Syria

Syria: new chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta

Estimates of the dead vary from 70 to 150 after the latest and worst chemical attack on the besieged enclave of Eastern Ghouta, in the Damascus suburbs. The number is likely to rise, as rescue workers are still reporting new casualties at the town of Douma, the last in the enclave that remains in rebel hands. The apparent strike by a “barrel bomb” filled with either sarin or chlorine gas targeted a building where displaced families were sheltering from the ongoing Assad regime and Russian air-raids. The victims are overwhelmingly civilians, and many are said to be children. Trump has pledged a US military response to the attack. (Image: Syria Solidarity Campaign)

New York City

Standing for Gaza and Ghouta in Union Square

Protesters for both the besieged Gaza Strip and the besieged Syrian enclave of Ghouta gathered in New York's Union Square on Friday night. Those standing for Gaza and Ghouta should be natural allies, but there was little interaction between the two protests. And some (by no means all) among the Gaza protesters were followers of Stalinist factions that support the dictatorship of Bashar Assad—who is raining death down on Ghouta just as Israel has serially rained death down on Gaza. What will it take to provoke the conversation that needs to be had on the American left, and build the unified but multi-issue movement so desperately needed at this dangerous moment, with fascist forces on the advance worldwide? (Photo: Syria Solidarity NYC via Facebook)

South Asia

Pakistan: death penalty in slaying of Sufi singer

Pakistan's army high command approved the death penalty for 10 condemned jihadists who were convicted by a military tribunal of attacks that claimed over 60 lives—including the assassination of Amjad Sabri, one of the country's most revered singers of qawwalii, traditional Sufi devotional music. Sabri was on his way to a televised Ramadan performance in Karachi when his car was attacked by gunmen, and his many followers hailed justice in the case. But in the two years since Sabri's death, attacks on Sufis in Pakistan have continued, with suicide blasts and horrific massacres at shrines and mosques. (Photo via PTI)

Syria

Afrin and Ghouta: fearful symmetry

The imminent fall of rebel-held Ghouta to Russian-backed Assad regime forces approaches just after the fall of Kurdish-held Afrin to Turkish-backed rebel forces. As Arab and Kurd are pitted against each other, the Great Powers carve up Syria. But both sides are preparing to advance on Idlib next. Even as Trump talks of getting the US out of Syria, potential builds for a superpower confrontation.  (Photo of Aleppo ruins from UNHCR)

New York City
anti-semitism

Why do people treat the word ‘Jew’ as an insult?

From anonymous radical-right xenophobes in Britain came the call to make April 3 “Punish a Muslim Day.” Letters were sent to addresses across England, calling for violent attacks on Muslims. Police were on alert, and women who wear the hijab were advised to stay home. There were also reports that some of the letters had arrived in New York, causing the city’s Muslim community to mobilize and the NYPD to beef up security. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams joined multi-faith leaders to condemn the threats. His comments were laudable in intent, but revealing in their wording: “Our message must be just as loud. Not punish a Muslim, let’s embrace a Muslim, let’s embrace a Christian, let’s embrace a person of Jewish faith…” Why has the word “Jew” become taboo, and especially in progressive circles? (Image: frgdr.com)

North Africa

ICC takes Mali war crimes suspect into custody

The International Criminal Court announced that al-Hassan ag-Abdoul Aziz was surrendered to the court’s detention center in the Netherlands by Malian authorities. He is accused of crimes against humanity in Timbuktu  as de facto leader of the “Islamic police” force after the city was taken over by jihadists in 2012. He allegedly took part in the destruction of the mausoleums of Muslim saints. He is also accused  of participating in forced marriages involving Fulani women, which resulted in the reduction of women and girls to sexual slavery. (Photo: WikiMedia Commons)

Planet Watch

Podcast: The Abolition of (Hu)man(ity)

In Episode Six of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg reads and discusses selections from CS Lewis‘ classic work The Abolition of Man, and explores its relevance in light of the contemporary dilemmas posed by biotech and artificial intelligence. Conservative Christian moralist Lewis paradoxically developed a quasi-anarchist critique of technological society, with ideas closely mirroring those of his contemporary George Orwell—despite the fact that the two were on opposite sides of the political divide. But Lewis went beyond even Orwell’s dark vision in foreseeing an actual end to humanity itself, as it has been understood for millennia, and its replacement by a conditioned post-humanity stripped of all dignity and reason. Recent technological “advances” have made this possible more literally and completely than Lewis could have imagined. Listen on SoundCloud. (Image: Earth First! Newswire)

The Andes

Peruvian left bids farewell to Genaro Ledesma

Genaro Ledesma, a campesino leader and later congressmember who was one of the most respected figures on Peru's political left, died April 1 at the age of 86. He was first elected to Congress in 1963 while imprisoned in connection with peasant protests in his home province of Cerro de Pasco. He was again imprisoned and exiled under later military dictatorships, but returned to Peru with the restoration of democracy in 1979 to help draft the country's new constitution. Ledesma served in the Senate from 1980 to 1990, and continued to work for unity of Peru's democratic left in the polarized years of the Sendero Luminoso insurgency and Alberto Fujimori dictatorship.  (Photo via Facebook)

Palestine

Rights groups slam Israeli ‘crimes’ in Gaza

Human rights organizations have come out in full condemnation of Israel's violent response to massive unarmed civilian protests in Gaza, which left 16 Palestinians—one farmer and 15 protesters —dead along the Strip's border. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, released a statement condemning Israel's use of military snipers against the civilian protesters. "The Israeli military's use of 100 snipers against unarmed Palestinian civilian protesters in the Gaza Strip is illegal," the statement said, adding that "live gunfire on unarmed civilians constitutes a brutal violation of the international legal obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants." (Photo: Maan News Agency)