#Politics | South Asia

[xtruss]

“World’s Most Wanted Criminal, Hindu Fascist Modi’s Politics” Hinder Neighborhood Ties

Recent Events in Bangladesh Show How the Hindu Nationalist Project has Harmed India’s Regional Interests.

— By Sushant Singh August 22, 2024

Indian Prime Minister and World’s Most Wanted Criminal, Hindu Fascist Narendra Modi Takes his Oath of Office in the Presence of Indian President Droupadi Murmu and Other South Asian Leaders in New Delhi on June 9. Elke Scholiers/Getty Images

When Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister 10 years ago, those invited to his swearing-in included leaders of every South Asian country. This reflected his “Neighborhood First” foreign policy, which was intended to foster cordial relations and economic synergy with India’s smaller neighbors. The approach soon floundered due to border disputes and bilateral disagreements, India’s tardy execution of development projects, and rising Chinese influence in the region.

However, Bangladesh was seen as one of its shining successes. Bangladeshi then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who held power for 15 consecutive years before resigning under pressure this month, worked closely with Modi; their friendly relationship seemed to be a win-win situation. But in Bangladesh, Hasina transformed into an authoritarian ruler despite her democratic beginnings. Popular anger against her brewed; the final trigger came with student protests against an order for government job quotas. The demonstrations soon turned on Hasina herself, leading to nationwide unrest. She fled the country on Aug. 5 and is currently residing in India.

Despite her unpopularity, Hasina’s resignation came as a shock to the Indian political and security establishment. India fully backed Hasina during her tenure, often ignoring the concerns of other stakeholders and the people of Bangladesh. Under Modi, New Delhi has taken this approach with most of its smaller neighbors, with sometimes unfortunate consequences.

It is clear India’s policy failures in its neighborhood are not solely due to external events. They are also manifestations of India’s current domestic politics. From the securitization of diplomacy to Modi’s strongman image, New Delhi has undermined its liberal credentials among the people of South Asia. Preferential treatment for Modi’s favored corporate interests by governments such as Hasina’s—an international extension of Indian cronyism—has further raised suspicion about New Delhi’s intentions.

The adherence of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to Hindu Nationalist Ideology has played a major role in harming India’s regional interests, especially in Bangladesh. The 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that fast-tracked Indian citizenship for persecuted minority groups in neighboring countries while excluding Muslims fueled criticism from the Bangladeshi public. The BJP regime’s ill treatment of Muslims within India has fueled criticism of Modi abroad; his 2021 visit to Bangladesh was met with violent riots.

Hasina’s resignation provided the opportunity for a moment of introspection for the Indian government, but it seems unable to engage in policy correction. India’s tarnished image in Bangladesh is not the Modi government’s first major failure in South Asia, and it won’t be the last. Its pursuit of a de facto Hindu Rashtra (“Hindu state”) is not only damaging to India but will also have disastrous results in South Asia.

India’s Ties To Hasina run deep. After her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman—Bangladesh’s founding leader—was assassinated in a 1975 military coup, Hasina and her sister took refuge in India. She returned to Bangladesh to fight for democracy, first serving as prime minister from 1996 to 2001 before returning to office in 2009. Her rule took an authoritarian turn after 2014 as she went after political opponents, journalists, and activists.

Hasina’s party, the secular Awami League, targeted radical Islamist groups; unlike her opponents, she did not did not allow anti-India militant groups to establish bases in Bangladesh. India backed Hasina to the exclusion of everyone else, with officials arguing that if she lost power, Bangladesh would become a “breeding ground for Islamist groups posing a threat to India’s national security.” This year, after Hasina won a fourth term in a criticized election, India lobbied U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to stop applying pressure to Bangladesh over democratic backsliding.

Hasina presided over soaring economic growth and controlled all state institutions, including the military; as a result, India assumed that she would continue to rule despite protests. But in a striking Indian intelligence and diplomatic failure, New Delhi was stunned when the army asked Hasina to leave the country this month. No Western government has offered her asylum, leaving her holed up in New Delhi. Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval greeted Hasina when she landed.

India’s over-securitized approach to neighborhood diplomacy—reflected in its unconditional support of Hasina—goes against the grain of historical, cultural, ethnic, geographic, and economic ties that India has throughout South Asia. New Delhi has missed opportunities to gain the confidence of its neighbors, in effect breeding insecurity in these countries. It has become out of touch with larger public sentiment in the region, burning bridges with the political opposition, including in conditions of democratic backsliding.

In Myanmar, India has shunned pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar in favor of the military junta that seized power in a coup in 2021. In Afghanistan, it has established friendly ties with the Taliban rulers, neglecting longstanding relationships with nationalist Afghans. In Bangladesh, the security-centric approach has manifested in policing along the countries’ border; complaints about the heavy-handed behavior of India’s Border Security Force abound.

Modi’s strongman politics have also shaped India’s regional diplomacy. While Modi maintains a silence on China’s ingress on the disputed India-China border, India’s smaller neighbors bear the brunt of his image building. India launched a cross-border raid in Myanmar in 2015 against transit camps of Indian insurgents, the same year it unleashed a trade blockade on Nepal when the latter declared itself a secular republic. Last year, Modi’s supporters launched a campaign for Indian tourists to boycott the Maldives, after a diplomatic row when some Maldivian ministers allegedly criticized Modi.

In Bangladesh, the tough approach of India’s border police added to public grievances about New Delhi’s actions on water sharing, transit facilities, and other trade-related issues that were supposedly unfair to Dhaka. In a young country with fragile nationalism, the public seemed to transfer its rage against India for violating Bangladesh’s sovereignty to Hasina.

Political opponents in India have regularly criticized Modi for his support of crony firms, especially those owned by the billionaire Gautam Adani. These ties have attracted attention in India’s neighborhood, too. Last year, Adani posted a picture with Hasina after announcing that an Adani Group power plant would supply 100 percent of its electricity to Bangladesh. It drew criticism in Bangladesh for being too expensive, too late, and too risky while lining Adani’s pockets. Experts alleged that Hasina need Modi’s associated political favor to “secure political legitimacy.”

Populism, authoritarianism, and cronyism contributed to India’s troubles in Bangladesh, but the Modi government’s pursuit of Hindu nationalist ideology has been even more damaging.

The 2019 CAA ultimately serves the goal of creating a de facto Hindu state; among the persecuted communities that it fast-tracked for Indian citizenship were Hindus in Bangladesh. (Hasina’s media advisor Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury expressed distaste at being compared to Pakistan and Afghanistan, countries rife with terrorist activity.) This fed an anti-India narrative that gained ground in Bangladesh, as did other rhetoric about Bangladeshis from top BJP leaders. Indian Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah, Modi’s de facto no. 2, has called Bangladeshi immigrants termites, illegal infiltrators, and a threat to national security.

Before the CAA, the Indian judiciary ordered a draconian survey to document legal citizens and identify Bangladeshi immigrants in the border state of Assam—seen by critics as a way of targeting undocumented Indian Muslims. Shah vowed to implement this National Register of Citizens (NRC) nationwide, but that has not yet materialized. Although New Delhi characterized the register as a domestic issue, Bangladesh found itself at the center of India’s “illegal foreign nationals” problem. Many analysts feared the CAA and NRC could push millions of Indian Muslims into Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, Hasina’s government continued to reinforce the perception that she was taking orders from New Delhi. When a BJP spokesperson made remarks insulting the prophet Muhammad in 2022, it earned the ire of many Muslim-majority countries; Hasina’s government declared the matter an “internal issue.” The grievances began adding up in Bangladesh, and the BJP government’s escalating discrimination toward Indian Muslims has not helped. On the campaign trail this year, Modi indulged in anti-Muslim dog-whistling. Last year, he inaugurated a new parliament building that features a mural of Akhand Bharat (“Unbroken India”)—including all of India’s smaller neighbors within its borders.

In His National Address on India’s Independence Day on Aug. 15, Modi spoke about India’s 1.4 billion citizens worrying about the safety of Hindus in Bangladesh. It was a thinly veiled way of framing India as only a Hindu homeland—not the multiethnic, multireligious, and multilingual country it has been for hundreds of years. It is no surprise that the BJP government refuses to censure its right-wing supporters and media that spread disinformation about killings of Hindus in Bangladesh amid the recent unrest—even after retaliatory attacks in India on the Muslim community.

Modi’s government now seems to have little capacity for self-reflection. Instead of blaming Pakistan, China, or Islamists for the events that led to Hasina’s resignation in Bangladesh, India should acknowledge that its neighboring countries’ citizens can win back their agency and exercise it against authoritarian regimes. Although India is hailed as a rising power in distant lands, it is still seen as a relatively weak power by those in its neighborhood. Geography dictates that its smaller neighbors must work with India, but it is now up to New Delhi to negotiate fresh terms of engagement.

— Sushant Singh is a Lecturer at Yale University and a Consulting Editor with India’s Caravan Magazine. He was Previously the Deputy Editor of the Indian Express and Served in the Indian Army for Two Decades.

[mysharona1987]

I love how South Korea doesn’t really let people have guns outside of the military and other quite restricted circumstances, but they’re still kicking USA ass here.

[curtwilde]

TW: Rape, violent language, islamphobia.

On Slide 3 you can see the vile genocidal fantasies of hindutva ghouls towards grieving Palestinian mothers and children, and yet they'll whine about safety of Hindu women just to demonize Muslim men. Please remember every accusation from the Hindutva genocidal majority is a confession.

Source

This is what hindutvavadis - even the soft sanghis here on tumblr - support and align themselves with. This is what they believe and what they vote for.

[sneeplerbeepler]

westerners are so fucking annoying. "only adivasis (tribal people) are native to india" you heard the word tribal and immediately made false equivalences between India and the Americas/Oceania

[crimeronan]

hi friends, i am back for now! mainly because i am Sick As Hell with some respiratory thing that hopefully isn't COVID and therefore can't do much besides lay in bed + hang with people online. is anyone up on this fine saturday morning and if so, would you join me if i streamed the owl house??

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

Is North Korea actually bad

It is not what you have been told it is. There are many bad things about the government of North Korea, there are many bad things about those running it, but it is not what you have been told it is.

[lilithism1848]

Atrocities US committed against ASIA

Between 1996-2006, The US has given money and weapons to royalist forces against the nepalese communists in the Nepalese civil war. ~18,000 people have died in the conflict. In 2002, after another civil war erupted, President George W. Bush pushed a bill through Congress authorizing $20 million in military aid to the Nepalese government.

In 1996, after receiving incredibly low approval ratings, the US helped elect Boris Yeltsin, an incompetent pro-capitalist independent, by giving him a $10 Billion dollar loan to finance a winning election. Rather than creating new enterprises, Yeltsin’s democratization led to international monopolies hijacking the former Soviet markets, arbitraging the huge difference between old domestic prices for Russian commodities and the prices prevailing on the world market. Much of the Yeltsin era was marked by widespread corruption, and as a result of persistent low oil and commodity prices during the 1990s, Russia suffered inflation, economic collapse and enormous political and social problems that affected Russia and the other former states of the USSR. Under Yeltsin, Between 1990 and 1994, life expectancy for Russian men and women fell from 64 and 74 years respectively to 58 and 71 years. The surge in mortality was “beyond the peacetime experience of industrialised countries”. While it was boom time for the new oligarchs, poverty and unemployment surged; prices were hiked dramatically; communities were devastated by deindustrialisation; and social protections were stripped away.

In the 1970s-80s, wikileaks cables revealed that the US covertly supported the Khmer Rouge in their fight against the Vietnamese communists. Annual support included an end total of ~$215M USD, food aid to 20-40k Khmer Rouge fighters, CIA advisors in several camps, and ammunition.

In December 1975, The US supplied the weaponry for the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. This incursion was launched the day after U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had left Indonesia where they had given President Suharto permission to use American arms, which under U.S. law, could not be used for aggression. Daniel Moynihan, U.S. ambassador to the UN. said that the U.S. wanted “things to turn out as they did.” The result was an estimated 200,000 dead out of a population of 700,000. Sixteen years later, on November 12, 1991, two hundred and seventeen East Timorese protesters in Dili, many of them children, marching from a memorial service, were gunned down by Indonesian Kopassus shock troops who were headed by U.S.- trained commanders Prabowo Subianto (son in law of General Suharto) and Kiki Syahnakri. Trucks were seen dumping bodies into the sea.

In 1975 Australian Constitutional Crisis, the CIA helped topple the democratically elected, left-leaning government of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, by telling Governor-General, John Kerr, a longtime CIA collaborator, to dissolve the Whitlam government.

In 2018 after the release of a suppressed ISC (International Scientific Commission) report, and the release of declassified CIA communications daily reports in 2020, it was revealed that the US used germ warfare in the Korean war, 2. Many of these attacks involved the dropping of insects or small mammals infected with viruses such as anthrax, plague, cholera, and encephalitis. After discovering evidence of germ warfare, China invited the ISC headed by famed British scientist Joseph Needham, to investigate, but the report was suppressed for over 70 years.

Between 1963 and 1973, The US dropped ~388,000 tons of napalm bombs in vietnam, compared to 32,357 tons used over three years in the Korean War, and 16,500 tons dropped on Japan in 1945. US also sprayed over 5 million acres with herbicide, in Operation Ranch Hand, in a 10 year campaign to deprive the vietnamese of food and vegetation cover.

In 1971 in Pakistan, an authoritarian state supported by the U.S., brutally invaded East Pakistan in the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971. The war ended after India, whose economy was staggering after admitting about 10 million refugees, invaded East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and defeated the West Pakistani forces. The US gave W. pakistan 411 million provided to establish its armed forces which spent 80% of its budget on its military. 15 million in arms flowed into W. Pakistan during the war. Between 300,000 to 3 million civilians were killed, with 8-10 million refugees fleeing to India.

In 1970, In Cambodia, The CIA overthrows Prince Sihanouk, who is highly popular among Cambodians for keeping them out of the Vietnam War. He is replaced by CIA puppet Lon Nol, whose forces suppressed the large-scale popular demonstrations in favour of Sihanouk, resulting in several hundred deaths. This unpopular move strengthens once minor opposition parties like the Khmer Rouge (another CIA supported group), who achieve power in 1975 and massacres ~2.5 million people. The Khmer Rouge, under Pol Pot, carried out the Cambodian Genocide, which killed 1.5-2M people from 1975-1979.

In 1969, The US initiated a secret carpet bombing campaign in eastern Cambodia, called, Operation Menu, and Operation Freedom Deal in 1970. An estimated 40,000 - 150,000 civilians were killed. Nixon lied about this campaign, but was later exposed, and one of the things that lead to his impeachment.

US dropped large amounts of Agent Orange, an herbicide developed by monsanto and dow chemical for the department of defense, in vietnam. Its use, in particular the contaminant dioxin, causes multiple health problems, including cleft palate, mental disabilities, hernias, still births, poisoned breast milk, and extra fingers and toes, as well as destroying local species of plants and animals. The Red Cross of Vietnam estimates that up to 1 million people are disabled or have health problems due to Agent Orange.

US Troops killed between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians, including women, children, and infants, in South Vietnam on March, 1968, in the My Lai Massacre. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated. Soldiers set fire to huts, waiting for civilians to come out so they could shoot them. For 30 years, the three US servicemen who tried to halt the massacre and rescue the hiding civilians were shunned and denounced as traitors, even by congressmen.

In 1967, the CIA helped South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in villages, in the Phoenix Program. By 1972, Phoenix operatives had executed between 26,000 and 41,000 suspected NLF operatives, informants and supporters.

In 1965, The CIA overthrew the democratically elected Indonesian leader Sukarno with a military coup. The CIA had been trying to eliminate Sukarno since 1957, using everything from attempted assassination to sexual intrigue, for nothing more than his declaring neutrality in the Cold War. His successor, General Suharto, aided by the CIA, massacred between 500,000 to 1 million civilians accused of being communist, in the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66. The US continued to support Suharto throughout the 70s, supplying weapons and planes.

Between 1964 and 1973, American pilots flew 580,000 attack sorties over Laos, an average of one planeload of bombs every eight minutes for almost a decade. By the time the last US bombs fell in April 1973, a total of 2,093,100 tonnes of ordnance had rained down on this neutral country. To this day, Laos, a country of just 7 million people, retains the dubious accolade of being the most heavily bombed country in the world per capita.

From the 1960s onward, the US supported Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The US provided hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, which was crucial in buttressing Marcos’s rule over the years. The estimated number of persons that were executed and disappeared under President Fernando Marcos was over 100,000. After fleeing to hawaii, marco was suceeded by the widow of an opponent he assasinated, Corazon aquino.

Starting in 1957, in the wake of the US-backed First Indochina War, The CIA carries out approximately one coup per year trying to nullify Laos’ democratic elections, specifically targeting the Pathet Lao, a leftist group with enough popular support to be a member of any coalition government, and perpetuating the 20 year Laotian civil war. In the late 50s, the CIA even creates an “Armee Clandestine” of Asian mercenaries to attack the Pathet Lao. After the CIA’s army suffers numerous defeats, the U.S. drops more bombs on Laos than all the U.S. bombs dropped in World War II. A quarter of all Laotians will eventually become refugees, many living in caves. This was later called a “secret war,” since it occurred at the same time as the Vietnam War, but got little press. Hundreds of thousands were killed.

In 1955, the CIA provided explosives, and aided KMT agents in an assassination attempt against the Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai. KMT agents placed a time-bomb on the Air India aircraft, Kashmir Princess, which Zhou was supposed to take on his way to the Bandung Conference, an anti-imperialist meeting of Asian and African states, but he changed his travel plans at the last minute. Henry Kissinger denied US involvement, even though remains of a US detonator were found. 16 people were killed.

From 1955-1975, the US supported French colonialist interests in Vietnam, set up a puppet regime in Saigon to serve US interests, and later took part as a belligerent against North Vietnam in the Vietnam War. U.S. involvement escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was later found to be staged by Lyndon Johnson. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities (see Vietnam War casualties). Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 source to 3.8 million.source Some 240,000–300,000 Cambodians,source23 20,000–62,000 Laotians,4 and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict, with a further 1,626 missing in action. Unexploded bomb continue to kill civilians for years afterward.

In the summer of 1950 in South Korea, anticommunists aided by the US executed at least 100,000 people suspected of supporting communism, in the Bodo League Massacre. For four decades the South Korean government concealed this massacre. Survivors were forbidden by the government from revealing it, under suspicion of being communist sympathizers. Public revelation carried with it the threat of torture and death. During the 1990s and onwards, several corpses were excavated from mass graves, resulting in public awareness of the massacre.

In 1984, documents were released showing that Eisenhower authorized the use of atomic weapons on North Korea, should the communists renew the war in 1953. The 2,000 pages released show the high level of planning and the detail of discussion on possible use of these weapons, and Mr. Eisenhower’s interest in overcoming reluctance to use them.

In the beginning of the Korean war, US Troops killed ~300 South Korean civilians in the No Gun Ri massacre, revealing a theater-wide policy of firing on approaching refugee groups. Trapped refugees began piling up bodies as barricades and tried to dig into the ground to hide. Some managed to escape the first night, while U.S. troops turned searchlights on the tunnels and continued firing, said Chung Koo-ho, whose mother died shielding him and his sister. No apology has yet been issued.

The US intervened in the 1950-53 Korean Civil War, on the side of the south Koreans, in a proxy war between the US and china for supremacy in East Asia. South Korea reported some 373,599 civilian and 137,899 military deaths, the US with 34,000 killed, and China with 114,000 killed. Overall, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs—including 32,557 tons of napalm—on Korea, more than they did during the whole Pacific campaign of World War II. The US killed an estimated 1/3rd of the north Korean people during the war. The Joint Chiefs of staff issued orders for the retaliatory bombing of the People’s republic of China, should south Korea be attacked. Deadly clashes have continued up to the present day.

From 1948-1949, the Jeju uprising was an insurgency taking place in the Korean province of Jeju island, followed by severe anticommunist suppression of the South Korean Labor Party in which 14-30,000 people were killed, or ~10% of the island’s population. Though atrocities were committed by both sides, the methods used by the South Korean government to suppress the rebels were especially cruel. On one occasion, American soldiers discovered the bodies of 97 people including children, killed by government forces. On another, American soldiers caught government police forces carrying out an execution of 76 villagers, including women and children. The US later entered the Korean civil war on the side of the South Koreans.

In 1949 during the resumed Chinese Civil War, the US supported the corrupt Kuomintang dictatorship of Chiang Kaishek to fight against the Chinese Communists, who had won the support of the vast majority of peasant-farmers and helped defeat the Japanese invasion. The US strongly supported the Kuomintang forces. Over 50,000 US Marines were sent to guard strategic sites, and 100,000 US troops were sent to Shandong. The US equipped and trained over 500,000 KMT troops, and transported KMT forces to occupy newly liberated zones as well as to contain Communist-controlled areas. American aid included substantial amounts of both new and surplus military supplies; additionally, loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars were made to the KMT. Within less than two years after the Sino-Japanese War, the KMT had received $4.43 billion from the US—most of which was military aid.

The U.S. installed Syngman Rhee,a conservative Korean exile, as President of South Korea in 1948. Rhee became a dictator on an anti-communist crusade, arresting and torturing suspected communists, brutally putting down rebellions, killing 100,000 people and vowing to take over North Korea. Rhee precipitated the outbreak of the Korean War and for the allied decision to invade North Korea once South Korea had been recaptured. He was finally forced to resign by mass student protests in 1960.

Between 1946 and 1958, the US tested 23 nuclear devices at Bikini Atoll, using the native islanders and their land as guinea pigs for the effects of nuclear fallout. Significant fallout caused widespread radiological contamination in the area, and killed many islanders. A survivor stated, “What the Americans did was no accident. They came here and destroyed our land. They came to test the effects of a nuclear bomb on us. It was no accident.” Many of the islanders exposed were brought to the US Argonne National laboratory, to study the effects. Afterwards the islands proved unsuitable to sustaining life, resulting in starvation and requiring the residents to receive ongoing aid. Virtually all of the inhabitants showed acute symptoms of radiation syndrome, many developing thyroid cancers, Leukimia, miscarriages, stillborn and “jellyfish babies” (highly deformed) along with symptoms like hair falling out, and diahrrea. A handful were brought to the US for medical research and later returned, while others were evacuated to neighboring Islands. The US under LBJ prematurely returned the majority returned 3 years later, to further test how human beings absorb radiation from their food and environment. The islanders pleaded with the US to move them away from the islands, as it became clear that their children were developing deformities and radiation sickness. Radion levels were still unacceptable. The United States later paid the islanders and their descendants 25 million in compensation for damage caused by the nuclear testing program. A 2016 investigation found radiation levels on Bikini Atoll as high as 639 mrem yr−1, well above the established safety standard threshold for habitation of 100 mrem yr−1. Similar tests occurred elsewhere in the Marshall Islands during this time period. Due to the destruction of natural wealth, Kwajalein Atoll’s military installation and dislocation, the majority of natives currently live in extreme poverty, making less than 1$ a day. Those that have jobs, mostly work at the US military installation and resorts. Much of this is detailed in the documentary, The Coming War on China (2016). 

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Douglas MacArthur pardoned Unit 731, a Japanese biological experimentation center which performed human testing of biological agents against Chinese citizens. While a series of war tribunals and trials was organized, many of the high-ranking officials and doctors who devised and respectively performed the experiments were pardoned and never brought to justice. As many as 12,000 people, most of them Chinese, died in Unit 731 alone and many more died in other facilities, such as Unit 100 and in field experiments throughout Manchuria. One of the experimenters who killed many, microbiologist Shiro Ishii, later traveled to the US to advise on its bioweapons programs. In the final days of the Pacific War and in the face of imminent defeat, Japanese troops blew up the headquarters of Unit 731 in order to destroy evidence of the research done there. As part of the cover-up, Ishii ordered 150 remaining subjects killed.

In 1945 during the month-long Battle of Manila, the US in deciding whether to attack Manila (then under Japanese occupation) with ground troops, decided instead to use indiscriminate carpet-bombing, howitzers, and naval bombardment, killing an estimated 100,000 people. The casualty figures show the US’s regard for filipino civilian life: 1,010 Americans, 16,665 Japanese and 100,000 to 240,000 civilians were killed. Manila became, alongside Berlin, and Warsaw, one of the most devastated cities of WW2.

US Troops committed a number of rapes during the battle of Okinawa, and the subsequent occupation of Japan. There were 1,336 reported rapes during the first 10 days of the occupation of Kanagawa prefecture alone.1 American Occupation authorities imposed wide-ranging censorship on the Japanese media, including bans on covering many sensitive social issues and serious crimes such as rape committed by members of the Occupation forces.

From 1942 to 1945, the US military carried out a fire-bombing campaign of Japanese cities, killing between 200,000 and 900,000 civilians. One nighttime fire-bombing of Tokyo took 80,000 lives. During early August 1945, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing ~130,000 civilians, and causing radiation damage which included birth defects and a variety of genetic diseases for decades to come. The justification for the civilian bombings has largely been debunked, as the entrance of Russia into the war had already started the surrender negotiations earlier in 1945. The US was aware of this, since it had broken the Japanese code and had been intercepting messages during for most of the year. The US ended up accepting a conditional surrender from Hirohito, against which was one of the stated aims of the civilian bombings. The dropping of the atomic bomb is therefore seen as a demonstration of US military supremacy, and the first major operation of the Cold War with Russia.

In 1918, the US took part in the allied intervention in the Russian civil war, sending 11,000 troops to the in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions to support the anti-bolshevik, monarchist, and largely anti-semitic White Forces. 

In 1900 in China, the US was part of an Eight-Nation Alliance that brought 20,000 armed troops to China, to defeat the Imperial Chinese Army, in the the Boxer Rebellion, an anti-imperialist uprising. 

In 1899, after a popular revolution in the Philippines to oust the Spanish imperialists, the US invaded and began the Phillipine-American war. The US military committed countless atrocities, leaving 200,000 Filipinos dead. Jacob H Smith killed between 2,500 to 50,000 civilians, His orders included, “kill everyone over the age of ten” and make the island “a howling wilderness.”

Throughout the 1800s, US settlers engaged in a genocide of native Hawaiians. The native population decreased from ~ 400k in 1789, to 40k by 1900, due to colonization and disease. In 1883, the US engineered the overthrow of Hawaii’s native monarch, Queen Lili’uokalani, by landing two companies of US marines in Honolulu. Due to the Queen’s desire “to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life” for her subjects and after some deliberation, at the urging of advisers and friends, the Queen ordered her forces to surrender. Hawaii was initially reconstituted as an independent republic, but the ultimate goal of the US was the annexation of the islands to the United States, which was finally accomplished in 1898. After this, the Hawaiian language was banned, English replaced it as the official language in all institutions and schools. The US finally apologized in 1993, but no land has been returned.

[jemmo]

i keep on seeing shit about ot6 vs ot7, who is there more of, why they support seunghan, why they don’t, and how that effects whether he returns to or leaves the group. and all i can think is WHY THE FUCK IS IT UP TO THE FANS. we do not own sm, we’re not on the board, we don’t work there. fans can think however they like. but why are we actually letting fans opinions not just influence but actually dictate what happens with these groups. no matter what anyone thinks, there are hard truths. seunghan did nothing wrong. that should be the only thing that dictates whether he’s allowed to continue his career or not, not what anyone online has to say. and reflecting on all of this makes me feel like a crazy person for not seeing it sooner. companies will lull you in with the intense connection they manufacture between idols and fans, they’ll make you think you’re important and that you matter, and when they respond to fan opinion in the way you want, it makes you feel great, like wow the powers that be actually listened to me. they want you to think that fan influence isn’t just good, it’s essential. like it just comes with being a fan now, you have power, it’s how they up engagement and make money. and usually them doing things, making decisions that are fan-driven is good bc it reinforces the feeling of power and closeness fans have and the company benefits so you don’t bat an eyelid. but something like this happens and you step back and just realise how insane it is. i am just a person. we are just people and our opinions can be fickle and baseless and emotional. they should not be the thing that drives decisions that change the lives of these idols. I do not want that power. sm might suck but they’re professionals paid to do a job, they’re kind of employed to have that power. when they do something you don’t like, you can complain about it, that’s fine. and if they do something bad or that is hurtful or objectively wrong, yes, kick up a fuss. but please please, i need people to realise that there’s a difference between complaining about a idol you don’t like and a company uplifting a person that has done something wrong, and sm should not look at us complaining about those as the same thing and meet it with the same response. public influence over companies should be reserved for when it is needed, for when that company is doing something that is actually bad, not for when its doing something you don’t like. at that point, no, you don’t get a say. there has to be a separation, we have to reintroduce that separation, between the what the company is doing and what the fans think. fan engagement is a nice sentiment but just look at where it has got us. we have people believing it’s right that they control an idols life, they think that’s what they’re entitled to, bc of how much they support them, how much they buy. and we have companies that will listen to harmful fans bc it’s better for them to go with what they think bc that’s where the money comes from. it’s the bad feeding off the bad. and while it’s not all of asian fans or all of korean fans, the fact is that whoever is making the most noise in the home market, no matter what it is they’re saying, they’ll get listened to, bc the company needs that fanbase most. they need the ones that will attend events day after day, buy all the merch and engage most and believe in this parasocial relationship for them to benefit. why do they support delulus? it’s how they make money. simple as. and as much as i hate being pessimistic and bitter, there’s simply nothing we can do. if it’s not what the local crazies want, it won’t happen. and as much as i wished for all these months that seunghan could just wait out the hiatus until all the drama died down and return quietly and it’d all be fine, I should’ve known that there’s nothing those ‘fans’ like better than sitting on their high horse over something petty and unimportant just to feel powerful.

so consider this a call out post, to fans that have made this space so incredibly harmful and toxic, and to the companies that encourage their behaviour. i hope you’re very happy together.

[troythecatfish]

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Droupadi Murmu

Droupadi Murmu was born in 1958 in Uparbeda, India. Murmu's political career started in local government in 1997 when she was elected a councillor in Rairangpur. There, she was frequently seen personally supervising sanitation work. Later, Murmu became a state lawmaker in Odisha. From 2015 to 2021, she served as Governor of Jharkhand state. As governor, Murmu was appreciated for keeping the governor's office open to those from all different backgrounds. In 2022, she was elected India's president, making her the first person from a tribal community to hold this role.

Image: President's Secretariat, 2022, https://www.presidentofindia.gov.in/ under a GODL-India license

[discoursets]

“Kasuri also gives us a rare insight into the minds of the Pakistan Army, the contribution of the Foreign Office and his warm but complex relationship with President Musharraf. Blending analysis with choice anecdote, Neither a Hawk nor a Dove gives us a comprehensive and revealing account of Pakistan’s politics and the political compulsions of those at the helm.” 🌱

[fatehbaz]

On May 28, 1914, the Institut für Schiffs-und Tropenkrankheiten (Institute for Maritime and Tropical Diseases, ISTK) in Hamburg began operations in a complex of new brick buildings on the bank of the Elb. The buildings were designed by Fritz Schumacher, who had become the Head of Hamburg’s building department (Leiter des Hochbauamtes) in 1909 after a “flood of architectural projects” accumulated following the industrialization of the harbor in the 1880s and the “new housing and working conditions” that followed. The ISTK was one of these projects, connected to the port by its [...] mission: to research and heal tropical illnesses; [...] to support the Hamburg Port [...]; and to support endeavors of the German Empire overseas.

First established in 1900 by Bernhard Nocht, chief of the Port Medical Service, the ISTK originally operated out of an existing building, but by 1909, when the Hamburg Colonial Institute became its parent organization (and Schumacher was hired by the Hamburg Senate), the operations of the ISTK had outgrown [...]. [I]ts commission by the city was an opportunity for Schumacher to show how he could contribute to guiding the city’s economic and architectural growth in tandem, and for Nocht, an opportunity to establish an unprecedented spatial paradigm for the field of Tropical Medicine that anchored the new frontier of science in the German Empire. [...]

[There was a] shared drive to contribute to the [...] wealth of Hamburg within the context of its expanding global network [...]. [E]ach discipline [...] architecture and medicine were participating in a shared [...] discursive operation. [...]

---

The brick used on the ISTK façades was key to Schumacher’s larger Städtebau plan for Hamburg, which envisioned the city as a vehicle for a “harmonious” synthesis between aesthetics and economy. [...] For Schumacher, brick [was significantly preferable] [...]. Used by [...] Hamburg architects [over the past few decades], who acquired their penchant for neo-gothic brickwork at the Hanover school, brick had both a historical presence and aesthetic pedigree in Hamburg [...]. [T]his material had already been used in Die Speicherstadt, a warehouse district in Hamburg where unequal social conditions had only grown more exacerbated [...]. Die Speicherstadt was constructed in three phases [beginning] in 1883 [...]. By serving the port, the warehouses facilitated the expansion and security of Hamburg’s wealth. [...] Yet the collective profits accrued to the city by these buildings [...] did not increase economic prosperity and social equity for all. [...] [A] residential area for harbor workers was demolished to make way for the warehouses. After the contract for the port expansion was negotiated in 1881, over 20,000 people were pushed out of their homes and into adjacent areas of the city, which soon became overcrowded [...]. In turn, these [...] areas of the city [...] were the worst hit by the Hamburg cholera epidemic of 1892, the most devastating in Europe that year. The 1892 cholera epidemic [...] articulated the growing inability of the Hamburg Senate, comprising the city’s elite, to manage class relationships [...] [in such] a city that was explicitly run by and for the merchant class [...].

In Hamburg, the response to such an ugly disease of the masses was the enforcement of quarantine methods that pushed the working class into the suburbs, isolated immigrants on an island, and separated the sick according to racial identity.

In partnership with the German Empire, Hamburg established new hygiene institutions in the city, including the Port Medical Service (a progenitor of the ISTK). [...] [T]he discourse of [creating the school for tropical medicine] centered around city building and nation building, brick by brick, mark by mark.

---

Just as the exterior condition of the building was, for Schumacher, part of a much larger plan for the city, the program of the building and its interior were part of the German Empire and Tropical Medicine’s much larger interest in controlling the health and wealth of its nation and colonies. [...]

Yet the establishment of the ISTK marked a critical shift in medical thinking [...]. And while the ISTK was not the only institution in Europe to form around the conception and perceived threat of tropical diseases, it was the first to build a facility specifically to support their “exploration and combat” in lockstep, as Nocht described it.

The field of Tropical Medicine had been established in Germany by the very same journal Nocht published his overview of the ISTK. The Archiv für Schiffs- und Tropen-Hygiene unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Pathologie und Therapie was first published in 1897, the same year that the German Empire claimed Kiaochow (northeast China) and about two years after it claimed Southwest Africa (Namibia), Cameroon, Togo, East Africa (Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda), New Guinea (today the northern part of Papua New Guinea), and the Marshall Islands; two years later, it would also claim the Caroline Islands, Palau, Mariana Islands (today Micronesia), and Samoa (today Western Samoa).

---

The inaugural journal [...] marked a paradigm shift [...]. In his opening letter, the editor stated that the aim of Tropical Medicine is to “provide the white race with a home in the tropics.” [...]

As part of the institute’s agenda to support the expansion of the Empire through teaching and development [...], members of the ISTK contributed to the Deutsches Kolonial Lexikon, a three-volume series completed in 1914 (in the same year as the new ISTK buildings) and published in 1920. The three volumes contained maps of the colonies coded to show the areas that were considered “healthy” for Europeans, along with recommended building guidelines for hospitals in the tropics. [...] "Natives" were given separate facilities [...]. The hospital at the ISTK was similarly divided according to identity. An essentializing belief in “intrinsic factors” determined by skin color, constitutive to Tropical Medicine, materialized in the building’s circulation. Potential patients were assessed in the main building to determine their next destination in the hospital. A room labeled “Farbige” (colored) - visible in both Nocht and Schumacher’s publications - shows that the hospital segregated people of color from whites. [...]

---

Despite belonging to two different disciplines [medicine and architecture], both Nocht and Schumacher’s publications articulate an understanding of health [...] that is linked to concepts of identity separating white upper-class German Europeans from others. [In] Hamburg [...] recent growth of the shipping industry and overt engagement of the German Empire in colonialism brought even more distant global connections to its port. For Schumacher, Hamburg’s presence in a global network meant it needed to strengthen its local identity and economy [by purposefully seeking to showcase "traditional" northern German neo-gothic brickwork while elevating local brick industry] lest it grow too far from its roots. In the case of Tropical Medicine at the ISTK, the “tropics” seemed to act as a foil for the European identity - a constructed category through which the European identity could redescribe itself by exclusion [...].

What it meant to be sick or healthy was taken up by both medicine and architecture - [...] neither in a vacuum.

---

All text above by: Carrie Bly. "Mediums of Medicine: The Institute for Maritime and Tropical Diseases in Hamburg". Sick Architecture series published by e-flux Architecture. November 2020. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[curtwilde]

Voting NOTA is as good as not voting. Vote wisely.

[sneeplerbeepler]

I want western progressives to stop projecting their guilt about the history of the west onto south asia. we are not the same.

[bfpnola]

Part of the rationale offered by supporters of the name change is that Bharat is an indigenous term that goes back in history and was prominent in the anti-colonial struggles – for example, the slogan “Bharat Mata ki Jai” (Hail to mother Bharat). But there are other more important political ideological factors that must not be missed.

As the backbone of the right-wing in the country, the RSS (founded in 1925) has always carried a vision for India as a Hindu nation that extends far beyond electoral politics. In this transformation of Indian society and polity, the idea of “othering” non-Hindus has been crucial, and at various times has targeted Muslims, Christians, non-Brahmins, secularists, atheists, dissenters and so on.

So the proposed change of name from India to Bharat is not an anti-colonial move. Rather it is the creation of a binary designation whereby those who continue to espouse an “Indian” identity will, over time, become politically labelled as an “other” to the true and authentic “Bharatiya” (resident of Bharat) who is the “ideal” Hindu or Hindu-ised citizen.

—

🚨 want more materials like these? this resource was shared through BFP’s discord server! everyday, dozens of links and files are requested and offered by youth around the world! and every sunday, these youth get together for virtual teach-ins. if you’re interested in learning more, join us! link in our bio! 🚨

[obsessioncollector]

This guy edits the Washington Post opinion section. Fascinating choice to invoke the Sri Lankan genocide of the Tamil minority, especially since both Israel and the U.S. supported the Sri Lankan government. Probably means nothing.