Syrian refugees from Syrian & Russian scorched earth bombing can’t even wash their hands to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. What prevails in northern Syrian refugee camps is repeated on the US southern border, on the Turkey-Greece border, & in squalid refugee camps in Greece. Our demand, even in our quarantine, must be that authorities provide medical care, nutrition, & housing to refugees & above all that Syria & Russia stop bombing civilians.
Meanwhile in Israel, Netanyahu is manipulating the coronavirus epidemic to maintain autocratic power–a malignancy & cynicism which does not distinguish him from Modi, Xi, Trump, & other politicians.
The Modi thing about clapping, whistling, & bell ringing notwithstanding, we should thank our lucky stars for the medical personnel on the front lines of this international epidemic without whom millions of us would die.
A Forbes writer thinks the US should do more to tackle Chinese forced labor of Uyghur Muslims. There’s a troubling & massive cognitive disconnect here, probably of the nationalist or white supremacist kind. US companies, including Apple & Walmart, are among the largest clients of the sweatshops where Uyghur are forcibly confined along with children workers. With 700 military bases all over the world & reliance on sweatshop economics, how has the US come to be seen as a champion of the oppressed?
It’s not certain how much US sanctions on Iran impact medicine supplies to use in the overwhelming coronavirus epidemic Iran is facing. It’s not certain since both regimes lie: Iran says sanctions are denying them access to vital medicines (though they produce most of their own medicines); the US claims medicines are exempt under the sanctions (but nothing the US claims can be trusted & genocide via coronavirus is not beneath them).
What is certain is that Iran prioritizes military intervention in Syria, Iraq, & Yemen over the health of Iranian citizens. If the regime spent even a portion of what they spend on financing, training, & deploying terrorist militias on developing Iran’s health infrastructure, the Iranian people would be in a stronger position to fight the epidemic. Militarism is a disease that kills.
“While the world is helping each other in fighting COVID, a professor of surgery in Kashmir had to waste hours trying to download treatment guidelines from the internet,” a Kashmiri doctor tweeted.
Modi urges every Indian to come out of their house, stand on the balcony or in the window exactly at 5 pm on March 22nd & clap, ring a bell, or whistle to express gratitude to healthcare workers. While they’re at it, they should assume his favorite yoga pose, the donkeys ass asana.
As Assadists have always mocked the suffering of children, fascist Eva Bartlett is in Aleppo mocking Syrian & Russian bombing of hospitals & ridiculing a little girl whose family was forced to flee to Turkey. She remains a hero to the Assadist & Stalinist cult that usurped the antiwar movement.
Yesterday in Kashmir, the Hurriyat Conference led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq demanded the restoration of 4G internet speed to fight the coronavirus epidemic. They also demanded the immediate release of all Kashmiri prisoners in several jails across India on humanitarian grounds since overcrowded jails make them vulnerable to the epidemic & other diseases.
We should stand with them in demanding the immediate release of all political prisoners–Kashmiris in Indian jails as well as Palestinians in Israeli jails, Rohingya in Burmese jails, Uyghur in Chinese jails, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans.
