Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the race, in effect making Biden the candidate for the Democratic Party. That sucking sound you hear is the stampede of socialists lining up behind Biden or Howie Hawkins as the lesser evil guy. Sanders did not, as the NY Times reports, move the Democratic Party to the left any more than legions of socialists have after decades of being embedded in the party. Like in the past, the party moved the credulous left to the right & only succeeded in playing them just as it used Sanders to do in the 2016 election. In comparison to Clinton, Biden, & Trump, Sanders looks like a champion of the oppressed. But that only reflects the impoverished political & theoretical vision of the left, not the realities of Sanders. When a man says he is “100% pro-Israel” but supports Palestinians, you ought to be able to smell a scam. There are no electoral saviors from the wreckage of the barbaric phase of capitalism except our own actions on behalf of the oppressed.
Daily Archives: April 14, 2020
Islamophobia has made the coronavirus epidemic in India many times worse.
Nobody mocks Arnab Goswami better than Mir Suhail Qadiri.
Picture of Dinosaur in India real or not?
#arnabgoswami #fakemedia
UPDATE: the Jerusalem Post which published this report mistranslated the press release in Hebrew. It was not the US Defense Department but the Israeli ministry of Defense mission in the US which purchased the masks from China & shipped them to Israel.
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Even though face masks are not available in large sections of the US, the Defense Department allocated one-million masks procured from China to be sent immediately to the Israeli army. That’s not a bad thing since masks provide some measure of protection to Palestinians surrounded in their daily lives by Israeli soldiers as well as to Israelis who come in contact with soldiers. But if the US can get masks for the Israeli army, why can’t it get them for the millions of Americans who are unable to find them for sale anywhere?
“A brigadier says, The boys of Kashmir
break so quickly, we make their bodies sing
on the rack, till no song is left to sing.”
–Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali (1949-2001)
There needs to be more serious reporting about & more clamorous protest against the Bangladeshi government snapping the internet in Rohingya refugee camps. There are roughly one-million refugees in cramped quarters without adequate sanitation or clean water. Social distancing isn’t possible so they must be able to access information on the internet about how to prevent or manage any outbreak of coronavirus. Instead, the Sheikh Hasina government has shut them off the internet & does not allow educational programs about the virus unless her government manages them. Rohingya lives are imperiled by such actions & one must wonder if this is a deliberate strategy to ‘cull the herd’ of refugees since sending them back to the killing fields of Burma or to that uninhabitable island seem to be off the table.
The coronavirus crisis doesn’t seem to have slowed down Indian troops in Kashmir. There are reports of them vandalizing & torching family homes, engaging in hunt to kill operations, killing young militants. The question is raised: has the Indian Army tested any of the one-million soldiers deployed in Kashmir for the virus? Or will India play chicken with soldier’s lives as they’ve taught those soldiers to do with Kashmiri lives?
This article from Time from September 2018 is a quite good piece about the affects of pellet munitions on unarmed protesters. We cannot cease from campaigning against their use in Kashmir.
Twitter often highlights the polemical sarcasm of Kashmiris when they respond to Indian nationalists. A retired Indian Army major (@majorgauravarya) tweeted: “When someone speaks about the “Kashmir Issue” in today’s times, it seems he is talking about the dinosaurs 🦕.There is no Kashmir issue, except in the minds of a few Kashmiri politicians and in the cocaine fueled ramblings of a neighbouring country’s PM.” A Kashmiri activist (@MehJohar) responded: “Lets address the dinosaur in the room: A Nation of Billion is petrified of Kashmiris with access to 4G internet lest they use free speech. A Nation Of Billion has stationed one armed person for 8-10 Kashmiris. Nation of Billion has arbitrarily arrested thousands of Kashmiris.”
“India has finally outshined all other countries in stupidity by defeating respiratory disease by lighting fire crackers!”
–Zafar Iqbal