Hundreds of Indian migrant & day workers have sheltered under a bridge on the banks of the Yamuna River living on one meal a day provided by Sikhs at a nearby gurdwara. When this photo began circulating on social media, some Indian politicians who seem to have a high threshold for embarrassment were prompted to some grandstanding & began bussing these workers to shelter, promising them food & corona screening.

If India withdrew its one million troops from Kashmir, it would have more than enough resources to begin addressing such miserable poverty in India.

(Photo by Arvind Gunasekar)

Can Kashmiri friends explain India’s Red Zone strategy for us? Does all of India have them or just Delhi? Is all of Kashmir now a Red Zone? Does it seem to be more for repressive purposes than for medical necessity? Because it is hard to believe the Modi regime actually cares about the health & safety of Kashmiris. It sounds more like turning Kashmir into a concentration camp.

(Posted April 15th)

You can see with the Indian Army marauding in Kashmir, with Russian, Iranian, Turkish, Syrian, & US troops prowling the Syrian countryside, with massive deployments in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya that militarism presents massive dangers in a pandemic. We can be sure millions of soldiers are deployed without any screening whatsoever. Whilst they are using the pandemic for greater social control, we must find ways to protest the ruling elites’ form of internationalism: war, occupation, plunder, genocide. It is the cholera epidemic brought to Haiti by UN troops after the 2010 earthquake writ large.

(Posted April 15th)