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hussyknee · 2 years ago

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Arundati Roy writing in The Guardian against the Afghanistan War on October 2001

“Brutality smeared in peanut butter”

Why America must stop the war now.

By Arundhati Roy

Tue 23 Oct 2001 • 00.57 • BST •

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As darkness deepened over Afghanistan on Sunday October 7 2001, the US Government, backed by the International Coalition Against Terror (the new, amenable surrogate for the United Nations), launched air strikes against Afghanistan. TV channels lingered on computer-animated images of cruise missiles, stealth bombers, tomahawks, "bunker-busting" missiles and Mark 82 high drag bombs. All over the world, little boys watched goggle-eyed and stopped clamouring for new video games.

The UN, reduced now to an ineffective acronym, wasn't even asked to mandate the air strikes. (As Madeleine Albright once said, "We will behave multilaterally when we can, and unilaterally when we must.") The "evidence" against the terrorists was shared amongst friends in the "coalition".

After conferring, they announced that it didn¹t matter whether or not the "evidence" would stand up in a court of law. Thus, in an instant, were centuries of jurisprudence carelessly trashed.

Nothing can excuse or justify an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by religious fundamentalists, private militia, people's resistance movements – or whether it's dressed up as a war of retribution by a recognised government. The bombing of Afghanistan is not revenge for New York and Washington. It is yet another act of terror against the people of the world.

Each innocent person that is killed must be added to, not set off against, the grisly toll of civilians who died in New York and Washington.

People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed.

Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people's minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, civilians are now hostage to the actions of their own governments.

Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a common bond - they have to live with the phenomenon of blind, unpredictable terror. Each batch of bombs that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts.

There is no easy way out of the spiralling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the world today. It is time now for the human race to hold still, to delve into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and modern. What happened on September 11 changed the world forever.

Freedom, progress, wealth, technology, war – these words have taken on new meaning.

Governments have to acknowledge this transformation, and approach their new tasks with a modicum of honesty and humility. Unfortunately, up to now, there has been no sign of any introspection from the leaders of the International Coalition. Or the Taliban.

When he announced the air strikes, President George Bush said: "We're a peaceful nation." America¹s favourite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who also holds the portfolio of prime minister of the UK), echoed him: "We're a peaceful people."

So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace.

Speaking at the FBI Headquarters a few days later, President Bush said: "This is our calling. This is the calling of the United States of America. The most free nation in the world. A nation built on fundamental values that reject hate, reject violence, rejects murderers and rejects evil. We will not tire."

Here is a list of the countries that America has been at war with – and bombed – since the Second World War: China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), the Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999). And now Afghanistan.

Certainly it does not tire – this, the most free nation in the world.

What freedoms does it uphold? Within its borders, the freedoms of speech, religion, thought; of artistic expression, food habits, sexual preferences (well, to some extent) and many other exemplary, wonderful things.

Outside its borders, the freedom to dominate, humiliate and subjugate usually in the service of America¹s real religion, the "free market". So when the US Government christens a war "Operation Infinite Justice", or "Operation Enduring Freedom", we in the Third World feel more than a tremor of fear.

Because we know that Infinite Justice for some means Infinite Injustice for others. And Enduring Freedom for some means Enduring Subjugation for others.

The International Coalition Against Terror is a largely cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and sell almost all of the world's weapons, they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modern history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins, the Taliban just isn't in the same league.

The Taliban was compounded in the crumbling crucible of rubble, heroin and landmines in the backwash of the Cold War. Its oldest leaders are in their early 40s. Many of them are disfigured and handicapped, missing an eye, an arm or a leg. They grew up in a society scarred and devastated by war.

Between the Soviet Union and America, over 20 years, about $45bn (£30bn) worth of arms and ammunition was poured into Afghanistan. The latest weaponry was the only shard of modernity to intrude upon a thoroughly medieval society.

Young boys many of them orphans – who grew up in those times, had guns for toys, never knew the security and comfort of family life, never experienced the company of women. Now, as adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, rape and brutalise women, they don't seem to know what else to do with them.

Years of war has stripped them of gentleness, inured them to kindness and human compassion. Now they've turned their monstrosity on their own people.

They dance to the percussive rhythms of bombs raining down around them.

With all due respect to President Bush, the people of the world do not have to choose between the Taliban and the US Government. All the beauty of human civilisation – our art, our music, our literature – lies beyond these two fundamentalist, ideological poles. There is as little chance that the people of the world can all become middle-class consumers as there is that they will all embrace any one particular religion. The issue is not about good vs evil or Islam vs Christianity as much as it is about space. About how to accommodate diversity, how to contain the impulse towards hegemony every kind of hegemony, economic, military, linguistic, religious and cultural.

Any ecologist will tell you how dangerous and fragile a monoculture is. A hegemonic world is like having a government without a healthy opposition. It becomes a kind of dictatorship. It¹s like putting a plastic bag over the world, and preventing it from breathing. Eventually, it will be torn open.

One and a half million Afghan people lost their lives in the 20 years of conflict that preceded this new war. Afghanistan was reduced to rubble, and now, the rubble is being pounded into finer dust. By the second day of the air strikes, US pilots were returning to their bases without dropping their assigned payload of bombs. As one pilot put it, Afghanistan is "not a target-rich environment". At a press briefing at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, was asked if America had run out of targets.

"First we're going to re-hit targets," he said, "and second, we're not running out of targets, Afghanistan is..." This was greeted with gales of laughter in the briefing room.

By the third day of the strikes, the US Defence Department boasted that it had "achieved air supremacy over Afghanistan" (Did they mean that they had destroyed both, or maybe all 16, of Afghanistan's planes?)

On the ground in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance – the Taliban's old enemy, and therefore the international coalition's newest friend – is making headway in its push to capture Kabul. (For the archives, let it be said that the Northern Alliance's track record is not very different from the Taliban's. But for now, because it's inconvenient, that little detail is being glossed over.) The visible, moderate, "acceptable" leader of the alliance, Ahmed Shah Masud, was killed in a suicide-bomb attack early in September. The rest of the Northern Alliance is a brittle confederation of brutal warlords, ex-communists and unbending clerics. It is a disparate group divided along ethnic lines, some of whom have tasted power in Afghanistan in the past.

Until the US air strikes, the Northern Alliance controlled about 5% of the geographical area of Afghanistan. Now, with the coalition's help and "air cover", it is poised to topple the Taliban. Meanwhile, Taliban soldiers, sensing imminent defeat, have begun to defect to the alliance. So the fighting forces are busy switching sides and changing uniforms. But in an enterprise as cynical as this one, it seems to matter hardly at all.

Love is hate, north is south, peace is war.

Among the global powers, there is talk of "putting in a representative government". Or, on the other hand, of "restoring" the kingdom to Afghanistan's 89-year old former king Zahir Shah, who has lived in exile in Rome since 1973. That's the way the game goes – support Saddam Hussein, then "take him out"; finance the Mojahedin, then bomb them to smithereens; put in Zahir Shah and see if he's going to be a good boy. (Is it possible to "put in" a representative government? Can you place an order for democracy – with extra cheese and jalapeno peppers?)

Reports have begun to trickle in about civilian casualties, about cities emptying out as Afghan civilians flock to the borders which have been closed. Main arterial roads have been blown up or sealed off. Those who have experience of working in Afghanistan say that by early November, food convoys will not be able to reach the millions of Afghans (7.5m, according to the UN) who run the very real risk of starving to death during the course of this winter. They say that in the days that are left before winter sets in, there can either be a war, or an attempt to reach food to the hungry. Not both.

As a gesture of humanitarian support, the US Government air-dropped 37,000 packets of emergency rations into Afghanistan. It says it plans to drop a total of 500,000 packets. That will still only add up to a single meal for half a million people out of the several million in dire need of food.

Aid workers have condemned it as a cynical, dangerous, public-relations exercise. They say that air-dropping food packets is worse than futile.

First, because the food will never get to those who really need it. More dangerously, those who run out to retrieve the packets risk being blown up by landmines. A tragic alms race.

Nevertheless, the food packets had a photo-op all to themselves. Their contents were listed in major newspapers. They were vegetarian, we're told, as per Muslim dietary law (!) Each yellow packet, decorated with the American flag, contained: rice, peanut butter, bean salad, strawberry jam, crackers, raisins, flat bread, an apple fruit bar, seasoning, matches, a set of plastic cutlery, a serviette and illustrated user instructions.

After three years of unremitting drought, an air-dropped airline meal in Jalalabad! The level of cultural ineptitude, the failure to understand what months of relentless hunger and grinding poverty really mean, the US Government's attempt to use even this abject misery to boost its self-image, beggars description.

Reverse the scenario for a moment. Imagine if the Taliban Government was to bomb New York City, saying all the while that its real target was the US government and its policies. And suppose, during breaks between the bombing, the Taliban dropped a few thousand packets containing nan and kebabs impaled on an Afghan flag. Would the good people of New York ever find it in themselves to forgive the Afghan Government? Even if they were hungry, even if they needed the food, even if they ate it, how would they ever forget the insult, the condescension? Rudi Guiliani, Mayor of New York City, returned a gift of $10m from a Saudi prince because it came with a few words of friendly advice about American policy in the Middle East. Is pride a luxury that only the rich are entitled to?

Far from stamping it out, igniting this kind of rage is what creates terrorism. Hate and retribution don't go back into the box once you've let them out. For every "terrorist" or his "supporter" that is killed, hundreds of innocent people are being killed too. And for every hundred innocent people killed, there is a good chance that several future terrorists will be created.

Where will it all lead?

Setting aside the rhetoric for a moment, consider the fact that the world has not yet found an acceptable definition of what "terrorism" is. One country's terrorist is too often another¹s freedom fighter. At the heart of the matter lies the world's deep-seated ambivalence towards violence.

Once violence is accepted as a legitimate political instrument, then the morality and political acceptability of terrorists (insurgents or freedom fighters) becomes contentious, bumpy terrain. The US Government itself has funded, armed and sheltered plenty of rebels and insurgents around the world.

The CIA and Pakistan's ISI trained and armed the Mojahedin who, in the '80s, were seen as terrorists by the government in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Today, Pakistan – America's ally in this new war – sponsors insurgents who cross the border into Kashmir in India. Pakistan lauds them as "freedom-fighters", India calls them "terrorists". India, for its part, denounces countries who sponsor and abet terrorism, but the Indian army has, in the past, trained separatist Tamil rebels asking for a homeland in Sri Lanka – the LTTE, responsible for countless acts of bloody terrorism.

(Just as the CIA abandoned the mujahideen after they had served its purpose, India abruptly turned its back on the LTTE for a host of political reasons. It was an enraged LTTE suicide bomber who assassinated former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1989.)

It is important for governments and politicians to understand that manipulating these huge, raging human feelings for their own narrow purposes may yield instant results, but eventually and inexorably, they have disastrous consequences. Igniting and exploiting religious sentiments for reasons of political expediency is the most dangerous legacy that governments or politicians can bequeath to any people - including their own.

People who live in societies ravaged by religious or communal bigotry know that every religious text – from the Bible to the Bhagwad Gita – can be mined and misinterpreted to justify anything, from nuclear war to genocide to corporate globalisation.

This is not to suggest that the terrorists who perpetrated the outrage on September 11 should not be hunted down and brought to book. They must be.

But is war the best way to track them down? Will burning the haystack find you the needle? Or will it escalate the anger and make the world a living hell for all of us?

At the end of the day, how many people can you spy on, how many bank accounts can you freeze, how many conversations can you eavesdrop on, how many emails can you intercept, how many letters can you open, how many phones can you tap?

Even before September 11, the CIA had accumulated more information than is humanly possible to process. (Sometimes, too much data can actually hinder intelligence – small wonder the US spy satellites completely missed the preparation that preceded India's nuclear tests in 1998.)

The sheer scale of the surveillance will become a logistical, ethical and civil rights nightmare. It will drive everybody clean crazy. And freedom – that precious, precious thing – will be the first casualty. It's already hurt and haemorrhaging dangerously.

Governments across the world are cynically using the prevailing paranoia to promote their own interests. All kinds of unpredictable political forces are being unleashed. In India, for instance, members of the All India People's Resistance Forum, who were distributing anti-war and anti-US pamphlets in Delhi, have been jailed. Even the printer of the leaflets was arrested.

The rightwing government (while it shelters Hindu extremists groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal) has banned the Islamic Students Movement of India and is trying to revive an anti-terrorist Act which had been withdrawn after the Human Rights Commission reported that it had been more abused than used. Millions of Indian citizens are Muslim. Can anything be gained by alienating them?

Every day that the war goes on, raging emotions are being let loose into the world. The international press has little or no independent access to the war zone. In any case, mainstream media, particularly in the US, have more or less rolled over, allowing themselves to be tickled on the stomach with press handouts from military men and government officials. Afghan radio stations have been destroyed by the bombing. The Taliban has always been deeply suspicious of the press. In the propaganda war, there is no accurate estimate of how many people have been killed, or how much destruction has taken place. In the absence of reliable information, wild rumours spread.

Put your ear to the ground in this part of the world, and you can hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat of burgeoning anger. Please. Please, stop the war now. Enough people have died. The smart missiles are just not smart enough. They're blowing up whole warehouses of suppressed fury.

President George Bush recently boasted, "When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2m missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive." President Bush should know that there are no targets in Afghanistan that will give his missiles their money's worth.

Perhaps, if only to balance his books, he should develop some cheaper missiles to use on cheaper targets and cheaper lives in the poor countries of the world. But then, that may not make good business sense to the coalition's weapons manufacturers. It wouldn't make any sense at all, for example, to the Carlyle Group – described by the Industry Standard as "the world's largest private equity firm", with $13bn under management.

Carlyle invests in the defence sector and makes its money from military conflicts and weapons spending.

Carlyle is run by men with impeccable credentials. Former US Defence Secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyle's Chairman and Managing Director (he was a college roommate of Donald Rumsfeld's). Carlyle's other partners include former US Secretary Of State James A Baker III, George Soros and Fred Malek (George Bush Sr's campaign manager). An American paper The Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel– says that former President George Bush Sr is reported to be seeking investments for the Carlyle Group from Asian markets.

He is reportedly paid not inconsiderable sums of money to make "presentations" to potential government-clients.

Ho hum. As the tired saying goes, it's all in the family.

Then there's that other branch of traditional family business – oil. Remember, President George Bush (Jr) and Vice-President Dick Cheney both made their fortunes working in the US oil industry.

Turkmenistan, which borders the north-west of Afghanistan, holds the world's third largest gas reserves and an estimated six billion barrels of oil reserves. Enough, experts say, to meet American energy needs for the next 30 years (or a developing country's energy requirements for a couple of centuries.) America has always viewed oil as a security consideration, and protected it by any means it deems necessary. Few of us doubt that its military presence in the Gulf has little to do with its concern for human rights and almost entirely to do with its strategic interest in oil.

Oil and gas from the Caspian region currently moves northward to European markets. Geographically and politically, Iran and Russia are major impediments to American interests. In 1998, Dick Cheney – then CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the oil industry – said, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight." True enough.

For some years now, an American oil giant called Unocal has been negotiating with the Taliban for permission to construct an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to the Arabian sea. From here, Unocal hopes to access the lucrative "emerging markets" in South and South-east Asia. In December 1997, a delegation of Taliban mullahs travelled to America and even met US State Department officials and Unocal executives in Houston. At that time the Taliban's taste for public executions and its treatment of Afghan women were not made out to be the crimes against humanity that they are now.

Over the next six months, pressure from hundreds of outraged American feminist groups was brought to bear on the Clinton administration.

Fortunately, they managed to scuttle the deal. And now comes the US oil industry's big chance.

In America, the arms industry, the oil industry, the major media networks, and, indeed, US foreign policy, are all controlled by the same business combines. Therefore, it would be foolish to expect this talk of guns and oil and defence deals to get any real play in the media. In any case, to a distraught, confused people whose pride has just been wounded, whose loved ones have been tragically killed, whose anger is fresh and sharp, the inanities about the "clash of civilisations" and the "good vs evil" discourse home in unerringly. They are cynically doled out by government spokesmen like a daily dose of vitamins or anti-depressants. Regular medication ensures that mainland America continues to remain the enigma it has always been – a curiously insular people, administered by a pathologically meddlesome, promiscuous government.

And what of the rest of us, the numb recipients of this onslaught of what we know to be preposterous propaganda? The daily consumers of the lies and brutality smeared in peanut butter and strawberry jam being air-dropped into our minds just like those yellow food packets. Shall we look away and eat because we're hungry, or shall we stare unblinking at the grim theatre unfolding in Afghanistan until we retch collectively and say, in one voice, that we have had enough?

As the first year of the new millennium rushes to a close, one wonders – have we forfeited our right to dream? Will we ever be able to re-imagine beauty?

Will it be possible ever again to watch the slow, amazed blink of a newborn gecko in the sun, or whisper back to the marmot who has just whispered in your ear – without thinking of the World Trade Centre and Afghanistan?

#if you read nothing else today read this #i wonder how many people know that Afghanistan was also an oil war #people seem to think the Afghanistan War was 'justified'#but the Iraq War wasnt #Arundati Roy was just saying what people already knew – this was a war machine sniffing after oil and guns #an industry coalition of which the Republican establishment were major stakeholders #the obscenity of dropping food packets with bombs #this is why you have no future in your country USAmerican Gen Z #this is why the entire globe adopted anti-Muslim ethnonationalism and Islamic fundamentalism for the next 20 years #this is how the global wave of fascism began #because they sold weapons to the wrong people‚ and then chose a scapegoat to sacrifice in revenge #world history #september 11 #geopolitics #us history #afghanistan war #usamerican imperialism #cold war #taliban #violence #terrorism #colonialism #capitalism #genocide #arundati roy #pacifism #anarchism #knee of huss

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newstfionline · 6 years ago

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Headlines

Right-Wing Party Wins Power in Canada’s Oil Region, Attacks Trudeau on Environment (Reuters) A right-of-center party swept to power in Canada’s main oil-producing province of Alberta on Tuesday and attacked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s efforts to fight climate change, raising tension just months ahead of a federal election.

U.S. Health Officials Probe Multi-State Salmonella Outbreak (Reuters) U.S. federal health officials said on Tuesday an investigation is underway over a multi-state outbreak of Salmonella Newport infections linked to frozen ground tuna, which were imported into the United States by seafood retailer Jensen Tuna.

Mexico President Sets Aside Education Reform (AP) President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ordered his Cabinet ministers Tuesday to ignore the education reforms put in place by the previous administration while congress tries to work out replacement legislation.

Hundreds of Prisoners Released in Nicaragua Before Protests Anniversary (Reuters) Nicaragua’s government released 636 prisoners on Tuesday as embattled President Daniel Ortega seeks to consolidate his hold on power nearly one year since the beginning of the biggest protests to shake his government.

London Braces for Rail Disruption by Climate-Change Protesters (Reuters) London was bracing for disruption by climate-change activists to underground train services on Wednesday after protesters blocked some of London’s most important junctions including Oxford Circus and Marble Arch.

$1 Billion Raised to Rebuild Paris’ Notre Dame After Fire (AP) Nearly $1 billion has already poured in from ordinary worshippers and high-powered magnates around the world to restore the fire-ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, after the French president set a controversial five-year deadline to get the work done.

Hungry for Change, Ukrainians Set to Elect Comedian as Next President (Reuters) Ukrainians fed up with entrenched corruption and hungry for change are likely to elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a comedian with no previous political experience, as their next president in a run-off vote on Sunday.

Myanmar Pardons More Than 9,000 Prisoners in New Year Amnesty (Reuters) Myanmar began releasing more than 9,000 prisoners from jails on Wednesday, after the president announced an amnesty on the first day of the traditional New Year.

Murder-suicide flames tensions between Okinawa residents and U.S. troops (Washington Post) Police in Okinawa discovered a grisly scene of murder-suicide Saturday, a culmination of what military officials had already suspected: Navy corpsman Gabriel A. Olivero had a history of violence. Olivero, 32 fatally stabbed an unidentified woman on the island, southwest of mainland Japan, before turning the knife on himself, Stars and Stripes reported. The slaying has inflamed decades-long relations between thousands of U.S. troops and Okinawans, many of whom resent the American presence there.

Indonesia goes to the polls (Reuters) More than 192 million Indonesians are eligible to vote in presidential and parliamentary elections on Wednesday after campaigns focused on the economy, but with political Islam looming large over the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation. President Joko Widodo, a former furniture salesman who launched his political career as a small-city mayor, is standing for re-election in a contest with ex-general Prabowo Subianto, whom he narrowly defeated in 2014.

Israel Demolishes Home of Suspected Palestinian Attacker (AP) The Israeli military has demolished the family home of a Palestinian suspected in a drive-by shooting against Israelis in the occupied West Bank.

UAE Minister Hails Trump’s Veto of U.S. Congress Resolution on Yemen (Reuters) United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash hailed President Donald Trump’s veto of a congressional resolution that sought to end U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Egyptian President Sissi wins approval from lawmakers to stay in office until 2030 (Washington Post) Parliament voted overwhelmingly for constitutional amendments to extend President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi’s rule and greatly enlarge his powers.

Shelling in Libyan Capital Kills Two, Wounds Eight: Tripoli Official (Reuters) Late night shelling in Libya’s capital Tripoli killed two people and wounded eight, a Tripoli emergency department official said on Wednesday.

150 Missing After Shipwreck in Eastern Congo (Reuters) About 150 people are missing after a boat sunk on a lake in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, President Felix Tshisekedi said on Tuesday.

#headlines

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Link Tank: 10 Shows to Watch For Fans of The Expanse

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

From Altered Carbon to Fortitude, here are some shows fans of The Expanse should check out.

“The Expanse Season 5 recently made its debut, after an excruciating series hiatus. Unfortunately, fans were also met with the bittersweet news that The Expanse will come to an end with season six. The fascinating blend of sci-fi noir, space opera, and political thriller will hopefully get the ending it deserves.”

Read more at Gizmodo.

The post Link Tank: 10 Shows to Watch For Fans of The Expanse appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3oO6ims

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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storiesfablesghostlytales · 6 years ago

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Stories Fables Ghostly Tales: Mae Nak, The Oily Man, The Midnight Bus𝓤𝓻𝓫𝓪𝓷 𝓛𝓮𝓰𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓼 and Research | Indonesia, Malaysia, China *EXPLICIT - Adult Themes | Sexual Assault | Rape (Term only not detail) See Source Bibliography in the episode notes at the bottom. Mae Nak - 4:07 The Oily Man - 11:30 The Midnight Bus - 22:00 Topic: #Nosleep #Creepy #Storytelling #Fiction #Rituals A spirit turns sour when she murders to hide a secret from her husband…which is nothing what you’d expect. A creature, a warlock, a monster no-less strikes terror to Malaysian woman to this day…whose body is covered in something…unusual, and a Bus that takes it’s passengers…to a grisly fate…the only bus you’d be lucky enough to miss. Welcome listeners, I have for your three Urban Legends from three different countries, part of an urban legends episode series that I’ll be working on amongst many other mini-projects. I bring you Mae Nak from Indonesia, Orang Minyak from Malaysia, and The Midnight Buss from China – so turn off your lights, turn up the sound, and if you here a sound in the night…lock your doors. Thank you so much for listening to the #podcast mates! ***** Visit my website for those without Podcast apps: httpts://www.storiesfablesghost.wixsite.com/storiesfables Send me your own stories and recommendations because you're awesome: [email protected] All my Social Media Links: ***** Facebook Page: httpts://www.facebook.com/StoriesFablesGhostlyTales Twitter: twitter.com/StoriesFablesGT Youtube: httpts://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjtTN-6a_PS38eO90wzcNew ***** Fantastic Music Links and Credit - Public Domain: CO.AG - httpts://goo.gl/hQZW8Z Myuuji - httpts://www.youtube.com/user/myuuji NCM: httpts://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHEioEoqyFPsOiW8CepDaYg ***** RESEARCH SOURCES: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhakara_Kiartivongse 2. Mae Nak: https://www.toptenz.net/10-creepy-asian-urban-legends.php https://www.thaiworldview.com/bouddha/maenak.htm https://www.thephuketnews.com/the-haunting-tale-of-mae-nak-ghost-59641.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mae_Nak_Phra_Khanong 3. Orang Minyak: https://www.livescience.com/17781-orang-minyak-malaysia.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orang_Minyak http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=8779 https://www.historicmysteries.com/oily-man-orang-minyak/ 4. News Report: https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2018/04/351725/teen-girl-attacked-orang-minyak-kelantan-village https://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/yahoo-malaysia-newsroom/orang-minyak-supernatural-sicko-real-life-rascal-154310905.html 11. The Midnight Bus: https://chinesefolktales.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-midnight-bus-urban-legend-from.html http://www.scaryforkids.com/bus-375/ https://paranormalis.com/threads/the-legend-of-the-midnight-bus-real-or-fake.10631/

#Stories Fables Ghostly Tales Podcast #Podcast #Creepypasta #Nosleep #Stories #Audiobook #Drama #Horror #Fiction #Storytelling #Folktales #Old Time Radio #Creepy Stories #Horror Stories #Audio Drama #Australian

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sacarita-blog · 6 years ago

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Madison County

Download Madison County (2011) Subtitle Indonesia – Nonton Film Streaming Sub Indo – A group of college kids travel to a small, mountain town called Madison County to interview the author of a tell-all book on the accounts of several grisly murders that happened there.

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party-hard-or-die · 7 years ago

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In India, Facebook’s WhatsApp Plays Central Role in Elections

MANGALORE, India — Waving a giant saffron flag, Pranav Bhat last week joined a political rally for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India’s ruling party here in this sweltering port city on the southwest coast.

Milling on a vast field with his college buddies, Mr. Bhat, 18, cheered for Mr. Modi and his Hindu-oriented Bharatiya Janata Party, which was trying to wrest control of Karnataka state from the more secular Indian National Congress in legislative elections.

Yet the most intense political campaigning was not taking place on the streets. Instead, the action was happening on WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook that has about 250 million users in India.

Mr. Bhat, a B.J.P. youth leader, said he used WhatsApp to stay in constant touch with the 60 voters he was assigned to track for the party. He sent them critiques of the state government, dark warnings about Hindus being murdered by Muslims — including a debunked B.J.P. claim that 23 activists were killed by jihadists — and jokes ridiculing Congress leaders. His own WhatsApp stream was full of election updates, pro-B.J.P. videos, and false news stories, including a fake poll purportedly commissioned by the BBC that predicted a sweeping B.J.P. win.

“Every minute, I’m getting a message,” said Mr. Bhat, a college student.

Facebook’s WhatsApp is taking an increasingly central role in elections, especially in developing countries. More than any other social media or messaging app, WhatsApp was used in recent months by India’s political parties, religious activists and others to send messages and distribute news to Karnataka’s 49 million voters. While many messages were ordinary campaign missives, some were intended to inflame sectarian tensions and others were downright false, with no way to trace where they originated.

In the run-up to the May 12 vote in the state — the results of which are set to be announced on Tuesday — the B.J.P. and Congress parties claimed to have set up at least 50,000 WhatsApp groups between them to spread their messages. At the same time, many others — their identities are unknown — distributed videos, audio clips, posts and false articles designed specifically to rile up the area’s Hindu-Muslim fissures.

Right-wing Hindu groups employed WhatsApp to spread a grisly video that was described as an attack on a Hindu woman by a Muslim mob but was in fact a lynching in Guatemala. One audio recording on the service from an unknown sender urged all Muslims in the state to vote for the Congress party “for the safety of our women and children.” Another WhatsApp message exhorted Hindus to vote for the B.J.P. because “this is not just an election. This is a war of faiths.”

Like the rest of India, Karnataka is a Hindu majority state. A staple of electoral politics here is pitting Muslims against Hindus, and various Hindu castes against each other.

Ankit Lal, a top strategist for the Aam Aadmi Party, which fielded 28 candidates for Karnataka’s 224 legislative seats, said WhatsApp has become the most important tool in digital campaigning. “We wrestle on Twitter. The battle is on Facebook. The war is on WhatsApp,” he said.

The role that WhatsApp plays in influencing voters has received far less attention than that of its sister services, Facebook and its photo-sharing platform, Instagram. Both Facebook and Instagram have come under intense scrutiny in recent months for how Russian agents used them to manipulate American voters in the 2016 presidential election.

WhatsApp has largely escaped that notice because it is used more heavily outside the United States, with people in countries like India, Brazil and Indonesia sending a total of 60 billion messages a day. And unlike Facebook and Instagram, where much of the activity is publicly visible online, WhatsApp’s messages are generally hidden because it began as a person-to-person communication tool.

Yet WhatsApp has several features that make it a potential tinderbox for misinformation and misuse. Users can remain anonymous, identified only by a phone number. Groups, which are capped at 256 members, are easy to set up by adding the phone numbers of contacts. People tend to belong to multiple groups, so they often get exposed to the same messages repeatedly. When messages are forwarded, there is no hint of where they originated. And everything is encrypted, making it impossible for law enforcement officials or even WhatsApp to view what’s being said without looking at the phone’s screen.

Govindraj Ethiraj, the founder of Boom and IndiaSpend, two sites that fact-check Indian political and governmental claims, called WhatsApp “insidious” for its role in spreading false information.

“You’re dealing with ghosts,” he said. Boom worked with Facebook during the Karnataka elections to flag fake news appearing on the social network.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has pledged to curb the abuse of Facebook and Instagram by people seeking to secretly influence elections. But he has said nothing about WhatsApp, which Facebook bought in 2014 for $19 billion.

WhatsApp officials said they are concerned about misuse of the platform, whose terms of service forbid hate speech, threats of violence and false statements. A few weeks ago, its systems detected an attempt by someone in Karnataka to create dozens of groups very quickly using automation. After some people reported getting spam from these groups, the company blocked them all. WhatsApp declined to say who it suspected was behind the group creation.

“We’re working to give people more control over groups and are constantly evolving our tools to block automated content,” WhatsApp said in a statement, adding that it was stepping up education on its safety features and how to spot fake news and hoaxes.

India’s Congress party, which has ruled the country for most of the period since independence, has lost control of the central government and several key states but has held on to power in Karnataka. If the B.J.P. wins the state when votes are counted on Tuesday, it would give Mr. Modi’s party crucial momentum ahead of India’s 2019 national elections.

How much the WhatsApp barrage affected the final election results in Karnataka may never be clear. While WhatsApp has largely replaced text messages and email here, old-school campaign tactics such as rallies, television and newspaper coverage, door-to-door canvassing and outright vote-buying remain prevalent.

Neelanjan Sircar, who was in Karnataka last week studying electoral behavior for the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, said the flood of WhatsApp messages probably did not change voters’ political views. But they did push emotional buttons and increase turnout in areas with strong caste or religious divisions.

“What it does do is get people out on the street,” Mr. Sircar said. State officials said voter turnout was 72 percent, the highest level since 1952.

Four years ago, during India’s national parliamentary elections that swept Mr. Modi to power, the primary digital tool was Facebook. But as smartphone use in India has exploded over the past year and a half, WhatsApp became the country’s default communication mode — and the preferred medium for distributing campaign messages.

In state elections in Uttar Pradesh in early 2017, for example, the B.J.P. created more than 6,000 WhatsApp groups to get its messages to every district and village. Its landslide victory there prompted the Congress party to mobilize its own WhatsApp army.

So when the time came to gear up for Karnataka’s state elections, the parties turned to the same WhatsApp playbook.

“WhatsApp works like a nuclear chain reaction,” said Randeep Singh Surjewala, the Congress party’s chief spokesman.

U.T. Khader, an incumbent member of Karnataka’s legislative assembly, experienced the WhatsApp effect firsthand. Just before the election, Mr. Khader, a Muslim in the Congress party, was the target of what Mangalore police said was a disturbing new type of WhatsApp attack: a series of profane audio messages purporting to be an escalating exchange of threats between Hindus and Muslims over his candidacy.

In one recording, which was supposedly a phone call between two Hindu political activists, one voice harangued the other for putting a saffron-colored shawl, which the B.J.P. views as a Hindu symbol, around Mr. Khader.

“Why did you put a saffron shawl on Khader? Do you love your life or not?” the first voice said. “If I shove a knife into you, do you think Khader will come to your support?”

Later messages sounded like they came from Muslims threatening to kill the first voice in response. “Son of a prostitute, I’m warning you,” said one. “I’ll take you out.” The messages were sent to various WhatsApp groups, so they were heard by many voters.

Mr. Khader, who has represented the area for more than a decade and won with a large margin last time, said the alleged conversations were fake and recorded in a studio.

He said WhatsApp has a social responsibility to stop such hate speech, but he also believed the negative messages backfired, increasing the support he got from his constituents, half of whom are Muslim. And WhatsApp has been useful for his campaign in other ways.

“TV channels and newspapers largely tend to ignore me,” Mr. Khader said. “WhatsApp has helped me reach my supporters without the help of the mainstream media.”

Mr. Bhat, the college student and B.J.P. youth leader, said WhatsApp has been effective for him as well. After the polls closed on Saturday, he said the messages he shared with the 60 voters assigned to him had helped persuade 47 of them to vote for the B.J.P., including 13 who were previously uncommitted.

“I was successful in making them vote for B.J.P.,” he said.

Sudipto Mondal contributed reporting.

Follow Vindu Goel on Twitter: @vindugoel.

The post In India, Facebook’s WhatsApp Plays Central Role in Elections appeared first on World The News.

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