Do you think if there was a famine in France or California as severe as the one in South Sudan (where they’re eating leaves), that people would be left to starve?

Shouldn’t the US & Israel feel some responsibility for those starving since they are involved in engineering the disastrous secession from Sudan?

Each thought I express, I’m paid.
Each word I write, I’m paid.
For every slogan I raise, I’m paid.
For every rock I hurl, I’m paid.

For that gun I snatched, I was paid.
For that bullet piercing my chest, I was paid.
My presence in funerals was paid.
My visit to families of Martyr’s was paid.

When you entered my valley, you were paid.
For each day you spend here, you are paid.
For harrasment, torture, arson, murder, you are paid.
Even for saying, I’m paid, you are paid.

If my each act of resistance is paid,
Your every act of aggression is paid.

The difference:
You are paid with money and promotion,
I’m paid by hope of ending your occupation.

–Nasir Patigaru

India Today did what they call a sting operation in Kashmir where they claim to have uncovered a criminal syndicate of “insidious villains” from Pakistan or possibly Kashmiri independence leader Syed Ali Geelani who are organizing & paying Kashmiri youth a stipend to charge Indian occupying forces with stones & molotov cocktails.

At first the report seemed to be Indian TV’s version of Saturday Night Live but it’s just too stupid for even lowbrow satire. Maybe a reporter from India Today did talk to four guys in Kashmir but they should chalk it up to being played & not make asses of their reporters by airing it as serious news. Either that or it’s the same trough that Assadist propagandists draw from.

According to one of the Kashmiri guys who played the reporters, they each get paid “Rs 5,000-Rs 7,000 (£80 / USD$100) a month & clothes. Sometimes shoes as well.” So for the price of a one-bedroom apartment in the outskirts of town, this criminal syndicate has found thousands of people to brave tear gas attacks, risk being blinded & permanently disabled with pellet guns, shot & killed with live ammunition, arrested, tortured, disappeared? It’s a good thing they throw in clothes & a pair of shoes.

India Today even made “Down With Stone Pelters” their banner on FB & Twitter today. What kind of crap is this that passes for political news & not just in Indian nationalist media? This obvious propaganda & foolishness was picked up by MSN & the Daily Mail. The problem in Kashmir is not stone-pelters. It is the presence of 700,000 occupying troops engaged in the most monstrous crimes against unarmed civilians. The purpose of this Down With Stone Pelters campaign is to justify even greater violence against Kashmiri Intifada under the guise of fighting mercenary terrorists.

Long live Kashmiri Intifada. End the occupation. Self-determination for Kashmir.

For two days I’ve been chasing down a skeletal baby Chihuahua with an injured eye who wanders the area. He’s led me down allies, through backyards, & always left me in the dust.

Yesterday, two police cars lit up like Christmas trees stopped me because they got reports about my suspicious behavior. When I told them I was tracking an abandoned dog & they saw the nine mutts in my car, they sent me on my way. I’ll remember the car full of Chihuahuas trick if I ever take up a life of crime.

I take my dogs with me since they’re used to hunting with me for Sophie the Houdini Schnauzer. I couldn’t catch the little guy again today so I let Annie & Juan go after him since they’ve both helped me rope in errant dogs previously. They cornered him & exchanged sniffs till I could wrap him up. This herding thing from two Chihuahua mutts is a marvel to behold.

Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh: 18-year-old Noor Kayes with her 26-day-old daughter. Noor fled with her parents from Poachong village in Myanmar two months ago after her husband was killed by the military.

If the UN Human Rights Council is prevented from entering Arakan state, Myanmar by the military & Suu Kyi regime to investigate charges of human rights crimes, the monitors can begin with Noor & the other 75,000 refugees in Bangladesh. They are free to speak whereas those remaining in Arakan would be terrified of retributions by the military when the UN monitors leave.

This stunning photo is from this wonderful album of Rohingya mothers with their newborn babies in a Bangladesh refugee camp:

https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/young-rohingya-mothers-flee-persecution

Kashmir: no need to wonder where the kids get it. The mothers of revolutionary insubordination.

(Twitter from Voice of Kashmir)

Israeli occupying forces arresting a Palestinian boy no older than 11 or 12. For what? Throwing rocks at soldiers armed to the teeth with riot gear & armored vehicles? For defending their homes against demolition, their olive trees from being uprooted, their lands from being confiscated by freeloaders from other countries to build settlements?

Build & honor the cultural & economic boycott of Israel (BDS). Buy nothing with barcode beginning 729 & check every label on foods, clothes, shoes, cosmetics, you name it.

Rania Khalek, Abby Martin, & Mnar Muhawesh (from the discredited Mint Press), who are all apologists for the Assad regime, have been invited to speak next month at Oregon State University on Palestine, Syria, & Yemen. The student group hosting the event claims they are receiving requests to disinvite Khalek & Muhawesh.

Martin is no slouch either when it comes to support for Assad’s dictatorship so the group has probably been asked to disinvite all three. But then Assad supporters couldn’t post sensational headlines like this; “Oregon State student group stands up for Arab journalists amidst calls to disinvite them from event.”

Neither Khalek nor Muhawesh are Arab journalists any more than I am an Irish or German journalist just because my ancestors came from those countries. Both were raised & educated in this country & are American up to their hairy eyeballs. All three women are being challenged by those who do not want Palestinian solidarity tainted by anti-Muslim hatred, support for counter-revolution in Syria, & support for Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians.

Since both Khalek & Muhawesh’s schtick is playing the victim of an orchestrated smear campaign, it might be politically wiser not to object to their speaking but to have a picket line outside the event with flyers explaining the issues at dispute. Since the student group which invited them said it wants dialogue over differences, it might also be wise to organize an intervention that is not disruptive in any way but vigorously interrogates their Assadist apologia in the discussion period. Both of them are intellectually shallow & ignorant & can be exposed as propagandists with a respectful but informed interrogation.

So glad these retired FBI & CIA agents & military officials leading the US antiwar movement & Hands Off Syria Coalition have become such ardent civil libertarians, banging on about the new McCarthyism. Maybe they’ll come clean now about what they did before their miraculous transubstantiation.

Never was there such a clamor for national sovereignty from both the libertarian left & the right. Suu Kyi & the generals rail about it to prevent any investigation into crimes against the Rohingya; Assad & his coterie of apologists consider it the coup de grace for their defense of counter-revolution; Modi wields it to justify 700,000 soldiers occupying & brutalizing Kashmir; anti-immigration & anti-refugee nationalists & supremacists tout it as the be-all & end-all for keeping Europe & America white (no one claimed you had to be smart to be racist).

Now some libertarian left guy says “National sovereignty is an undervalued asset in today’s world, especially in the international media, where the views of Washington & its allies largely prevail.” If they could get over their hang-up about reading mainstream media they would know about Suu Kyi, Modi, Assad, & the other nationalist idiots & even learn about the Trump wall on the southern US border. Isn’t that all about national sovereignty?

The problem with national sovereignty is that it only goes one way. It is no part of international considerations when it comes to wars. Who gets to define it? In Syria, does national sovereignty adhere to Assad’s dictatorship & the counter-revolution or to the popular revolution of millions against Assad?

Sweatshop economics, which is the neoliberal way of doing business, cannot exist by respecting national sovereignty. So if they can move money around, invest in mining, agribusiness, plunder all over the globe, why can’t those who are dispossessed have unfettered access to go where they can earn a living & make a better life?

National sovereignty is swell. Human rights trump all.