March 2020
Coronavirus Pandemic: Deaths Surge
By Countercurrent: According to Johns Hopkins University on Sunday, there are more than 721,000 coronavirus cases and 33,900 deaths worldwide. The U.S. now leads the world with more than 120,000 confirmed cases while the U.S. coronavirus deaths surge past 2,000. Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that the U.S. could experience more than 100,000 deaths and millions of infections. Read More
Quo Vadis - the Robert’s Court
Prof. Arthur Kane Scott: As most of America watch aghast as the Trump administration daily violates the law with impunity, Robert’s Court remains deathly silent, not ever uttering a word. Its stonysilence, rationalized as being outside the fray of politics jeopardizes checks/balances and separation of powers, both fundamental to our democracy. Likewise, its silence during the impeachment hearings fueled the imperium reach ofthe executive at the expense of Congress as it did nothing around the issues of witnesses or executive documents, thereby undermining its moral role as theultimate umpire of our democracy by acting as a check on the executive and yes, the legislative. Wake up Mr. Chief Justice, and call PresidentTrump out as Judge Sirica did Richard Nixon. Read More
The sobering statistics of COVID-19
By Dr. Habib Siddiqui: As of Saturday, March 28, 2020, nearly 650 thousand people worldwide areconfirmed to have been infected by the Corona Virus (COVID-19).As I write around 4 p.m. EST (USA), more thanthirty thousand deaths have been confirmed. The latest statistics show that the USA has superseded China as the epicenter of the virus with more than 116 thousand infected people. In any biological system, if you put a living organism into an environment where it can thrive, with unlimited resources and no predators or competitors, it will always grow in the same fashion: exponentially. Read More
USCMO Holds Community Leaders’ Coronavirus Crisis Teleconference
The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations convened its first National Muslim Leadership Teleconference on the Coronavirus Covid-19 contagion’s impact on the Muslim community on March 21. Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Andre Carson (D-IN) participated along with 113 organizational leaders. The two members of congress detailed the intensive efforts to ensure the then-developing stimulus package provided for the urgent financial and healthcare needs of unemployed Americans and income-deprived individuals and families. Read More
The Politics of the Coronavirus
By John Feffer: The far right thrives on fear. It’s no surprise, then, that it would use the latest pandemic, which has generated widespread panic, to bolster its own agenda. All of the hallmarks of the far right are in play during the current crisis. It has pushed to close borders. It has demonized foreigners and particularly border-crossers. It has spread a variety of conspiracy theories. And where it is in power — Hungary, Israel — it has moved to increase that power through emergency measures. On the other hand, the incompetent response of some right-wing leaders — Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil — may well set back the far right in certain countries. Moreover, the scale of the threat has put on the table the kind of large-scale transformative policies that hitherto circulated only on the margins. So, which way will COVID-19 ultimately push the political pendulum? Read More
COVID-19 Puts Capitalism on a Ventilator. No More Bank and Corporate Bailouts!
By Anthony A. Gabb: The aftershock of previous pandemics was catastrophic. The fourteenth century Black Plague and the 1918 Flu pandemics inflicted colossal hardships and caused many deaths. The Black Plague shook the foundations of feudal social relations. It killed 25 to 30 million people, resulting in peasant uprisings, shortages that caused wages to rise, and large parcels of land to go fallow. Scientists believe the 1918 Flu could have come to Spain from the United States and spread to other parts of the world killing 20 to 50 million people, more than the 17 million who died in WW1. Even though it was common knowledge that the flu was already in Philadelphia, the authorities went ahead anyway with a parade to raise funds for the war causing many unnecessary deaths—at the time the economics of the war took priority over stopping the spread of the flu. Similarly, today there are competing views about whether fixing the economy should take precedence over addressing the ravages of COVID-19. Read More
Yemen – Five years after catastrophic US-backed war
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: Fighting in Yemen continues, five years after Saudi Arabia launched indiscriminate air strikes against Yemen to re-install the government of President Hadi who fled to Saudi Arabia in March 2015. Hadi’s government was overthrown by Houthi rebels. Interestingly, since the beginning of Yemen war, the US and the United Kingdom have sold arms and provided technical and logistical assistance to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), both of which have conducted indiscriminate air raids on Yemeni soil causing heavy civilian casualties. Read More
BJP and Israel: Hindu Nationalism is Ravaging India‘s Democracy
by Dr Ramzy Baroud: It was only a matter of time before the anti-Muslim sentiment in India turned violent. A country that has historically prided itself on its diversity and tolerance, and for being ‘the largest democracy in the world’ has, in recent years, exhibited the exact opposite qualities – chauvinism, racism, religious intolerance, and, at times, extreme violence. The latest round of violence ensued on February 23, one day before US President Donald Trump arrived in Delhi on his first official visit to India. Trump is a beloved figure among Hindu nationalists, especially supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has ruled India since 2014. BJP, under the leadership of Narendra Modi, has wreaked havoc on Indian politics and foreign policy. However, the damage that this ultra-nationalist movement has caused to Indian society is unmatched since the country’s independence in 1947. Read More
Trump activates National Guard in NY, Washington and CA, states hit hardest by coronavirus
Washington Post: President Trump announced Sunday that the federal government has activated the National Guard to assist New York, California and Washington, three of the states hit hardest by the novel coronavirus. Read More
I see our government using Covid-19 to take away our fundamental rights
By Robert Barnes: Governments across America already used the pandemic, and the media-stoked panic around the pandemic particularly, to limit, restrict or remove First Amendment freedoms of speech and free association, with officials complaining about the potential restraints the freedom of religion imposed upon them. Others denied or declared the right to deny Second Amendment rights of gun purchase for personal safety (at a time governments are issuing no-arrest and no-detention orders for a wide range of crimes in their community while publicly freeing inmates from jails and prisons). They want to coordinate with tech companies to surveil and spy on your everyday movements and activities, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and potentially waive, unilaterally, your medical right to privacy in multiple contexts. Stay-at-home orders deprive you of your profession, occupation, business and property, without any due process of law at all beyond an executive fiat in violation of the Fifth Amendment right to due process. Governments request the authority to involuntarily imprison any American on mere fear of infection without any probable cause of crime or clear and present danger of harm by that person’s volitional conduct, deny access to personal counsel in an unsupervised, un-surveilled manner in violation of the Sixth Amendment, and act as judge, jury and executioner in violation of the Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury, as jury trials themselves get suspended around the country in the nation’s quieted courts and fear-muted public. Read More
The Coronavirus Is Not “The Plague”: It Is the U.S.
By Edward Curtin: We are all infected with the soul-destroying evil that our leaders have loosed upon the world, a plague of killing that is now hidden behind the coronavirus fear that is being used to institute tight government controls that many will come to rue in the months ahead, just as happened after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Coronavirus is a perfect cover-story for the occupation of the public’s mind by a propaganda apparatus that has grown even more devious over the past 19 years. Ask yourself: Where is the news about U.S. military operations in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia, etc.? There is none in the corporate mainstream media, and little in the alternative media as well. Have those operations ceased? Of course not. It’s just that the news about them, little that it was, has disappeared. Now it is all about us and the coronavirus panic. It is about how many of us might die. It is about stocking toilet paper. For the rich, it is about getting to their second or third houses where they can isolate themselves in splendor. As I write, 150 or so Americans are said to have died of Covid-19, and by the time you will read this the number will have climbed, but the number will be minuscule compared to the number of people in the U.S.A. and those numbers will be full of contradictions that few comprehend unless, rather than reacting in fear, they did some comprehensive research. But arguments are quite useless in a time of panic when people are consumed with fear and just react. Read More
COVID-19 information blackout hitting Kashmir hard
Anadolu Agency: Anxiety and fear is gripping residents of Indian-administered Kashmir after the first coronavirus case was found in the region’s main city, Srinagar, Friday, yet a lid is still being kept on information. The confirmation came after government spokesman Rohit Kansal tweeted the news and called on the public to take safety measures to stem the virus’ spread and stay indoors. But the people in the region are questioning how they can access any information on the pandemic when the government has restricted internet access. Read More
Farooq Abdullah Released After 7-month Detention
By Syed Rifaquat Ali: The three-time former chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir, Dr.Farooq Abdullah was released in Srinagar on March 13 after seven-month detention under the Public Safety Act which his father, Sheikh Abdullah, had enacted to curb timber smuggling. Read More
New Zealand cancels memorial event for mosque shootings due to coronavirus
Associate Press: People in the New Zealand city of Christchurch honored the 51 (Muslim) worshipers who were killed in a mass shooting a year ago in small but poignant ways Sunday, after a planned national memorial event was canceled due to fears it might spread the new coronavirus. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was in Christchurch attending events to mark the anniversary of last year’s March 15 massacre, which she has described as one of New Zealand’s darkest days. On Friday she attended a special joint prayer with members of both mosques that were attacked. Read More
Sanitizing Modi’s Hindutvadi Fascism is Impious!
By Dr. Habib Siddiqui: Last Wednesday (March 4, 2020) the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) convened a hearing about the intent and impact of India’s amended Citizenship lawsand the Rohingya Muslims’ issue in Myanmar to help develop policy recommendations for the US government in response to the issues. Members of the commission along with an invited panel of experts expressed concern over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), saying that it could result in the “wide-scale disenfranchisement” of Muslims in the country. The new Indian citizenship law passed by the Hindutvadi-dominated parliament in December 2019 offers citizenship to non-Muslim religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan but not to Muslims. After the enactment of the law, protests erupted across the country over fears that the CAA may marginalize the minority Muslim community. Read More
Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez: 'Modi Ethnically Cleansing Religious Minorities'
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said that Narendra Modi government is ethnically cleansing the country’s religious minorities. Commenting on recent anti-Muslim riots in Delhi, the US Congresswoman from New York said in a tweet: “President Trump is engaging in arms deals with Modi while his administration is ethnically cleansing the country’s religious minorities. We must not enable this rise in sectarian violence.” Cortez shared a report by The Guardian that called the Delhi anti-Muslim riot a “Hindu nationalist rampage”. Cortez’s comments come days after Democratic presidential candidate and senator Bernie Sanders’s reaction to the rioting in northeast Delhi. Read More
Hundreds rally in US, Europe against anti-Muslim massacre in Indian capital
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: Hundreds of Indian Americans of different faiths rallied outside Indian consulates in major American cities on Friday evening to protest against the recent massacre of Muslims in Delhi that has killed at least 53 and injured hundreds. Bloodshed erupted in the Indian capital on Monday, leading to a three-day-long rampage, with Hindu mobs attacking Muslim homes, shops and Mosques. The attacks were carried out on protesters, who have been rallying against a new citizenship law, after the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Kapil Mishra threatened peaceful sit-ins would be removed from the streets. Read More
After troops withdrawal U.S. to maintain seven bases in Afghanistan
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: The US and the Taliban Saturday signed a peace agreement under which the United States, its allies, and the Coalition will withdraw all their forces from five military bases. However, New York Times Sunday reported that the US will maintain seven bases. Those bases are in Herat Province, Mazar-a-Sharif, Bagram, Jalalabad, Kabul (both the airport and the main American base next to the embassy) and Kandahar Airfield in the south. What remains unclear is how the American military will treat some of the outposts primarily used by the C.I.A., such as Camp Chapman in the country’s east. The New York report pointed out that with the new Taliban deal in place, the C.I.A. will not increase its presence in the country, officials said, although the agency will draw down its personnel more slowly than the military, according to people familiar with the matter. Read More
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
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