Not just a handshake but a betrayal of the struggle against colonialism: an obituary for Martin McGuinness whose life mocked the Republican anthemic, “Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”

Martin McGuinness died today at the age of 66. He was the IRA leader of armed struggle who brokered the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) in 1998 with then British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The GFA is credited with ending the “troubles” in Northern Ireland, in ending the armed conflict between the guerrilla branch of the IRA & the British occupying army.

It is one thing to repudiate armed struggle as a bankrupt political strategy to win independence from a colonial power, as a method futile & fatal in advancing reunification between the Irish Republic & the six colonial counties of Northern Ireland. It’s entirely another matter to accept British colonialism in Ireland as a fait accompli, become its representative, & denounce Irish Republicans as “traitors to Ireland” for not giving allegiance to British colonial power & for continuing the struggle for freedom not through guerrilla activity but by organizing a social movement.

The Good Friday Agreement is the Irish rendition of the Oslo Accords for Palestinians: the terms of surrender to colonialism & the abandonment of the anti-colonial struggle. Armed struggle is a dead-end, dead-wrong strategy, often borne from desperation, but it is not an abandonment of freedom principles like the GFA.

Gerry Adams & Martin McGuinness, both former armed struggle leaders, betrayed the Republican struggle against colonialism & went on to make jackasses of themselves by scraping & bowing to Betty Windsor like she was their queen, proceeding from simple-minded groveling to crawling on their bellies like a reptile.

The abandonment of armed struggle was essential to advance reunification but the conditions of colonialism for Catholics in Northern Ireland remain unchanged. As Pádraig Henry Pearse, a Republican activist who led the 1916 Easter Rising, said: “Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”

These are former posts about McGuinness:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3829986641245&set=a.3437789876571.300336.1625229061&type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3912649267759&set=a.3437789876571.300336.1625229061&type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10202878449915349&set=a.3437789876571.300336.1625229061&type=3&theater

Photo is McGuinness meeting with Betty Windsor in 2012, trying to make groveling look dignified. In November 2016, as then Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, McGuinness went on to writing a fawning letter to Trump, reminding him of his Irish ancestry & inviting him for a state visit to the colony.

(Photo by by Paul Faith/Getty Images)

Everything that used to be prefixed neo is now prefixed alt without adding clarity to a damn thing. Is that one of those “nuance” things?

Why insult some schnook with nuance when you can just tell them to stuff it?

This article commemorating the 6th anniversary of the Syrian revolution against dictatorship & gulag is at once a powerful tribute & a condemnation by Usman A Khan Tahir:

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/03/20/syria-the-ultimate-mirror/

Another valuable article on Syria:

http://www.tmimag.com/articles/al-waers-final-stand/

Enough with the fake news crap! You have to be a halfwit to fear reading mainstream media lest you be deceived or catch diphtheria. Learn to study for heaven’s sakes. That’s what learning to read is all about. If the ABCs are beyond you, stick to finger-painting & leave politics to grown ups.

What’s more important is recognizing what Henry Lowi calls “the fake antiwar activists, the fake socialists, & the fake Palestine solidarity activists” who support Assad, Putin, & Trump.

It’s been two years this month since the Saudi coalition of five monarchies & two military dictatorships began bombing democracy into Yemen, where in 2011 one of the most powerful Arab uprisings brought dictatorship to its knees–at least for a period.

It was a hopeful period for humanity, with uprisings as intransigent in Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, reverberations in Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, & elsewhere. The setback of the Arab Spring by the most repressive military forces & think tanks aligned against them has brought the cynics, but mostly the Muslim-haters, out of the woodwork to sneer that Arabs would be capable of democracy, especially in those countries where women wear the veil. Yemen & Bahrain were led by fully-veiled women standing against tear gas & tanks & they played a central role in Egypt. But smart-asses whose most courageous acts are cursing at authorities under their breath dare to disdain them?

The tragedy of the Arab Spring is the epic failure of international solidarity–& now the alignment of erstwhile progressives with Assad’s dictatorship & Russian bombing of civilians in Syria. It is not Arab activists who do not understand the character of democracy. It is mostly western progressives moving to the right led by Assad propagandists, retired CIA & FBI agents, & former US military officers who do not agree with uprisings against dictatorship or international solidarity–so profound is their hatred of Muslims & Jews.

The Arab uprisings have not said their struggles are over nor conceded defeat. This is not the time for triumphal or smug obituaries. Until then, we stand with them & look to them as leaders & teachers in the struggle of humanity for a world suitable for human beings to live & love in–a place to come of age & grow to old age in peace.

This women in Sana’a, Yemen is outside her tent shelter at a camp for those made homeless by Saudi-led, US & UK backed bombing.
US out of Yemen.

(Photo by Yahya Arhab/EPA)

Liberation US-style: these kids lining up in the rain at a refugee camp were forced to flee the fighting in Mosul between ISIS fighters, Iraqi ground forces & US bombers. The bottom photo of a rocket shot off by Iraqi forces is what they were fleeing from.

The ISIS fighters are urban guerrillas living amidst hundreds of thousands of civilians, including children, elderly, infirm, disabled, pregnant women. Doesn’t matter how damn high-tech those bombers are, in such a situation it is civilians who will bear the brunt of the suffering & deaths. Unless of course that is precisely the intent of bombing the entire city & only ostensibly to get at less than 5,000 ISIS fighters hiding behind civilians.

Bombing civilians is not the way to end the tyranny of ISIS.
US our of Iraq & Syria.

(Photo of children by Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images; photo of Iraqi rocket in Mosul by Felipe Dana/AP)

Libertarian left’s antiwar position: no US intervention in Syria.

Their political rationale: I am not an Assadist but I believe in national sovereignty. So Russian & Syrian bombers, Irani, Hezbollah, sectarian mercenaries are freedom fighters against “head-chopping jihadists” trying to take down Assad.

Their mantra: there was no Syrian revolution against Assad. The Syrian people love him & his wife because they’re so pretty, western, & haute couture.

We should take a moment to honor Abdullah al-Sarhan, the head of Daraa, Syria’s White Helmets, who was killed when Assad bombers targeted the civil defense vehicle he was in with a thermal rocket.

May he Rest In Peace.

(Photo is al-Sarhan)

There is something so disturbing about this video of Indian occupying soldiers taunting a small Kashmiri boy. The little guy is lucky they didn’t shoot or beat him. But he’s not more than 6 or 7 years old & clearly feels the weight & anger of humiliation & repression without fully grasping its danger to him.

Kids this age should be playing ball with each other, not locked indoors so they won’t get hit with pellet guns or tear gas. They should be socialized to solidarity & community, not to fighting for their very existence.

Ending the occupation is a children’s welfare issue.

https://kashmirpulse.com/videos/fun-entertainment/watch-melee-kid-security-forces-kicking/19974.html

Fortify Rights, a human rights group, is calling for an international inquiry into Myanmar army “atrocities with impunity” against Rohingya Muslims which have not ceased since October 2016.

Aung San Suu Kyi, as State Counsellor, publicly ridicules accusations of sexual violence by the military as “fake rape.” A member of parliament in Arakan state publicly stated that no soldier would rape Rohingya women because they are “too dirty.”

The UN & human rights groups claim they cannot indict Suu Kyi & the Myanmar military for crimes against humanity because they are denied entrance to Arakan state to investigate. They weren’t allowed to tour the gulags of the USSR either but that didn’t stop them from condemnations because there was substantial testimony about monstrous crimes committed by the Soviet regimes. Do the testimony of over 70,000 refugees (just in the past 5 or 6 months) not count for documentation?

This is the brief video Fortify Rights are putting out as part of their call.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ursjg1oy67k&feature=youtu.be