An analysis by Basharat Shameem on why the Indian Army systematically destroys family homes during its military operations.

https://www.newsclick.in/Destroying-houses-in-Kashmir-Collective-Punishment?

Take a walk in my shoes, by Bangladeshi award-winning photographer GMB Akash

Shagufta Ashraf speaks about Kashmir issue to the UNHRC in Geneva.

Six-year-old Nihan Yawar from Bijbehara in the Anantnag district of Kashmir is here being taken for the last rites. He was killed at noon today during a military operation by Indian occupying troops. He was with his father who was going to the market.
Omar Abdullah tweeted his condolences for the death of this little boy “in a dastardly grenade attack by militants”. Since 120 civilians, including 8-year-old Sameer Rah, were killed by the Indian Army under his tenure as chief minister, he has to put the onus entirely on militants & deny the culpability of the occupying army. His outrage is less about little Nihan than it is about justifying his own criminality.
May our little brother Rest In Peace.
Video of Nihan’s funeral prayers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZd-oOOhth0
(Photo is Nihan Yawar)

It should be noted that the funeral prayers for little Nihan Yawar were held during a deadly pandemic. If mourners are not wearing corona masks, it is probably because fears of the pandemic seem more remote than the immediacy of an aggressive, ubiquitous occupying army.

This article is about Israel’s policy of disabling Palestinians by using snipers that target eyes & intentionally shoot off legs. That is clearly a strategy of genocide also employed by India in Kashmir. Israel mainly uses rubber bullets; India uses rubber bullets & pellet guns. It doesn’t take Nostradamus to say that if we do not campaign against the use of lethal weapons on unarmed Palestinians & Kashmiris, we will be warding them off in our own countries. The use of pellet munitions now in Chile & the use of rubber bullets against Black Lives Matter protesters in the US is testimony to that.
https://qudsnen.co/losing-sight-of-the-future…/
(Photo from article is of Palestinians who lost vision because of rubber bullets)

A Kashmiri woman named Hina Bashir Beigh & her husband Jahanzaib Sami Wani from Shivpora in Srinagar were arrested in New Delhi, India last March for alleged associations with a terrorist group & for ‘instigating protests’ against the Citizenship Amendment Act legitimizing persecution of Indian Muslims.
The couple remains in custody at Tihar Prison in New Delhi. Hina Bashir Beg has just tested positive for corona & her lawyer has petitioned the court to get her moved to a hospital. Is a court order required to get medical care for a political prisoner who is a corona victim? Does she remain among the other prisoners whilst contagious with corona? This only highlights the demand that all political prisoners receive proper medical care & be immediately released to contain the pandemic.
(Photo of Hina & Jahanzaib from Kashmir Life)

How dare major corporations attach themselves to the George Floyd solidarity movement like it was a free marketing opportunity or a bandwagon where they can stamp their logos. Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Netflix, Ben & Jerry’s, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Levi Strauss all are using social media to denounce ‘systemic & institutionalized racism’ in the US as ‘abhorrent’ & senseless’. They should be strongly rebuked & not allowed to market off the backs of the Black community in the same uncompromising way that Kashmiris use against Indian nationalists who are all over social media with ‘Black lives matter’ placards whilst defending the colonial occupation of Kashmir.
Before these corporations have any place in a new civil rights movement, they must divest themselves of their complete reliance on sweatshop labor using black & brown women & children. Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Apple, Levi Strauss will have to demand union standards in wages & working conditions in the manufactories where their products are made to help transform sweatshops into workplaces suitable for human beings to work. Since they have profited so ruthlessly & substantially from child & female labor, they will have to establish schools, vocational training, medical centers, housing, & will have to stop working with repressive governments to obstruct labor organizing. Ben & Jerry’s, which is on the BDS boycott list, will have to sever its relationships with the illegal Israeli settlements. Twitter will have to stop censoring Kashmiris & Palestinians whilst Indian nationalists & Zionists are allowed their vituperations. Netflix will have to stop showing movie after movie portraying Palestinians, Arabs, & Muslims as rabid terrorists. Amazon will have to sever contracts with government agencies like ICE & Homeland Security that facilitate deportations of undocumented workers. If they take those modest measures we will feel more confident that their tweets like ‘Don’t turn your back on racism’ & ‘Black lives matter’ are sincere & not just marketing devices to stamp their logos all over this movement.
Microsoft asked an artist in NYC to make a ‘Black lives matter’ mural for their 5th Avenue store in Manhattan “while the protests are still relevant”, as if it were a transitory phenomenon & marketing opportunity. Cynical, yes. Contemptible, absolutely. But in so many ways more honest than Nike & all the other corporations who pretend to give a rat’s ass about racism & white supremacy.
As for the expressions of support from AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka & other labor leaders? They can’t get off their asses to defend any workers & refuse to organize undocumented workers facing deportation so they only compete with corporations in cynicism.
Black Lives Matter is a social movement to end racist persecution & white supremacy all over the world. It is not for sale.
(Photo of BLM protest from Independent/UK)

Kashmiris, possibly at a funeral, but just awesome.

Last night, I had a testy discussion with my older sister Joni, a civil rights activist, about voting for Biden. She’s a social democrat & has always voted lesser evil. But I challenged her on how she could vote for a man who is creepy & perverted around women & responsible for the incarceration in federal prisons of tens of thousands of Black kids for minor offenses or for lack of decent legal counsel. She thinks I’m being impractical & too high-minded, even foolish. My question to her, who I love dearly, was ‘To whom is Biden a lesser evil’? To Black kids sitting in federal prisons for life without parole for smoking a joint? To Palestinians who he considers terrorists? To Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis, Somalians against whom he’s endorsed war?
If you want to vote lesser evil to get Trump out, that is understandable. But to deny the crimes of Biden or whitewash the Democratic Party to justify your vote is not just lesser evil stuff but delusional & naive about politics.
There is an alternative to lesser evil politics. They are the greater good politics of organizing independent political power to achieve our goals of democracy, peace, justice.

Trump had to be dragged out of the presidential bunker & now it’s reported there are six buses of US soldiers dressed like special forces near the White House. Good to know he’s afraid of us.