#Indian Mass Media

[insightfultake]

Indian Mass Media Lacks Credibility and Transparency

According to science, all living organisms thrive on others. One’s weakness becomes a source of success for others. It appears to be absolutely right in the case of mass media in India. Out of 1.4 billion people, 77.7% are literate. Being literate in India means one has to know how to write his or her name. In such a scenario, one-third of the population is illiterate, 80 crore people survive on government aid, which is popular in the name of ration, and huge unemployment could be understood by the fact that 38% of IITians are unemployed this year. The Indian mass media is capitalizing on these resources by doing gossiping in support of the government 24x7. The market size of the mass media industry combining electronic and print media will amount to a thousand billion Indian national rupees.

[ikusayu-no-hana]

and when i finally watch every single satyajit ray film it's going to be the end of me

[probablyasocialecologist]

Yemen’s armed forces threatened on 22 April to expand military operations against Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea, Arab Sea, and Indian Ocean following the discovery of mass graves in Gaza’s Nasser Medical Complex. “For the seventh month in a row, the genocidal crimes of the Israeli enemy continue, the latest of which is the brutal massacre in the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis,” the armed forces said via a statement on Yemen’s Al-Masirah channel. The statement continued, “the genocidal crimes that the Palestinian people are facing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank reflect an unparalleled level of Zionist hatred and crime.” The statement by Yemen called to “escalate their operations in the Red Sea,” adding that Sanaa continues its full support for the people of Gaza. On Sunday, over 200 bodies were found across two mass graves located in Khan Yunis’ Nasser Medical Complex. Gaza’s Government Media Office announced that about 700 victims are expected to be found. “We found in the Nasser Complex corpses without heads and bodies without skins, and some of them had their organs stolen,” the media office said. “The occupation executed dozens of displaced, wounded, sick, and medical staff.”

[timetravellingkitty]

KASHMIR MASTERLIST

Background

History of Kashmir from 250 BC to 1947 [to understand Kashmir's multi religious history and how we got to 1947]

Broad timeline of events from 1947 to the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution in 2019 (BBC) [yes, BBC. hang on just this once]

Human Rights Watch report based on a visit to Indian controlled Kashmir in 1998 [has a summary, background, human rights abuses and recommendations]

Another concise summary of the issue

Sites to check out

Kashmir Action - news and readings

The Kashmiriyat - independent news site about ongoings in Kashmir

FreePressKashmir - same thing as previous

Kashmir Law and Justice Project - analysis of international law as it applies to Kashmir

Stand with Kashmir - awareness, run by diaspora Kashmiris (both Pandit and Muslim)

These two for more readings and resources on Kashmir: note that the petitions and donation links are from 2019 and also has explainers on the background (x) (x)

To read

Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? - about women in the Kashmiri resistance movement and the 1991 mass rape of Kashmiri women in the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora by Indian armed forces

Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir - a compliation of writings about the lives of Kashmiris under Indian domination

Colonizing Kashmir: State Building under Indian Occupation - how Kashmir was made "integral" to the Indian state and examines state-building policies (excerpt)

Resisting Occupation in Kashmir - about the social and legal dimensions of India's occupation

On India's scapegoating of Kashmiri Pandits, both by Kashmiri Pandits (x) (x)

Of Gardens and Graves - translations of Kashmiri poems

Social media

kashiirkoor

museumofkashmir

kashmirpopart

posh_baahar

readingkashmir

standwithkashmir and their backup account standwithkashmir2 (main account is banned in India wonder why)

kashmirlawjustice

kashmirawareness

jammugenocide (awareness about the 1947 genocide abetted by Maharaja Hari Singh and the RSS)

To watch

Jashn-e-Azadi: How We Celebrate Freedom parts 1 and 2 - a documentary about the Kashmiri freedom struggle (filmed by a Kashmiri Pandit)

Paradise Lost - BBC documentary about how India and Pakistan's dispute over the valley has affected the people

Kashmir - Valley of Tears - the exhaustion with the conflict in the post nineties

In the Shade of Fallen Chinar - art as a form of Kashmiri resistance

Human rights violations (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

Land theft and dispossession (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

A note: I know annoying Desis are going to see this and go "Oh but Kashmir is Pakistan's because-" and "Kashmir is an integral part of India because-". I must make my stance clear: Kashmir belongs to the Kashmiris, the natives, no matter what religion they belong to. Neither Pakistan nor India get to decide the matter of Kashmiri sovereignty. The reasons given by both parties as to why Kashmir should be a part of either nation are bullshit. The United Nations itself recognises Kashmir as a disputed region, so I will not entertain dumbfuckery. I highly encourage fellow Indians especially to take the time to go through and properly understand the violence the government enacts on Kashmiris. I've also included links to learn more about Kashmiri culture because really, what do the rest of us know about it? Culturally and linguistically Kashmir differs so much from the rest of India and Pakistan (also the amount of fetishization of Kashmiri women...yikes). This is not just a bilateral issue between these two nations over land, this actually affects the people of Kashmir. And if you're still here, thank you for reading

[odinsblog]

Henry Kissinger's victims:

3 million + Vietnamese

2.5 million + Cambodians

200,000+ Laotians

3 million + Bangladeshis

10,000+ Indians

10,000+ Pakistanis

15,000+ Egyptians

3500+ Syrians

6500+ Cypriots

40,000+ Chileans

30,000+ Argentinians

10,000+ Zimbabweans

60,000+ Mozambiqueans

900,000+ Angolans

11,000+ Guinea Bisseauans

300,000+ East Timorians

1,000,000+ Indonesians

20,000+ Western Saharans

1,100,000+ Iraqis

and so so many more

“…it is very possible that Henry Kissinger has played a role in the mass murder of more people than anyone else in human history.”

Henry Kissinger was a vile, evil man through and through. And while good people are justifiably rejoicing at his long overdue death, please never forget that his evil brand of warmongering, unending “defensive” wars, and colonialism lives on in far too many media pundits, Hollywood + media influencers, and powerful politicians.

Kissinger is dead, but his cruel, cold-blooded, sadistic brand of militarism still lives on, and that is what we must bring an end to.

[fatehbaz]

Regarding this post going around:

Recommend checking out an article by Kasey Keeler and Ryan Hellenbrand, published at Edge Effects in 2021, which, aside from addressing the Ojibwe story about the Nanabozho fighting against logging, also describes the origin of Paul Bunyan as an icon of clear-cutting timber industry and, later, as a symbol of the advent of the US federal government’s “German-style” forestry management.

Some quick tidbits from their article:

- References to Bunyan appear in local print media from the 1890s onward, but Bunyan became more widely known in 1916 after a scholarly publication about the folklore. In the same year, 1916, an important mass media pictorial representation was made in a promotional pamphlet by the marketing team of a major logging company as a move to give them a folksly and “local” charm as the corporation expanded from Minnesota to California.

- That same logging company had owned the land that would become both Paul Bunyan State Forest and Chippewa National Forest.

- The first national forest created by act of Congress rather than presidential proclamation was actually Chippewa National Forest, which has been described as “a laboratory” to solve “the Indian problem” and discipline/contain Ojibwe people.

- Paul Bunyan was a sort of icon of German folklore in the region. Ironically, even though Bunyan was originally associated with clear-cutting, it would in fact be "German-style” forestry policy that (in Minnesota and later across the US) replaced the original clear-cutting industrial extraction methods with a "modern" and "sustainable" management approach meant for "sustained yield" (which still just treats forests as a resource to be extracted for profit).

---

Anyway, some images, captions, and text from the article [all text below is excerpted from the article]:

Across the Northwoods, a geography that spans the U.S.-Canada border, stories are used to make and claim space. [...] Throughout northern Minnesota, legends of Paul Bunyan, the fictional giant lumberjack, have been used to claim space. [...] Bunyan has been credited with creating Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes, the Mississippi River, and the Grand Canyon, while simultaneously logging millions of acres of forest. [...] Together, we juxtapose the history of two forests -- the Paul Bunyan State Forest and the Chippewa National Forest -- to reveal how German settlement, logging, and forestry have contributed to placemaking narratives, and how [...] nostalgia links past and present. Paul Bunyan’s literal and figurative imaginings advance American Indian erasure narratives, leading to the invisibility of these same communities today. [...] The Northwoods have been popularized and imagined as America’s version of northern Europe. [...] Across Minnesota, towns like New Ulm, New Munich, Heidelberg, and Luxemburg bear witness [...]. More recently, Native scholars Michael Dockry and Christopher Caldwell have examined [...] “the Menominee people’s profound sense of place and their intimate relationship with place.”   [...]

---

Ojibwe dispossession, well underway by the late nineteenth century, is not told in any Paul Bunyan story. [...] The "heroic labor" of logging formed a significant portion of Great Lakes region economies [...] on the heels of, and entangled with, Ojibwe dispossession. [...] Formally established in 1908, the 1.6-million-acre Chippewa National Forest (CNF) lies nearly contiguous with the Leech Lake Reservation. [...] [T]he CNF was the first national forest created "for the benefit of [American] Indian people." [...] In 1902 came the Morris Act. Authored by [a] Duluth congressman [...], the act "created the first forest reserve established by congressional action rather than presidential proclamation." The act established the 225,000-acre Minnesota Forest Reserve as a “compromise,” a way to tackle the “Indian problem” while allowing for timber harvest. Here, Ojibwe homelands became “a laboratory for the first comprehensive forest management plans undertaken by a federal agency.” In 1928, the forest was renamed the Chippewa National Forest, as it remains today.

---

While the Chippewa National Forest forces us to consider the many ways logging and forestry has usurped American Indian peoples’ access to land, the nearby Paul Bunyan State Forest encapsulates the material legacy of symbolic myth. [...]

Officially recognized in 1935, the Paul Bunyan State Forest evolved from the site of the Red River Lumber Company sawmill. Founded in 1884, the Red River Lumber Company (RRLC) directly participated in and contributed to Ojibwe dispossession. By the end of the nineteenth century, he RRLC had purchased most of the land that comprises the present-day Pual Bunyan State Forest, milling millions of board feet of lumber at the company town of Akeley. [...]

The expansion of RRLC to California precipitated another key move: using Paul Bunyan in their marketing. William B. Laughead (pronounced Log-head), advertising manager in 1914 and a logger himself, spun another Paul Bunyan tale for the promotional booklet “Introducing Mr. Paul Bunyan of Westwood, Cal,” which included Bunyan’s first pictorial representation. This marketing campaign relied on the new and growing nostalgia for the grand logging days in the Great Lakes to keep the transcontinental corporation rooted in place.

With logging long established throughout the Great Lakes region, the ecological damage was clear. To remedy this, in the mid-1930s (German) forestry was introduced to manage timber on a sustained yield base. This, then, is the irony of the Paul Bunyan State Forest: named for an American legends who is said to have literally cleared the path for settlement, forest management now proposes to maintain the integrity of the forest. [...]

Though Paul Bunyan narratives dominate the landscape of the Northwoods, if we look closely we can see the ways Native people resist the legendary exploits. Indeed, a lesser-known Ojibwe oral story reminds us that the Anishinaabe people, their culture, and their histories will always prevail over dispossession and logging. In the story, Nanabozho, an Ojibwe trickster or cultural figure, confronts Paul Bunyan, who had already logged off most of the northeastern states before making his way to Minnesota. Nanabozho tells Paul to leave, to not log any more timber. A fight ensues, and [...] Nanabozho swings a Red Lake walleye at Paul, knocking him off his feet. As Paul stumbles, Nanabozho pulls at Paul’s whiskers, making him promise to leave the area. This is why, today, Paul Bunyan does not have a beard and why he is facing west at the statue on Lake Bemidji, as he prepares to leave the region.

This is also why we have the Chippewa National Forest, because Nanabozho and his Ojibwe kinsmen saved it from being logged. It is this contemporary narrative that highlights the complexity of Ojibwe storytelling [...].

---

Images, captions, and text as published by: Kasey Keeler and Ryan Hellenbrand. “Paul Bunyan and Settler Nostalgia in the Northwoods.” Edge Effects. 2 December 2021. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks added by me.]

[rotzaprachim]

one of the things that’s so grotesque is like, never in my life have I ever felt people en masse really cared very much about Jews or wanted us to be safe, and that includes Israelis. They don’t care about us but we can be used to justify so so much mass death on people who never hurt us at all. I spent four years living in a horrific Antisemitism Country, a now “neutral” Western European power which killed Jews, expelled jews, banned Jews for hundreds of years. There were large Eastern European and middle eastern diasporas there and I was almost always the First Jew anyone had ever met - or that had admitted to being Jewish. People regularly assumed jews controlled the world media. I got harassed for - yes- the idea of Zionist infiltration, for being one of the evil Zionists people knew controlled the world. One time I left shule with a friend who had forgotten to take his kippah off and a group of drunks coming out of a bar physically shook us as we walked by. To get to Jewish events I walked over the literally former “Jewry” where Jews had lived in the medieval era but were expelled and which had me ember been rebuilt or returned to Jews. When I was in university the most famous fascist family in the country donated money to one of the most famous universities in the country in order to have a building named after their fascist family name and people agreed to it! In university someone gave off a long Hitler impersonation at a general event and the manager of the event refused to end it or call him out. We always always looked over our shoulders. My friends who were Israelis, who came from Iraqi and Indian and Persian Jewish families, described racial and ethnic harassment that occured to them all the time from people who saw Brown people and decided it was time for racism. Even Ashkenazi Israelis I knew were harassed for being Too middle eastern, too foreign, their language Hebrew too strange. We just lived with it all. relatively speaking this is small stuff. *minor.* it’s not like what’s happening in Gaza and it never will be. But what it was was years of accumulated pain, and the understanding that the country did not love us and was unwilling to do much but the bare minimum to let us live. And then three weeks ago the leader of that country got up and declared support for the state of Israel because of his support for the Jews. And he’s stood by that. He’s stood supporting the state of Israel as they’ve killed over seven thousand people, including thousands of children. My safety wasn’t important enough when I lived in *their* country to be much worth doing anything about, anything that might slice into the rind of how awful and alienating and antisemitic that culture was, but it’s also important enough to be worth the violent murder of thousands of children. NO ONE EVER FUCKING ASKED ME WHAT WOULD MAKE ME SAFE, BUT THEY DID DECIDE THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN NEEDED TO DIE, and they decided they needed to put my name to it. I’ve gotten to watch world leaders pull off a “the people of yisrael live” over and over again these last three years ago to justify arming a right wing dictator I never voted for in a country I never set foot on kill thousands and thousands of people. And I’ve gotten to see the hordes screaming for my death in response. Because it’s in our name and we asked for it and after all we do run everything. I’ve yet to get the feeling that western powers like Israelis all that much. The coverage really isn’t like us and uk based terror attacks. But they certainly don’t like Jews at all. No one cares about Jewish lives but they can collectively be used to justify non stop murder of a civilian population. The leader of that country I lived in will support all this forever. There’s no horror greater than that.

[ramayantika]

as a dancer yourself, how do you think the stigma against male dancers which makes them labelled "gay" and female dancers which makes them labelled "prostitutes", can be dispersed?

This is something which even I think of and to be honest I do not have a good definite answer.

But, firstly, people need to be educated on the cultural history. History books mention about wars, dynasties and politics. There are very vague and meagre mentions of india's cultural history especially of the performing arts.

When I see the young masses talking about hindu culture and worship, the same barely know how many classical dance forms are there in India.

Exposure of the general audience to indian music and dance shows will actually help. I believe that the new gen dancers and some veteran dancers too have actually begun conversations about the history of dance, especially about female performers and their role in shaping the performing arts of india. Those need to be popularized especially through social media, because our generation uses a lot of it, so why not support viewership of the classical dance forms? That way even male classical dancers can be seen by non dancer males.

We have watched DID and other dance reality shows. Not everybody has enrolled in a dance class (neither western nor indian) but somehow we still accept western dance forms easily especially by males but sadly there isn't enough recognition for male classical artists. People talk about bharatiya sanskriti and sabhyata, will talk (and romanticize) wearing outfits from the vedic period, but will swiftly call the male dancer slurs even though he is portraying shiva and parvati.

When dance and music forms an integral part of indian culture, it is disappointing to see the general indian society be alienated from it. They are aware of it only through Bollywood which now does a shit job at portraying indian dance forms (folk dance is rarely seen. Folk is well another topic)

A good starting point would be to first read about it or watch classical dance shows and productions. Many of them are available on YouTube for free.

No one's asking to start learning dance and music, but if you can appreciate contestants on other dance reality shows with no knowledge of hip-hop, contemporary dance etc , then certainly you can also begin with indian dances.

I also need to add that good changes are happening. They are slow, but I am seeing appreciation for male dancers too. The stigma exists but the essential conversation about gender roles and art is taking place. It will take time, but it is happening.

As for female dancers well.... I do wonder when will the sexualization of the dancing body stop. Sensuality has been celebrated in India from a very long time, and there is a thin line between sensuality and vulgarity. Sadly, we as a society see sensuality as something impure.

A woman who is free and in control of her sexuality and sensuality must be tamed, turned demure and controlled. That is the general view. She is attractive, desirable but then when won/conquered/possessed must be tamed. The dancer too I think is seen as the same.

Stigma and stereotypes never completely break. But like I said previously, dialogue and debate is needed. Conversations need to happen. Female dancers too need to speak up and be vocal about it, about our history of women performers, because all of this exists due to them.

This was a long answer and I don't really have a definite solution(s) but I hope I could provide a few insights.

Also thanks for the question, I was writing in my journal about my dancing experience and the male gaze, I kinda vented it a little here too.

[girlactionfigure]

🟡 ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

Morning Report - Tuesday

▪️A HERO SOLDIER HAS FALLEN.. Yehuda Geto, 20, from Pardes Hana-Karkur, fell in battle in Tulkarm, Samaria.  May his family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem, and may G-d avenge his blood!

.. a bomb exploded on a Panther APC that stopped and unloaded in Nur al Shams, Tulkarm.  There was the driver and a commander from the Duvdvan unit in the vehicle, the rest of the fighters unloaded before the explosion.  The Panther was parked in an area where there was no fear of explosives (that is, there was no intelligence information about suspected explosives) and therefore the road was not scrapped by a D9.  The driver was killed and the commander was seriously injured.

▪️GERMAN PAPER SAYS - WAR WITH LEBANON IN 2 WEEKS.. According to its sources, the German newspaper "Bild" (the most widely read newspaper in Germany) reports that Israel will launch a full-scale war against Hezbollah in the second half of July if Hezbollah does not cease its attacks.  (( I always rely on foreign media for knowing when a war will start. ))

▪️US QUIETLY THREATENS.. The US military released photos of the Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group together with the USS Wasp amphibious attack ship and the British Navy ship HMS Duncan in the waters of the Mediterranean.

.. Related: Houthis threaten to attack US carrier strike group coming to replace the Eisenhower in the Red Sea / Gulf of Aden area.  "Any aircraft carrier that enters the Red Sea will become our main target.”

▪️TEL AVIV RELIGIOUS CONTRAVERSY.. The Municipality of Tel Aviv responded negatively to the request of the Hotam organization to hold a segregated outdoor prayer on Rosh Chodesh (the new Jewish month) in the exact same place where Israeli-Arab Muslims were permitted for an outdoor segregated prayer session.  

▪️PEACE POLITICS.. MK Ayman Odeh, chairman of Israeli-Arab party Hadash Ta’al: "the peace camp is waking up and calling with all its might to stop the war immediately."  (( Nobody wants war, but we want our children burned to death and women raped to death less. As long as the enemy is committed to slaughtering us and trying to do so, peace is not an option. ))

▪️US ARMS DELAYS - AGAIN.. Israel submitted a request to the Americans to purchase combat helicopters, but the administration is delaying the request.  

▪️DRUG DANGER.. wave of hospitalizations: young people seriously injured with 1 death by using fake vapes that pretend to contain cannabis but in fact contain dangerous synthetic drug "nice guy" synthetic cannabinoids.  Symptoms: convulsions and agitation.   These fake vapes are sold in Israel mainly through Telegram and are illegal. They are packed in colorful packages impersonating well-known brands. False claims such as "contains 78.5% THC" and "Made in the Netherlands" appear on the packaging.

▪️ISRAELI AID.. Electricity returns to Gaza: operation of a sewage and water desalination plant "directly from Israeli electricity”.

▪️HIGH COURT HEARING TO REQUIRE MEDICAL TREATMENT IN ISRAEL FOR GAZANS.. Yesterday at the hearing on the introduction of a population that supports terrorism and is holding our hostages into medical treatment in Israel, the audience in the courtroom shouted ‘shame! shame!’ The judges shifted uncomfortably.

♦️IDF firing artillery shelling in Nuserat.

⭕ HOUTHI MASS SHIP ATTACK CLAIM.. The Houthis claim to have attacked four ships associated with the US, UK and Israel - in the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.  No confirming reports, particularly about the Mediterranean.

[insightfultake]

Indian Mass Media Lacks Credibility and Transparency

According to science, all living organisms thrive on others. One’s weakness becomes a source of success for others. It appears to be absolutely right in the case of mass media in India. Out of 1.4 billion people, 77.7% are literate. Being literate in India means one has to know how to write his or her name. In such a scenario, one-third of the population is illiterate, 80 crore people survive on government aid, which is popular in the name of ration, and huge unemployment could be understood by the fact that 38% of IITians are unemployed this year. The Indian mass media is capitalizing on these resources by doing gossiping in support of the government 24x7. The market size of the mass media industry combining electronic and print media will amount to a thousand billion Indian national rupees....read more

[tamlindudley]

I am going to "Indian" up the Palestine genocide coz by god, majority of the people in India do NOT get it. And it feels like there is so much false and especially Islamophobic propaganda pushed to the masses, it makes my blood boil.

Israel = Occupier & Palestine = Occupied. What does this mean? It means like how British came to India and occupied our land, Israel is occupying Palestine. Palestine was a colony of British in 1917 but after WW2, British backed out of Palestine just like it did with India. We were lucky that we didn't have multiple occupying forces colonizing us. Palestinians weren't so lucky. When British left in 1948, it went from one colonizer to another. The Zionists who came from Europe swooped in like vultures and named the place Israel and has been masquerading as a country. And just like we fought for our freedom, Palestinians are STILL fighting for their freedom.

This is not a religious issue, this is a land issue. The actual issue isn't about Jew and Muslim hatred. It just so happens that Muslims are the majority in Palestine. Its like how our majority is Hindus and we have BC, OBC etc. Palestine majority is Muslim but there are Christians and Jews too. And before the Zionist intervention they all resided together harmoniously. But the Zionists love to push the religion angle and make it sound like a religious conflict for their own benefit. Because if people think it's a religious conflict, they will hesitate to speak out. But dear fellow desis, I swear, it's okay to support Palestinians even if you are Hindu, Sikh, Jain or any other non-Abrahamic faith you follow. Because this isn't about supporting Muslims, this is about supporting people who are colonized.

India does NOT support Israel. OK listen, I know what the internet looks like. But India's official stance is in support of Palestine. It always has been. Granted, under the current government, it doesn't look like it but just google it up. India was the first non-Arab country to come in support of Palestine back in 1974. Don't let media confuse you about this. Learn about this. Talk about this. Show your support. We got our independence in 1947. They are still fighting. Getting killed in masses. We are literally the most populous nation in the world and our support has not been loud enough. I beg you, as a fellow Indian, use your voices and support Palestine.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Up to 10 informants managed by the FBI were embedded in anti-pipeline resistance camps near the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation at the height of mass protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016. The new details about federal law enforcement surveillance of an Indigenous environmental movement were released as part of a legal fight between North Dakota and the federal government over who should pay for policing the pipeline fight. Until now, the existence of only one other federal informant in the camps had been confirmed.  The FBI also regularly sent agents wearing civilian clothing into the camps, one former agent told Grist in an interview. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, operated undercover narcotics officers out of the reservation’s Prairie Knights Casino, where many pipeline opponents rented rooms, according to one of the depositions.  The operations were part of a wider surveillance strategy that included drones, social media monitoring, and radio eavesdropping by an array of state, local, and federal agencies, according to attorneys’ interviews with law enforcement.

[timetravellingkitty]

But isn't the military occupancy to keep militancy under control?

whatever reasons aside, there really is no justification for torturing and raping kashmiris and shutting down social media in the state (do read up on the mass rapes of women in the kunan and poshpora villages in 1991. february 23 has since then been labelled kashmiri women's resistance day. report about the use of torture in kashmir by the caravan)

also the instrument of accession was signed by an immensely unpopular ruler. maharaja hari singh was a dogra rajput he wasn't even kashmiri. like, this is the same guy who abetted the 1947 jammu massacres (this one is actually not nearly talked about as much). kashmiri muslims overwhelmingly disliked him

besides, kashmiri separatism and the groups that adopt its ideology came around because of indian domination and because there was no plebiscite held to call for kashmir joining either india or pakistan. the jklf and its leaders have stated that they want an independent, secular kashmir free from both india and pakistan. yasin malik himself refers to pakistan as an occupation power

[freeleyenrashespeakstruth]

To all the new people in the country...

The people of the United States of America do not hate you or dislike you, well most of us anyway. What we hate is how our politicians have deceived us by how they made your presence in our nation possible. Please read on and think about why you are here in the first place, and I don't mean your reason for coming to the USA, I mean the reason why so many people were allowed in from a certain date in time all of a sudden.

Let me explain. Please read on.

About 30 years ago our nations elected leaders did something that they don't even speak about anymore. They intentionally stopped manning the border, and pretended that it was an invasion of the southern border. Literally they cried "the Mexicans are crossing the border and we can't stop them!" It was all over the media. The greatest nation in the world and strongest most powerful military could not defend our southern border and they announced it on every tv station and every radio station. No internet or cell phone 30 years ago.

"The Mexicans are invading the USA and we cannot stop them" and "the Mexicans are taking our jobs and we can't stop them" were all we were hearing almost the exact same time that it was announced there would be mass layoffs all across the United States. Another thing that started almost immediately was the "dial 1 for Spanish, 2 for English" that quickly changed to "1 for English, 2 for Spanish" because the citizens were getting ready to riot.

Lots of things changed and quickly. Many of us were confused. Many of us were losing our jobs and businesses were closing up, and those who stayed open were replacing the workers with people who didn't even speak our language. It was happening so fast and more cries of "THE MEXICANS ARE STORMING OUR BORDER AND WE CAN'T STOP THEM!!!" Seriously (said sarcastically and truthfully.)

And who were the Mexicans? The Mexicans were every Latino from central or south America who came into the country regardless of what nation they came from. And every politician and media called all Latinos Mexicans, long before Trump was ever in the picture.

And was it only the southern border? Of course not silly. We were told only about the Mexicans so that we wouldn't pay attention to the massive amount of people coming in from India and Pakistan, on planes on the east and west coast. And there were almost as many Indians and Pakistanis as there were Latinos.

Any other nations coming in? Nope. Only Latinos down south and Indians and Pakistanis on the east and west, but no other nationalities. Europeans, very little, a few Russians, Oriental Asians only to work at businesses owned by Asians, and never many Africans. Israelis always had an open door, but not many Arabs at all because they were considered our enemies and not allowed in the USA. About 99% Latino or Indian only, with a 60/40 to 70/30 ratio being Latino. "THE MEXICANS ARE STORMING OUR BORDER AND WE CAN'T STOP THEM!"

Nothing racist said, I hope you see that. We The People were being deceived big time. I say this because most of the people here now don't know what happened. And that has been used to the politicians advantage. Most of the people who lost our jobs have all died by now. And our families were destroyed. Our people will never recover from that time period. But we do not blame you. It was our very own elected public servants in the White House, the Senate, and Congress who did this to us, not you, the people who came into the USA to have a better life for you and your family.

Now you understand why the Great Divide in this country from it's beginning.

[kp777]

By Thom Hartmann

Common Dreams

March 31, 2023

The Republican Party's most dangerous grift today has been their embrace of the lie that America is not a democracy but instead is a theocratic republic that should be ruled exclusively by armed Christian white men. It's leading us straight into the jaws of fascism.

Nobody ever accused Republicans of not knowing how to make a buck or BS-ing somebody into voting for them. Lying to people for economic or political gain is the very definition of a grift.

Whenever there’s another mass- or school-shooting, Republican politicians hustle out fundraising emails about how “Democrats are coming to take your guns!” The result is a measurable and profitable spike in gun sales after every new slaughter of our families and children, followed by a fresh burst of campaign cash to GOP lawmakers.

But the GOP’s ability to exploit any opportunity that comes along — regardless of its impact on America or American citizens — goes way beyond just fundraising hustles.

When Jared Kushner was underwater and nearly bankrupt because he overpaid for 666 Fifth Avenue and needed a billion-dollar bailout to cover his mortgage, his buddies in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia and the UAE) blockaded American ally (and host to the Fifth Fleet) Qatar until that country relented and laundered the money to Jared through a Canadian investment company.

Just this week, after Trump deregulated toxic trains leading to a horrible crash and the contamination of East Palestine, Ohio, Steve Bannon — already charged with multiple fraud-related crimes and then pardoned by Trump — showed up this week to hustle $300+ water filters to the people of that town.

The grift is at the core of the GOP’s existence, and has been since Nixon blew up LBJ’s peace talks with the Vietnamese in 1968 and then took cash bribes from the Milk Lobby and Jimmy Hoffa in the White House while having his mafia-connected “plumbers” wiretap the DNC’s offices at the Watergate.

— Republicans successfully fought the ability of Medicare to negotiate drug prices for decades; in turn, Big Pharma pours millions into their campaign coffers and personal pockets (legalized by 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court).

— Republicans beat back Democratic efforts to stop insurance giants from ripping off seniors and our government with George W. Bush’s Medicare Advantage privatization scam; in turn, the insurance companies rain cash on them like an Indian monsoon.

— Republicans oppose any effort to replace fossil fuels with green energy sources that don’t destroy our environment; in turn, the fossil fuel industry jacked up the price of gasoline into the stratosphere just in time for the 2022 election (and you can expect them to try it again in 2024).

— Republicans stopped enforcement of a century’s worth of anti-trust laws in 1983, wiping out America’s small businesses and turning rural city centers into ghost towns while pushing profits and prices through the ceiling; in turn massive corporate PACs fund ads supporting Republican candidates every election cycle.

— Republicans authored legislation letting billionaires own thousands of newspapers, radio stations, and TV outlets; in turn the vast majority of those papers (now half of all local papers are owned by a handful of rightwing New York hedge funds) and stations all run daily news and editorials attacking Democrats and supporting the GOP.

— Republicans Trump and Pai killed net neutrality so giant tech companies can legally spy on you and me, recording every website we visit and selling that information for billions; in turn, major social media sites amplify rightwing voices while giant search engines stopped spidering progressive news sites.

Newspeak — George Orwell’s term for the grift where politicians use fancy phrases that mean the opposite of what people think they mean — has been the GOP’s go-to strategy for a half-century.

Richard Nixon, for example, promised to crack down on drugs, but instead used that as an excuse to crack down on anti-war liberals and Black people. Instead of an economic grift, it was a political grift.

As Nixon‘s right hand man, John Ehrlichman, told reporter Dan Baum:

“You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. Do you understand what I’m saying? “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. “We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.“

The grift is a recurrent theme through Republican presidencies in the modern era.

Ronald Reagan told us if we just destroyed America’s unions and moved our manufacturing to China and Mexico, great job opportunities would fill the nation.

He followed that up by promising if we just cut taxes on the morbidly rich, prosperity would trickle-down to the rest of us.

Reagan even assured us that raising the Social Security retirement age to 67 and taxing Social Security benefits would mean seniors could retire with greater ease.

All, of course, were grifter’s lies. Republican presidents since Reagan have continued the tradition.

George W. Bush called his program to make it easier to clear-cut America’s forests and rip roads through wilderness areas the “Healthy Forests Initiative.”

His program to legalize more pollution from coal-fired power plants and immunize them from community lawsuits (leading to tens of thousands of additional lung- and heart-disease deaths in the years since) was named the “Clean Air Act.”

Bush’s scam to “strengthen” Medicare — “Medicare Advantage” — was a thinly disguised plan to privatize that program that is today draining Medicare’s coffers while making insurance executives richer than Midas.

Donald Trump told Americans he had the coronavirus pandemic under control while he was actually making the situation far worse: America had more deaths per capita from the disease than any other developed country in the world, with The Lancet estimating a half-million Americans died needlessly because of Trump’s grift.

Jared and Ivanka cashed in on their time in the White House to the tune of billions, while Trump squeezed hundreds of millions out of foreign governments, encouraging them to illegally pay him through rentals in his properties around the world.

Other Trump grifts — most leading to grateful industries or billionaires helping him and the GOP out — included:

— Making workplaces less safe — Boosting religious schools at the expense of public schools — Cutting relief for students defrauded by student loan sharks — Shrinking the safety net by cutting $60 billion out of food stamps — Forcing workers to put in overtime without getting paid extra for it — Pouring more pollution from fossil fuels into our fragile atmosphere — Gutting the EPA’s science operation — Rescinding rules that protected workers at federal contract sites — Dialing back car air pollution emissions standards — Reducing legal immigration of skilled workers into the US from “shithole countries” — Blocking regulation of toxic chemicals — Rolling back rules on banks, setting up the crisis of 2023 — Defenestrating rules against racially segregated housing

While Nixon was simply corrupt — a crook, to use his own term — in 1978 when five Republicans on the Supreme Court signed off on the Bellotti decision authored by Lewis Powell himself, giving corporations the legal right to bribe American politicians, the GOP went all in.

Ever since then, the GOP has purely been the party of billionaires and giant corporations, although their most successful political grift has been to throw an occasional bone to racists, gun-nuts, fascists, homophobes, and woman-haters to get votes.

Democrats at that time were largely funded by the unions, so it wasn’t until the 1990s, after Reagan had destroyed about half of America’s union jobs and gutted the unions’ ability to fund campaigns, that the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton was forced to make a big turn toward taking corporate cash.

Since Barack Obama showed how online fundraising could replace corporate cash, however, about half of the nation’s Democratic politicians have aligned with the Progressive Caucus and eschewed corporate money, returning much of the Party to its FDR and Great Society base.

The GOP, in contrast, has never wavered from lapping up corporate money in exchange for tax cuts, deregulation, and corporate socialism.

Their most dangerous grift today, though, has been their embrace of the lie that America is not a democracy but instead is a theocratic republic that should be ruled exclusively by armed Christian white men. It’s leading us straight into the jaws of fascism.

Bannon’s grift in East Palestine is the smallest of the small, after his being busted for a multi-million-dollar fraud in the “Build the Wall” scheme and others, but is still emblematic of the Republican strategy at governance.

When all you have to offer the people is a hustle, then at the very least, Republicans figure, you should be able to make a buck or gain/keep political power while doing it.

[livelaughlovechai]

I saw that video of tucker carlson or wtv the fuck his name was and some other random bitch saying that the british “civilised“ india and made us what we are today like honey did you guys skip history or what the indus valley was there before yall’s ancestors could wear clothes and if india wasnt here say goodbye to half ur hygiene and development including this dear social media u luv sm

I have actually never loved being indian more now then ever when south asian hate is at its highest. Anyways stay safe and keep on jamming to marana mass and zinda banda/vandha edam bye ty lysm💋💋💋