It’s one thing for a Black person to refer to Obama as a “house Negro,” though there are preferable metaphors not rooted in slavery. But it is completely unacceptable for a white person to use such a term. It moves beyond disrespect to racism.

This is from when the orange man was preparing himself to be king of the world, long before anyone in their right mind would consider him for president of the US.

Assad & Putin supporters are among the most ardent Trump supporters because hating on Hillary is the breadth of their political vision but not the depth of their confusions & in some cases their malignancies.

They like him because of his grandstanding, fatuous denunciations of fake news & mainstream media. They like him best because they think Pepe Escobar speaks in the oracular voice when he says the US Pentagon is transitioning from the war on terror to a new cold war. They believe Trump poses a threat to the “neoliberal & neoconservative interventionist foreign policy establishment.” Whatever the hell that is.

This surreal break with reality can be explained by what they all cite as their top news sources: RT, Global Research, Counterpunch, Sputnik news.

Outgoing CIA director John Brennan has cautioned Trump about his intemperate, reckless accusations including against the CIA. If he won’t be controlled, Trump will be silenced. One way or another.

Britain’s Stop the War coalition has become politically unhinged; one could even say politically bankrupt. It just issued a statement condemning NATO military exercises in Poland which they claim reflect US aggressive & expansionist policies toward Russia.

Last October, Russian bombers had been engaged in carpet bombing Syria for over a year. A fleet of Russian warships were headed to the Mediterranean to launch air strikes from an aircraft carrier. Stop the War coalition issued statements opposing protests against Russian bombing because “We do not want to contribute to the jingoism & hysteria that is being whipped up against Russia.”

There’s only one explanation for refusing to oppose Russian military intervention in Syria: Stop the War coalition supports Assad’s dictatorship & Russian bombing on Assad’s behalf.

When an antiwar coalition gets so politically lost that it abandons basic principles, it is so far beyond post-truth truthiness that it can take its place in that overfilled landfill called the dust bin of history.

Go ahead. Liberate her from her hijab. She’ll kick your ass.

The Minneapolis school district must have made the kids remove the video of a Muslim girl whaling on a kid who tugged on her hijab. The Minneapolis paper reported that after the video went viral on social media school officials contacted the families of the kids involved & learned it was a fake fight.

The paper asked if the kids faced discipline & the district spokesperson refused to say. Discipline for playing a prank on social media?

Now this would be an example of overkill in the interests of fighting fake news. Since when did a damn good high school prank become the subject of such moral outrage from a school board? Do kids now have to issue prank warnings or get clearance from the principal every time they post something on social media? Call it Bill of Rights purism if you like, but if Assadists can post their rubbish so should high school students be allowed to post their pranks.

Fake fight or not, that young girl was an inspiration to us all.

Turns out you can’t directly contact Aung San Suu Kyi at her presidential offices to lodge protests. You need Myanmar postal identification. She’s no longer on Twitter so I leave my protests on her FB wall. Until she shuts that down.

They might be able to nail Trump for high treason tweeting even before he takes office.

And no, Russian hacking did not throw the election. Like it or not, Clinton won but the oligarchs stole the election from her.

Syria is complicated. That’s why you need to read Syrians who were part of the 2011 revolution & witnessed & participated in the course of events. Why the hell would you read only propagandists for the regime who came from nowhere & believe reptilian Jewish bankers & jihadists are the problem in the world? You need to have your head examined if that’s how you function politically.

This is an article by Loubna Mrie, a Syrian revolutionist now in exile in the US, which addresses the very important issue of violent armed extremists in Syria–minus the Muslim-hating rubbish that dominates Assadist propaganda.

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/how-did-the-syrian-uprising-become-dominated-by-jihadists#page1

You can read it along with this analysis by Yassin Al Haj Saleh, a Syrian revolutionist now in exile in Turkey, on the origins & development of ISIS:

http://www.yassinhs.com/2016/11/18/the-genealogy-of-isis/

Last October 21st, government forces arrested 29-year-old Tanveer Ahmad War in Baramulla district, about 34 miles (54 km) from Srinagar after an FIR had been filed against him with the police.

An FIR is a criminal complaint lodged by a victim or material witness to a crime. The police can only register the FIR, arrest & initiate criminal proceedings against the accused for a “cognizable offense” like rape, murder, theft, kidnapping, or assault. He was granted bail by the court on that charge but not released because another FIR had been filed against him. On December 8th, the court ordered him released on bail on the second charge & again he was not released.

In an illegal move similar to what they pulled on Khurram Parvez, police moved him to a jail in Kupwara district, about 22 miles (36 km) from Baramulla, & detained him under the Public Safety Act (PSA). PSA is an outrageous legal maneuver to legitimize repression & occupation. It is used by Israel against Palestinians, including children, & was used in apartheid South Africa. It allows the government to indefinitely detain activists on vague charges like endangering the security of the state or public disorder. In the case of Tanveer Ahmad War, it allows the courts to dodge criminal allegations which are almost certainly fabricated. You wouldn’t hold a man on an unspecified charge of public disorder if you could nail him for rape, murder, or another serious felony.

Tanveer’s wife & family are aggressively hounding authorities to get him released because it’s a travesty of justice & as an amputee with multiple ailments, his health is jeopardized by incarceration. According to documents his family obtained from the court in Baramulla, he is accused of “vitiating the peaceful atmosphere & creating unrest that will ultimately lead to increasing violence” & for “carrying out antisocial activities.”

What happened to the felony charges? Well the Baramulla magistrate claimed Tanveer used his motorized tricycle provided by the government as an assault weapon to ‘advocate secessionist ideology & actively disturb the public order.’ When the magistrate completes his court tenure he should consider a second career in stand-up comedy or writing propaganda for Assad.

It isn’t shocking that a disabled activist would be arrested & detained since disability rights activists have defied marginalization & played prominent roles in the Arab Spring, in anti-austerity protests across Europe, & in the Occupy movement. They’re in the thick of things. The concern of his wife & family is the illegality of his detention & that he receive proper medical attention in prison.

According to Human Rights Watch, authorities in Kashmir detained over 400 activists, including children, between July 9th & October 6th of 2016.

End the occupation. End the PSA. Self-determination for Kashmir.

(Story & photo from Kashmir Reader)

There was a TV show about the extraordinary case of Edward Lee Elmore, a 23-year-old man arrested in 1982 in Greenwood, South Carolina for the rape & murder of a wealthy 75-year-old woman. Elmore was Black, a high-school dropout, had a learning disability, & was one of 11 kids from a poor family.

Elmore’s only connection to her was that he’d washed windows for her a couple weeks before the murder. He was fingered to the police by the most likely perpetrator, a neighbor romantically involved with the victim, the first person on the scene of the crime, & as a white city councilman a person with high social standing relative to Elmore.

Framed up with planted evidence, Elmore was given court-appointed lawyers, & sustained massive prosecutorial misconduct. He was given the death sentence & spent 30 years in prison, 29 of them on death row. In 2010 he was taken off death row when his legal team successfully argued he was not eligible for execution as a person with learning disabilities (what the court calls “mental retardation,” a term rejected as derogatory by those with disability) in accordance with a US Supreme Court decision.

The only reason Elmore’s case became prominent & that he was eventually released is because in 1993 a law school student named Diana Holt reviewed his case & became convinced he was innocent. She had herself spent time in jail for armed robbery & became a jail house lawyer. When she got out she went to law school after encouragement by a prosecutor who admired her work.

Holt was dogged & committed to the Elmore case & described the misogynist bullying the prosecution subjected her to, especially over her own criminal past as a 17-year-old runaway. She’s tough. She stood up to it. Over the next several years she got the Cornell Death Penalty Project involved in Elmore’s defense & together they litigated despite several legal setbacks until Elmore was released in 2012. He was 53 years-old.

To show the scope of prosecutorial malice, even after years of legal procedures showing Elmore could not have committed the crime, the state of South Carolina refused to exonerate him & he was released on an Alford Plea where the state claims there is evidence against him but they are unable to prove his guilt.

Raymond Bonner, the NY Times reporter covering the case, wrote
“Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong” about the case.

Photo is Edward Lee Elmore with Diana Holt next to him at his release.

(Photo from AP)

There’s so much propaganda stuff on social media about Syria that’s deranged & politically banal. So here’s a chance to read a Syrian revolutionist, someone who spent 16 years in Assad’s gulag, someone who was part of the 2011 revolution against Assad, & whose beloved wife & brother were forcibly disappeared three years ago.

It’s an excellent interview. A necessary one. An informed voice.

http://aljumhuriya.net/en/syrian-refugees/interview-with-yassin-al-haj-saleh