Category Archives: Government Oppression

British prime minister Boris Johnson's resignation has called into question the future of LGBTQ+ rights. (Vudi Xhymshiti/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Leading LGBTQ+ activists and groups have welcomed Boris Johnsons resignation, but some warned that his successor could be just as toxic.

On Thursday (7 July), Johnson stood outside 10 Downing Street to announce he is stepping down as leader of the Conservative Party.He plans to remain as caretaker prime minister until the autumn, while the Tories elect a successor.

Itbrought to an end a stormy 48 hours that saw a rebellion in his own cabinet and an unprecedented wave of resignations from all levels of the government.

As the nation waits with bated breath to learn who the next prime minister will be, LGBTQ+ activists responded with a mixture of jubilation and fear. The future of LGBTQ+ rights, they say, hangs in the balance.

Peter Tatchell, a veteran LGBTQ+ rights campaigner, toldPinkNews: Boris Johnson has a long history of anti-LGBTQ+ remarks and bad taste jokes about our community.

He stoked the culture wars; using LGBTQ+ concerns as a wedge issue to appeal to bigoted voters. It is reprehensible the way he disparaged trans people and supporteddiscrimination against them in sport and the provision of womens services.

He flip-flopped on banning conversion practices and was intent on excluding trans people from any ban.

For Nadia Whittome, Labour MP for Nottingham East, seeing the back of Johnsons head was an image she has long hoped to see. He was, after all, a prime minister who played a ruthless game of divide-and-rule, regularly attacked trans people in an attempt to stoke a culture war which would deflect from his own failings, she said.

So it was no surprise trans rights groups were especially relieved at Johnsons ousting.

Gendered Intelligence, a trans healthcare charity, welcomed Johnsons administration coming to an end. The end of Boris Johnsons term has been marked by constant attacks on trans people, including his sudden U-turn on the ban on conversion practices, a spokesperson said.

There are many social ills that need addressing in this country the legacy of COVID, child poverty, the cost of living crisis but trans people are not one of them.

To Trans Activism UK, Johnsons administration has been one that has actively devalued vital human rights and marginalised communities and threw Britain into a spiralling cascade into the Stone Age.

There were many examples of this, but the governments decision to scrap vital reforms to the Gender Recognition Act and to exclude trans people from a conversion therapy ban were high on the groups list.

Johnson himself began to echo gender critical dog whistles in interviews and statements that have made it abundantly clear that he does not stand by the scientifically-backed evidence that transgender women are women, and deserve full equal inclusion, Trans Activism UK said.

When it comes to the question of who will succeed Johnson, some sounded a more cautious tone.

Among them was Tatchell.The entireleadership of the Tories is toxic for our community, he said, well probablyend with another prime minister who will continue many of Johnsons prejudiced policies.

Campaigner and former government LGBTQ+ adviser Jayne Ozanne said: We can only hope that whoever succeeds him is from outside of Johnsons inner circle.

So far, only attorney general Suella Bravermanhas confirmed her intent to run in the leadership contest, in which some 100,000 Conservative Party members will decide Britains next prime minister.

Liz Truss is expected to announce her run imminently, with Rishi Sunak and his successor as chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, Penny Mordaunt and Ben Wallace also being discussed.

Dominic Raab and Michael Gove have said they do not intend to run in the upcoming leadership contest.

LGBT+ Conservatives, the ruling partys queer members wing, stressed it will remain neutral during the contest and hopes to work with candidates with their LGBTQ+ policies.

But setting the tone for her campaign, Braverman told ITVs Robert Peston said she will get rid of all this woke rubbish a remark that struck fear in some LGBTQ+ activists.

Sadly weve already seen potential Tory leadership candidates talk about LGBT+ equality as woke stuff they want to get rid of, said Joe Vinson, national secretary for LGBT+ Labour, the opposition partys official queer wing.

His solution was simple enough: Its clear that LGBTQ+ people dont just need a change of prime minister, they need a total change of Government

Such fears of yet another populist and polarising Tory in power were felt by Whittome as well.When you look at the candidates lining up to replace him, I have no faith that the next Conservative Prime Minister will be any better for LGBTQ+ people, she said.

And she certainly has her reasons.From Priti Patel who has made it harder for LGBTQ+ refugees to find safety here, to Ben Wallace who has voted against LGBTQ+ equality at every opportunity, to Liz Truss who opposed trans rights while Equalities Secretary, the list goes on and on.

The Tories are not on our side.

Even on the other side of the political aisle, gay Tory MP for Darlington Peter Gibson said that as he decides which hopeful to back, their commitment to LGBTQ+ rights will be a deciding factor.

I will be looking for cast-iron guarantees for the LGBT+ community, not least of which includes a commitment to a ban on conversion practices which includes Trans people. We cannot go backwards, he said.

Gendered Intelligence, however, remains hopeful. Many of the ministers who resigned among them former minister for equalities Mike Freer cited Johnsons treatment of the LGBTQ+ community in their letters of resignation, a spokesperson said.

It was not so long ago that the Conservative Party were leading the campaign for Gender Recognition reform and promising to ban conversion therapy.

We hope that they will realise that nothing stands to be gained from continuing the legacy of oppression, and instead focus on the challenges that affect all of us.

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Tories urged to ditch Boris Johnson's 'legacy of oppression' by LGBTQ+ activists - PinkNews

The level of government neglect is alarming. Indices of unemployment, poverty, development, health infrastructure are abysmally low.

We want Freedom Pakistan Army go back. Such angry slogans are heard every day in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Women and children have been sitting on dharna for days. Many people were arrested as they wanted to protest at the secretariat in Muzaffarabad. Clearly, people of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir have had enough. The pitiable state of poverty, unemployment, health care, infrastructure development and social opportunities has driven people into the streets. In a profoundly symbolic action, people surrounded the United Nations Observers Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) vehicles while shouting slogans against Pakistan government and Army. UNMOGIP is one of the oldest UN missions in world which came into operation on request of India to monitor cease fire between India and Pakistan. The war had started as Pakistani Army along with Tribal groups attacked Jammu and Kashmir soon after the partition. The attackers unleashed a wave of violence, rape, arson and loot. These unholy activities of the raiders delayed them and Srinagar was saved. In spite of being in stronger position in the ensuing war, India approached UN as a responsible democracy and the UNMOGIP came into existence. UNMOGIPs birth was the direct result of Pakistans unjustified aggression in Jammu and Kashmir. Later, having failed to wrest Jammu and Kashmir by force, Pakistan unleashed a proxy war here in late eighties resulting into colossal deaths and destruction which continues unabated.

Ironically, Pakistani establishment blatantly neglected Kashmir it had occupied after partition. Except for the so called name i.e. Azaad Kashmir, everything else there is a saga of utter neglect and oppression. The level of government neglect is alarming. Indices of unemployment, poverty, development, health infrastructure are abysmally low. The forest cover went down from 42 percent to 14 percent due to unchecked deforestation. The electricity produced here is sent to Punjab while the people of the region face load shedding of 18 to 20 hours. The Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) has emerged as the suicide capital of Pakistan with over90 per centof cases being reported from there. With reports of the region being given to China, the despondency of people has increased. Recently, the Prime Minister of POK cried during an official address. POK Pakistan ke liye ek colony hai....loot ke liye ek jagah hai ...is asserted by leaders openly. Look at the investments in Jammu and Kashmir.. even the meeting of G 20 is being planned there. We want to merge with India ...... people of POK are heard saying. The protests have resultantly reached a peak in POK and people have protested in front of the UNMOGIP. This is a tight slap on the face of Pakistan Government which has already lost credibility in UN, FATF, IMF and international community.

Pakistani establishment lost credibility because it adopted terrorism as a state policy. Encouraged by the ouster of Soviets, Pakistan under Operation TOPAC started training, equipping and infiltrating terrorists into Jammu and Kashmir. The gun culture and state patronage to jehadi groups turned Pakistan into a terror state. When the subsidiary of Pakistan created Taliban, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan started hammering its own Army, Pakistan ludicrously coined the terms Good Taliban and Bad Taliban. Today the bad Taliban, the TTP, is negotiating with Pakistan government as an equal and demanding that Pakistan Army withdraws from FATA. What kind of banana republic would do that? No matter how much Pakistani establishment denies and defends..... the world knows its reality. The diabolic policies of the establishment have turned inwards and the snake has started to bite the hand that fed it. The ungrateful snake..... fed lovingly to bite the neighbours but has turned against Pakistan.... its mentor!! Why dont snakes have scruples? Pakistan seeks sympathy on this account.

The repercussion of the negative state policies are ironically faced by Pakistani citizens who humiliatingly wait for hours at airports due to their green passports, treated like terrorists. Recently, Pakistan as expected rejected the dossier submitted by India on Pakistan terror infrastructure. They assert that Pakistan, a peace loving country does not believe in terrorism (LOL).

The ongoing economic down slide of Pakistan is clearly fatal and hence the government is accepting all dictates of IMF like raising cost of fuel, mortgaging national assets and even reducing defence budget. The spirits of Eid Festival were dampened due to unprecedented inflation. Excessive load shedding has forced people to use hand fans. And as always, the spineless Pakistani politicians are playing the bickering blame game. Pakistan is going the Sri Lanka way but ISI and Pakistan Army is busy running a proxy war in Kashmir. Pakistans obsession with Kashmir has taken it to the dooms way.

Bachaa naa sake East Pakistan.haath se nikal raha hai Baluchistan

Kashmir ka jhootha khwab dekhte dikhate, toot raha hai Pakistan

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PoK: A place of exploitative and predatory - Brighter Kashmir

Kurds have again been betrayed, this time to enable Sweden and Finland to apply for NATO membership. The trilateral memorandum between these two countries and Turkey paves the way for the extradition of political refugees to Turkey.

Sweden and Finland are now on track to become NATO members. Yet again, Kurds have become the currency with which geopolitical deals are made. Sweden and Finlands NATO membership hinged on a promise to extradite Kurds suspected by Turkey of having terrorist associations who have sought refuge in these countries. Since signing the agreement on 28 June, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has refused to deny deportations to Turkey as part of the NATO deal. Turkeys ambassador to Sweden has gone even further than what is required in the memorandum, demanding the Swedish government do something about rallies where demonstrators wave the flags of organisations banned by Turkey.

According to the 1920 Treaty of Sevres that followed the demise of the Ottoman empire, there was supposed to have been an autonomous Kurdistan. However, in an attempt to appease Turkey, which did not recognise the Kurds as a separate ethnic group despite having their own languages and culture, the United Kingdom betrayed the Kurds in the negotiations leading up to the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, in which their lands were divided. The Kurdish population was then split into Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Each has been ruled by tyrannical autocrats responsible for massacres of the Kurdish population, such as the chemical attack by Saddam Hussein in Halabja, Iraq in 1988. Due to the oppression of the four states occupying the land of Kurdistan, there is a large number of Kurdish refugees across the globe, many of whom found their way to Sweden. Others, such as Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdish Freedom movement, have been in solitary confinement in Turkey for decades.

In the late 1970s, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) emerged in Turkey against the background of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Kurds and the prohibition of any expression of Kurdish culture, even speaking the language. Similar to other freedom movements, such as the ANC in South Africa and FRETILIN in East Timor, the PKK has used armed resistance to achieve its goals. However, unlike other freedom movements striving for human rights, the PKK has been designated a terrorist organisation by many Western states. This stems from the pathological hatred Turkish leaders have for the Kurdish people and reflects Turkeys geopolitical power. Its location, with access to the Mediterranean as well as the Black Sea, makes Turkey a desirable ally.

Two of the so-called terrorist organisations mentioned in the tripartite memorandum agreed at the NATO summit in Madrid on 28 June are the PKK and the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), organisations that were instrumental in defeating the ISIS caliphate. Their fighters were admired for their rescue of the surviving Yazidis from the marauding ISIS gangs. The agreement commits Sweden and Finland to significant changes of laws and policies to enable the extradition of people designated by Turkey as terror suspects affiliated with these organisations.

YPG is the major component of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is supported by the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. It serves as the defence force of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), formed in 2018, as an evolution of a previous autonomous administration established in 2014, following the withdrawal of the Syrian government forces during the civil war. SDF is now simultaneously fighting both ISIS sleeper cells and attacks by Turkey, both directly and through its Jihadist mercenaries. In its June 2022 report, SDF noted that it had conducted 11 security operations and arrested 17 terrorists, most of whom were funded by Turkey and operating from areas occupied by Turkey. The report emphasised that the Turkish occupations continuous threats of launching new attacks will negatively affect the SDFs fight against ISIS and would provide a safe harbour for other terrorist groups.

Both PKK and YPG are informed by the principles of democratic confederalism, which incorporates democratic institutions from the micro levels of society up to the macro level. In areas governed by AANES, also known by the Kurdish name Rojava, these principles have been implemented with equal gender representation for each governance structure, with female and male co-chairs. This level of gender equality is unusual even in the West, let alone in the more patriarchal Middle East. Furthermore, these groups have introduced a solidarity economy, prioritising social goods like ecological sustainability over profits.

That this democratic enclave has been able to survive regular onslaughts by Turkey, including rape and other forms of torture and ethnic cleansing by Jihadist mercenaries of the Turkish regime, is a testament to the resilience of the population and their strong belief in the democratic system. Turkey has recently threatened another invasion for the purpose of occupying more land, a threat that has been preceded by almost daily bombings of civilian targets, often in Christian villages. As part of the tripartite memorandum, Sweden will also lift its arms export embargo on Turkey, introduced following the 2019 invasion and occupation of Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) and Gire Spi (Tel Abyad).

It is not surprising that an authoritarian leader such as Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdoan finds it difficult to accept the existence of adherents to this humanitarian philosophy within or in proximity of Turkeys borders. Capitalising on its beneficial geopolitical position, Turkey has successfully convinced Western democracies, including Australia, to list the PKK as a terrorist organisation and is now attempting to extend this definition to the US ally YPG. In Belgium, the only country where this classification of PKK has been legally challenged, the Court of Cassation found that the PKK is not a terrorist organisation.

Can the Australian government show moral courage and do anything to counter this inappropriate concession to Turkey in the form of betrayal of Kurds? Yes, it can bring forward the next review of the listing of the PKK as a terrorist organisation with a view of removing it from the list. PKK has been listed in Australia as a proscribed organisation since 2005, and this listing is reviewed every three years. In its submission to the 2021 Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security review on the relisting, the Federation of Democratic Kurdish Society Australia argued that PKKs actions should be viewed in the light of the ongoing oppression of Kurds by Turkey, that the delisting of PKK has the potential contribute to peace and stability in the region, and that the continued listing of the PKK is traumatic for the Kurdish diaspora in Australia and leads to discrimination. The next scheduled review will occur in August 2024, when the current three-year listing expires. By starting the review now, Australia would signal its contempt for the injustice enshrined in the trilateral memorandum.

Considering the widespread listing of PKK by other countries and the large Turkish diaspora and its associated lobbying power relative to the much smaller Kurdish community, it would be a courageous move by Australia to delist it. However, demonstrating such independent foreign policy could position Australia to play an important role in achieving peace, freedom, and democracy in that part of the Middle East.

Dr Helena Grunfeld and Fionn Skiotis are co-chairs of North and East Syria Solidarity.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.

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Sweden and Finland's NATO Aspirations Put Kurds at Risk - Australian Institute of International Affairs - Australian Institute of International...

The London ministerial conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief has served as a reminder that religious freedom is fractured beyond repair, and we must act now before its too late, writes Qamar Rafiq.

The religious freedom crisis and its consequences are nothing new. I have suffered at the very sharp end of a system where only religious identity determines your status, freedom, and opportunity.

There wasn't space for me to survive and thrive. Hence, I was compelled to leave my home country. I gave up so much more than the sun and sea to rebuild my life in England. These are life-changing experiences which go beyond pain and suffering. I urge when the nightmare is over, we must evaluate who owes an apology for all those long painful years of subjugation that victims of religious oppression face.

There are clear signs the crisis of religious freedom has landed us in the worst of all worlds. As a result of the pandemic of religious persecution everywhere, the face of religious freedom has become fierce and damning testimony to a flagrant disregard for the right to life.

Study after study has revealed that religiously motivated extremists and non-state actors continue to target religious minorities. And faith communities not only face brutal robbery of their rights but also the challenges which include the vandalism of their sites of worship and discriminatory laws, which has aggravated the situation to horror. Similarly, the crimes of forced conversion, abductions and enslavement of minority women and girls are among the biggest human rights issues in the arena.

Welcome to this new era of breakdown that affects us all.

Atrocities in the name of religion have made the case that FoRB is under sustained attack a concern we can't afford to overlook. On 5 and 6 July 2022, the United Kingdom convened the International Ministerial on Freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) to engage with civil society, religious actors, and governments for a global action to address the underlying threat. Indubitably, it is a colossal mandate and it wont flourish without leadership, strategy, and change.

Thankfully, Britain has not only taken a leadership role in advancing the cause but also pledged to ripen herd instinct by strengthening its partnership with International FoRB Alliance.

During the FoRB prayer breakfast, I had the opportunity to meet government officials, religious leaders, survivors of persecution, and civil society organisations from around the world. It soon became clear from these conversations that the religious freedom crisis that has become an international tragedy.

The Prime Ministers Special Envoy for FoRB, Fiona Bruce, highlighted the necessity for robust engagement with governments, civil society, and academics to advance religious freedom and associated rights. Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon spoke about the power of prayer and faith when human solutions fail to guide you. He urged delegates to remember the golden thread of life is Love for all hatred for none.

The event featured the genocides of religious minorities, such as the Hazaras in Afghanistan, the Bahai in Iran and the Yazidis in Iraq, which has brought awareness to the bleak situation that continues to be neglected by law enforcement, media and governments around the world.

The event also brought to light to the kind of political discourse that is fundamentally driven by religion and that has crushed the values of democracy. Perhaps, we cannot protect our living world until we revolutionise our political systems in order to safeguard the social, economic and civil rights of faith communities.

In his remarks during the panel session, Bishop of Truro Philip Mounstephen said the key challenge is to keep up the momentum around the issue. We must not let it sink back into the place that it was before, largely ignored and overlooked.

A lifelong champion of persecuted people and victims of genocide, Lord Alton of Liverpool emphasised the significance of detecting the beginnings of genocide.He has been repeatedly urging the UK Government to put in place adequate frameworks to thwart the monster of genocide.

I was incredibly honoured to meet Rashad Hussain, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. I was especially inspired to learn about his passion and dedication to working for a common cause. I will always remember him as a phenomenal religious freedom champion who has the power of listening.

As a victim of persecution, I can see the ripples of hatred are widespread in many countries for being merciless about dispatching minorities to second even third-class citizens which puts the country in such a grisly place for minorities.

In 2021 more than 4,650 Christians were killed in Nigeria, roughly 13 per day, or about one killing every two hours, according to a report by the international watchdog Open Doors. Nigerians face systematic threats to their right to freedom of belief and Boko Haram jihadists and other armed insurgents repeatedly attack civilians based on their beliefs. Similarly, Pakistans failure to safeguard the fundamental rights of minorities hasnt only amplified the trend of misuse of blasphemy law but also thrown poor minorities into deeper deprivation since 30,000 jobs allocated for minorities remain vacant for years.

Equally appalling is the situation of 130,000 Muslims in Burma who remain in government-run internment camps. The US State Department in its annual report to Congress on international religious freedom has alleged that in India in 2021 attacks on members of the minority communities occurred throughout the year. One question above all strikes at the heart of Indias democracys uncertain prospect of religious freedom: who belongs in todays India?

We need a coordinated global effort to combat our existential crises the rising tide of blasphemy laws and stockpiling of human rights abuses. That is why Britain has propelled a clear message to the world that religious freedom is fractured, beyond repair, and we must act now before it's too late.

The issue has received much attention after the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has stepped up its commitment to FoRB. In recent years, the British government has taken every possible step to champion freedom of religion.

In September 2018, Jeremy Hunt, British Foreign Secretary, worked hard on the plight of the Rohingya Muslims, who are targets of a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing mounted by the army of Burma.

On the other hand, he warmly welcomed Bishop Mounstephens report on Christian persecution and its recommendations on 8 July 2019. Noting the worsening situation of the Hazara community and highlighting the risk of a possible genocide, a UK Parliamentary inquiry was launched in April 2022.

The London summit last week was a consequence of the UK's commitment to champion FoRB globally through the FCOs diplomatic network, partnering with faith groups and working together with the countries of concern. Isnt it frightening that a minority facing endless oppression now feels afraid, not being reassured? At worst, the religious freedom agenda risks being derailed, by parroted rhetoric of the governments which is often followed by pledging more excuses.

From Myanmar to India and Nigeria to Pakistan, religious minorities wallow in the myths of denialism. How long can the world cope with the religious freedom crisis? The reality is minorities are in the grip of deep malaise and exhausted by efforts to find havens from tyranny. What happens when denialism bites?

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Why we must act now on religious freedom before it is too late - The Tablet

Dr. Thamil Ananthavinayagan discusses the recent uprising in Sri Lanka, and its potential to have a meaningful impact on social, racial and moral justice in the country.

What is Happening in Sri Lanka?

The dynasty has fallen. After protesters stormed the presidential palace and the private residences of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapakse and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, the former announced his resignation while the latter offered to follow suit.

For some, the anger burgeoned as Sri Lankas economy spiraled into a rapid downfall in the face of crushing debt owed to such regional powers as India, China and Japan, as well as to Western-based international organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Rajapaksa regimes extravagant tax breaks and increasing debt ruined the governments finances. As oil prices increased, foreign currency reserves were swiftly drained. Long lines have become commonplace in front of stores selling cooking gas since the nation hardly has enough money left to import the heavily rationed fuel. The 22 million-person nations headline inflation rate was 54.6 percent last month, and the Central Bank has issued a warning that it may increase to 70 percent in coming months.

Peoples Justice, or Majoritarian Justice?

Against this backdrop, pressure had been mounting on the Third World Elite, which had governed and shaped recent decades of Sri Lankan history. Anger about the socio-economic collapse, long queues for fuel, skipping meals to make ends meet: what started with waves of frustration had grown into a tsunami crashing down on the shores of the elites palaces. Scenes of people entering the buildings of their leaders went around the world: sleeping on their beds, swimming in their pools, using their gym equipment and eating in their kitchens. These scenes were reminiscent of the Libyan people entering the palaces of Muammar Gaddafi or of the Iraqi people in Saddam Husseins palaces.

The protests were led predominantly by the Sinhala people, members of Sri Lankas ethnic majority. While they were loud and clear in their demands for social justice in various capacities, they fell silent on key issues of racial justice on the island. And this silence isnt new; the large majority of the Sinhala people were silent when it came to post-colonial string of racial, religious, cultural discriminatory policies; the large majority remained silent when Tamils were attacked during the infamous Black July of 1983; they were silent when Muslims were attacked in the streets after the Easter Bombings of 2019. Pogroms and attacks against Tamils and Muslims were forms of exercising biopower. As it is written elsewhere, as a result of the states role in preserving life that is productive and necessary for the social body, war becomes an organising rationale for and truth-effect of the arrangement of bodies within a population, stimulated by the theme of racism. The war played out in a variety of fashions and modes; but ultimately it was meant to give an identity and self-serving providence of the Sinhala people. It was that identity politics that divided the Third World peoples, a smokescreen for the Third World elites to distract, obstruct and enrich themselves while the ethnic feud assisted in the corruption of solidarity in the post-colonial era. The phenomenon of state capture has not only occurred in Sri Lanka; other Third World countries are carbon copies of Sri Lankas governance.

However, it was only when injustice hit home, when a lack of food and the empty stomachs could not take it anymore, that the realization kicked in: they have also betrayed us. Will the current upheaval lead to a process of critical reflection and discussion? The future is murky, as the keys to the palaces are in the hands of the Sinhala people. Even if talks remain ongoing and there is general agreement to form an all-party interim government, the formation and governance thereof will be heavily influenced, on the one hand by the Sinhala monks who want to influence and shape the future of Sri Lanka, and on the other, by the ambitions of the Army. The manipulation of the post-colonial architecture is real: divisions between communities along racial lines have led to wealth disparities: the richest 20 percent of Sri Lankan households receive more than half of the nations total household income, while the bottom decile (the poorest 20 percent) receives only 5 percent, with the proportion of household income for the poorest 10 percent amounts to just 1.6 percent.

What Does the Future Hold?

The looming intervention of the IMF will not solve the woes of the country. To the contrary, it will exacerbate the situation: the IMF, in the past, had intervened with further loans to support the participating international banks and financiers, placing the burden of repayment on the taxpayers of the damaged economies. Uncollectible private loans were frequently turned into public debt at the IMFs urging. The IMF and the World Bank imposed structural adjustment plans (SAP) on around 90 developing nations, ranging from Guyana to Ghana, over the past 20 years. The goal of these SAPs was to eliminate protectionism and enable neoliberal intrusion. As Brian-Vincent Ikejiaku writes: The international economic liberalism is one of the major powerful tools of international economic law agenda pursued by the Westerners through the auspices of the international financial institutions, in order to continue maintaining the subjugation and control of the third-world countries. () Thus, the growing importance of international organisations such as the G7, IMF and World Bank is indicative of the influence of liberal economic internationalism in the post-Cold War period. Hence, the granting of aid and loan to the poorer communities, as a means for the elimination of hunger and disease in the Third World become the primary aim which these institutions based their activities.

The fight Sri Lankas protestors started must trigger a larger indigenous moment of solidarity: native and foreign elites have sold off the country, using identity politics to intoxicate, manipulate and divide, while enabling them to maintain the upper hand over the country. German scientist, writer and revolutionary Georg Bchner proclaimed once under the title Peace to the huts! War on the Palaces! explaining that peasants and workers should revolt against oppression and excessively high taxation.

And, in fact, it is moment to revolt against injustice in all its forms: social, racial and moral.

Dr. Thamil Venthan Ananthavinayagan, LL.M. (Maastricht University), PhD (NUI Galway) is a lecturer for international law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law at Griffith College Dublin since September 2017. Prior to this lectureship at GCD, he worked as a Fellow and research assistant to the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway, Ireland. His doctoral research focused on the engagement of Sri Lanka with the United Nations human rights machinery.

Suggested citation: Thamil Ananthavinayagan, Peace to the huts! War on the palaces! Is Sri Lanka experiencing peoples justice or a coup dtat?, JURIST Academic Commentary, July 12, 2022, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2022/07/peace-to-the-hut-or-a-coup-detat/

This article was prepared for publication by Ingrid Burke-Friedman, JURIST Features & Commentary Editor. Please direct any questions or comments to [her] at commentary@jurist.org

Opinions expressed in JURIST Commentary are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST's editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.

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'Peace to the Huts! War on the Palaces!' Is Sri Lanka Experiencing People's Justice or a Coup d'tat? - JURIST

Only 36 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. system of government is sound, according to a new poll from Monmouth University. This number is a significant drop from previous polls which showed that even as recently as 2020, 52 percent felt the system was sound. This historic drop down from 62 percent of responders who said that the system was sound in 1980 is the result of sustained decrease in Americans faith in the government over the past several years.

A recent Gallup poll which measures faith in 16 different institutions including governmental institutions as well as institutions more broadly defined such as the medical system and small businesses backed up these findings. The poll found that the average level of faith in institutions is at an all-time low and that faith in 11 of the institutions that they measure has dropped significantly. The biggest drops from 2021 to 2022 were trust in the Presidency and the Supreme Court, likely a direct response to the ongoing political crisis of the regime. Interestingly, the only institution that saw no decline in faith at all on that poll was organized labor. These polls show an increasingly prominent crisis of the institutions, where more and more of the general population are breaking with their faith in these institutions which weaken their ability to control areas of society.

Other signs of this crisis can be seen in the historically low approval rating of the Supreme Court. Only 25 percent of Americans believe the Supreme Court is doing a good job and a majority believe that the court is driven by politics an important rebuttal to the historic misunderstanding of the court as an apolitical institution. Recent far-right decisions, like the overturning of Roe v. Wade, have only intensified public dissatisfaction with the court as an institution, with Abort the Court and other similar slogans being common rallying cries at protests and online. Even members of the liberal intelligentsia typically key defenders of the institutions of American Democracy have had to attack the court as an institution. Vox published a Case Against the Supreme Court, Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times declared that the Supreme Court is the Final Word on Nothing, and Ezra Klein said that Americans need to question the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.

This anger at the Supreme Court comes amidst an incredibly unpopular Congress (82 percent disapprove) and president (59 percent disapprove). In addition, 40 percent of Americans dont believe Biden won the election. These results show that the political regime as a whole and as parts is despised by the majority.

In the days before Joe Biden was sworn in amidst a huge national crisis arising from the wreckage of the Trump presidency and the chaos of January 6 I wrote that Biden was taking power with a set of very specific tasks from the bourgeoisie with the primary one among them being to re-legitimize the institutions of the American state. Essentially, Biden was handpicked by the ruling class as a response to Trump, under the theory that Uncle Joe could restore Americans faith in institutions that had increasingly been revealed to be institutions of racism, oppression, and the preservation of capitalist exploitation rather than the idyllic democratic notions that the bourgeoisie had historically tried to present them as. To combat the awakenings that resulted from Trump, the pandemic, and Black Lives Matter, the Democrats were able to win a majority of the bourgeoisie to Bidens campaign, arguing that he would bring stability, demobilize social movements, and restore legitimacy to institutions of the state both domestically and internationally.

This last point is important. Bidens task was not merely to restore faith in the presidency, the courts, elections, and various other domestic institutions but also to attempt to reassert American hegemony on the world stage. Trumps America First approach was in firm opposition with the neoliberal/neoconservative project of building and maintaining active imperialist control through international alliances between imperialist powers through institutions like NATO, the IMF, etc. This America First orientation led to Trump withdrawing or distancing the U.S. from several of these organizations. He openly, for example, criticized NATO and apparently considered withdrawing from it all together. These moves weakened the United States already declining position abroad and left Biden with a mess on the international stage to contend with, in addition to the crises at home.

In this task, Biden has succeeded far more than he has with the domestic challenges. Specifically as a result of Russias invasion of Ukraine, Biden has been able to reposition the U.S. as a leader internationally, rebuild U.S. forces within NATO, and convince other member states to rearm themselves all in advance of future conflicts with Russia and China. Congress has increased military budgets, allowing Biden more resources with which to maneuver internationally. In addition, public support for NATO is incredibly high (65 percent support) and the main opposition to Bidens militaristic approach in Europe is coming from the Trumpist right who question why funds are being sent to Ukraine in the midst of an economic crisis at home rather than from the Left. In this task, Biden has been a success and has advanced American imperialist power in significant ways.

On the domestic front, of course, the situation is very different. As described above, domestic institutions are increasingly unpopular and Bidens presidency seems to be in crisis with the Democrats likely headed for a midterms blood bath likely worsened by their embarrassing and politically inept response to the overturning of Roe. The seeming impending electoral doom for the Democrats is largely a response to the faltering economy and high inflation, which impact the average working person on a daily basis. Biden and the Democrats have been relatively impotent on the question of inflation, choosing instead to largely leave it to the Federal Reserve to figure out. With many economists predicting a coming recession, economic anxiety and anger at the president who was supposed to bring us a return to prosperity are at a high.

The honeymoon offered to Biden after January 6 has ended and, since that honeymoon period drew to a close, Biden and the Democrats have been unable to pass any significant piece of their legislative agenda engaging in politically costly compromises to weaken the already-milquetoast reforms they were proposing and then still failing to pass them. One important area of failure in the legislative arena was the PRO Act, which was intended in part to co-opt the new union wave into the folds of the Democratic Party by making the Democrats appear to be the party fighting for union rights. But they werent even able to pass that, showing yet again a legislative disunity which only underlines their inability to address the current crisis. In this context, any hopes that the Democrats may have had that the war in Ukraine, anger at the Supreme Court, or the January 6 hearings would bolster support for Biden has been dashed on the rocks of reality.

In this context, it seems likely that the crisis within the Democratic Party between the progressive, establishment, and conservative wings of the party, which has effectively ground all of Bidens legislative agenda to a halt due to the conservative wing represented by Manchin and Sinema being able to veto any legislation they want will re-emerge in an even greater way. The tensions of the current period of the Biden administration has been primarily between the establishment wing and the conservative wing, with the progressives giving political support to the establishment. This is due to the progressive wing being in relative retreat and alliance with the establishment since the 2020 primary fight between Sanders and Biden.

Facing a political massacre as the political face of unpopular institutions, Democratic politicians will have to come up with a strategy to stop the bleeding and find someone to blame for the consequences of their inability to resolve the capitalist crisis. For the establishment wing, it seems clear that the strategy will be, once again, to run against Trumpism (leaning on the January 6 hearings) and attempt to win moderates to the party by ditching activist issues. As an example of this, Hillary Clinton recently said in an interview that trans rights (which are under massive attacks by the advancing right) shouldnt be a priority for the Democrats. Some Democrats have even taken out TV ads trying to distance themselves from the Defund the Police slogan.

Members of the progressive wing, by contrast, are trying to appear more confrontational in hopes that this will make them appear separate from the regime that they currently serve in. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has demanded that Supreme Court justices be investigated for lying under oath surrounding statements that were made about not overturning Roe during the confirmation hearings for several of the Justices who then voted to overturn Roe. Cori Bush aggressively pursued Biden passing climate protections via Executive Order and Rashida Tlaib joined with an activist group to call for more transparency around water policy in Detroit. Several members of the Squad have also been very vocal on social media with fiery statements denouncing various court decisions in recent weeks. If the Democrats do end the year as the minority in Congress, it seems likely that the Progressives may return to their pre-2020 strategy of openly arguing with the establishment wing as an attempt to delineate themselves from the sinking ship of the Democratic Party leadership; though it seems likely that, when push comes to shove, they will toe the line and play their part of saving the Democratic Party by giving them a left cover as they did after the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

The Republicans, in the current moment, are on a high, with their crisis becoming more latent than it was even a few months ago. A new approach of Trumpism without Trump has emerged, marrying some of Trumps populism and rhetorical approach with more traditional Republican approaches to foreign policy as well as some hyper-reactionary positions on issues like abortion, trans rights, and immigration. This approach was piloted in the Virginia gubernatorial race in 2021 to great success and has been rolled out to several states since then.

Key figures of Trumpism without Trump include Gregg Abbott and likely 2024 frontrunner Ron DeSantis (who is polling neck and neck with Trump in early 2024 Republican primary polls). Both men have been able to tap into some of Trumps base while also keeping better relations with the party establishment, and have made significantly more moves toward the socially conservative Mike Pence wing of the party than Trump ever did. For all his bluster and reactionary agenda, Trump was always relatively uninterested in typical Republican bugbears of abortion and queer rights focusing his hate instead on immigrants and taking a significantly different approach to foreign policy than the mainstream Republican Party favoring protectionism over globalization and openly critizing important institutions of global hegemony like the WHO, NATO, and the UN. Abbott, DeSantis, and others in this new moment in the Republican Party have brought a Trumpist approach to those issues to, from their perspective, great success, with some of the most oppressive policies against trans people being enacted in several states and Roe being overturned. In this, it is clear how Trumpism without Trump has been able to unite the various warring wings of the party social oppression for the Pence wing, right-wing populism and anti-immigration for the Trump wing, and a more traditional Republican approach to foreign policy and governance for the Romney wing. This new moment of the Republican party positions it well to act as the political representation for the current moment of right wing advance.

Whether this moment of decreased tensions within the party will continue or not is, of course, an open question. Trump is still a major player and it is unclear whether or not he will run again and, if he doesnt, whether he will throw his support behind another leader of the party. In addition, most of Trumpism without Trump is occurring on the state level with only a handful of Trumpist politicians serving in Congress. After November, this will likely no longer be the case there is talk of a potential far-right Squad being formed in the House with Marjorie Taylor-Greene and the new Trumpists being elected which will bring Trumpism into direct conflict with the Mitch McConnell establishment. In addition, despite not being leaders of the institutions of the state, the unpopularity will also have an impact on the Republicans as any potential explosions of rage on the streets will be largely directed at them which could force them into a more defensive position. Additionally, many economists predict that another recession is coming which would greatly impact the political terrain on which both parties operate. Regardless, it seems clear that the current crisis benefits the Republicans far more than it does the Democrats.

As the two main capitalist parties fight amongst themselves for who should steer a sinking ship, the working class and oppressed are more and more enraged at the institutions that got us here. In the third year of a pandemic with yet another once in a generation financial crisis coming, a constantly worsening climate, and massive restrictions on our right to bodily autonomy, there is a real rage at the current situation that, so far, has remained relatively latent though with some meaningful explosions such as Striketober, the recent protests against the Supreme Court, etc.. Yet the powder kegs are being assembled. It is only a matter of time until a match is lit.

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Historically Low Approval Ratings of Institutions Show the US Regime in Crisis - Left Voice

I was born underground. When I was a kid, my parents were on the run from the FBI and my mom, Bernardine Dohrn, was on the US governments 10 Most Wanted List. J Edgar Hoover called her The most dangerous woman in America.

My parents never hid any of this from me. I knew, from when I was three or four, that we used fake names. I knew we moved around a lot, made calls from public phones, and paid for everything in cash. I knew somebody was chasing us, but didnt know what FBI meant why they, or it, wanted to catch us or what would happen if they did.

As I grew up, I learned my parents were leaders of the Weather Underground organisation, a militant leftwing group that carried out a series of bombings in the 1970s as a protest against the war in Vietnam, as well as police violence against Black people in the US.

When I was four, my parents turned themselves in after more than a decade underground. Most of the charges against them had been dropped due to government misconduct the FBI had illegally wire-tapped their friends and relatives, searched their apartments without warrants and even plotted using kidnapping and blackmail to catch them. Nonetheless, my mom still went to jail when I was five for refusing to testify against her friends and former comrades.

Some of my earliest memories are of visiting her behind bars, sneaking pocket-sized books past the metal detectors so she could read to me; and, later, visiting other radicals serving long prison sentences. Many had children my age; one of those kids, Chesa Boudin, became my adopted brother.

So I have thought a lot about the consequences of radicalism. About the damage extremist violence can do to a country or a society, and to the loved ones of political combatants on both sides.

I dont have the political certainty of my parents which is why Im a writer, not an activist. But Im interested in the messy tangle of personal and political forces that motivate people to risk their lives and families to try to change the world. So, over the past few years, Ive been writing a documentary podcast series, Mother Country Radicals, which is both a family memoir and a wider history of the revolutionary underground a story that turns out to be more dramatic and surprising than I ever imagined, and holds important lessons for today about what radicalises people, and how activists can fight creatively for political change.

As I was conducting interviews for the podcast, the murder of George Floyd provoked uprisings across the US. They came with a predictable reactionary response: white paramilitary vigilantes, such as the Proud Boys, the Patriot Front, and Kyle Rittenhouse preparing to defend their neighbourhoods from urban lawlessness and imaginary immigrant caravans and far-left Antifa hordes.

It stood in distinct contrast to something I came across during my research: the critical and complicated connection between Black and white revolutionaries in bygone decades. Members of the Weather Underground and the Black Panther Party (BBP) (and later, the BPPs militant offshoot, the Black Liberation Army) were allies. In fact, they were more than that; they were comrades who worked together, aided and abetted each other on the run and fought shoulder-to-shoulder in the struggle against racism.

Most of the people I spoke to be they members of the Weather Underground or the Black Liberation Army were first radicalised by the killing of Black people by police: specifically the murder of Fred Hampton in 1969 and Clifford Glover a 10-year-old boy shot by an undercover cop in Queens in 1973. These killings enraged an entire generation of young activists, setting them on a path to violent revolution.

The more research I did for the podcast, the more I realised that there are crucial differences between leftwing revolutionaries and the rightwing fascist movement of today. The radical undergrounds of the 1970s were fighting state violence and racism; the insurrectionists at the Capitol acted on the orders of a sitting authoritarian president, while literally waving the flag of white nationalism. One side attempted to resist state power and real systems of oppression; the other is fighting for state power and injustice, often based on lies.

None of this means the ends justify the means, or that leftwing radicals should be let off the hook for their mistakes. During our many conversations, I pressed my parents and their friends about the morality of violence, and about what they might regret today. Even though Weather Underground bombings never killed anyone, three of their own members including my dads girlfriend at the time, Diana Oughton died in 1970, building explosives in New Yorks Greenwich village. And most former revolutionaries now regret that turn towards a military strategy and disavow actions in which innocent people might be hurt or killed.

A member of the Black Panther Party told me that the word radical means seeking to understand root causes and the underlying nature of things. In this sense, it is radical to see racism as systemic, radical to understand the supreme courts attempts to control the bodies of women and LGBTQ+ people as rooted in a history of religious patriarchy, and radical to resist unjust laws when they conflict with basic human rights.

More than anything, the members of the revolutionary undergrounds of the 1970s expressed hope that the next generation of activists will do better than they did that young people today fighting for Black lives, abortion rights and climate justice will find new methods of radical resistance while avoiding the dangerous mistakes of the past.

Because, for my parents and their comrades in the Black underground, the struggle is not about any one strategy or tactic not about violence or clandestine organisations but about a long-term commitment to continue the fight for a better world. Thats an inheritance that can be passed on, to their children and to generations still to come.

Zayd Ayers Dohrn is a playwright and screenwriter, and a professor at Northwestern University. His 10-part audio series Mother Country Radicals is available on your podcast provider.

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Bombs, blackmail and wire-taps: how I spent my childhood on the run from the FBI - The Guardian

Bengaluru: Those who are mostly tasked with moulding and reshaping Indian media policies the policy makers at the apex bodies have seldom experienced the lived reality of media on ground. Maybe more so in case of those who implement the policies. A spurious idea of freedom of expression, and at the ground level oppression and unaccountable censorship are caused by this, despite policies aiming for the contrary, said Mrinal Pande, well-known journalist, author and television personality, while speaking on Unseen Bipolarity at the Heart of our Media Policies, during the 4th Foundation Day Lecture of the Centre for Public Policy (CPP) at IIM Bangalore, on July 10 (Sunday), 2022. The event was held online. Her speech covered a wide spectrum of issues including private media vs public media, thought leadership vs the dread of it, legacy media vs new media, policy and law, gender issues, and more.

Mrinal Pandes lecture consisted of two parts: she spoke about the overabundance of policy in India, that remains mostly on paper and creates snarls later. This, she explained, leads to a lack of true autonomy for the Boards, as in the case of Prasar Bharati (PB). She observed that there have been huge governance issues ever since Prasar Bharati was founded in 1997, that going by reports, even now need redressal. It is to be noted that Mrinal Pande has served as the Chairperson of Prasar Bharati, Indias public broadcaster that runs Doordarshan (DD) and All India Radio (AIR).

Ms Pande started her talk by sharing her experience with Indias public sector media. She said that her tenure at Indias public broadcaster PB was shaped during two time segments first at the cusp of the old and new century when she worked as Senior Editorial Advisor of Hindi news on DD, then a decade later when she was appointed the Chair of PB between 2010 and 2014. Indias public broadcasting sector controls both Doordarshan and All India Radio. In 1982, the PC Joshi committee report reiterated that an umbrella corporation needs to be formed, manned by professionals to oversee Indian media. The policy was aimed to divert power from the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry to a Board. The PB Act received Presidential approval in 1990 and became an Act in 1997, with an objective to provide autonomy to broadcasting in India. It was planned that broadcasting would be construed as a public service, and it will gather and disseminate news, not act as propaganda for the government to be consumed by the public.

However, PB remained a statutory autonomous body instead of becoming a Corporation under the Companies Act. It was expected to generate revenues for itself by commercial advertising and sponsorship. In 2002, due to the lack of a full time Chairman, powers of the Board were taken back by the Ministry and have yet to be redelegated. This has been the source of several clashes and disputes, that have made the case for the Ministrys intervention stronger, while the well-intentioned policies have fumbled. There have been various disparities between the Ministry and the Board related to manpower, poor HR structure, recruitment, running cost shortage all of which came in the way of the basic ideals of PB as stated in the original Act. PB as a so-called autonomous body, thus reflects the acute bipolarity in the soul of our media policy makers.

She added: Over the years, in the name of restructuring, there has been a plethora of data and countless inputs from top scholars, but no vital inputs were obtained from the PB Board and its functionaries. A near total lack of understanding of the increasing volatility of 247 news flow and everchanging new tech has deeply affected PB that often gets snarled in differences of opinion between the Board and the Ministry. Tensions between various ministries to which PB must report for special events, has often caused PB to appear as a hapless body. A Board needs not only to be described as autonomous but be ensured clear functional autonomy as well.

Ever since it came up, the dependency level on the Ministrys approval causes inordinate delays which are avoidable in the news business. Moreover, the broadcast bodies are saddled with a lot of paperwork and near obsolete equipment compared to the private media, she rued.

There is still promise, she pointed out. DD and AIR still have the potential to become public service broadcasting assets. In 1980s and 90s they came up with brilliant debates, musical broadcasts, TV serials, all of which were watched by the entire country.

She also spoke at length about her four-decade long experience with Indias private print media which has produced lots and has changed from print to digital, analogue to digital adroitly, but has today very little left by way of policy guidelines. This, she said, was in part due to its family-centric structure of major media houses, and mostly to its swift corporatization and revenue needs. They all often push private media into the position of a supplicant before various vested interest groups.

Digital India is globally a very important market today. However, the new media ecology is facing various challenges with ever changing new technology, new devices, emergence of new platforms, etc. Yet all of these must coexist with the socio-political structure of an ancient hierarchical society and bureaucracy. There are also issues with various institutions of state and their relationship with Indias legacy media, controlled, promoted and funded by few cash-rich families, political parties, and major corporate houses. This often makes a large chunk of media a vehicle for shaping its news less objectively and promoting specific interests. While multiple business and political interests are being nursed through various large media empires, most media houses have skewed policies against women, Dalits and vernaculars.

She also highlighted the element of intermediary liability, a legal concept which governs responsibility of all online platforms for user-generated content. There is the phenomena of paid news, threat posed by fake news and videos, pervasive campaigning via the social media apps, etc. As consumption of digital news jumped, prints share into total media revenue started declining, which gave an uptick to online media. Their credibility and trust are becoming big issues.

In this context, she referred to a recent issue of a Silicon Valley giant which challenged a big rise in Centres takedown orders to them. The draft report circulated by the government last year flagged issues of misuse of free expression by individuals and vested interest groups that affects the future of all digital media in India.

Listing the new challenges, she continued: Media and government are both waking up to the fact that web is a very complex series of paths for raw data. The business models are advertisement driven. Plus, the largest driver of a news item is gossip. But removal of massive amounts of content requires specialized handling and sufficient time given to the intermediary for verifying the allegations made. This gives the issue of intermediary liability a different colour and importance. Globally, a huge fragmentation of media is happening, challenging news as we have known it. As big newspapers cannibalize smaller ones, and big media giants buy smaller platforms, the model for legacy media becomes more complex as also more cash driven. This often hides the fact that there are invisible fault lines within the mediascape in India that, coupled with the somewhat colonial mindset of our bureaucracy, often create instability in our media scene. If the State seems happy to slam down on the media when it questions policies and begins to see dissenters and whistle blowers as a threat, media is badly shaken both from the inside and outside.

The proposed regulations for the intermediaries on ground may spell entry ban for smaller players, create infeasible multiple demands for expunging huge amounts of matter deemed objectionable, and a fear of legal reprisal hangs overhead, thus the challenges appear insurmountable. One major reason for this fear and mistrust is that the Government is yet to put in place implementable SOPs for media and enforcement agencies, she pointed out.

She recommended that we above all need to protect integrity of our platforms and news industry. Social media certainly needs to be controlled with new policies but given the nature of the beast, there can be no quick fixes nor will it be easy. News needs to be collected, curated and verified before being uploaded and consumed by general public. So, accountability is vital. But let us acknowledge that the social media today is a social and political institution, that has major legal rights issues. We must recognize this and a few others, including relative freedom of speech and expression for the vernacular media and out groups, skewed gender issues, etc.

Media policies cannot and should not be framed or used to settle political scores. While making policies, India must be democratic and inclusive especially in the area of knowledge. At this point apart from the media giants, it is also for the legal community and the executive to do a soul search and to protect the priceless freedom of expression. Strong arm tactics cannot work here. The issues need to be seen not just as legal or political, but as socio-political-human rights issues.

Will we ever see a digital Geneva Convention for world media, I wonder, she observed stating that she wished to see a healthier media in our country.

Earlier in the evening, Prof. M S Sriram, Chairperson and faculty, Centre for Public Policy, in his welcome address, introduced the speaker and set the context of the talk. He also moderated the Q&A session, which followed Mrinal Pandes talk.

The past CPP Foundation Day lectures have been delivered by Steven Wilkinson, Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies, and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Yale University; Tridip Suhrud, writer, translator and noted Gandhian scholar, and KK Shailaja, former Minister for Health, Social Justice, and Woman and Child Development, Government of Kerala.

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We should become more inclusive in the area of knowledge: Mrinal Pande - India Education Diary

Images of the depths of the universe from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) released yesterday brought the world to a momentary standstill. These are awe-inspiring visuals of the cosmos like weve never seen them before, putting our place in this universe into perspective. The JWST is perhaps one of our most important achievements in science showing how far weve come from merely being able to observe the skies with our eyes to peeking into distant reaches of galaxies and back in time itself through a telescope in space.

The telescope, however, is named for a man whose legacy stands to tarnish what this instrument could mean for us. James Webb was an administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968. Webb oversaw the agencys Apollo program that took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon this, along with his focus on science, led to him being honored with humanitys best space telescope to date being named after him.

More than 1,200 people, including researchers and astronomers, who will use the telescopes findings in their work, had opposed the move to honor him thus citing his alleged track record of perpetuating a culture of homophobia within NASA. They brought a petition to rename the telescope before NASA last year, and the agency accordingly conducted an internal investigation. It concluded, however, that there was no proof to substantiate the allegations, and the petition was dismissed. This conclusion was made in one sentence, with no further documents provided to justify the decision leading many astronomers to doubt the integrity of the investigation. [A]stronomers opposing the name posit that he played a major role in setting the culture at the agency he presided over, a report in Science notes.

Their suspicions werent unwarranted. Recent internal documents obtained by Nature showed how NASA was aware of the termination of a gay employee in 1963 because of his homosexuality, and that James Webb himself was complicit. The employee, Clifford Norton, filed an appeal in the court; documents show that the chief judge in the case cited the words of the person who fired Norton, who claimed that someone he consulted within the personnel office said that it was a custom within the agency to fire people for homosexual conduct, the internal documents show.

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NASA Set to Launch Hubble Telescopes Successor, Expected to Peer Into Universes Origins

Moreover, Webb was also complicit in what has come to be known as the Lavender Scare a period in American history when government employees suspected of being gay were purged from employment. Webb donned many hats and was thus involved in this even beyond NASA he served as the Undersecretary of State and allegedly oversaw the purge throughout the US government. They [LGBTQ+ people] were, in the eyes of Webb and his allies on the right, akin to aliens from East, notes historian Naoko Shibusawa.

The gut-punch is in the outright refusal to hear the voices of queer astronomers, Brian Nord, an astrophysicist, told Nature. This is a refusal to confront history. If we cant have that, how are we going to shed light on the oppression that people are facing?

I just dont think that makes him the right choice for NASAs premier science project more than 60 years later, Rolf Danner, an astronomer and chair of the American Astronomical Societys committee on sexual orientation and gender minorities in astronomy, told Nature.

As one of the biggest and most ambitious space projects globally not to mention, a publicly-funded one at that the JWST is accountable to people as much as people are indebted to it. The issue is to science debates what similar debates on problematic legacies have been to art for a long time: should we separate the science from the scientist? Arguably, not. Astronomers like Carl Sagan have represented what science should be: a project that advances humanity not just for what it teaches us about the world, but about ourselves, and how compassion takes us further in our shared pursuit for knowledge. When people involved in the science are complicit in bigotry, exclusion, and wanton discrimination it doesnt just hurt the people at the receiving end, it hurts science as a whole.

As one of the people who has been leading the push to change the name, today feels bittersweet, Im so excited for the new images and so angry at Nasa HQ, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, an assistant professor of physics at the University of New Hampshire tweeted earlier. The issue goes to show that science is never neutral or objective as it is mistakenly posited to be. Questions about who forms our knowledge systems, and even at whose expense, are integral to the story of our eons-old quest for learning.

It would do well, then, to remember in light of the Telescopes images and the person from whom it derives its name, what Sagan himself said: There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home weve ever known.

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The James Webb Telescope Is Named After a Bigot. Its New Legacy Heightens the Need to Change Its Name - The Swaddle

In a previous speech, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced himself as the countrys seventh king. He was referring to his Orthodox mothers performance of divination for him when he was young. This self-presentation strongly brings back to mind the history of Ethiopias Christian imperialism.

Since the Oromo protests that lasted from 2014 to 2018, Ethiopia rapidly evolved disobediently. In 2018, Ethiopias first Protestant Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn resigned, and in March 2018, Abiy Ahmed succeeded him. Abiy was a young Oromo leader and the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Fronts (EPRDF) former surveillance head.

Abiy became Ethiopias first Evangelical prime minister. He was enthusiastically described by many Ethiopians, particularly Evangelicals, as messiah, the new Moses, or King David, who would save Ethiopia. He comprehended that he couldnt evolve as the seventh king of Ethiopia without the buy-in of Ethiopias Evangelical doorkeepers, so he brought them into his close circle.

He publicly supported extremists in the Orthodox Church, like Daniel Kibret, a well-known Orthodox scholar in Mahibere Kidusan or the communion of saints. This strong group is a right-wing Orthodox juvenile campaign that aims to restore the Orthodox Churchs historical hegemony. Unsurprisingly, Daniel is also famous for his bigotry against Muslims and Protestants. However, many Protestant leaders acknowledged his power and embraced him. After Abiy selected him as his personal counselor, Daniel gave a textbook genocidal speech calling for exterminating his Tigrayan enemies, describing them as weed and devils. Daniel is now a member of the Ethiopian parliament.

The Orthodox kingdoms starless red, yellow, and green flag was revived and became a fierce sign of imperial homesickness. This Christian nationalist flag is everywhere in Orthodox churches and is a reason for a painful clash in Ethiopia Today. A prominent Ethiopian activist said that multiple Oromos consider it a symbol of domination and mastery.

Evangelicalisms rapid growth is robust in Oromia and the southern regions of Ethiopia, where many have felt crushed and impoverished by Ethiopias Orthodox kingdom. This campaign has injected the wealth gospel into the famous Ethiopian civilization. Its principle asserts that if you unquestioningly consider your spiritual leader and confirm it by charity money, God will give you health and wealth. Ethiopia now has a booming industry of modern prophets and motivational lecturers promising wealth. In multiple ways, Abiy himself is a thriving speculator. He also replaced the old EPRDF with his new Prosperity Party, whose spiritual overtones should not be skipped.

According to the Ethiopian constitution, (Church and state should be separated). Abiy, however, started an umbrella organization (the Ethiopian Evangelical Council) that contained a group of 15 well-known Christian influencers. Abiy raised his intended vision to 400 Christian leaders at the Palace.

Abiy said: The constitution says church and state should be separated, but that doesnt mean they shouldnt work together.

Gaining a Membership in this party has accrued lucrative business deals, land grants, and positions in political power. When Abiy was questioned about his intentions for the council, Abiy laughed and replied: That is a complicated question to answer. You want a strong institution. But I intend to expand the kingdom of God.

The church is not a democracy! What you know doesnt matter in Ethiopia. Who you know is everything, said Betta Mengistu, a founding father of Ethiopian Pentecostalism and a key player in Abiys Ethiopian Evangelical Council. Currently, these Christian princes know Abiy, and wealth appears to be streaming.

Christian expansionism vitalized the dominionist and seven mountain faith in Ethiopia. This political belief encourages the idea that if Christians can control essential sectors like politics, business, and culture, the community can be seized for Christ. This is the Pentecostal similarity to Orthodox imperialism.

Evangelicals then prepared a confidential procedure manuscript for asserting impact in the postponed 2021 federal election, and some well-known Evangelicals triumphed in public office. The dominionist paradigm created momentum within the Prosperity Party.

After earning access to privilege and authority at the Palace, few Christian leaders have publicly admitted this horrible brutality is occurring. Some hold scapegoated Islam, fueled Christian nationalist conspiracy theories, defended the civil war in the north, which incidentally pits mainly Orthodox Tigrayans against mostly Orthodox Amharas, and others depicted the conflict as Gods will, said an Ethiopian researcher who spoke anonymously.

Today, Ethiopia seems hauntingly like a Zemene Mesafint reduced spiritual Era of the Princes. This recognized expression in Ethiopian historiography harkens to the era of extreme disruption between 1706 and 1855. During this time, restricted princes struggled against one another for imperial control and burst the country.

A civil war ensued in the north for 18 months. Tens of thousands of individuals have been slain, nearly a million Ethiopians encounter starvation, and millions more are displaced. The roots of future wars have already been planted.

Brutality is ruining different regions of the country, including Oromia, Benishangul-Gumuz, and elsewhere. Slaughter, mass rapes, and other horrors are becoming heartbreakingly regular headlines. Muslims were slaughtered, and mosques were burned down purportedly by Christian extremists in the historic imperial Orthodox capital of Gondar. The media is soaked with polarizing enemy speech, demonization, and hate. African civil society organizations alert that violence on the ranking of the Rwandan genocide could still explode.

Prominent Evangelical leaders demand that what the world genuinely sees is a recovery of Ethiopias holy greatness. Abiys dehumanizing lectures against his Tigrayan enemies as a cancer, hyena, and weed who must be destroyed.

Ethiopians and observers of Ethiopian politics may smoothly agree that Ethiopias main worst bad habit is indeed state violence. Every Ethiopian administration has operated it as the primary means of holding power. It has become so wired into the perspective and institutional tradition of the Ethiopian state. No modification of time and circumstances has been able to change it.

Solomon Dersso, the former chairperson of the African Unions Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, has written trenchantly.

Christian leaders are in the front row cheering and holding their privileged or intimidated silence. Ethiopian history, however, also has a juvenile line of protest. Abba Estifanos died in jail for publicly critiquing the dictatorial violence of Emperor Zera Yacob in the 15th century. The Muslim party Dimtsachin Yisemas Let Our Voices Be Heard! became the first nonviolent religious rally campaign in current Ethiopia against the government intervening in religious leadership in the 21st century. Abune Mathias, leader of the Orthodox Church, has courageously called out against genocidal violence in Ethiopia Today.

This tradition can be resumed today for an inclusive reconciliation of Ethiopia. Of course, it needs powerful ethical bravery. It demands condemning all forms of religious domination, divesting insider privilege and authority, and renouncing loyalty to Abiy and other rulers who create their thrones on religious arrogance. There is no time to waste.

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Ethiopia's garment of religion is the best cloak for power and oppression - Daily News Egypt