After traveling from Europe through Lebanon across the Syrian border to Aleppo in defiance of coronavirus protocols & whilst peddling mountains of conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, Assad propagandist Eva Bartlett is holed up in Damascus sucking down Vitamin C supplements just in case. Don’t you just love a propagandist who is skeptical about their own lies!?

Don’t make us a fool !!

#Kashmir #2010

By Mir Suhail Qadiri

To the question, ‘how does war intersect with the coronavirus?’, the answer is ‘massively’. First, by creating millions of refugees who are denied asylum & are forced to live years in squalid, overcrowded conditions without healthcare or proper nutrition. Secondly, because bombing ambulances, hospitals, clinics, & medical personnel has become a primary military strategy even though it violates several international laws.

The Yemen Data Project reports that the Saudi-led coalition supported by the US, UK, & France has bombed 83 hospitals & clinics in Yemen & killed hundreds of medical personnel over the past five years. Syria & Russia target hospitals & hidden clinics in Syria using coordinates provided by the UN. Medical staff gave the coordinates to the UN precisely to prevent air strikes on healthcare facilities. Physicians for Human Rights is an organization which monitors attacks on medical facilities & workers in Syria & documented the collapse of Syria’s healthcare system. They documented at least 583 Syrian & Russian bomb attacks on medical facilities between 2011 & October 2019 where nearly 1,000 medical workers were killed. Under a 2012 counterterrorism law, the Assad regime criminalized any kind of medical care to its enemies, including just disinfecting the wound of an injured fighter. A special court has prosecuted tens of thousands, including medical personnel. As the films “The Cave” & “For Sama” document, thousands of medical workers have been forced into exile lest they be arrested, tortured, or disappeared in Assad’s gulag.

The US routinely bombed ambulances & hospitals in Iraq & continues to do so in Afghanistan. The result was the complete meltdown of Iraq’s healthcare infrastructure & the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis. Israel targeted ambulances & medical facilities in its 2014 seven-week bombing siege of Gaza, also after the UN provided coordinates & whilst Zionists claimed Palestinians used their children as human shields. Images from the morgues & hospitals during that siege haunt to this day.

If war has demolished the medical infrastructures & killed, jailed, or forced the exile of medical personnel, it is impossible that those countries could respond effectively to the coronavirus epidemic. It is also likely that occupying armies will be infected with the virus in an unfortunate case of ‘chickens coming home to roost’. In the case of Iranian militias in Syria, it is more likely they will bring the virus.

(Photo is women health care workers in Idlib, Syria protesting in September 2018 to demand hospitals be protected from bombing)

“I wonder if Omar Abdullah will demand scrapping of Public Safety Act now or not? I remember in 2013, he said “there was no need to revoke”.”

–Tweeted by Fahad Shah @pzfahad on former chief minister Omar Abdullah who was detained under the Public Safety Act

Life in Kashmir under occupation.

(Images via Khawer Shakeel)

The Shadow

Remember those who was #killed and #jailed in 2010 #umarabdullah is not a saint.

By Mir Suhail Qadiri

After they kill off all the grandmas, refugees, political prisoners, homeless, occupied peoples, who’s next? Those with disability? Women who wear the veil despite laws making it illegal? Those who are undocumented & living in concentration camps? Where does this triage stuff end if we allow governments to decide who of us is expendable & who not?

After his release, Omar Abdullah tweeted: “On a lighter note if anyone wants tips on surviving quarantine or a lock down I have months of experience at my disposal, perhaps a blog is in order.”

Niya Shahdad (@niyashahdad) responded: “Your tenure as CM has already left thousands of detained Kashmiri men, many of them only students/teenagers in summer of 2010, with much experience at their disposal.”

Only a jackass collaborator would see the experience of political prisoners & the lockdown of 8-million Kashmiris as amusing in any way.

Standing with Palestinians fighting the occupation of Palestine & the blockade of Gaza is central to the fight against coronavirus since Israel will use the epidemic to advance genocide against Palestinians. For Zionists, it isn’t just about killing off grandma but also about enforcing the final solution for Palestinians.

(Photo of Gaza protest at border fence from Free Palestine Initiative)