“Aren’t enough humans already dying with this pandemic, hunger, homelessness? Why is there an urge for more? Why don’t the countries on the two sides of this ominous LOC between India and Pakistan shut their businesses now? Why is Kashmir not left alone for Gods sake. Enough is enough. Let the innocents live and let us breathe in free air. I am sure scientists must be working day and night to find a remedy for Covid 19 but is anybody at least trying to find a solution for this conflict which has consumed four generations till date. If people here are tested for depression along with corona testing, majority will test positive. People are sinking with the very thought of being under siege most of the time and this present lock down is rubbing salt on the wounded hearts.
I appeal to the global community , PLEASE HELP TO END THE WAR IN KASHMIR.”

–Kashmiri Shajarat U Durr

Please read & share this post demanding the immediate release of Kashmiri political prisoners whose lives are imperiled by squalid conditions, poor nutrition, high stress, & lack of medical care in a time of pandemic.

https://www.standwithkashmir.org/release-kashmiri-prisoners?

Coronavirus & the forgotten war in Yemen: a killing field.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/coronavirus-yemen-faces-aid-cuts-pandemic-spreading?

Rollie Mukherjee’s tribute to B.R. Ambedkar, the great Indian jurist, economist, politician, & social reformer born April 14, 1891 as the 14th child in a Dalit family. His work continues to inspire the struggle against caste oppression.

Do not invite me to like pages that allow David Icke stuff on their walls, including his ramblings on coronavirus. I like to keep several times more than six degrees of separation from the hatred of Jews, Islamophobia, paranoia, political insanity. Assad propagandists Eva Bartlett & Vanessa Beeley are both adherents & Eva a former employee of Icke so if that is your schtick, please friend them & share your derangement with them. That way all the crazy people are gathered in one place & they don’t confuse me for a friend.

If adherents of fascism, Assadism, David Icke, & now the reactions to the coronavirus show us anything, it is the alarming rates of obscurantism & nihilism in our societies. In place of rigorous study or any study at all, too many substitute conspiracy thinking rooted in paranoia & white supremacy. A skin care consultant from Massachusetts named Kayla Gabriel came out of nowhere to get 21,000 likes & 57,000 shares talking about ‘a fucking virus that is not a pandemic by any means’. She wants us to challenge authority by coming out of our homes without masks & gloves & just go about our daily business. Being of skeptical mind myself, I like to vet everything. But the evidence from medical & science authorities is so overwhelming that only a fool would challenge it. Being skeptical is necessary but it is not the same thing as being paranoid.

Do 57,000 people really believe world capitalism would put the entire system into a tailspin just to manufacture a pandemic? To what purpose? Just to get us off the streets for several months? To accelerate repression, occupation, genocide when they were doing well enough without a pandemic & without harm to capitalism? Since we are electrical beings, is it possible that 5G masts facilitate the spread of coronavirus? Who knows? It’s a reasonable conjecture based on the integration of living species with a depleted over-electrified environment. Those are political questions as well as epidemiological ones. But only a fool would take just this time to challenge the hegemony of medicine & science in how to respond to the pandemic. Fools like Trump & Kayla Gabriel’s followers who march in recklessly where the wise fear to tread.

Stay safe. Stay in the damn house.

“People must maintain distance
Streets must adopt silence

Was it any different?
Weren’t
the streets
always silent
And
People indifferent

Towards a people
As they continue to perish
One man
Two children
A teenager

On some days
in the city
Sometimes
at the
line of no control”

–Kashmiri Farah Bashir

“The people of Pakistan are millions times better than these fallacious Kashmiris who advocate and defend atrocities committed on Kashmiris by army. I challenge show me one Pakistani who ever surrendered in Kashmir. Nowadays handicapped intellectuals are accusing Pakistanis for our miseries in their commentaries and analyzing the war they never fought. Anyone who supports India and their mechanism is worst than a Pharaoh. Because Pharaoh didn’t torture Jewish women using tactics as Indian army did in Kashmir.

When these vultures find chance, they please tyrants and masters in Delhi. They come on social media and talk about humanity and responsibilities. They are artists, given scripts. We are all saddened at this cross border shelling. We lost many lives including kids. Kashmiri vultures have opportunity to put blame on Pakistan. Let me teach you something. Under which international law can Army use artillery on villages instead of fields? Why didn’t army evacuate civilians? They used Kashmiris as shields. It is not new to them. We have witnessed this in the past.

We have more than 15,000 youths buried near border forests, killed in fake encounters under cross border infiltration propaganda. It is a genocide. Let them allow human rights organisation, Amnesty International. I assure you all such mudslinging people are war criminals .

How many were killed in custody? how many were tortured to death? How many were force disappeared? How many brides were raped, how many towns were burnt into ashes?

By Allah!! These opportunists are slur on their existence and a huge liability to Kashmir.”

–Kashmiri Aahil Asif

-a poem (my mode of resistance)

my mode of resistance is silence.
silence, silence and silence.
far i know silence lies
on the opposite lane of
revolutions.
so , in all probability,
my mode of resistance is to count.
count, count and count.
far i know count will
include
dead and
martyred children of
revolutions.
so, in all probability,
my mode of resistance is to escape.
escape, escape and escape.
to high mountains and deep valleys.
for i know high mountains and
deep valleys are
all occupied by the tyrants.
So, in all probability,
my mode of resistance is to pray.
pray, pray and pray.
for I know
God will never help,
God helps those
who help themselves.
so, in all probability,
my mode of resistance is to write.
write, write and write.
for I know
they will never understand
my poetry.
So, in all probability,
my mode of resistance is to educate.
educate, educate and educate
for I know
my tyrant is snared
in the sewer of baser minds.
Evil lunatic is its king.
hate and killing is the objective
so, in all probability,
my mode of resistance is to educate
educate, educate and educate.

–Kashmiri poet Zafar Iqbal