Since the main organizers of the anti-AIPAC rally in DC last weekend are ardent Assadists & members of the hate-mongering Hands Off Syria Coalition, it was a given that some of the participants would carry Syrian flags in support of Assad & Russian intervention in Syria. It was a given that this would cause conflict with Palestinian supporters who oppose Assad’s dictatorship, oppose Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians, & understand that the fate of Palestinian self-determination is directly tied to the fate of the Syrian revolution.

Those who don’t understand the destructive, divisive character of Assadist influence & support for counter-revolution in Syria among Palestinian solidarity activists just want a harmonious, united movement back so they dummy up & refuse to inform themselves of the issues at stake. The life & death issues for Syrians, Palestinians, Iraqis who are all being bombed to smithereens.

Assadism is a poison to Palestinian solidarity & has brought the antiwar movement to a dead-end. The fracturing of these movements is a wrenching process to go through but it is a necessary one to throw off those whose activism is based on a profound phobia & hatred of Muslims, i.e., those whose politics have the depth & malignancy of US Pentagon war propaganda, & those whose solidarity with Palestinians is based more on a hatred for Jews than respect for Palestinian justice.

No one has to like this situation but the days of dummying up, hoping the conflict will just go away, are over. We need to inform ourselves about the Syrian revolution & either stand with it or against it. There is no neutral way. Not if you give a damn about justice, including for Palestinians.

Those oppressed for their identity don’t truck well with the rubbish demeaning our struggles against racism, casteism, misogyny as politically inferior. If a demographics were done of the people who hold “identity politics” in contempt, privilege would be written all over it. As long as we are oppressed for our identify, we will fight for our dignity as part of every struggle we are involved in–because our identity is always an issue.

As Khalid Anis Ansari so succinctly & cogently states it:

“there is no politics without an identity. we only embrace those that work for us and reject those that don’t. left, feminist, hindutva, muslim, pasmanda, dalit, bahujan, moolniwasi, lgbti, islamist, marathi, ecofeminist, adivasi. its a long menu card. make a pick and fight your battle….cut this crap that your politics is beyond identity.”

Western media reports that ISIS in Mosul is using civilians as human shields. Maybe. Probably. They’re at least as psycho as US special forces. But then you stop bombing where you think ISIS is holed up behind civilians. Then you stop carpet bombing residential areas. You cut off their arms supply route. You hunt down the countries supplying them arms & put a halt to that. Or is that getting too close to home?

What the US coalition & Iraqi forces are doing in Mosul is the same scale of barbarism & criminality as Syrian, Russian, & Iranian forces in Aleppo.

Massive bombing of residential areas, entire families buried in rubble & terrifying reports of children shouting from beneath the rubble for someone to help them. Tens of thousands dodging crossfire & rockets in flight for their lives; Iraqi special forces making door to door home invasions searching for ISIS snipers; Iraqi forces detaining fleeing men & boys as potential ISIS fighters trying to escape. This is the character of liberation US-style.

If we learn nothing else from this method of fighting ISIS, it is that bombing cities with millions of people to take out a few thousand urban guerrilla fighters is not only a monstrous strategy but it is a completely dishonest one. The intention both in Aleppo & every other Syrian city being bombed & in Mosul in Iraq is to bring the civilian population to its knees in subordination.

There is no more tragic nor epic failure than the complete lack of an international antiwar response to defend the Syrian revolution & the Iraqi people from US occupation. It is the epic mission of our generation to forge a new antiwar movement, uncompromised by association with Assadism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism & committed to the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all foreign troops & military operations in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen.

These are photos of civilians fleeing Mosul on March 4th as bombers turn the city into mountains of rubble.

US out of Iraq & Syria now!

(Photos by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

Some US senator too old to be so stupid said Trump is on a learning curve & may turn out to be a valuable president. Define valuable. Define learning curve & how in Trump’s case it’s distinguished from derangement. We dare you.

These are the poetry, musical, & other presentations at the “In Lak’ech. I am you” celebration of solidarity last Saturday in McAllen, Texas which I participated in. Not all of the performances are recorded here.

One of my petty antipathies in life is speakers who are ill-prepared, which I am in this presentation on solidarity. But let it be a lesson to myself & others to always think out & organize comments in advance.

Thank you to Monica Ramirez, artist, writer, organizer, for coordinating this wonderful event & to the musicians & poets, including Priscilla Celina Suarez, the Poet Laureate of McAllen.
Like most political events here, it was bilingual Spanish & English, as is the area on the US border with Mexico.

https://www.facebook.com/theartofmonicaramirez?pnref=story

I have a friend whose mission in life is to rescue cats. She’s a retired teacher who subs in order to pay for feeding feral cats, catching them to get spayed, getting them medical care, & then releasing them if they are free spirits. She has about 35 living with her & has organized her life to rescue them.

She’s not a crank or oddball but a deeply compassionate woman who feels for the feline.

One of her rescues was attacked by a pit bull & she took it for surgery. When she brought it home, he must have been disoriented or felt he was dying because he went off & she’s unable in two days of searching to find him.

I’m off to help her search the neighborhoods again & would like to ask friends to keep her & the little cat in your blessings to return him safely. Rescue is filled with grief for her, including having several poisoned. A feral cat doesn’t seem like much to fret over in a world filled with sorrow, but there are always more than enough blessings to go around. They’re really for my friend.

The UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution to send a team to Arakan state in Myanmar to investigate charges that the Burmese military are engaged in killing, raping, torturing, & torching the homes of Rohingya Muslims on a mass scale.

A spokesperson for Aung San Suu Kyi said the regime “cannot accept” that resolution. The Kofi Annan commission which turned in its whitewash findings last week recommended that the Suu Kyi regime allow human rights monitors & journalists unfettered access to Arakan state. Suu Kyi’s office issued a statement of concurrence with the Annan report, relieved that he provided cover for the genocide she was orchestrating.

That concurrence means it won’t be so easy for her to refuse entry to the UN Human Rights Council investigative body. But of course, she will come up with some justification for doing just that.

There are 75,000 Rohingya who fled Arakan state since the onslaught began last October 9th. That’s a lot of witness testimony the UN body can get without ever setting foot in Arakan. But they should continue to pressure Suu Kyi who has now completely lost her hallowed status as a champion of human rights & is now recognized as a two-bit political hustler for the military junta which really rules the country.

Media should stop referring to the genocidal onslaught against Rohingya which began last October as a “counterinsurgency operation,” which suggests Rohingya militias had culpability for the genocide when there’s no evidence for that but only Islamophobic accusations.

(Photo of Arakan state from Reuters)

This video was created by Kashmiri students last December in solidarity with the Syrian revolution during the fall of Aleppo to Assadist & Russian forces. It was a somber & wrenching event to witness because of the political divisions & deceits which rendered international solidarity impotent against such barbarism.

The destruction of Mosul by US coalition & Iraqi forces parallels the horrors of that period in Aleppo so am reposting with the belief that the international antiwar movement will be rebuilt if we commit ourselves to that purpose. Human solidarity is the heart of antiwar activism & the iron law of social transformation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSe5Wr9JH9I

Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis marched in Sanaa yesterday to protest & commemorate two full years of the Saudi-led carpet bombing campaign.

Casualty figures are now reported at over 10,000 but given the international monitoring systems in place for civilian deaths, that estimate is mostly a shot in the dark. Since civilian areas, including schools, hospitals, residences, mosques are being directly targeted, the actual number of deaths is probably considerably higher.
There are 40,000 who have been reported injured–some of course with incapacitating, permanent disabilities. Over 3 million have been displaced & made homeless & the country is sustaining widespread famine.

Like the US occupation of Afghanistan in 2011, the reasons for the bombing campaign shift & morph until now it is reported to be about the Houthis & the guy who’s president. In fact, it is about the complete destruction of the spirit of the revolution which began just over 6 years ago & was one of the most remarkable uprisings the world has seen in decades.

Judging from this protest yesterday, two years of bombing has not daunted the spirit of resistance, so profound is the hatred for tyranny & the desire for freedom.

Our deepest respect & fullest solidarity with the Yemeni revolution.

(Photo by Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)