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[Photos © Stephen Jess]

to the 200 million Muslims in India. India has passed the Citizenship Act, which blatantly discriminates against the Muslims. They register the citizens and then deregister the names of the Muslims as Indian citizens. This is a prelude to genocide. This is what happened in 1935 in Nazi Germany. The Nuremberg Laws were a prelude to the deregistration of the Jews as German citizens. In Myanmar, in 1992, they did the same thing. They deregistered the Muslims as citizens of Myanmar. What India is doing is a prelude for a genocidal war against the Muslims. This is why the Organization of Islamic Cooperation must be more vocal about it. My worry is that because India is a big market, countries worry about losing their trade with it. Western countries are acting this way. Look at the prominence given to Hong Kong and to the rights of the citizens there. Compare it to what it is happening to eight million Muslims in Kashmir. Clearly, double standards play a role here. India is a big market and this overwhelms the issue of human rights."

What, you may wonder, does Imran Khan have to say about the actually occurring genocide of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang?

Nothing. 

From January:

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been vocal about the mistreatment of Muslims around the world, so his silence on the Chinese persecution of millions of Uighurs has been particularly noticeable. 

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Khan was asked about this apparent lack of criticism and at first replied that he didn't "know much about" the scale of Uighur mistreatment.

But after being pushed on the issue by a reporter, Khan acknowledged that Pakistan's special relationship with China played a part in his response to the Uighur crisis.

"China has helped us," Khan said. "They came to help us when we were at rock bottom, and so we are really grateful to the Chinese government."

Isn't that nice?

Pakistan was prominent among those Muslim and African countries that supported China in response to western criticism of the repression in Xinjiang, praising Beijing’s “remarkable achievements in the field of human rights.” 

What was it Khan said? 

"Clearly, double standards play a role here. India is a big market and this overwhelms the issue of human rights." 

The hypocrisy is brazen.

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[Photos: Txema Salvans, from “Perfect Day” (MACK, 2020)]

od at 160,000 as of Mar. 2020. What this means is that the country’s prisoner population has grown by around 30,000 during Kim’s eight years in power.

The number of prisoners held in specific facilities is believed to be 43,000 at Camp No. 14 (in Kaechon, South Pyongan Province); 55,000 at Camp No. 15 (in Yodok, South Hamgyong Province); 24,000 at Camp No. 16 (in Hwasong, North Hamgyong Province); and, 25,000 at Camp No. 25 (in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province).

While the number of prisoners held at the Chongjin facility was fairly low in the beginning, that figure is believed to have skyrocketed in October of last year. 

“The number suddenly jumped, with 150 prisoners crammed into rooms designed for 50,” a source in the country told Daily NK recently. “Most of them were arrested while conducting foreign currency-earning activities in Pyongyang.”

Many of the new prisoners appear to be those involved in corrupt activities, including embezzlement, while working to earn foreign currency for the regime.  […]

The Kim regime appears to be operating the camps under the same principle that led to their establishment: namely, the idea that prison camps must remain in place to punish anyone who opposes the party’s ideology and the doctrines of Kimilsungism and Kimjongilism – at least until such ideas have been “fully adopted” by society. 

Prison camps in the country are still divided into “total control zones” – camps set up for those who can never be released back into society, and “revolutionary zones” – camps where inmates receive “ideological education” while engaging in forced labor. Prisoners are stripped of all rights and prohibited from making contact with the outside world. Indeed, Kim Jong Un has carried on the country’s brutal tradition of treating imprisoned citizens as nothing more than tools of production. 

Under Kim’s rule, it is now an official rule for all prisoners to be shot to death in the event of war breaking out or in other “extraordinary political circumstances,” according to the source. Prison camps are the embodiment of the regime’s brutality, which is why North Korea maintains the official position that such facilities do not exist. 

When the young Supreme Leader first took command in 2011, it was widely expected that he'd start modernising and liberalising North Korea, using post-Mao China as an example. What seems to have happened instead is that China has taken North Korea as an example, and now they're vying with each other for that coveted "most repressive" title. For sheer scale and genocidal intent, though, the North Koreans simply can't compete with Xinjiang. No one can.

A degree of poetic justice here:

Doctors are warning that new cases of Covid-19 in Turkey are rising far faster than official figures suggest, with up to 3,000 people likely to have been infected during the first prayers at the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque last month.

President Erdogan said that 350,000 people had descended on Istanbul for the event on July 24, which marked the conversion of the historic building back into a mosque after 86 years as a museum. Social distancing measures were in place inside the building and the immediate surrounding area, but beyond the police barricades people were closely packed in the streets.

At least four officials from Mr Erdogan’s AK Party, who were among 500 people invited inside the mosque, have since been diagnosed with the virus….

Sarp Uner, a professor of public health, has estimated that up to 3,000 people are likely to have been infected at the event, based on current infection rates and the likelihood of transmission….

“I believe that the [Hagia Sophia] gathering will increase the cases in Istanbul . . . It is certain that more difficult days await us,” Professor Uner told the Anka news agency.

Last Sunday I found a red dog, and now today, on Curtain Road, behind some builders' junk….

At the top of Curtain Road, on Old Street, Thierry Noir has been at work on the Central London Osteopathy and Sports Injury Clinic, next to the spine:

There's a website, but the place looks like it's seen better days.

Back to Omaha in November 1938 with John Vachon, and a sign-filled panorama of the city featuring the oddly-named Eggerss-O'Flyng Company, makers of boxes, cartons, and containers:

[Photo: Shorpy/John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration]

me to Lebanon on August 5 to meet people, many politicians didn’t seem to bother. While some port officials have reportedly been detained, there are questions about how an investigation will unfold.

There have been a few Middle Eastern pundits, inevitably, who've blamed the explosion on Israel or America, but somehow their hearts don't seem to be in it. It's too hard a sell, even to an audience accustomed to hear about the evil machinations of the Zionist entity and the Great Satan. The incompetence of the Lebanese authorities is too obvious. 

Iran, Hezbollah's backer, has meanwhile had very little to say.

Tasnim news on Saturday was more concerned with US sanctions, a protest by Iran about US fighters jets intercepting an Iranian passenger plane and exchange rates. Not so much about Lebanon. Fars News also didn’t have many details about the blast. There was a report about Lebanon’s foreign minister praising Hezbollah head Hassan-Nasrallah and details about the Mozambique company that had purchased the ammonium nitrate that exploded in Beirut. There was less about how the blast might affect Iran, Iranians in Lebanon or even Hezbollah, a key Iranian ally.

So what is going on with Iran’s regime and its reaction to the blast? The regime seems more interested in a few petty details or ignoring the destruction entirely….

or the surge in cases that never happened, cleared untested old people out to care homes – with disastrous results:

With passionate discussions about opening schools, it is good to step back, take a deep breath, and examine what science tells us. To know the effect of smoking, we study smokers. To know the effects of vaccines, we study those vaccinated. Similarly, to know the effects of keeping schools open during the Covid-19 pandemic, we must study the one place that kept their schools open during the height of the pandemic. That place is Sweden.

Sweden never closed day-care centres or schools for its 1.8 million children ages one to 15. Of these children, zero died from Covid-19. The total number of cases is unknown, but the reported number is 468, which is 25 per 100,000. Of these 468 children, eight were hospitalised in an intensive care unit. This means that, whether schools are open or not, children are less at risk from Covid-19 than from influenza, which kills an average of 40-50 children in England and Wales each year. In contrast to influenza, schools are not driving the Covid-19 pandemic, and in Sweden, teachers had the same Covid-19 risk as the average risk among other professions.

It is inappropriate to either exaggerate or dismiss the seriousness of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is still impossible to know what percentage is needed to reach herd immunity or how many people will eventually die, and no respectable epidemiologist will make such claims. Nor do we know how long it will take to get a vaccine, which could be anything from six months to never. The one important thing that we do know is the enormous risk difference by age. Covid-19 is a formidable enemy, and in any war, one must take advantage of the opponent’s weaknesses. That weakness is the near inability of the virus to kill younger people. Hence, it is the young adults among us that must stand in the front line as we fight this enemy. If not, we will have many more casualties than necessary.