#India voting process

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Archive link because paywall but LOOK WHAT'S IN THE TIMES. CLOWNFALL BEHIND THE SCENES. https://archive.is/GdLCM

Oh DAAAAAAAAMN

God there's so much in this but let's start with:

November 7 I am blessed with the use of a car to share with Commons leader Penny Mordaunt. On its first outing, the government car service sends a very pleasant driver who has clearly never been outside the M25 and is totally unfamiliar with the rural, unlit lanes of west Wales. We crawl along, following the verge in and out of every yard and gateway until we get to a road with white lines, where normality is restored.

Lmao.

BUT HOLY SHIT THERE'S SOME GOLD HERE. My favourite entry:

January 11, 2023 Just before PMQs we get a call to say one of our MPs, Andrew Bridgen, has made a Twitter connection between the vaccine rollout and the Holocaust. No 10 is initially inclined to “demand an apology” but due to Bridgen being an utter knob, we agree the more decisive and meaningful course of action is to suspend the whip with “immediate effect”. The antivaxers go spare; to them our move confirms the Deep State is at work. The reality is he is a malevolent creep whom nobody likes, and we really don’t need him in our party. A massive cheer goes up in the whips’ office when I tell them.

Get fucked Andrew you disgustoid.

Meanwhile:

June 7/8 Harriet Harman calls by to tell me her privileges committee will publish the report into Boris [Johnson] on June 29 and hand it to him on Friday at noon. It will recommend a 20-day suspension, which will almost certainly result in a recall motion and by-election. Brace for impact. I speak to BoJo, who is questioning whether there is any procedural route by which we can kill off the report or at least vote it down. In any normal circumstances, a former PM asking for special treatment would be a big deal but this being Boris, it doesn’t surprise me at all. Worryingly, it doesn’t even annoy me that much either. So I remind him, as nicely as I can, that it was he who set up this process, he who approved its terms of reference and he who accepted Harriet Harman as its chair. “But I was in India and I wasn’t concentrating,” comes the reply. “I left it all to the whips.” Not sure that will wash, even if it were true.

GOD I'm so glad he's gone. Fucking hell, you get away from the crass incompetence of that fucking buffering pig-stuffed buffoon mask for a couple of years and your mind heals and forgets just how bad he was.

July 6 The standards committee publishes its report on Chris Pincher (accused of groping a young man), concluding with an eight-week suspension. He is finished. On the face of it, the sentence seems unbelievably harsh given he has lost his job, all his money and most of his friends. On the other hand, maybe we are all discovering that “squeezing people’s arses” is not acceptable, however fleetingly or however drunken the circumstances.

Yeah, Simon, maybe you are learning sexual harassment is not acceptable, Jesus Christ. I also managed to forget the extent to which Simon Hart is Mammy's Specialest Turd. But that's actually a good thing, because this whole thing is written as him just having the most increasingly stressful year of his entire life as Tory after Tory goes to an orgy and shits on someone's head, or goes to a party dressed as Jimmy Saville and fucks a blow-up doll, or Suella Happens Again. The whole thing is increasingly written like he wants to cry, but also like he's the One Reasonable Man in the whole place; particularly interesting is the way he tries to throw others under the bus when he was all on board with their shit while in power.

Anyway. Christ I'm glad to see the back of them all.

[political-us]

While flying with Trump on Air Force One Sunday, Bessent advised him to pivot toward negotiation talk and to clearly define the endgame, warning that the markets were tanking. Two days later—after efforts by Bessent, Vance, and others—Trump backed down.

U.S. egg prices have hit a record high, now costing $6.23 per dozen — a 5.6% increase from last month.

U.S. CPI inflation fell in March compared to the previous month — the first monthly decline since May 2020.

Apple has shipped 600 tons of iPhones from India in an effort to avoid tariffs, according to Reuters.

The House passed a bill to restrict district court judges from issuing nationwide injunctions. Only one Republican—Mike Turner from Ohio—sided with Democrats in opposing it. The move directly targets judges who previously blocked some of Trump’s policies.

Trump has signed an executive order aimed at the law firm Susman Godfrey, which played a key role in helping Dominion Voting Systems secure a $787 million settlement from Fox News over false claims about the 2020 election.

The DOJ is backing off its case against a man it had labeled an MS-13 leader—an arrest once touted in a major press conference with AG Bondi, Kash Patel, and Glenn Youngkin. But the man's lawyer is urging the judge not to dismiss the charges, worried it could trigger a quick deportation without due process. The administration hasn’t revealed what it plans to do next.

After their first night sleeping outdoors in earthquake-stricken Myanmar, the three-person USAID team sent to assist was met with termination notices the next morning.

According to a memo, the Justice Department is now banning its employees from participating in American Bar Association events. These events have traditionally served as a space for professional growth and idea sharing. The Trump administration argues the ABA is pushing a left-leaning agenda and is frustrated that the organization has sued over suspended USAID contracts.

[read-write-thrive]

part 1 (both girls in their full outfits) ; part 2 (Edwina in several other outfits/sketches) ; part 3 (the companion to this piece aka Edwina getting ready :)

part 4 of my fem!payneland fanart series!!!! as I talked about with the poll, I have quite a few variations of this piece as I couldn’t make up my mind on a few of the elements, but I listened to your feedback and have included them all here !! the winner of the poll is above the cut with the rest of the variations below to hopefully make this not take up too much of your dash lol

lmk what you think - especially people who voted on the poll!! I’ve also included my thought process below the cut since I know y’all are interested :)

- first and foremost: I have absolutely no idea what order someone would get ready in with all these outfit components, so if you���re sitting here like “why is her makeup done when she has to pull a shirt over her head?” or something like that: you’re probably correct but my getting ready process is always chaos and there aren’t exactly articles on this sort of thing

- along with that: her straightening her hair is probably not accurate to how hair works but again I’ve got v little experience to pull from and trying to find a proper reference was a pain in the ass

yes her bra is fully rendered and then got covered up by her arm. I'm still mad that I did that to myself but I like the pose too much to change it so oh well

- (onto actual historical stuff!!)

- her hair is being straightened here despite straight not being in style during this era for several reasons:

1. I based her hair (and a lot of her style, as per part 1) on Rhoda Dakar of the band The Bodysnatchers, which was an all-female band that was part of the ska revival in the late 70s/early 80s. Rhoda Dakar in particular is a British artist (who’s still making music!) with an English mother and Jamaican father—so not only was she one of the only women of color I could find as part of this subgenre/in ths era/with plenty of photo references, but considering Jayden Revri is Jamaican and English (alongside Indian) himself I thought it was fitting! Her Bodysnatchers look is also much more femme leaning than the rest of the band, as well as her hair styled in a way that suggests straightening, so I carried that over to Charlotte here as well.

2. On a related note, there is a clear historical and modern difference in hairstyles worn/made popular/deemed fashionable by non-white versus white individuals and I thought it only appropriate to acknowledge that in my design of her. I even went so far as to research how her mom’s hair may have been styled since I assume that’s who would’ve been teaching her how to care for her hair in the first place. With that, I looked at popular Indian hair trends from the 60s (figuring that’s when Charlotte’s mom could’ve still been in India and following those trends) which also involved a preference for straight/wavy hair, with soft fringe made popular by Sadhana and the styles ranging from long and luscious to styled up into a very 60s beehive. Charlotte could easily also rock a beehive, especially since the 60s revival was a part of the ska revival movement and Dakar herself styled her hair as such, but I figured Charlotte is a little too much of a rebellious teenager to go for a look she’s seen her mom wear!

- her makeup is based off of the different members of The Bodysnatchers as well as other punk/ska fans at the time. The look usually required more blush that what I gave her here, but I wanted to make sure the eyes were the feature (since Charles wears eyeliner himself) and then the lips being any less just looked weird to me. Also, Dakar doesn't seem to wear the same heavy blush that the other members do, which could be a stylistic choice but could also be the potential lack of blush shades that would work well on her skin tone, so I went that route for Charlotte here

- her underwear is all based off of meticulous searching of historical advertisements, though I will admit the sources are (presumably) American since I couldn't find British equivalents (I'm hoping the styles were similar enough...) in particular:

1. Her bra is based off of: Playtex’s New Made for Me, Playtex’s Right For Me, and Playtex’s Thank Goodness It Fits (which are seriously the names of these as per the ads—how creative /s)

2. Her panties (or pants or underwear or whatever term you want to use) are based off of: Sears Best’s Nylon tricot panties, Sears Very Impressive Panties Nylon panties, and JCPenny’s eiderlon fashion panties

3. (In the below variations) Her pantyhose are theoretically based on L’eggs and Spirit by Stevens’s Slim & Slender pantyhose. But, honestly, they’re mostly based on my own experience wearing hose bc almost none of the ads showed how the gusset of the pantyhose actually looked so I needed to fill in the gaps (one of the many reasons I’m still unhappy with them—plus the wrinkles would not look right no matter what I did !!)

4. Her socks are called slouch socks! I don’t have a specific brand for them but the style was all the rage in the 80s-90s (and I want to own some so bad ngl)

- the hair straightener is just a blob based on the reference photo since trying to research historical hair tools was beyond me at the time apparently, but the style of outlet/plug is accurate to Britain in 1989 so there’s that at least (I have no idea why my brain works like this)

- since I talked about it in the poll I feel like I should address it here: technically having a bush was well out of fashion by 1989 due to the grooming boom and new types of hair removal popular throughout the 80s and 90s. However, she’s wearing multiple layers over it and is technically a teenager (in an abusive household and a catholic all-girls school, at that) so I kept going back and forth on it. It won the poll so it’s in the main post, but you’ll see in the below variations that I really went back and forth on it. that being said I do think it’s interesting given her nylon pants being semi-sheer besides at the gusset, so I’m not mad at it. plus I figured she was definitely shaving her legs/underarms, so maybe that balances it out ?

and finally here’s the other seven variations of this piece :) lmk what you think!!

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Excerpts:

The centre of everything is a long-running row over oil exploration in the Foz do Amazonas. BP and the French oil company Total used to hold most of these rights, but they baulked at the political and environmental challenge of drilling so close to the world’s biggest centre of terrestrial biodiversity. Instead, Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras, stepped up. For Lula – and the senators in nearby regions – that meant potential votes, jobs and export earnings. The only thing standing in their way was the environment ministry, which has delayed a licence for years due to the risks of a possible spill in such an ecologically sensitive area.

That handbrake was lifted earlier this week, when the head of the environmental regulator, Ibama, ignored the warnings of 29 expert advisers by moving on to the next stage of the approval process for operations in the Foz do Amazonas. This capitulation followed pressure from Congress and the president.

This was followed by the biggest legislative setback for the environment in more than 40 years. To the delight of the mining, construction and farming industries, the senate has passed a long-pending bill that strips a range of environmental licensing powers from Silva’s ministry. This piece of legislation – dubbed the devastation bill by opponents – allows companies to self-license or avoid environmental licensing for road construction, dam-building and other projects. It is a shift of control from the representatives of the people to the executives of big companies.

Lula could yet wield a veto on this bill. But so far the president’s response has been tepid. His party has a weak presence in congress, so he depends on a broad and fractious coalition, many of whose members are enmeshed in agribusiness or mining. Next year’s presidential election seems to be weighing on his mind more than November’s Cop30 climate summit in Belém.

At the Amazon Summit in Belém two years ago, he declined to sign up to Colombian president Gustavo Petro’s calls for a fossil-free rainforest. Soon after, at Cop28 in Dubai, his government shocked many of its supporters by announcing it would join the Opec+ oil cartel. Lula can argue that this is pragmatism as Brazil depends on petroleum sales for a growing share of its GDP. Fossil fuel realpolitik is likely to be evident at a Brics summit in Rio de Janeiro in July, where the Brazilian president will rub shoulders with China’s Xi Jinping of China, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, India’s Narendra Modi and other world leaders.

His base – the working class and poor – are already suffering the brunt of climate impacts. The south of Brazil has been deluged by devastating floods. The northern Amazon has been stricken by record droughts and fires.

[mariacallous]

A new Pew Research Center poll finds partisan polarization among Americans at its highest level in decades. As just the latest example, House Republicans passed a budget bill without a single Democratic vote. But there is at least one issue on which both sides of the aisle can increasingly agree: The United States needs to re-embrace nuclear energy and retake its role as a global leader in nuclear power technology.

Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump signed four executive orders aimed at dramatically increasing nuclear power generation in the United States. While those orders correctly identify several areas for reform, the executive branch cannot overcome existing barriers on its own. Democrats and Republicans in Congress need to strengthen efforts to build a reinvigorated nuclear sector in the United States, as exemplified by a bipartisan bill introduced in May aimed at developing an export strategy for civilian nuclear energy.

Operationalizing a U.S. nuclear resurgence requires agreeing on an ambitious goal and working together to realize it. Just as Trump in his first term announced Operation Warp Speed to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to market, both parties should set aside partisan differences and back a Nuclear Operation Warp Speed with a target of building 20 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity by 2035.

Nuclear energy is undergoing a resurgence. Beyond the growing recognition among environmentalists that curbing greenhouse gas emissions will be easier and cheaper if nuclear is part of the mix, there are two additional reasons for the focus on nuclear energy that have broad bipartisan support.

First, after two decades of flat electricity demand, it is set to surge in the United States in the coming years to meet the demands of data centers for artificial intelligence, in addition to the electrification of cars, heating systems, and industrial processes. According to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), electricity demand from data centers worldwide is set to more than double by 2030. Given the need for data centers to rely on large quantities of power that runs 24/7 and 365 days per year, nuclear energy’s high reliability makes it particularly attractive.

For all the attention paid to surging natural gas investment to meet the power needs of AI, the report finds that by 2035 nuclear power will contribute just as much as gas to meeting increases in data center electricity demand—and the longer-term potential is even larger given the longer time frame for advanced nuclear technology to come online. Big tech firms, including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, have all signed deals to buy new nuclear power for data centers—and even to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island. Just last week, Meta signed a 20-year deal with Constellation to buy power from a nuclear plant in Illinois that was at risk of prematurely closing.

Second, the United States’ geostrategic influence and national security are undermined by ceding nuclear leadership to Russia and China. Russia is building more nuclear power plants abroad today than any other country, including in Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Iran, and Turkey. When domestic construction is included, China leads the world in the build-out of nuclear power. Of the 58 reactors currently under construction in 17 countries worldwide, 80 percent are of Russian or Chinese origin. These include not only traditional reactor designs, but also advanced nuclear technologies that will dominate future growth in the nuclear energy market, including small modular reactors.

Both Beijing and Moscow view nuclear energy leadership as a geostrategic priority. They provide vast state financing to state-owned nuclear companies, which then offer emerging and developing countries low-interest loans and contracts that allow them to build, own, and operate the plants. In this way, China and Russia not only make it hard for companies from other nations to compete. They also ensure that buyers become indebted to them—and dependent on their expertise and supply of nuclear fuel. These arrangements allow China and Russia to deepen their economic and political influence over the countries buying their technology. The United States prides itself on its safety standards, security culture, and nonproliferation stance, but when the United States is not the technology supplier, it does not spread those standards, cultures, and policies to the purchasing countries.

To put the goal of 20 gigawatts (GW) of new nuclear power in the United States by 2035 in context, this compares to current U.S. nuclear generation capacity of around 100 GW. Although only about 6 GW of new capacity has been added over the past 35 years, more than 50 GW were added in the 1980s, showing that major buildouts have been done before. While the goal is ambitious, fast-tracking even a handful of initial reactors to be under construction by 2030 would build the momentum for additional projects by establishing robust supply chains and a ready workforce.

While the U.S.-China race for AI leadership demands power be added to the grid more quickly than 2035, focusing exclusively on speed would lock the United States into currently operating nuclear technology and forgo the longer-term opportunity to build leadership in advanced nuclear technologies that will take time to develop.

Elements of Trump’s executive orders offer promising avenues for reforming U.S. nuclear policy and align broadly with bipartisan reforms set forth in the 2024 ADVANCE Act. Thoughtful implementation will be necessary to avoid introducing delays due to regulatory churn and undermining necessary safeguards, nonproliferation controls, and public confidence in nuclear energy.

A successful Nuclear Operation Warp Speed should bring down costs, eliminate delays, and ensure a secure fuel supply. Today, the key challenge for nuclear energy is cost. The causes of delays and cost overruns include immature designs and supply chains, regulatory burdens, other first-of-a-kind issues, and megaproject management failures. When these issues are addressed, analysis shows that the costs of nuclear energy deployed at scale can compete favorably with other clean energy sources on a power generation basis. What’s more, the overall system costs for generation and transmission of low-carbon electric power supply are much lower when nuclear energy is included.

The list of steps the Trump administration and Congress must take to overcome these challenges is long. It requires addressing issues ranging from spent nuclear fuel disposition to workforce development to fuel supply. To start, policymakers should focus on three key policy reforms: financing, regulation, and exports.

First, the government should increase financial support for new nuclear reactors and fuel supply infrastructure. Doing so is justified to value the carbon-free electricity; to compete with extensive Russian and Chinese government support; to overcome the extra costs of first-of-a-kind projects to restart a shuttered U.S. nuclear industry; and to address the mismatch between a nuclear plant’s 60- to 80-year lifespan and the 30-year cost recovery period expected by financial markets.

One promising approach is a milestone-based payment model, similar to that used by NASA to jump-start a private space transportation sector in the United States. Existing loan guarantees and tax credits are effective tools, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright was right to encourage Congress to retain current nuclear tax incentives. The Defense Production Act is also a powerful tool to secure the nuclear fuel supply, as proposed in Trump’s executive orders. Federal agencies can use government procurement of future power generation to stimulate demand.

Second, the federal government should reduce nuclear regulatory and permitting burdens while protecting public health and safety. Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) should streamline the environment review process, as a major new report from the Center on Global Energy Policy explains. Trump’s orders also direct NRC reform—including streamlining regulations, establishing fixed deadlines for reviews, reorganizing the structure, reducing staffing, and establishing a process for more and faster licensing—although in ways that risk undermining the efficiency and effectiveness of the agency if they are implemented without adequate care and independence.

Congress should eliminate the so-called mandatory hearing, which only adds time and cost to new reactor licensing. The NRC should improve its procedures based on the lessons of the last U.S. nuclear reactors to come online in Georgia in 2023 and 2024, which ran far over cost and schedule.

Third, the U.S. government should support its nuclear industry’s global leadership by providing diplomatic support and export financing for companies building projects abroad. Bipartisan bills such as the Civil Nuclear Export Act, as well as Trump’s new executive orders, aim to increase the Export-Import Bank’s financing capabilities for U.S. nuclear projects in other countries. In its reauthorization of the Development Finance Corporation this year, Congress should give the agency more resources to expand its nuclear expertise and its investment authorities.

Finally, the United States should keep pressing the World Bank to lift its restrictions on financing nuclear projects and develop its capacity for assistance in this area, as World Bank President Ajay Banga suggested earlier this year.

In today’s new age of great-power competition, the United States faces three related threats: competition from China and Russia for leadership in the construction and export of nuclear technology; competition for leadership in the transformational new technology of artificial intelligence, which requires vast amounts of electricity; and competition for leadership in the clean energy technologies that will be necessary to address the threat of climate change in the decades to come. Nuclear energy is key to meeting all three competitive challenges.

Democrats and Republicans should continue making nuclear energy a rare bright spot of bipartisan cooperation, working together to build out nuclear power, reinvigorate the U.S. nuclear industry, and assert leadership in advanced nuclear technology.

[mohabbaat]

Still everyone knows kuch bhi hoon jaye PM kisi ko banayege aur bana bhi diya toh itna easy nahi hoga for india alliance

Dusra this time BJP ke liye kuch bhi easy nahi hai na bill pass , aur na changes toh 5 years will be difficult for everyone

Aur logo ne toh casting, religion pe vote de diya toh kya hi hoga

agreed. india alliance is vvv unstable. even if they win the government will not be able to do much. for one, the pm/cabinet ministers selection process itself will be messy. but if they lose and manage to stay together they will be a formidable opposition. bjp won't be able to take any decision unilaterally. so a win is a win!!!

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

Premise of a fictional movie (part 5):

A stand-alone sequel to the 2016 remake of “The Magnificent Seven”. Taking place two years after the first movie, the focus is on a Lakota tribe that is being targeted by a racist group of settlers. After the leader of the settlers dies in a mysterious incident, the settlers put the blame on the Lakota tribe. They kidnap the chief’s daughter (played by Amber Midthunder) and hold her hostage.

Knowing that they are outnumbered and outgunned, the Lakota chief’s son (played by Dakota Beavers) heads out and recruits seven other fighters for the rescue mission. The odds are still stacked against them, but they will do what it takes to rescue the daughter.

They are…The Magnificent Eight.

Current body count:

1) The city slicker who is trying to prove that he’s tough (played by Joe Keery) is the first one to die in the movie. After successfully rescuing the chief’s daughter, he is shot by a sniper.

2) The Irish immigrant who joins purely for fun (played by Domhnall Gleeson) is the second one to die in the movie. He is killed by a Gatling gun crew that was hired by the racist settlers.

3) The retired outlaw-turned-peaceful rancher (played by Jon Bernthal) is the third one to die in the movie. After going on a rampage, he is killed after getting shot in the back.

4) The bounty hunter suffering from PTSD (played by Don Cheadle) is the fourth one to die in the movie. He takes control of the Gatling gun and takes out most of the racist settlers before being shot multiple times.

[tomorrowusa]

This is a good idea...

Ban fossil fuel ads to save climate, says UN chief

Tobacco ads were banned on TV and radio in the early 1970s in the United States. That began a process of denormalization of tobacco which has continued in the years since then.

Climate change likely played a role in India's national election.

The hidden story behind India’s remarkable election results: lethal heat

The Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), led by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has won more seats than the opposition alliance, and yet its victory tastes of defeat. Why? In the days leading to the election, the BJP’s main slogan had been Abki baar, 400 Paar, a call to voters to send more than 400 of its candidates to the 543-member parliament. This slogan, voiced by Modi at his campaign rallies, set a high bar for the party. Most exit polls had predicted a massive victory for the BJP – and now the results, with that party having won only 240 seats, suggest that the electorate has sent a chastening message to the ruling party and trimmed its hubris. [ ... ] People in Patna voted on 1 June, the last day of the seven-phase polling schedule. In Patna, the temperature had hovered above 40C. Local newspapers carried government ads exhorting voters to exercise their franchise, as well as half-page ads from the health ministry offering advice about how to avoid heatstroke. In the days leading to the voting in Patna, there were reports of personnel at polling stations dying from the heat. In the nation’s capital, Delhi, there were protests over water shortages. Last week, the temperature in Delhi hit 49.9C.

For the Celsius-challenged, 49.9° C = 121.8° F. That's just 0.2° F short of the all time record high temperature in Phoenix, Arizona which reputedly has "dry" heat.

As it turned out the ruling BJP did win the election but will be able to govern only with the help of electoral allies. The BJP had been boasting about getting 400 seats in the 543 seat Lok Sabha - the lower house of parliament. It ended up with just 240 with its allies winning 53 for a total of 293 seats. It is a modest working majority but is way down from the 353 seats won by the BJP & allies in the previous election.

Climate was certainly not the only issue in the election but experiencing a severe heat wave in which people were dropping dead at polling places is bound to have an impact. Politicians in India may now be more open to moving away from fossil fuels. The opposition would be wise to make climate change a bigger issue.

[leam1983]

The Election - FAQ

You're Canadian; why do you care so much?

We have a saying, up here: The USA get a cold and Canada sneezes. In more straightforward terms, what affects you is, in some other shape or form, going to affect us as well. Our antivax waves were spurred on by American campaigns, our last two elections were marked by the presence of fringe Manosphere and generally misogynist groups that claimed to speak for "family values", and our own Right-wing politicians are only just starting to realize that when filibusters and name-calling in Parliament fail, landing direct threats on an Instagram post works just as well. We have the same bigots, the same zealots and the same Christofascists as you do - they're just slightly less organized by virtue of Canada being a less polarized society than America. Our big points of division are mostly linguistic, with a second one consisting of the Prairies' redistributed wealth, thanks to their rich petroleum industries.

So... Canada is basically America Lite, then?

Yes, absolutely. We're less polarized, but we have the same problems, and we tend to think of America as being Canada's shadow - i.e. what Canada could be if it had more of an Interventionist policy and were less Progressive than it already is. We share a lot of the same problems, however, such as the long-delayed restitution efforts towards Native populations, and the myriad scandals involving the abuse forced on Native kids to "christianize" them, in generations past.

We're the same as you, just - a little less bossy. We're America's quieter, shyer cousin, and we've got a ton of skeletons in our closet. So, considering, when something goes wrong in Uncle Sam's yard, we can expect a few bones to pop up in our turf, too.

Okay, so... What? You'll get nicer versions of Trump?

Something like that. We have a developed anti-trans and anti-woke contingent, but it's mostly limited to the Prairies. Head for the Maritimes, and you enter areas of the country that are staunchly liberal in structure (e.g. Quebec). The local Conservatives' bugaboos tend to be fiscal, which is a little bit more tolerable than attacks based on a person's lifestyle, but we do have our own brewing and growing basin of anti-DEI sentiment, as well as misogynist types aplenty. If you've followed the news, then you probably know that Canada and India are at odds on a few key questions, which has fostered resentment between groups outside of the Indian diaspora, and Indians themselves. As you'd expect, even groups that aren't related but that get tossed in by ignorant locals, like the Sikh, also needlessly get a bad rep.

For the most part, our "Trump" is gearing up to be Pierre Poilievre, a Calgary native who's mostly been campaigning on his, well, not being Justin Trudeau. He mostly promises to redress the Federal budget, cut taxes - and to catch up on the lack of windfall by slashing into Liberal and NPD-backed programs that tended to veer towards more Progressive views. Doubling import taxes are seen as a win, while dental credits helping younger families cover basic oral care were seen as driving inflation up - and slashed. They've audited the ArriveCAN program, which is designed to make re-entry into the country by those born here a tad easier, by driving part of the passport-screening process digitally. A few weeks into the audit, everyone knew they were doing this to stall the program and to effectively mess with the current Liberal cabinet. Poilievre's also used an ad block paid for to promote a home-building bill in order to depict Justin and his father, Pierre-Elliott Trudeau, as Marxists.

If you know anything about Canadian history, you know Social Democracy has nothing to do with Marxism. He's also voted against an aid package destined for Ukraine, citing that Kyiv's downtrodden would be somehow forced to pay for our newfangled Carbon Tax, if Zelenskyy received the shipment.

I could go on, but you get the gist of it. He's not at Trump's level of sheer rhetorical abhorrence, but he gets there, so to speak. And with Trump in the White House and Trudeau losing support and being rocked by a non-confidence motion, of late, this little shit's in the best possible position to pounce.

Trump's strategy for tariffs is likely to hurt the loonie, which will drive inflation up in Canada. I wouldn't be surprised if Poilievre brought it up as a failure of Justin Trudeau's government, and made it a leading campaign point. It's not the other guy's blithe disregard for the law, but it's arrogant sophistry, nevertheless.

It's not that far off, in my book. Trump is going to love Poilievre, as he'll have good synergy well with him, while also being just that smidge more likeable. He'll be a great way for the Trump brand to make in-roads in the Great White North, for his brand of discontent to brew in my back yard - and then spill back into yours.

It's not just one guy, though, right?

Of course not. You might've heard about the Freedom Convoy, a group of truckers that held antivax beliefs and who wanted the government to life health guidelines and restrictions earlier, in the later days of the pandemic. Poilievre is the nice, pretty, polite and regimented spokesperson for every free-wheelin' uncle who wants to keep guzzling diesel like it's water while never having received a single jab since before Woodstock - and they've got their meaner, nastier mouthpieces. The more abusive shitheads were quiet during the Biden administration, for the most part, but they ran rampant during Trump's last presidency. Think every juiced-up man-child that thinks pronouns are the world's greatest evil, for instance; the exact type that lobs death threats on a Facebook Live and then hides behind social commentary.

We'll see more of those, guaranteed. All we need is one guy with a shred of political acumen in the lot, and the fuse is lit. It's lit before - one of our more notorious Union locals was publicly known as the "back-breaking" type... Power to the people, as long as that power means keeping Trans people in their AMAB and AFAB bathrooms...

None of that is a serious, structural threat to democracy as we know it, but erosion should be as much a concern as any intent to blow base charges off of the structural pillars, as it were.

So, you'll be okay?

Sort of, excerpt how for every move Trump and his cronies will attempt, someone's going to be over my shoulder, obsessively taking notes. And I do not like where this leads.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Agents of India and their proxies allegedly meddled in the 2022 election of Pierre Poilievre as Conservative Party Leader as part of a larger effort to cozy up to politicians of all parties, according to a source with top-secret clearance. The source said the Canadian Security Intelligence Service learned that Indian agents were involved in raising money and organizing within the South Asian community for Mr. Poilievre during the leadership race, which he won handily. But the CSIS assessment did not indicate that this effort was done in a sweeping and highly organized way, the source said. Mr. Poilievre won on the first ballot with 68 per cent of the vote. CSIS also did not have evidence that Mr. Poilievre or members of his inner circle were aware of the alleged actions of India’s agents and their proxies, said the source, who has national security clearance to see top secret reports. CSIS did not share this information with Mr. Poilievre, the source said, because he does not have the necessary security clearance to access secret documents and receive classified briefings on foreign-interference activities in Canada. Mr. Poilievre is the only federal party leader who has declined an offer to obtain a security clearance. Sam Lilly, a spokesman for the Conservative Leader, said Mr. Poilievre’s leadership race followed all relevant rules and laws. The public inquiry into foreign interference, which held hearings in 2024 and was headed by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, cited China and India as the main foreign-interference actors in Canada, saying they use diplomats and proxies to meddle in Canadian domestic affairs. In regard to India, Justice Hogue said in her final report in January that proxy agents clandestinely provide “illicit financial support to various Canadian politicians in an attempt to secure the election of pro-India candidates or gain influence over candidates who take office.” Justice Hogue added, however, that “the intelligence does not necessarily indicate that the elected officials or candidates involved were aware of the interference attempts, nor were the attempts necessarily successful.” In a statement Monday, CSIS spokesperson Lindsay Sloane said that the agency testified during the Hogue inquiry that there was no reason to believe “impacted candidates would have been aware of the alleged support” from India. [...]

When he launched his campaign in the federal election that was called on Sunday, Mr. Poilievre told reporters that he doesn’t trust the Liberals with a security clearance and noted the obligations of a clearance would restrict his ability to discuss and hold the government to account. “What I am not going to do is go into a politically directed process by the Liberals that they use to decide what I can see and say and comment on,” he said. He said CSIS is free to brief him directly if the agency feels it’s warranted.

In testimony before the Hogue inquiry in October, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed to the NSICOP report on the 2022 Conservative leadership contest, criticizing Mr. Poilievre for showing “no curiosity or openness in trying to figure out what happened or whether someone was compromised or whether a foreign country impacted those leadership races.”

god Poilievre is stupid

[particularj]

The UN Chief has invoked Article 99 of the charter, something that has not been done since 1971, during a particularly bloody phase of India-Pakistan fighting that resulted in the establishment of Bangladesh.

It calls for an immediate ceasefire under international law, to be voted on by the Security Council.

A couple things could happen:

-If the US votes it down or vetos, it signals what I think is the end of international rule since WWII. A single country being able to stop enforcement of international law to at the highest order so that a genocide may continue would be a death knell to the flimsy frame upholding current international politics and decorum.

-If the US does not somehow block this move, Israel potentially could be charged with war crimes if they continue to fire upon Gaza. It’s unclear what will happen from there, since that is a long process and over 17,000 are already dead in Gaza in less than 60 days.

In any case, I suspect that Netanyahu is being set up to be the fall guy for all of Israel’s actions. A couple far right cabinet members may go with him. Think, essentially, what is happening to Trump or what did happen to Milosevic. The occupationist establishment is willing to sacrifice an aging maniac to avoid any real consequences to Israel as a whole. This gives them time to continue expanding into the West Bank, control Gaza so it remains a disaster zone, and wait for an opportunity to push further next time Hamas or another entity that arises from this dares to fight back.

Netanyahu’s government already responded, saying a ceasefire is unacceptable and calling the UN Sec. General’s letter is a “new moral low” and shows their “bias” against Israel, that they will not stop until Hamas is defeated (something that is very unlikely through military action and is really an excuse to commit genocide, kill UN officials, kill journalists, and destroy civil and resistance infrastructures.)

Don’t stop taking about Palestine. Don’t stop talking about Sudan. Bring attention to these atrocities and demand action / donate to relief / spread the word / protest in any way you can.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

How to Understand Brazil’s Stance on Venezuela’s Election

Lula’s policy is an attempt to exert influence over Brazil’s neighbor, but the recent past suggests this may have limited effect.

In the aftermath of what looks to have been a blatantly fraudulent election in Venezuela on July 28, the administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has decided to join Mexico and Colombia to help facilitate a dialogue between the Maduro administration and the opposition.

This has reignited familiar discussions about Brazil’s foreign policy strategy. Similarly to its response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Brazil has sought to craft a “neutral strategy,” predictably enraging those who say the facts are too clear to justify fence-sitting. Thirty former Latin American presidents recently exhorted Lula to take a tougher stance to defend democracy in Venezuela. Be it growing tensions between the West and China, the war between Russia and Ukraine, or Venezuela’s descent into full-blown dictatorship, Brazil—just like other large powers in the Global South, such as India or Indonesia—often opts for an ambiguous stance to keep all doors open. This is often described as “pragmatism” by its supporters and decried as hypocritical or morally questionable by critics.

Those opposed to Lula’s strategy of seeking to persuade Venezuelan electoral authorities to release the vote tally sheets before deciding whether to accept Maduro’s claim of victory see it as playing into the hands of Venezuela’s president. After all, calling for an “impartial verification of the results” in a country without properly functioning checks and balances or an independent electoral justice system implicitly ends up lending an autocratic government a veneer of legitimacy, as if an impartial verification were possible. Lula has a history of making similar remarks about Russia, such as calling for an independent investigation into the death, earlier this year, of Putin opponent Alexei Navalny, who endured conditions in prison that have been described as amounting to torture.

In addition, the initiative by Brazil, Colombia and Mexico certainly helps Maduro buy time as he hopes the international community will move on once the next crisis emerges someplace else, repeating a strategy he has successfully pursued for years. Lula’s off-the-cuff description of the Venezuelan elections as a “standard and orderly” process and the enthusiastic support of much of the Workers Party for Venezuela’s dictator substantiated Lula’s critics’ position. For them, Brazil was unwilling to condemn Maduro’s transition to “Ortega-style” rule, inadvertently helping Maduro avoid broader diplomatic isolation in the West and ultimately being Maduro’s “useful idiot.” Lula’s diplomatic advisor Celso Amorim’s comment that he had “no confidence” in the vote tallies provided by the opposition is likely to deepen this type of criticism further.

Those who defend Lula’s strategy, on the other hand, question the rush to denounce Maduro and say Brazil’s president is just being prudent. The Brazilian government’s argument is that cutting all diplomatic ties with Caracas would simply deepen Venezuela’s isolation, pushing it even closer to the likes of Russia, Iran and China. It’s an argument that deserves attention. Brazilian diplomats rightly point out that the strategy by Western and Latin American countries of recognizing former opposition leader Juan Guiadó a few years ago failed spectacularly and forced governments into awkwardly reestablishing ties to the Venezuelan regime as Maduro’s hold on power proved more resilient than anticipated. Finally, with both the United States and European governments facing other geopolitical challenges higher up on the list of priorities, having Brazil take the lead on the thankless task of dealing with the crisis in Venezuela has been welcomed by several Western nations.

Continue reading.

[ajmal-v]

Understanding the Lok Sabha Elections: A Comprehensive Guide for Political Science Students

The Lok Sabha elections, a pivotal event in India’s democratic framework, offer a rich field of study for political science students. Since India’s independence in 1952, these elections have been a cornerstone of the country’s democratic process, shaping its political landscape and governance.

Key Stakeholders in the Lok Sabha Elections

The Lok Sabha elections involve a diverse range of stakeholders, each playing a crucial role in the electoral process. These include the Election Commission of India, which oversees the conduct of elections, and the political parties and candidates who vie for the electorate’s votes.

The voters themselves, the media, civil society organizations, security forces, and observers/international agencies also play significant roles. Each stakeholder has a unique part in shaping the election’s outcome and, by extension, the country’s political future.

The Lok Sabha Election Process

Understanding the Lok Sabha election process is fundamental to grasping the complexities of India’s democratic governance. The process involves several stages:

Electoral Constituencies: The country is divided into various electoral constituencies, each represented by a Member of Parliament.

Voter Registration: Eligible citizens are registered as voters.

Nomination of Candidates: Political parties or independent candidates file their nominations for the elections.

Campaigning: Candidates and parties campaign to win the electorate’s favor.

Voting: Registered voters cast their votes on Election Day.

Counting of Votes and Formation of Government: Votes are counted, and the party or alliance with the majority of seats forms the government.

Focus Areas for Political Science Students

Political science students studying the Lok Sabha elections should focus on several key areas to understand the complexities of democratic governance and political evolution. These include learning about electoral systems, political parties and alliances, election monitoring and reform, and voter behavior and participation.

By studying these areas, students can gain a comprehensive understanding of the Lok Sabha elections, equipping them with the knowledge to analyze and interpret the dynamics of India’s political landscape. To know more, read this blog

[news-of-the-day]

5/28/24

A massive landslide in Papua New Guinea buried possibly 2000 people last Friday. Hope of finding survivors is rapidly diminishing. The country is requesting the UN help coordinate resources to help, like heavy machinery to move debris, drones to map instability, extra manpower, etc.

Israel is pushing into Rafah in the face of the International Court of Justice demanding that Israel stop. An airstrike hit a tent camp that killed 45 people, and Netanyahu made a very rare concession that was a mistake, but considering, you know, all the other death it seems odd he chose this incident specifically. The Pentagon said it was suspending humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza after the floating pier it used was damaged as well as several vessels were beached due to strong currents and bad weather.

Closing statements were made at the Trump hush money trial, and it will now go to the jury.

The DNC is holding a "virtual roll call" to nominate Biden. Ohio said its ballot deadline was August 7th and the DNC convention starts on August 19th, so then people would not be able to vote for him in Ohio if the DNC doesn't expedite the process. In reality Biden has more or less been voted in as the Democratic candidate, but isn't officially until the convention when states send representatives to vote him in. Conventions are vestiges of when candidates were chosen in "smoke-filled rooms" by party top brass, but it's a way to hype up voters.

South Africa is having its elections tomorrow. Mandela's African National Congress party (ANC) has held a solid majority since apartheid ended, but massive corruption in recent years may topple it. The country has had enough political assassinations post-apartheid that it has its own wikipedia page, but for this upcoming election, the killings seem to be ramping up.

The military controlling Burkina Faso is extending its control for an additional five years before relinquishing control back to civilian rule. The country had two coups in 2022. Who knows if the transition will actually happen.

Mexico City announced it could run out of water in a month due to three years of drought.

Last February a forest fire killed 137 people in Chile. Over the weekend a firefighter and forestry official were arrested for starting it.

A fire tore through a newborns hospital in India, killing seven babies.

NYT 2) BBC, AP, Washington Post 3) AP 4) Politico 5) BBC, Washington Post 6) Al Jazeera 7) Marketplace 8) WION 9) Hindustan Times

[mariacallous]

In 2017, Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair cofounded the fact-checking website AltNews in India. Almost immediately, the pair were targeted with persistent and vicious attacks from the far-right news website OpIndia. Many of the attacks claimed that Zubair was a Rohingya Muslim who illegally migrated to India and that his cousin was a rapist. In several headlines, the site described Zubair as an “Islamist” spreading fake news.

This wasn’t far off from OpIndia’s other coverage: In addition to routinely attacking journalists and news sites critical of the government, OpIndia spreads conspiracies and, at times, outright disinformation, particularly about the country’s minority Muslim population. Founded in 2014, OpIndia is regularly name-checked by leading lawmakers in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the site admits it is funded in part by ads run by the BJP. As hundreds of millions of Indians vote in elections across the country, critics fear that OpIndia’s election-related disinformation and overt support of the Modi government could further undermine trust in the democratic process. Already, the website has echoed Modi’s widely criticized description of the Muslim vote as “vote jihad.”

Yet despite this, US tech companies, which have rules against hate speech and disinformation, continue to platform OpIndia and, in some cases, allow it to continue to make money through advertising. OpIndia has a robust presence on Facebook, Instagram, and X. Additionally, a new report, shared exclusively with WIRED, has found that Google’s ad platform is being used to partially fund OpIndia’s operation.

“In an increasingly polarized space, they create a vicious narrative against you,” Sinha tells WIRED. “All of this is narrative building. Their job is to defame anyone who's critical of the government, and that's what they do.”

Despite repeated efforts by activists to defund the site—and the fact that publications that have partnered with a Google-supported election fact-checking initiative, Shakti, have fact-checked OpIndia’s articles and found it routinely publishes fake news—OpIndia continues to operate thanks in part to ads that Google’s ad exchange platform places next to its content. In 2019, Poynter’s International Fact Checking Network, which accredits publications as trustworthy arbiters of information, rejected OpIndia’s application.

“Google’s own publisher policies prohibit the monetization of content that incites hatred, incitement of racism, promoting discrimination of an individual or group,” says Sarah Kay Wiley, director of policy and partnerships at Check My Ads, a nonprofit digital advertising watchdog organization and author of the new report. “Google also says that they don't monetize or work with publishers that make claims that are false and could significantly undermine trust in an election or democratic process.”

Ad exchanges allow publishers to sell ad space and advertisers to buy it through an entirely automated process that happens in the split seconds before a website loads. Ad sellers and buyers set limits for price and spending, with Google taking a cut of all transactions. Because of the automated nature of the process, advertisers likely don’t realize that their products are showing up next to hateful and misleading content.

Other ad exchanges such as Magnite have discontinued working with OpIndia. If Google were to stop working with OpIndia, says Wiley, that “would definitely have a material impact.”

On Facebook, OpIndia runs pages in English and Hindi, with 310,000 followers and 431,000 followers in each language, respectively. Both pages list their administrator as Aadhyaasi Media and Content Services Private Limited, which owns OpIndia.

On its Hindi page, OpIndia has shared stories promoting the “love jihad�� conspiracy theory, which asserts that Muslim men are trying to marry, seduce, or kidnap Hindus in order to force them to convert and create a demographic shift in Hindu-majority India, and has promoted false claims, including that a new inheritance law would reallocate wealth from Hindus to Muslims. Meta spokesperson Erin McPike did not comment on whether this content violated Meta’s policies, nor on whether Meta takes into account the violations of the Hindi page when assessing the English page.

These narratives then get picked up and spread on other platforms, like X and Telegram, says Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, an analyst with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “In some of these places there’s even more explicit calls for violence against Muslims or for the removal of Muslims,” he says. The site has international appeal as well: WIRED was able to find OpIndia articles shared in non-Indian, right-wing channels on Telegram, including a pro-Kremlin channel with over 1.3 million subscribers and numerous conspiracy channels with hundreds of thousands of followers.

The site is also highly active on the social media platform X with the official OpIndia account, which has 688,000 subscribers. OpIndia appears to pay for X Premium, giving it a blue checkmark, but did not respond to whether it subscribes to the service. WIRED has identified at least half a dozen OpIndia writers, columnists, and editors, including editor in chief Nupur Sharma, who has more than 680,000 followers, who appear to be subscribed to X Premium.

Sharma did not respond to a question about OpIndia monetizing its content via X Premium, and the company itself also failed to respond.

“It’s a hyper-partisan, right-wing outlet that set themselves up by saying that mainstream news media in India have a liberal bias, very similar to what American right-wing outlets say about professional journalism in America,” says Kalyani Chadha, an associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University who published an in-depth report in 2020 on India’s right-wing media ecosystem that included OpIndia. “They bill themselves as a news outlet, but there's not a lot of original reporting. A lot of it is commentary and opinion.”

In addition to Sinha and Zubair, OpIndia has regularly targeted journalists and outlets it sees as “far left.” In one piece, the site’s staff listed the Indian journalists and publications supposedly associated with billionaire George Soros, who has long been the target of conspiracies from the global far right. In another, they attacked veteran journalist Ravish Kumar, falsely accusing him of harboring sympathies for the perpetrators of a 2019 rape case. OpIndia has also spent years attacking Raqib Hameed Naik, an Indian journalist and the founder of India Hate Lab, which documents instances of hate speech and conspiracies that target India’s minority communities. This, he says, was made all the harder by government officials sharing the articles.

“The goal is to amplify this disinformation, and you have BJP leaders sharing this, so people think it’s authentic,” says Naik. “In the long term, this kind of builds the case against a critic, a journalist, that this person is bad, because there is reporting against them.”

When WIRED contacted OpIndia for comment, Sharma responded to our emailed questions by posting her responses on X.

When asked about hate speech and disinformation on her site, Sharma wrote: “Our critics are mostly Islamists, Jihadis, Terrorists, Leftists and their sympathizers—like yourself. We don't particularly care about any of them.” She then added that “Islamophobia does not exist” and pointed to an OpIndia article that outlines her position. Sharma added that it was “none of your concern” when asked if OpIndia was funded by the BJP. Sharma’s post also tagged one of the authors of this story, who then faced a torrent of abuse from Sharma’s followers.

For years, activists and researchers have tried to highlight the problematic content published by OpIndia. A 2020 campaign from UK-based advocacy group Stop Funding Hate led to a number of advertisers removing their ads from the site. Google, however, says the content published on the site does not appear to breach its own rules.

"All sites in our network, including Opindia, must adhere to our publisher policies, which explicitly prohibit ads from appearing alongside content promoting hate speech, violence, or demonstrably false claims that could undermine trust or participation in an election,” Google spokesperson Michael Aciman says. “Publishers are also subject to regular reviews, and we actively block or remove ads from any violating content."

Despite this, users can find ads for Temu or the Palm Beach Post next to many OpIndia articles promoting conspiracies and Islamophobia, placed with the help of ad-exchange platforms like Google’s Ad Manager, which is the market leader.

Facebook, meanwhile, says Wiley, is more of a “walled garden.” Once a publisher meets the company’s criteria for monetization, including having more than 1,000 followers, it can earn money from ads that run on the page.

While researchers that spoke to WIRED were unable to tell exactly how much the site has made from Google Ads and Facebook monetization, they said it’s likely that OpIndia is not solely reliant on the ad exchange for its revenue. It appears that, as with many news outlets in India, part of that funding comes in the form of more traditional advertising from a major client: the government.

“A large section of India's mainstream press depends on the government ads for their survival,” says Prashanth Bhat, professor of media studies at the University of Houston. “That revenue is critical for the mainstream media survival in a hypercompetitive media environment like in India. We have about 400 round-the-clock television news channels in India in different languages, and we have over 10,000 registered newspapers. For them to survive, they definitely need government patronage.”

Sharma confirmed that OpIndia is reliant in part on ads from the government. “Literally every media house gets advertising from various political parties,” said Sharma. “In fact, a part of your salary could also be funded by such parties and/or their sympathizers. Do get down from your high horse.”

The BJP has, however, also sought to help OpIndia in other ways. In 2019, the BJP reached out to Meta directly, asking the company to allow OpIndia to monetize on Facebook. Meta spokesperson McPike told WIRED that OpIndia’s English page is still able to monetize but that monetization on its Hindi page is currently not allowed “due to violations of our policies.”

“In order to monetize on Facebook, Pages must comply with our community standards, our partner monetization policies, and our content monetization policies,” McPike says.

Google did not respond to questions from WIRED about whether it had ever received a similar request from the Indian government. Google’s Aciman says, “As we do with all publishers, we’ve taken prior page-level enforcement action on this site when we’ve found policy violations. We will of course continue to enforce our policies on violating content across our publisher network.”

X did not respond to questions about whether OpIndia and its staff are able to monetize through X Premium or whether the company has ever received requests from the government to restore content from OpIndia or its staff. The company has complied with several takedown requests from the Indian government to ban accounts or tweets critical of the government.

But Wiley says that without transparency on the part of tech companies as to how they’re deciding which organizations are able to earn money through ads—and how much—outlets like OpIndia will continue to fall through the cracks.

“The business model of the internet at the end of the day is advertising, and what we're seeing over and over again is, that business model is broken,” she says. “Advertisers don't know where their money is going. And the biggest issue is that a lot of that is being funneled to mis- and disinformation online.”

[follow-up-news]

India on Friday announced three-phased assembly elections in disputed Kashmir, the first in a decade and in a new political environment after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in 2019 stripped the Muslim-majority region of its semi-autonomy and downgraded it to a federally controlled territory. Since those changes the region has remained on edge, governed by a New Delhi appointed administrator and run by bureaucrats with no democratic credentials. The new polls will be held between Sept.18 and Oct. 1, India’s Election Commission said at a news conference in the capital, New Delhi. The vote will take place in a staggered process that allows the government to deploy tens of thousands of troops to prevent any outbreak of violence. Votes will be counted on Oct. 4. The multi-stage voting will elect a local government — a chief minister who will serve as the region’s top official with a council of ministers — from pro-India parties participating in the elections. However, contrary to the past, the local assembly will barely have any legislative powers with only nominal control over education and culture. Legislating laws for the region will continue to be with India’s parliament while policy decisions will be made in the capital.