing a damn thing. There are garden slugs who exhibit more initiative. They say he speaks a few languages but Betty & her privy council prefer he stick close to English where his guttural obscenities can be mistaken for a phlegm condition.

He does have a military record during WWII but it’s best not to ask much about it. In handling the searchlights & stoking the boilers on a battleship, he nearly brought down the combined allied navy. He’s in the annals of naval history–& not in a good way.

After he married Betty, who was smitten with his venality at a young age, the privy council tried him out on diplomatic duty, traveling to all the former colonies (now called the Commonwealth). After he was deported several times in chains for unseemly comments & conduct the privy council decided it best to keep him under close supervision in Buckingham Palace & just keep stuffing his face with whiskey.

Betty has remained steadfast in her affections for Phil despite his chronic flatulence problem & this is not at all touching but deeply regrettable. They have spawned four children together, one more corrupt than the next & with that streak of venality Phil is so renowned for.

These gunners from one of Betty’s elite artillery troops fire a 41-gun salute in Hyde Park, London to mark Phil’s birthday. Think of the artillery discharge as symbolic–& please don’t embarrass yourself by asking, “symbolic of what”?

(Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

A monstrous crime was committed against members of the indigenous Gamela tribe in Maranhao state, Brazil last Sunday evening. Most media reports blandly describe the incident as a land dispute between Brazilian farmers & Gamela Indians. The misrepresentation is so appalling & so dishonest as to approach criminal.

The so-called farmers got themselves boozed up & formed a vigilante squad to attack unarmed Gamela Indians with rifles & machetes. Thirteen Gamela were injured & hospitalized; some were shot, some had their hands, arms, legs dismembered with machetes. This was a massacre, not a two-bit altercation.

According to several eyewitnesses, Brazilian law enforcement stood by & made no attempt to intervene. That’s because Maranhao state in northern Brazil is a frontline of neoliberal scorched earth economic policies. It has an entire agribusiness complex of ethanol & biofuel plantations, deforestation & saw mills, open pit mining, thermo power stations. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of land have been expropriated from indigenous tribes forcing them to move to urban slums or live in tiny enclaves.

According to the Brazilian bishops’ Pastoral Land Commission, there are currently 360 areas of conflict in Maranhao state between the expropriators & Indian tribes. In 2016 alone, the commission reported 196 incidents of violence against Indians; 13 people were killed & 72 others were threatened with death.

The issue at dispute is the refusal of the Brazilian government to demarcate Indian territorial lands against neoliberal encroachment. This was as acute a dispute under the Dilma Rousseff regime as it is under the Michel Temer regime. Last week, over 2,000 members of Indian tribes gathered in Brasilia, as they have several times before, to demand the government act on demarcation & stop the confrontations with agribusiness & logging companies.

To coincide with that national protest, Gamela Indians, including women & children, decided to stage an occupation on lands stolen from them. They protested for several hours but sensing danger left in the early evening. On their way off the ranch they were met by the drunken, heavily armed goon squad & attacked. Those so-called farmers were more likely plantation supervisors & security guards.

The Reuters caption to this photo read: “Preta (L) & Gabao from Brazil’s indigenous Gamela tribe react after members of their tribe were injured in a dispute over land in northern Brazil, in Viana, Maranhao state, Brazil.” How contemptibly indifferent can you get to unarmed people being attacked & dismembered by machetes!?

Our fullest solidarity with the Gamela tribe who are on the frontline against scorched earth devastation in Brazil like millions of indigenous people on every continent.

(Photo by Lunae Parracho/Reuters)

More Kashmiri taunting of the occupying army:

“Protection against Indian Army in Kashmir” from Zaheed Ra Human.

The weeping & gnashing of grief was heard all over the monarchist wing of social media at news that Phil Windsor had croaked at the age of 95. When Buckingham minions announced he is still alive & farting up the palace, monarchists went from grieving back to vapid groveling without missing a beat.

It will be so hard on them when the news breaks that Phil actually died many years ago & his persona maintained only due to developments in the art of taxidermy. Courtiers, who for obvious reasons cannot speak publicly, verified his death at least 40 years ago. But if Betty was to maintain feudalism without a guillotine in the future for the whole rotten lot of them, she had to lay to rest her beloved “anus horribilis” lest his irrepressible racism single-handedly bring the moochocracy down. It was either quietly sending him to the netherworld or putting a muzzle on him in public & the latter would have been so plebeian & unseemly.

No slouch when it comes to groveling over moochocracy, US media reports he is still alive & will be retiring from official duties. Can they offer any proof of his existence? Or of any official duties where he will be missed? They find his racist insults endearing & refer to them as politically incorrect gaffes & faux pas. Betty thought them endearing also until they threatened to destroy the British Commonwealth–which would not have been a regrettable outcome from the point of view of its subjects.

This is a photo of taxidermal Phil who is now stored in a broom closet but gets rolled out for ceremonial occasions.

Carol Sughrue–who many know as a champion of Palestinians, Rohingya, Kashmiris, the Syrian revolution & all freedom struggles & who we love as a deeply kind & generous woman–has been in hospital for kidney surgery.

She’s quite ill but hasn’t lost her wonderful smart-mouth in describing the dipshit man in the next room with the three word vocabulary: fuck, shit, bitch; or in describing the imperious surgeon who thought it was good enough he did incisions & didn’t think he should be asked what the hell he took out or left in.

My nurse friends will be heartened to hear her appraisal that “nurses are really wonderful human beings.”

She expects to heal & needs time away from politics to do that. We send her all our love & miss the hell out of her.

We’re still waiting word from Rollie Mukherjee. If her account is threatened with deletion, we will start a petition to Facebook as we have successfully done for others.

(Picture is of course Rollie’s art about Kashmiri occupation &