For the past week, I defied the lockdown orders &, girded with plastic gloves, took my dogs to the dog park. Now I’m second-guessing the wisdom of that & for two days kept them at home where they have a small yard to run in. But they love the car trip where most of them pile in my lap, the whole group thing of jumping in & out of the car barking in chorus, the bullying & challenging of other dogs in the park & they have been absolutely bereft. I have to find a strategy to get them through this, possibly going into the yard with them & playing games since I can’t go anywhere else. The dog park is their big outing of the day & though their sacrifice is by no means the worst of the epidemic, it does show how animals are also affected.

#SocialDistancing #Kashmir
#COVID19

By Mir Suhail Qadiri, of course.

Those of us in the triage demographics of the coronavirus are gratified to see Palestinian doctors celebrating the birthday of an elderly woman in quarantine. If the grim reaper comes calling for us to give up our lives to save capitalism, we’re moving to live in Palestine where they know the value of human life.

(Photo tweeted by @Ameera_Ahmed00)

This is how Ahmed Bin Qasim described his mother’s incarceration as a Kashmiri political prisoner in an Indian jail:

“Two of our three female political prisoners are 50+ & suffering from co-morbidities that have worsened over time in prison due to lack of proper medications. This puts them in a high-risk group & makes them more vulnerable to this deadly virus as proven by fatalities around the world. The prison condition is most unfavorable & does not follow any WHO basic guidelines. The prison is crammed full & disease-ridden. No proper sanitization & hygiene are available. Prisoners are served meager food in polythene bags.”

This screenshot of a tweet is how Omar Abdullah described his detainment in a luxury guest house in Kashmir: a debate over staying in pjs or putting on sweatpants; home made meals with coffee & tea time; regular exercise, including outdoors; workout apps so he’d remain trim & fit in detainment. Not exactly a gulag nor a place with torturers & executioners on staff.

In Abdullah’s description of his time under detainment, it is cringe-worthy how tone deaf he is, how insular to the conditions of hundreds of young boys, men & women held in barbarous conditions, like Ahmed’s mother & father. There is no comparison possible between his experience & that of Kashmiri political prisoners. He was on a retreat, albeit a forced one. They remain in a gulag.

(Image is screen shot from Omar Abdullah on Twitter)

Since 2011, France has banned Muslim women from wearing the veil in public because it hides their faces. Legions of Islamophobes & other halfwits intoned agreement saying they want to see a woman’s face when they speak to them. As if women were on earth to do their bidding! So during this coronavirus epidemic will French medical personnel now be hunted down & prosecuted for hiding their faces? Or does the contradiction make the French legal system look like a covenant of jackasses?

So the question is, ‘Is this photo from Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, or northeast Delhi’?

Heidi Levine, an American photojournalist who became a settler to Israel in 1983, was just given an award by the International Women’s Media Foundation for her work in Gaza during Israel’s Operation Ethnic Cleansing last summer. She has been a combat photographer for a long time in both the West Bank & Israel & has also worked on assignments in Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Kosovo, & Afghanistan. This photo from Gaza City shows she was often in the midst of Israeli bombing. These men with the white flag are in the Shejaia residential neighborhood which Israeli bombing reduced to mountains of cement rubble & made thousands homeless.

This photo needs to be submitted to the UN as documentation of several Israeli war crimes in Gaza because under umpteen international laws “The right of belligerents is not unlimited.” Some of the most obvious violations seen here include attacking those who are unarmed or who have surrendered; bombing “to cause superfluous injury”; bombing towns, residences, or buildings which are not militarily defended; & bombing without warning authorities. Otherwise, it looks very much like genocide.

The UN of course won’t do squat with the evidence since they collude with Israel but that’s no reason not to “hold their feet to the fire.” Since the UN can’t be relied on for justice, there’s only one recourse & that is to build the economic & cultural boycott of Israel.

(Photo by Heidi Levine/SIPA/Rex)

Despite his loss of the nomination, it ain’t all over but the crying for the Sanders campaign. This is the time to prove to his constituents & the nation that his electoral rhetoric wasn’t just hot air but reflected real commitments on his part to working people, including Palestinians. Me thinks that ain’t his schtick.

There is some dispute about the origins of this photo: whether it’s from an Iraqi prison or Assad’s gulag. Could be either. Could also be human rights activists jailed in the Philippines for opposing the vigilante war against the urban poor, or Kashmiris in Indian jails, Palestinians in Israeli jails, Uyghur in Chinese jails, Rohingya in Burmese jails. Wherever & whenever it is from, this is the condition sustained by thousands of political prisoners as the world enters an uncontrolled epidemic. Several days ago, Assad declared an amnesty for prisoners but it isn’t certain at this point that it includes political prisoners, the tens of thousands, including women & children, who dared stand against a police state.

Our demand, even from quarantine, must be the immediate release of all political prisoners as well as demands for comprehensive healthcare programs for those who remain detained for crimes like murder or rape.

(Photo on several sites, often misidentified)

Message from Kashmiri doctor Mohsin Bin Mushtaq after eight diagnosed cases of coronavirus in Kashmir:

(Tweeted by @zikrejaana)