The idea that the coronavirus crisis is exaggerated becomes outright foolish when you look just at the multi-million dollar sports & cultural events being shut down all over the world, including the Boston Marathon, Broadway shows, Disneyland, the Masters Golf Tournament. The SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas closed by the coronavirus crisis, pumped over $300 million into Austin’s economy. They anticipate $5-billion in lost box office revenues from cancelled movie showings. Parliaments are closed down, elections called off, international travel shut down. They don’t lose billions of dollars over a false alarm.

“In the wake of Covid 19 pandemic and shut schools, concerned parents across the world should consult any Kashmiri (if they are lucky enough to know one), you will get the best strategies to cope with this particular problem. Indian state has been using quarantine against us regularly sometimes lasting months because at times even a mere thought of Kashmiris assembling on the streets expressing themselves is deemed too dangerous for the health of the mythic republic of india.They think ideas of freedom, justice and self determination are viruses we carry in our minds and hence justify the lockdown. We on our part survive one lockdown after the other hoping to send back the occupiers back to where they came from and never return back.”

–Mir Laieeq

We know that the lockdown of Kashmir had a disastrous impact on medical supplies & services. So with the internet still only functioning at a snail’s pace & with the coronavirus crisis increasing, has India developed a plan to deal with the pandemic in Kashmir? Or will neglect & a genocidal ‘culling the herd’ mentality prevail?

India’s Ministry of External Affairs today ordered the immediate deportation of Wall Street Journal reporter & South Asia bureau chief Eric Bellman for ‘anti-India behaviour’. The Wall Street Journal is a bastion of capitalism whose political purpose is to inform investors about opportunities & risks. If he is reporting on the crises of Indian capitalism under Modi, that is not intended as anti-India propaganda but to provide capitalist economic & political perspectives. It isn’t Bellman’s fault that Indian capitalism has been brought to ruin. India would be better advised to look at the cost of the occupation of Kashmir & of Indian militarism in general to understand why it is headed for a reckoning with economic disaster.

In an act of supreme recklessness, the Trump regime has blocked US states from using Medicaid to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Medicaid is a federal program to address the medical needs of those with disability, the elderly, & the poor who are primarily Black, women, children, & rural. This action would also prevent states from setting up emergency clinics to quarantine & care for the homeless who are at high risk from the virus.

The woman in this photo with Trump is Seema Verma, the federal official appointed by Trump to administer Medicare & Medicaid, first by slashing services to the elderly, disabled, & poor & by reducing the number of those eligible to receive services. She is considered a sociopath perfectly suited to the job & is herself under investigation for spending $2.25 million of Health & Human Services money to hire image consultants. In her interviews with Fox News, CNN, & other media, she is evasive & dishonest but makes it entirely evident that the Trump regime has no plan to deal with hospital, clinic, equipment, & personnel shortages except to deny services to the most vulnerable.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-03-13/trump-administration-blocks-states-use-medicaid-respond-coronavirus-crisis?

This photo is Ali Mustafa, a Syrian political prisoner in Assad’s gulag now for 2,446 days. His journalist & activist son Wafa Mustafa tweeted: “While I’m trying to protect myself from COVID-19, I think of my dad & hundreds of thousands of detainees. Those have no access to a minimum level of medical care. It’s unbearable.”

Wafa’s concerns about his father’s health in detention during an international pandemic is a concern for all families whose loved ones are political prisoners, especially Syrians, Kashmiris, Palestinians, Uyghur, Afghans, Iraqis. Our political demands must be for the immediate release of all political prisoners.

(Tweeted by Wafa Mustafa @WafaMustafa9)

A California doctor gives a very charming & very witty presentation on how to protect ourselves from corona.

Meme by Indian activist Ravi Kumar