Kashmir’s New Status: Why the West Turns a Blind Eye to Democracy Deficit in India
By Brian Cloughley | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 27, 2019
On August 23 the New York Times reported that the Indian Ministry of External Affairs “won’t say why foreign journalists continue to be blocked from setting foot in Kashmir” but managed to obtain a compelling first-hand account of one of the thousands of arrests by the authorities. In this instance “Asifa Mubeen was woken up by the sound of barking dogs as policemen began pouring into her yard. Her husband, Mubeen Shah, a wealthy Kashmiri merchant, stepped out onto their bedroom balcony in the night air. The police shouted that he was under arrest. When he asked to see a warrant, his wife said, the police told him there wouldn’t be one. ‘This is different,’ they said. ‘We have orders.’ It was the start of one of the biggest mass arrests of civilian leaders in decades carried out by India, a close American partner that bills itself as one of the world’s leading democracies…”
The appalling situation in Indian-administered Kashmir has been created by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who announced on August 5 that he was annulling Article 370 of India’s Constitution, which since 1949 has given the territory (called a State by India) virtual self-government. It had its own Constitution and the most important thing was that the special status of the region allowed it to adhere to the ancient law prohibiting outsiders from buying land. The central government could not overrule the law — but with Modi’s repeal of Article 370 there is now direct rule by Delhi.
This means that the people of the territory have no say whatever in their own governance. It has also meant, thus far, the arrest and detention of some 4,000 people under the Public Safety Act which allows the authorities to jail anyone for up to two years without charge. That isn’t exactly democratic — and it is intriguing to think about how Donald Trump would regard such a law, were he aware of it.
Deficiency of democracy doesn’t stop there, because the Armed Forces Special Powers Act “grants the armed forces the power to shoot to kill in law enforcement situations, to arrest without warrant, and to detain people without time limits. The law forbids prosecution of soldiers without approval from the central government, which is rarely granted, giving them effective immunity for serious human rights abuses.”
The Public Safety and Special Powers Acts are in full swing in Indian-administered Kashmir, and the population is in effect under military occupation authorised by Modi’s ultra-right wing government in Delhi. It is, to all intents, occupied territory whose inhabitants have no say whatever in their own governance. (There were supposed to be elections this year, but with the invalidation of Article 370 these can no longer take place. It has all been carefully thought through.)
And the leaders of the US and Britain, these usually eloquent supporters of freedom for the peoples of the world, have made no critical statements about the mass arrests or cancellation of elections or total closure of means of communication, and they ignore the fact that India’s Constitution “explicitly declares that all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression [Article 19(1)(a)].”
The New York Times managed to ascertain that in Kashmir, the thousands of detainees “have not been able to communicate with their families or meet with lawyers. Their whereabouts remain unknown. Most were taken in the middle of the night, witnesses said.” This smacks of dictatorship, for it is undeniable that detention and incarceration without trial is totalitarian rather than democratic.
It is barely credible that “Among the people who were rounded up were Mian Qayoom, president of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association; Mohammed Yasin Khan, chairman of the Kashmir Economic Alliance; Raja Muzaffar Bhat, an anticorruption crusader; Fayaz Ahmed Mir, a tractor driver and Arabic scholar; and Mehbooba Mufti, the first woman elected as Kashmir’s chief minister. Shah Faesal, another politician, was arrested at New Delhi’s international airport, bags checked, boarding pass in hand, heading for a fellowship at Harvard. Several prominent state politicians have also been put under house arrest; they told Indian news outlets they had been ordered not to engage in any ‘political activity’.”
But there hasn’t been a peep of protest from Britain’s Boris Johnson, he who showed solidarity with the protestors in Hong Kong by declaring “I do support them and I will happily speak up for them and back them every inch of the way.”
There hasn’t been a squeak of remonstrance from Washington, either, where Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the rule of President Maduro “is undemocratic to the core” and Trump committed his country to “stand with… all Venezuelans who seek to restore democracy and the rule of law.”
If Johnson and Trump are so supportive of democracy, why do they not protest about mass arrests and detentions and cancellation of democratic elections in Indian-administered Kashmir? Why do they not take Modi to task for his excesses? It was recorded on August 23 that in Indian-administered Kashmir, “Data obtained by Reuters showed 152 people reported to Srinagar’s Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences and Shri Maharaj Hari Singh with injuries from pellet shots and tear gas fire between Aug 5 and Aug 21.” It is regrettable that Trump and Johnson ignored the fact that on August 22 “UN human rights experts today called on the Government of India to end the crackdown on freedom of expression, access to information and peaceful protests imposed in Indian-Administered Kashmir this month.” It was also stated by the UN experts, headed by Special Rapporteur David Kaye, that “The shutdown of the internet and telecommunication networks, without justification from the Government, are inconsistent with the fundamental norms of necessity and proportionality. The blackout is a form of collective punishment of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, without even a pretext of a precipitating offence.”
The absence of any criticism by Trump and Johnson of the military rule excesses in Indian-administered Kashmir will encourage Modi and his far-right nationalist administration to extend their racist grip throughout India. Since Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014 there has been a most marked increase in officially-endorsed communal violence, mainly against Muslims but also involving other minority groups. These outbreaks of Hindu-supremacy barbarity are sponsored largely by a militant organisation called the Bajrang Dal which as noted in the New Yorker “has either been banned or has lurked at the margins of Indian society. But [since 2014] the militant group has been legitimized and grown exponentially more powerful. In the past seven years, according to Factchecker, an organization that tracks hate crimes, there have been a hundred and sixty-eight attacks by Hindu extremists, in the name of protecting cows, against Muslims and other religious minorities.”
Indian democracy is under grave threat from racist Hindu supremacists, and the New York Times rightly considers it disquieting that Modi “seems intent on digging in, and he has the Indian public firmly behind him. Many Indians see Kashmir as an integral part of India, and this move has stirred up jingoist feelings. Indian news channels have referred to the detainees being flown out of Kashmir as ‘Pakistani terrorists’ or ‘separatist leaders,’ toeing the government line.”
The most appalling thing is that Modi’s India appears intent on eradicating Muslims and that the vast majority of Hindus are right behind him. In order for him to succeed, there has to be destruction of democracy — and that’s exactly what is happening.
New Jersey Event Canceled After Threats From Anti-Free Speech Groups
By Jonathon Turley | August 22, 2019
We have been discussing the rising attacks on free speech across the country, including students and faculty who support the silencing of speakers who hold opposing views. What is most concerning is that these attacks are working. The latest example can be found in New Jersey where the Broadway Theater in Pitman cancelled an event because anti-free speech organizations and individuals threatened protests and some even threatened to burn down the theater. Among the speakers was journalist Andy Ngo, who suffered a brain hemorrhage after being beaten by Antifa supporters at an event in Oregon. My concern is not with planned protests but the coordinated effort to have the event cancelled to prevent others from hearing opposing views.
The one-day conference was set to discuss “combating racism, violence, and authoritarianism.” Sponsored by Minds.com, there were 20 speakers planning to discuss a variety of issues. They included speakers who had once support but later became disillusioned with some leftist groups. This included im Tim Pool, who calls himself a “disaffected liberal” and Josephine Mathias, who has opposed sexual orientation as not equal to race or ethnicity. Mathias was the only black speaker in the line up. It also included Lauren Chen, a conservative blogger.
It also included British YouTuber Carl Benjamin, who has been accused of sexist comments about rape, and Mark Meechan, a Scottish YouTuber who became a global figure when he taught a dog to give Nazi salutes (which he insisted was a joke with his girlfriend’s pug). He was convicted of a hate crime after the court deemed his motivation immaterial to the fact that it was offensive under hate speech laws. I have previously written critically of these laws in France, Germany, England and other countries.
Daryle L. Jenkins, executive director of One People’s Project, an activist group based in New Brunswick, N.J., called the lineup of speakers “the worst of the worst.” Holding such an event, he said, “is like picking a fight.” The statement was classic for the rising anti-free-speech movement. Allowing opposing views to be heard is now considered a provocation. Most of us would support Jenkins’ right to protest outside and contest the views of these people. However, the pressure was to get the theater to cancel the event so others could not hear the opposing views.
No Hate NJ, a coalition of organizations, insisted that the “hateful” event could not be held. In a statement right out of the Antifa handbook, the group said “The event is advertised as a ‘discussion,’ but it’s really just an echo chamber for far-right rhetoric that will bring hateful and violent people to Pitman.” In other words, no such discussion could be allowed between these speakers.
I know nothing about any of speakers beyond Meechan, but their specific views are immaterial if you truly believe in free speech. What Antifa wanted to do (and succeeded in doing) was to prevent opposing views from being heard.
I have previously discussed how Antifa and other college protesters are increasingly denouncing free speech and the foundations for liberal democracies. Some protesters reject classic liberalism and the belief in free speech as part of the oppression on campus. The movement threatens both academic freedom and free speech — a threat that is growing due to the failure of administrators and faculty to remain true to core academic principles. Dartmouth Professor Mark Bray, the author of a book entitled “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” is one of the chief enablers of these protesters. Bray speaks positively of the effort to supplant traditional views of free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase… that says I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” He defines anti-fascists as “illiberal” who reject the notion that far right views deserve to “coexist” with opposing views.
It only took a couple days for the campaign, No Hate NJ, to intimidate the theater owners. The venue’s Twitter account was also hacked. There was also a threat to burn the theater to the ground.
Once you declare opposing views to be a provocation and an attack, it is easy to mobilize to silence people on the other side. dam Sheridan of Cooper River Indivisible declared “We don’t want South Jersey being used as a platform for these far-right extremists. For us this is about community self-defense.” See? It is that easy. It is not censorship or intimidation. It is self-defense.
Once again, this is about the campaign to cancel the event and not to protest the event.
New Jersey cops turn citizens’ phones into surveillance devices – for their own good, of course
RT | August 27, 2019
A New Jersey police department has unveiled technology that allows 911 operators to stream video from callers’ smartphones. Sounds like a good idea, at first – but where does the surveillance stop?
Gloucester Township police’s new 911eye emergency dispatch system lets emergency service operators see video live streamed from a caller’s phone, giving first responders an idea of what they’re getting into before anyone is sent to the scene. For now, the caller has to activate the livestream with a link sent by the 911 dispatcher, which allows operators to operate the phone’s camera and microphone. But this is the first step down a very slippery slope.
911eye, developed by Capita Secure Solutions and Services in conjunction with West Midlands Fire Service in the UK, represents a step toward a frankly terrifying surveillance infrastructure that can turn any internet-capable device into a remote-activated surveillance tool. West Midlands Police were the first to embrace “pre-crime” technology in the UK, developing the National Data Analytics Solution to sniff out potential offenders and divert them with ostensibly therapeutic “interventions.”
If the fact that it was developed by the people behind the real-life version of Minority Report isn’t enough of a reason to give 911eye a wide berth, take a look at Carbyne911, one of its competitors. Funded by deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein through former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, Carbyne911 markets itself as the solution to mass shootings. The program – founded by current and former Israeli intelligence personnel, which isn’t at all worrisome given that country spies on the US so extensively it scares Congress – lets emergency dispatchers commandeer the camera and microphone of any internet-capable device within a certain range of the person who made the call.
Investors include Peter Thiel, whose company Palantir has been described as “using war on terror tools to track American citizens,” and its advisory board includes Patriot Act co-author Michael Chertoff, the former Department of Homeland Security chief. At least two US counties have reportedly adopted Carbyne911, despite obvious privacy issues (and the fact that while most of its employees and personnel have military-intelligence connections, few have a background in emergency services).
Of course, bad actors don’t need an “emergency services” app to turn your phone into a spying device. Israeli spyware manufacturer NSO Group’s Pegasus software has been wielded against human rights campaigners, journalists, and even politicians by governments including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to Amnesty International, which has sued the company for allowing its software to be weaponized against peaceful activists.
And how does Pegasus work? The hacker sends the target a link, and as soon as they click on it, the hacker can use the target’s smartphone camera and microphone as surveillance devices. Which sounds an awful lot like 911eye’s business model – but you can trust them. They’re the police, and they’re here to help.
Scottish nationalist leader awarded more than £512,000 after winning court case
Press TV – August 24, 2019
Alex Salmond’s legal victory against the government has been widely seen as yet another victory by Scottish nationalists against an establishment hell-bent on stopping them.
Scotland’s former First Minister had been accused of “inappropriate conduct” during the time he led the Scottish government.
The Scottish government has reportedly paid Salmond more than £512,000 to cover his legal costs after he successfully contested charges of sexual misconduct in court.
Although the case against him effectively collapsed in January, the government has now formally admitted defeat by awarding Salmond the large sum on an “agent and client” basis.
This is a punitive award used by the courts to recognize the fact that the losing party to litigation has caused the other party “unnecessary expenses”.
The Scottish parliament (Holyrood) has reportedly set up an enquiry to look into the huge expenses incurred investigating Salmond and the subsequent pay out after he won his court case.
The official enquiry was set up in the wake of reports that the Scottish government had spent nearly £750,000 (excluding internal costs) trying to defend its flawed legal case against Salmond.
This massive sum, combined with the substantial payment to Salmond, has raised questions about the nature of the enquiry into Salmond’s alleged “misconduct” and whether the case was politically motivated.
The former British diplomat, and supporter of Scottish independence, Craig Murray, alludes to this possibility in his latest post on his popular and respected blog.
For their part, the Scottish Conservative Party has seen fit to go on the political offensive, possibly with a view to deflect potential revelations that they had had a hand in forcing through a botched legal case against Salmond.
Donald Cameron, a Scottish Conservative member of Holyrood, has said it is “outrageous” that so much money had been spent on the case.
Salmond, who was the leader of the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) for over 20 years, still faces a separate trial centred on 14 alleged offences, including two of attempted rape, nine of sexual assault, two of indecent assault and one of breach of the peace.
But in view of the former First Minister’s latest legal victory, it is fair to ask whether the separate charges against him could also be “flawed” and possibly politically motivated.
The legal and criminal cases against Salmond have raised suspicions in the Scottish nationalist community that the British establishment is trying to arrest the momentum toward Scottish independence, by any means necessary, including “flawed” legal procedures.
Salmond is widely seen as the most effective proponent of Scottish independence, as demonstrated by his two highly successful stints as leader of the SNP, first from 1990 to 2000 and then from 2004 to 2014.
Will the DNC Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory Yet Again?
By Thomas L. Knapp | Garrison Center | August 23, 2019
President Donald Trump faces an exceedingly narrow path to re-election in 2020. In order to beat him, the Democratic nominee only needs to pick up 38 electoral votes. With more than 100 electoral votes in play in states that Trump won narrowly in 2016 — especially Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida — all the Democrats have to do is pick a nominee ever so slightly more popular than Hillary Clinton.
That’s a low bar that the Democratic National Committee seems determined, once again, to not get over. As in 2016, the DNC is putting its finger on the scale in favor of “establishment” candidates, the sentiments of the rank and file be damned.
Last time, the main victim was Bernie Sanders. This time, it’s Tulsi Gabbard.
Michael Tracey delivers the gory details in a column at RealClearPolitics. Here’s the short version:
By selectively disqualifying polls in which Gabbard (a US Representative from Hawaii) performs above the 2% threshold for inclusion in the next round of primary debates, the DNC is trying to exclude her while including candidates with much lower polling and fundraising numbers.
Why doesn’t the DNC want Gabbard in the debates? Two reasons come to mind.
Firstly, her marquee issue is foreign policy. She thinks the US should be less militarily adventurous abroad, and as an army veteran of the post-9/11 round of American military interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia, she’s got the credentials to make her points stick.
Foreign policy is a weak spot for the increasingly hawkish Democratic establishment in general and the front-runner and current establishment pick, former vice-president Joe Biden, in particular. As a Senator, Biden voted to approve the ill-fated US invasion of Iraq. As vice-president, he supported President Barack Obama’s extension of the war in Afghanistan and Obama’s ham-handed interventions in Libya, Syria, and other countries where the US had no business meddling. The party’s leaders would rather not talk about foreign policy at all and if they have to talk about it they don’t want candidates coloring outside simplistic “Russia and China bad” lines.
Secondly, Gabbard damaged — probably fatally — the establishment’s pre-Biden pick, US Senator Kamala Harris, by pointing out Harris’s disgusting authoritarian record as California’s attorney general. Gabbard knows how to land a punch, and the DNC doesn’t want any more surprises. They’re looking for a coronation, not a contest.
If the DNC has its way, next year’s primaries will simply ratify the establishment pick, probably a Joe Biden / Elizabeth Warren ticket, without a bunch of fuss and argument.
And if that happens, the Democratic Party will face the same problem it faced in 2016: The rank and file may not be very motivated to turn off their televisions and go vote.
Whatever their failings, rank and file Democrats seem to like … well, democracy. They want to pick their party’s nominees, not have those nominees picked for them in advance. Can’t say I blame them.
Nor will I blame them for not voting — or voting Libertarian — if the DNC ignores them and limits their choices yet again.
Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org).
Israel tech ‘facilitating press freedom abuses around the world’
MEMO | August 23, 2019
Israel has been charged with enabling attacks on media freedom around the world by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), after export controls on surveillance technology were eased.
Citing a Reuters report, CPJ noted that Israeli officials have confirmed that – thanks to a rule change by the Defence Ministry – Israeli surveillance companies “are able to obtain exemptions on marketing license for the sale of some products to certain countries”.
According to Reuters, “the change took effect about a year ago”.
CPJ stated that:
Israeli-exported technology undermines press freedom globally by allowing authorities to track reporters and potentially identify their sources.
One example given by the press freedom watchdog was the Mexican government deploying Pegasus malware, sold by Israeli firm NSO Group, to infiltrate the mobile phones “of at least nine journalists”.
Pegasus was also used by Saudi Arabia to spy on the associates of journalist Jamal Khashoggi before he was murdered in the kingdom’s consulate in Turkey in October last year.
“Over and over again, we see Israeli technology facilitating press freedom abuses around the world, by lending a hand to governments that want to track and monitor reporters,” said CPJ Advocacy Director Courtney Radsch in Washington, D.C.
“An unregulated surveillance industry is bad for press freedom. The Israeli government should heed the UN Special Rapporteur’s call to respect human rights in its export policies.”
UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression David Kaye described Israel as “a major player in the surveillance technology market” in a June 2019 report which urged “a global moratorium on such exports until a human rights compliant regime was put in place”.
Is ‘hate-crime’ a media-creation?
By Renee Parsons | OffGuardian | August 22, 2019
As part of Remarks by President Trump on Mass Shootings in Texas and Ohio on August 5th, President Donald Trump announced that.
Today, I am also directing the Department of Justice to propose legislation ensuring that those who commit hate crimes and mass murders face the death penalty, and that this capital punishment be delivered quickly, decisively, and without years of needless delay
Normally it might have been expected that the mainstream media would run with Trump’s support of the death-penalty-for-hate-crimes as proof positive that the man is off his rocker. Instead, the statement garnered barely a flicker of public notice. Did anyone in authority bother to confirm that the shootings were indeed motivated by ‘hate?’
As the mainstream media consistently rush to judgment, speculation too often becomes fact before all the evidence is considered (ie Russiagate) as the MSM is relied on to provide factual and critical background information.
And yet since 65% of the American public believe that the MSM is peddling fake news begs the question of why should detailed reporting on these tragic events be left to a discredited media establishment or that their information on these recent shootings be considered truthful?
Why should the American public trust the MSM for what may have already been determined to be a ‘hate’ crime without providing evidence of the hate – as the Divide and Rule Game continues undeterred sowing division and conflict among the American people.
It remains unclear exactly why either tragedy is being specifically labeled a “hate” crime instead of felony murder as if there is a larger agenda to establish ‘hate’ as a bona fide.
Obviously, such barbaric mass killings are not normal behavior as the rationale for such conduct must stem from some deep emotional depravity just as the epidemic of suicides of young white males who have lost hope in American society makes no more sense.
There is an endemic crisis throughout the country and the political class are responsible. Decades after federal government elimination of grants for community mental health programs, ‘hate’ is the favorite determinant factor as the world’s most violent nation creates a generation of emotionally or mentally unstable young men, many of whom may be on mind-numbing psychiatric drugs.
Since the MSM has failed to inform the American public of advanced mind control practices; perhaps the MSM itself and the young shooters are part of widespread experiment using MK Ultra or other state-of-the-art brain manipulation techniques. How would the American public ever know which might be true?
The 21 year old El Paso shooter was immediately identified as a right wing Trumper acting on behalf of the President’s “hate” rhetoric and that he had posted an anti-immigration racist tract entitled An Inconvenient Truth – all of which turned out to be something less than the truth.
Decrying mass immigration as an environmental plea for population control sounds more like something John Muir might have written rather than a hate-filled racist diatribe justifying the slaughter.
Perusing the alleged politically charged manifesto included such statements:
Our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country… If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.
There is, however, a problematic psychiatrist father of uncertain character in the background as the shooter drove 650 miles from his home to El Paso before committing the crime and surrendering to authorities.
On the other hand, the Dayton shooter also defies the usual partisan identity and has been acknowledged as a 24-year old member of the Democratic Socialist Party, a Bernie and Elizabeth Warren supporter and was dressed and masked as an Antifa member at the time of the shooting. His weapons and ammo magazines appear to have been legally acquired, he had a high school history as a bully who kept a hit list and made violent threats.
Meanwhile, the Democrats who consider themselves the responsible party on gun control, failed to restore the assault gun ban when they had the votes in 2010 as they prefer fanning the flames of more ‘hate’ by blaming Trump’s loose lips even though the once-revered ACLU does not oppose the Second Amendment.
One wonders that if the El Paso shooter can be tagged with being influenced by Trump rhetoric, did the Dayton shooter receive his inspiration from Antifa or perhaps Elizabeth Warren? It is too much to expect any rational media voice to inquire – all of which brings us back to the President’s Remarks endorsing the death penalty.
How exactly did this ‘hate’ language make its way into Trump’s remarks as “hate” has become a preoccupation of American society and the Administration as its Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism’s very life purpose is to root out hate – not hate of all kinds but only that of the Jewish variety.
Historically, the American criminal justice system, flawed as it is, requires any jury in a criminal case to consider the Defendant’s level of conscious intent to commit a criminal act as well as the illegality of the act without specificity to the psychological issues of that intent.
Originally, hate crime laws were expected to offer special protection based on an individuals’ sexual orientation, gender, religion, disability or racial identity as perceived by the perpetrator.
In a manner that does not occur in normal criminal proceedings, defining the “hate” component of a crime requires a distinct determination that the defendant’s actions were solely motivated by thoughts of ‘hate.’
In a worse case scenario, is Trump suggesting that the death penalty may be applied to what is determined to be a hate crime even if that crime has not resulted in a death?
The reality is that hate crimes may be difficult to distinguish from a run-of-the-mill felony murder, thereby increasing the hate crime penalty makes little sense since first degree murder is already subject to the death penalty. Therefore, it appears that a redundant death penalty for a crime that would already call for the death penalty is little more than…overkill.
In other words, hate crime prosecution necessarily relies on criminalizing thoughts as the NSA claims it has already developed remote neural monitoring revealing one’s most hidden private thoughts or an iphone may be bugged with implants to reduce impulse control.
Many legal scholars would respond that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Due Process Clause in the Fifth Amendment already provides all American citizens with the guaranteed right to equal protection under the law (ie Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade) and therefore such hate laws are unnecessary and may be unconstitutional.
Since the Constitution already protects the rights of aggrieved parties, why would Congress initiate an entirely new category of duplicative Hate Crime laws unless they needed the extra legislative accomplishment to justify their existence or to satisfy prominent politically-connected constituencies or to create a nefarious political agenda.
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter.
Journalism faces dire situation in Kashmir
By Shahana Butt – Press TV – August 22, 2019
Kashmir – In Indian-administered Kashmir, journalists and journalism are suffering the worst work challenges in decades. There has been a complete communication gag in the region since New Delhi revoked Kashmir’s special status.
This is not a usual gathering or a political meeting, these are the journalists gathered under one roof, working on Kashmir stories.
Kashmir’s administration has created a media center for journalists in the region following the criticism over the media dysfunction.
In the absence of communication facilities like the internet, mobile phones and landlines, this facilitation center created by government is the only source for journalists to send their reports out of Kashmir.
These four desktops and one cellular mobile phone have become lifeline for journalists working from Kashmir. From early morning till late evening, journalists wait in queues for their turn to come.
After New Delhi’s move of scrapping Kashmir’s autonomous status on August 5, Kashmir has witnessed a complete communication blackout. Not just international media outlets suffered, but local and regional news networks and journalists were hit the hardest.
In Indian-administered Kashmir, there are hundreds of journalists associated with more than a hundred news dailies and over 40 national and international media outlets, the communication blackout not only stopped local publications but pushed the entire Himalayan region to somewhere around stone age.
The local administration in Kashmir has no idea as to when this communication blockade will end. Journalists say the information blackout has furthered the fear among people and has created space for rumor-mongering and false news, adding to the already existing panic.
Law Enforcement To Flag & Spy On Future Criminals
DHS’s (old) Risk Assessment Chart
MassPrivateI | August 20, 2019
America’s fear of mass-shootings is about to take a truly bizarre turn. That’s because our law enforcement will soon be used as fortune tellers to spy on future criminals.
How will law enforcement be used as fortune tellers?
A recent Albuquerque Journal article revealed that law enforcement will flag people that they think might pose a potential risk.
“Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham directed state Homeland Security and Emergency Management Secretary Jackie Lindsay to start enrolling all 33 county sheriffs in a data-sharing program so that individuals deemed a potential risk could be flagged and monitored.”
What types of things could Americans do that law enforcement would consider threatening?
Inside Sources revealed that police would be looking for “certain indicators.”
State Police Chief Tim Johnson said, “I think it’s obviously important for all of the citizens of New Mexico to be on the lookout for certain indicators of these types of folks that would do this. And part of our job as government officials is to ensure that the citizens of the community understand what those indicators are so they can report them.”
The Tampa Bay Times reports that police are looking for “certain critical threat indicators” on students social media posts and have even created their own FortifyFL app that allows anyone to secretly report suspicious behavior.
What these “indicators” are is anyone’s guess.
Johnson also said that it was “important for law enforcement and other social services to follow up” on reports of possibly dangerous citizens “in the hopes of preventing” acts of domestic terrorism.
Law enforcement and other agencies are being encouraged to report on and flag anyone that they deem a “potential risk.”
What could possibly go wrong?
It was only a couple of months ago, when I warned people about the “Threat Assessment, Prevention and Safety Act” that basically allows law enforcement to label anyone a potential threat.
“The TAPS Act would encourage law enforcement to give everyone a personal threat assessment (kids and adults) and single out those that they deem as future threats.”
Police across the country are already using “red flag” laws to take weapons away from people they deem a potential threat. So why is Homeland Security creating a whole new class of suspicious people?
Because the War on Terror constantly needs new enemies if it is to keep Americans living in fear.
The Albuquerque Journal revealed how law enforcement plans to use the red flag bill to allow law enforcement and other agencies to give people secret threat ratings.
“Sheriffs had been working with the Democratic sponsor of a proposed red flag bill toward a possible compromise. In its original form, the bill would have allowed courts to order the temporary taking of guns from someone deemed an immediate threat, “San Juan County Sheriff Shane Ferrari said.
From Homeland Security spying on everyone’s social media posts to the FBI, it seems like no one is safe from Big Brother’s prying eyes.
Reason.com warned that the FBI’s “red flag” social media spying tool is “a meme-illiterate Facebook-stalking precog from the Minority Report.”
Reason also warned that spying on everyone’s social media posts could spiral out of control.
“There are operations centers and watch floors, which monitor news and events to create reports for the relevant FBI team. These would spur the activation of fusion center, tactical teams which use early notification and accurate geo-locations. Which could allow law enforcement to target and even disenfranchise social media users whose posts may have been misinterpreted.”
Placing people on a secret risk chart is a disaster waiting to happen, just ask those people on the no-fly list or terror watch list.
There are no law enforcement risk rating charts yet.
Based on DHS’s old risk advisory chart we could expect law enforcement to use something similar to Canada’s workplace risk assessment ratings chart:
Canada’s workplace risk assessment ratings chart is a disturbing example of how DHS could give everyone a personal risk assessment.
Asking law enforcement to guess who might become a criminal is at best fortune telling; and at worst, an excuse to incarcerate more people.
First they came for the bots: US academics make case for 1984-style silencing of any dissent
By Helen Buyniski | RT | August 21, 2019
With the “Russian meddling” theory of Trump’s victory on life support heading into 2020, US academic researchers have heeded the patriotic call and put forth a new definition of “disinformation” that includes inconvenient truths.
Social media platforms must expand their definitions of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” beyond the usual bots-and-trolls model to include conversations about topics harmful to the state if they hope to curb the spread of disinformation on their platforms, a trio of University of Washington researchers insist in a paper released ahead of the 2019 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. To help in this quest, the researchers have redefined “disinformation” to include truths arranged to serve a purpose.
“Evaluating disinformation is less about the truth value of one or more pieces of information and more about how those pieces fit together to serve a particular purpose.”
Such an Orwellian redefinition would include the lion’s share of journalism, especially opinion journalism, and sure enough, the researchers have their knives out for those who become “unwitting agents” in the spread of disinfo by writing based on anonymous tips – otherwise known as “reporting.”
All it takes is one article on a “conspiracy theory” to cause a rift in society, the researchers warn, as a single story spreads to multiple outlets and then throughout the social media infosphere. But governments may spend billions of dollars on manipulating public opinion over social media, because it’s OK to lie, as long as you’re helping your country.
The paper tiptoes around propaganda campaigns run by the “good guys” – acknowledged US operations like the notorious pro-Clinton Correct the Record, while New Knowledge, rather than being called out for its fake Russian bot campaign to influence the 2017 Alabama senate election, is cited as an academic source!
Understanding that bot- and troll-hunting has limited use, the researchers focus on “actors who are not explicitly coordinated and, in some cases, are not even aware of their role in the campaign” – i.e. ordinary social media users with opinions the researchers don’t like.
One “case study” examines content “delegitimizing” the White Helmets while neglecting to mention that the group and the publicity surrounding it are, themselves, part of a well-funded western influence operation against the Syrian government (with a sideline in terrorism and head-chopping). The researchers complain that anti-WH voices were not the expected bots and trolls but included “western journalists” and overlapped with “‘anti-war’ activism” – as if “anti-war” was an artifact of a bygone era when one could, realistically, be against war. They complain that not enough accounts retweeted pro-White Helmets articles and videos – essentially that the problem here was not enough of the right kind of propaganda.
Conspiracy theories especially get under the researchers’ skin, as they have trouble untangling “conspiracy pushers” from those following mainstream news and seem incapable of realizing that people looking for answers in the aftermath of a tragedy are inclined to look in multiple places.
The researchers warn their peers not to minimize the effects of Russian “influence operations” in 2016, even if their analysis shows them to be minimal – clearly, they aren’t looking hard enough (i.e., if you don’t see the effects, it’s not that they aren’t there, it’s that you aren’t using sophisticated enough instruments. May we interest you in this fine Hamilton68 dashboard?).
Scientists are cautioned never to allow their hypothesis to color the way they report the results of their experiments. If the lab doesn’t show something, it isn’t there. But these researchers are not scientists – they, like the New Knowledge “experts” they so breathlessly cite, are propagandists. They are the droids they are looking for. At one point, they even admit that they “wrestl[ed] with creeping doubt and skepticism about our interpretations of [operations promoting progressive values] as problematic – or as operations at all.” Skepticism, it seems, lost.
Social media platforms are warned that their current model of deplatforming people based on “coordinated inauthentic behavior” leaves much to be desired. If they truly want to be ideal handmaidens of the national security state, they must “consider information operations at the level of a campaign and problematize content based on the strategic intent of that campaign.” It’s not whether the information is true, it’s where it came from – and what it might lead to – that matters. Such a model would complete the transformation of platforms into weapons in the state’s arsenal for suppressing dissent, and the researchers acknowledge they might be at odds with “commonly held values like ‘freedom of speech'” (which they also place in quotes), but hey, do you want to root out those Russian influence operations or not? We’ve got an election to win!
When at first you don’t succeed, redefine success. None have heeded this maxim better than the Russiagate crowd and their enablers in the national security state, and academic researchers have long provided the grist for these propaganda mills. But the cheer chutzpah of expanding the definition of disinformation to include truths arranged to have an effect – a definition that could include most of journalism, to say nothing of political speeches and government communications – is unprecedented.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator, working at RT since 2018
Jammu and Kashmir: the Legitimacy of Article 370
Photograph Source: Motohiro Sunouchi – CC BY 2.0
By Nyla Ali Khan | CounterPunch | August 20, 2019
Introduction
The recent unilateral decision of Prime Minister Modi’s government to revoke Article 370, which guaranteed the special status of Jammu and Kashmir; dismemberment of the State, and its diminishment are flagrant violations of the sovereign Constitution of India. These maneuvers jeopardize the federal structure of India. The erosion of the rights and privileges of a State is an unhealthy precedent to set in a diverse and federal country. The current curbing of political and civil rights in Jammu and Kashmir is deplorable.
Historical Perspective
On 26 October 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh signed the “Instrument of Accession” to India, officially ceding to the government of India jurisdiction over defense, foreign affairs and communications. The accession of J & K to India was accepted by Lord Mountbatten with the proviso that once political stability was established in the region, a referendum would be held in which the people of the State would either validate or veto the accession. After signing the Instrument of Accession, the maharaja appointed his political adversary, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, as the head of an interim government.
On 2 November 1947, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, reiterated his government’s pledge to not only the people of Kashmir, but also to the international community, to hold a referendum in Indian and Pakistani-administered Jammu and Kashmir under the auspices of a world body like the United Nations, in order to determine whether the populace preferred to be affiliated with India or Pakistan. Nehru emphasized this commitment several times at public forums over the next few years.
In January 1948 India referred the Kashmir dispute to the United Nations. Prime Minister Nehru took the dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir beyond local and national boundaries by bringing it before the UN Security Council, and seeking a ratification of India’s “legal” claims over Kashmir. The UN reinforced Nehru’s pledge of holding a plebiscite in Kashmir, and in 1948 the Security Council established the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) to play the role of mediator in the Kashmir issue. The UNCIP adopted a resolution urging the government of Pakistan to cease the infiltration of tribal mercenaries and raiders into J & K. It also urged the government of India to demilitarize the State by “withdrawing their own forces from Jammu and Kashmir and reducing them progressively to the minimum strength required for the support of civil power in the maintenance of law and order.” The resolution proclaimed that once these conditions were fulfilled, the government of India would be obligated to hold a plebiscite in the State in order to either ratify or veto the accession of J & K to India.
In the meantime, the Government of Jammu and Kashmir negotiated with the central government to ensure that it would be allowed to function as a fully autonomous unit within the federation. Article 370 of the Constitution of India ensured that apart from defense, foreign affairs, and communications, decisions with regard to other matters would be determined with the consent of the Government of Jammu and Kashmir. There was a reason that special status was guaranteed to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. On 13 July 1950, the new government of J & K, headed by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, made a landmark decision.
“Between 1950 and 1952, 700,000 landless peasants, mostly Muslims in the Valley but including 250,000 lower-caste Hindus in the Jammu region, became peasant-proprietors as over a million acres were directly transferred to them, while another sizeable chunk of land passed to government-run collective farms. By the early 1960s, 2.8 million acres of farmland (rice being the principal crop in the Valley) and fruit orchards were under cultivation, worked by 2.8 million smallholding peasant-proprietor households.” (Bose 2003: 27–28)
This metamorphosis of the agrarian economy had groundbreaking political consequences. This revolutionary measure, which greatly improved the human development index in the State, would not have been possible without Article 370. The political logic of autonomy and Article 370 of the Indian Constitution was necessitated by the need to bring about socioeconomic transformations.
The legislative bill, which had orchestrated this transformation, won the unstinting support of thousands of erstwhile disenfranchised peasants. But displaced landlords and officials in the Dogra regime made no bones about their hatred of the political supremacy of the new class of Kashmiri Muslims. This hatred unleashed a reign of terror and brutality against the Valley’s new political class.
The “defining moment in Jammu and Kashmir’s post-Indian independence history” came in 1950 when disenfranchised peasants “were freed from the shackles of landlords through a law that gave them ownership rights on the land they tilled. . . . The sweeping land reforms under the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act passed on July 13, 1950, changed the complexion of Kashmiri society. The historical image of the emaciated local farmer in tatters, with sunken faces and listless eyes, toiling to fill the granaries of landlords changed overnight into one of a landowner who expected to benefit from the labor he had put in for generations” (Ahmed, F.). This program emphasized the necessity of abolishing exploitative landlordism without compensation and enfranchising tillers by granting them the lands they worked on. Many policy makers in the Indian subcontinent, political scientists, and economists have acknowledged the effectiveness and rigor of land reforms in Jammu and Kashmir, which benefited underprivileged farmers in all three parts of the State—Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh.
In August 1952, the government of J & K reiterated the commitment of to the principles of secularism and democracy which enabled the forging of ties with the Indian nation-state: “The supreme guarantee of our relationship with India is the identity of secular and democratic aspirations, which have guided the people of India as well as those of Jammu and Kashmir in their struggle for emancipation, and before which all constitutional safeguards will take a secondary position.” For the layperson, the “new Kashmir” in which the hitherto peripheralized Muslim population of the Valley and marginalized women would reinsert themselves into the language of belonging a welcome development.
But the nationalist project of the Praja Parishad had sought the subsumption of religious minorities into a centralized and authoritarian state since the 1940s. These integrative and centralist measures were met with massive opposition, which the government of India suppressed with bloody maneuvers. The volcanic nature of the protests in the Valley gave a veneer of legitimacy to its action of large-scale repression of leaders of the Plebiscite Front. Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was also arrested, for the umpteenth time, under the Defense of India Rules, to further hush the voices of dissent.
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah underlined in his letter to Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, founder of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, in February 1953,
When talking about the constitutional aspect, it is sometimes conveniently forgotten that the Praja Parishad wants that Article 370 should be expunged from the Constitution. So far as we are concerned, we have maintained that the special position accorded to the State can alone be the source of a growing unity and closer association between the State and India. The Constituent Assembly of India took note of the special circumstances obtaining in the State and made provisions accordingly.
To entertain the doubt that the Muslims of Kashmir would now give up their secular ideals would be uncharitable, although the statements and the pronouncements made by the leaders of communal parties in India from time to time and the inspiration and guidance they are providing at the moment to the Praja Parishad leadership in Jammu is, no doubt, giving them a rude shock. But let me assure you and the people of India that the Muslims in Kashmir will not falter from their ideals even if they are left alone in this great battle for secularism and human brotherhood.
As I’ve said on other forums, the Constitution of India seeks to guarantee respect for the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, and the integrity of the electoral process. But time and again, provisions of the Constitution of India have been breached in Kashmir, and the ideals that it enshrines have been forgotten. In Kashmir, rights relating to life, liberty, dignity of the people, and freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution, embodied in the fundamental covenants and enforceable by courts of law, have been flouted. The revocation of Article 370, without consultation, makes it clear that the much lauded parliamentary democracy in India has been unable to protect a genuine democratic set-up in Kashmir.
Heads of Governments cannot avoid their ethical and moral responsibilities toward the peoples of the States in a federal country. The lives of those people cannot be torn asunder by paramilitary forces and other “upholders” of the law.
Blow to Kashmiriyat
“Kashmiriyat” was not handed down to me as an unachievable and abstract construct. On the contrary, it was crystallized for me as the eradication of a feudal structure and its insidious ramifications. It was the right of the tiller to the land he worked on. It was the unacceptability of any political solution that did not take the aspirations and demands of the Kashmiri people into consideration. It was the right of Kashmiris to high offices in education, the bureaucracy and government; the availability of medical and educational facilities in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. It was the preservation of literatures and and historical artifacts that defined an important aspect of “Kashmiriyat.” It was the formation of the Constituent Assembly of J & K to institutionalize the Constitution of the State in 1951, which was an enormous leap toward the process of democratization. It was the fundamental right of both women and men to free education up to the university level. It was, constitutionally, equal opportunities afforded to both sexes in the workplace. It was the nurturing of a contact zone in social, political and intellectual ideologies and institutions. It was pride in a cultural identity that was generated in a space created by multiple perspectives.
Trust cannot be won and unity cannot be maintained by the display of national chauvinism and erosion of Kashmiriyat.
Nyla Ali Khan is the author of Fiction of Nationality in an Era of Transnationalism, Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir, The Life of a Kashmiri Woman, and the editor of The Parchment of Kashmir. Nyla Ali Khan has also served as an guest editor working on articles from the Jammu and Kashmir region for Oxford University Press (New York), helping to identify, commission, and review articles. She can be reached at nylakhan@aol.com.
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Are There 50,000 ‘Israeli-born’ Individuals Living in the UK?
By Professor David Miller | August 18, 2026
Recent disclosures by the Zionist regime show that some 2,069 British nationals were serving in the IDF as of March 2025, according to Freedom of Information (FoI) requests submitted to the occupation forces (1,686 dual British-Israeli, plus 383 multinational). We cannot tell from the figures how many of these were already settler colonists and intend to stay in the colony, and how many will return or have returned to the UK. Presumably, those returning to the UK will number far fewer than 2,000, since many are known to have become permanently residents of the colony.
Additionally, the IDF figures only provide a snapshot, and do not tell us how many have served in the Jewish supremacist military either before or after March 2025. One way into the question of how many genocidaires are living in Britain is to ask how many current British residents were born in the Zionist colony. There is data on that, as we shall see. … continue
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