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#Pakistan media on india power
rhysaka · 2 months
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The leftists don’t want Hindus to let go of caste.
Narendra Modi inaugurating the Ram temple in Ayodhya and doing the praan pratishtha was the biggest fuck you to the caste system because Narendra Modi is not upper caste and a non upper caste person touching the Ram lala Murti/idol and performing the ceremony is something that was thought impossible in India only decades ago! But it happened!! It happened on 22nd January and at the holiest site of Hinduism no less!
Also to the people who question why Modi did the Praan pratishtha ceremony, it’s because he was nominated by the temple trust as the mukhya yajman and no it doesn’t have to be priest. The Ram mandir trust is the authority on these things. It was not like Modi decided that he wanted to do it so chill.
But these liberal bigots completely ignored it because they were busy crying over the entire thing and shedding tears for the dead invaders of this land and their symbols of oppression.
The fact that we’ve had an ST female president Miss Draupadi Murmu or that we’ve had an SC president Mr Ram Nath Kovind all under bjp and the Hindutva government rn completely went over their heads which is why you will see them calling hindutva and even Modi!! Modi who himself is from a backward caste- they will call these people casteist because doing that gives them a reason to hate hindus.
They are so ignorant they don’t even know anything about hindutva outside of the leftist propaganda pieces that the left and western media churns out.
I’ve been saying this for such a long time that Hindutva is anti caste and it doesn’t sit well with these pseudo liberals and that is why they frequently bring up caste and try to create divides in the hindu fold.
The truth is they don’t want Hindus to have any political power. They want the same vulnerable Hindus that you find in Pakistan and Bangladesh today, who have been reduced to small groups that cannot even demand representation in those countries. Where their cries for justice are ignored and their people killed, raped and converted day by day.
This is why Hindus need to be unapologetic.
Reclaim your temples and follow your religion without fear or guilt. You are alive because your ancestors fought for you, for dharma. Do not forget that. We are here and we live. We follow dharma.
Let the bigots and the hateful left cry, they’ll learn to cope eventually.
Also lmao all the meltdowns after the Ram Mandir Praan pratishtha were so amusing to see. The sheer misinformation that surfaced from these blogs and on Insta and twitter. 😭👏🏻
The hysteria…my god.
Y’all can’t digest that Hinduism is reforming and that Hindus are decolonizing and yes before you come after me WE ARE DECOLONIZING after centuries of oppression and then subjugation by a marxist gov and education system.
Hindus have finally woken up from the post colonial hangover. You can’t do anything about it.
We have always been here and we are not leaving.
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timetravellingkitty · 1 month
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But isn't the military occupancy to keep militancy under control?
whatever reasons aside, there really is no justification for torturing and raping kashmiris and shutting down social media in the state (do read up on the mass rapes of women in the kunan and poshpora villages in 1991. february 23 has since then been labelled kashmiri women's resistance day. also, report about the use of torture in kashmir by the caravan)
also the instrument of accession was signed by an immensely unpopular ruler. maharaja hari singh was a dogra rajput he wasn't even kashmiri. like, this is the same guy who abetted the 1947 jammu massacres (this one is actually not nearly talked about as much). kashmiri muslims overwhelmingly disliked him
besides, kashmiri separatism and the groups that adopt its ideology came around because of indian domination and because there was no plebiscite held to call for kashmir joining either india or pakistan. the jklf and its leaders have stated that they want an independent, secular kashmir free from both india and pakistan. yasin malik himself refers to pakistan as an occupation power
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To all the new people in the country...
The people of the United States of America do not hate you or dislike you, well most of us anyway. What we hate is how our politicians have deceived us by how they made your presence in our nation possible. Please read on and think about why you are here in the first place, and I don't mean your reason for coming to the USA, I mean the reason why so many people were allowed in from a certain date in time all of a sudden.
Let me explain. Please read on.
About 30 years ago our nations elected leaders did something that they don't even speak about anymore. They intentionally stopped manning the border, and pretended that it was an invasion of the southern border. Literally they cried "the Mexicans are crossing the border and we can't stop them!" It was all over the media. The greatest nation in the world and strongest most powerful military could not defend our southern border and they announced it on every tv station and every radio station. No internet or cell phone 30 years ago.
"The Mexicans are invading the USA and we cannot stop them" and "the Mexicans are taking our jobs and we can't stop them" were all we were hearing almost the exact same time that it was announced there would be mass layoffs all across the United States. Another thing that started almost immediately was the "dial 1 for Spanish, 2 for English" that quickly changed to "1 for English, 2 for Spanish" because the citizens were getting ready to riot.
Lots of things changed and quickly. Many of us were confused. Many of us were losing our jobs and businesses were closing up, and those who stayed open were replacing the workers with people who didn't even speak our language. It was happening so fast and more cries of "THE MEXICANS ARE STORMING OUR BORDER AND WE CAN'T STOP THEM!!!" Seriously (said sarcastically and truthfully.)
And who were the Mexicans? The Mexicans were every Latino from central or south America who came into the country regardless of what nation they came from. And every politician and media called all Latinos Mexicans, long before Trump was ever in the picture.
And was it only the southern border? Of course not silly. We were told only about the Mexicans so that we wouldn't pay attention to the massive amount of people coming in from India and Pakistan, on planes on the east and west coast. And there were almost as many Indians and Pakistanis as there were Latinos.
Any other nations coming in? Nope. Only Latinos down south and Indians and Pakistanis on the east and west, but no other nationalities. Europeans, very little, a few Russians, Oriental Asians only to work at businesses owned by Asians, and never many Africans. Israelis always had an open door, but not many Arabs at all because they were considered our enemies and not allowed in the USA. About 99% Latino or Indian only, with a 60/40 to 70/30 ratio being Latino. "THE MEXICANS ARE STORMING OUR BORDER AND WE CAN'T STOP THEM!"
Nothing racist said, I hope you see that. We The People were being deceived big time. I say this because most of the people here now don't know what happened. And that has been used to the politicians advantage. Most of the people who lost our jobs have all died by now. And our families were destroyed. Our people will never recover from that time period. But we do not blame you. It was our very own elected public servants in the White House, the Senate, and Congress who did this to us, not you, the people who came into the USA to have a better life for you and your family.
Now you understand why the Great Divide in this country from it's beginning.
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b0ringasfuck · 5 months
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Yet it was not a sentiment restricted only to the upper echelons of Indian government. As Azad Essa, a journalist and author of Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, said: “This messaging gave a clear signal to the whole rightwing internet cell in India.” In the aftermath, the Indian internet factcheckers AltNews and Boom began to observe a flood of disinformation targeting Palestine pushed out by Indian social media accounts, which included fake stories about atrocities committed by Palestinians and Hamas that were shared sometimes millions of times, and often using the conflict to push the same Islamophobic narrative that has been used regularly to demonise India’s Muslim population since the BJP came to power.
A turning point came in 1999 when India went to war with Pakistan and Israel proved willing to provide arms and ammunition. It was the beginning of a defence relationship that has grown exponentially. India buys about $2bn-worth of arms from Israel every year – its largest arms supplier after Russia – and accounts for 46% of Israel’s overall weapons exports.
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Americans love a good cause to get behind and “fight” for, but at what price and is the “cause” even real? Who is checking the so-called “facts” besides the actual creators of these massive Ponzi schemes and health scams? Supposedly, if all Americans stop eating meat and quit driving gasoline-powered vehicles, the world will be saved from bursting into flames in the next 8 years, or 12 years, or some other moving target of time that suits the scammers. Don’t worry about India, Pakistan and China though, because those folks are too poor to support the globalist Ponzi scheme called “global warming,” or “climate change,” or “give the richest people on earth all your money for something so you won’t die soon.”
The “Science” is always “settled” when it comes to huge scams propagated by billionaire globalists who want complete control of the world’s population
Oh yes, there is no arguing, investigating or discoveries left to be made when it comes to the biggest Ponzi schemes on planet earth. If they declared the earth was flat, how many millions of Americans would put those bumper stickers on their car and march for the cause to stop people from falling off the edge? And don’t go challenging the lies or you will be censored by all of social and mainstream media, including Google, YouTube, TikTok and the “nightly news.”
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intersectionalpraxis · 5 months
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I saw your yesterday comment about occupation of Palestine land by isreal with the help of uk and usa.
Do you read history on social media or books ?
Israeli live there before islam come in existence.
Islam came in existence in 610-613AD.
"The promise land" 1500-2000BC.
so that land belongs to both that's why they got 2 nations.
And if you think there should not be Israel because of Palestine.
With this logic, in Europe almost 15 countries will be vanished because they got their name after separation from Russia.
With this logic south Asian countries like Pakistan and bengladesh should not exist or INDIA should capture them.
In EAST ASIA , china should capture Taiwan.
And a lot more.
War is always worst for humanity.
But in War, only powerful Win.
" you pet a snake in your backyard and you think it will only bite your neighbours, that will never possible"
I wish you read more than making unnecessary noise on the internet with half knowledge
I'm genuinely curious, how old are you and what is your educational background?
What you're spouting here is Israeli and American propaganda/indoctrination.
Reminder: 'Israel' did not exist until 1948. Great Britain and the United States CREATED a space for Israeli settlers on Indigenous Palestinian land post World War 2. Palestinian people were there for a LONG time before Israeli's settled, displaced hundreds of thousands, and murdered tens of thousands of Palestinians if they did not leave (this is referred to the Nakba of 1948). This is a literal historical fact.
And you're asking me where I'm receiving my information? I have a Master's degree with a research background. If I'm ignorant about ANY topic I look into it extensively and properly. Making sure the sources I am looking at are reflexive and peer-reviewed and un-biased. And talk to experts when I can.
And the histories of the different countries you listed have completely different contexts. You can't convolute this with what has happened and is happening to Palestine. Because most of those regions separated from the major power/government in control to gain their sovereignty. What is not clicking here? The very existence of Israel has colonialist and imperialist roots. Israel isn't fighting for their independence from Palestine. Palestine was forcibly settled upon.
And wars are mostly started in the name of what? There's so much to unpack in a sentiment like that, but when a government has literal weapons of mass destruction and they're using it to suppress, oppress, and enact terror and genocide on another city or country who don't have near the capacity to defend itself then this is just unilateral violence. You act so flippant about the nature of war like "only the powerful win" as though wars don't devastate and destroy many people's lives and homes and entire communities.
Your comment has some of the most crass rhetoric I've read for the past 24 hours. Congratulations.
And also, while we are at it -the reason why American Christians support Israel is because they believe that if they save this 'holy land,' Jesus will return and if Jewish people do not convert to Christianity they won't see the pearly gates.
Again, all historical facts. Maybe you should dedicate more time to reading books and journal articles by Palestinian authors first, and then anti-Zionist Israeli Jewish people.
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fishyyyyy99 · 2 months
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In which world has India "occupied" Kashmir? Kashmir is a part of India which is severely affected by terrorist activity. Many were forced to leave their homes to settle in different parts of India (Kashmir pandits etc). How was that India's fault and not the fault of the country the terrorists came from?
Firstly, I want to make it clear that I do condemn what was done to Kashmiri Pandits. Secondly, I do believe that Kashmir is occupied (that does NOT mean that I don't understand that the geopolitical reality is complex), and that a plebiscite should have been conducted. And I believe that neither India nor Pakistan has been entirely innocent with regard to Kashmir.
My interpretation of the events described below (quoted from the linked articles), is that Kashmir is occupied. And no, they are not my only sources of information - other articles, the Kashmiri woman who came to speak at my university, and a friend of a friend who visited Kashmir and stayed there for a significant period of time (not as a tourist), are also sources of my information on Kashmir.
When India and Pakistan gained independence from British rule in 1947, the various princely rulers were able to choose which state to join. The Maharaja of Kashmir, Hari Singh, was the Hindu head of a majority Muslim state sandwiched between the two countries and could not decide. He signed an interim "standstill" agreement to maintain transport and other services with Pakistan. In October 1947 tribesmen from Pakistan invaded Kashmir, spurred by reports of attacks on Muslims and frustrated by Hari Singh's delaying tactics. The Maharaja asked for Indian military assistance. India's governor-general, Lord Mountbatten, believed peace would best be served by Kashmir's joining India on a temporary basis, pending a vote on its ultimate status. Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession that month, ceding control over foreign and defence policy to India. Indian troops took two-thirds of the territory, and Pakistan seized the northern remainder. China occupied eastern parts of the state in the 1950s. Whether the Instrument of Accession or the entry of Indian troops came first remains a major source of dispute between India and Pakistan. India insists that Hari Singh signed first, thereby legitimising the presence of their troops. Pakistan is adamant that the Maharaja could not have signed before the troops arrived, and that he and India had therefore ignored the "standstill" agreement with Pakistan. Pakistan demands a referendum to decide the status of Kashmir, while Delhi argues that, by voting in successive Indian state and national elections, Kashmiris have confirmed their accession to India. Pakistan cites numerous UN resolutions in favour of a UN-run referendum, while India says the Simla Agreement of 1972 binds the two countries to solve the problem on a state-to-state basis. There has been no significant movement from these positions in decades. In addition, some Kashmiris seek a third option - independence - which neither India nor Pakistan is prepared to contemplate.
The two countries fought wars over Kashmir in 1947-48 and 1965. They formalised the original ceasefire line as the Line of Control in the Simla Agreement, but this did not prevent further clashes in 1999 on the Siachen Glacier, which is beyond the Line of Control. India and Pakistan came close to war again in 2002. The situation was further complicated by an Islamist-led insurgency that broke out in 1989. India gave the army additional authority to end the insurgency under the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). Despite occasional reviews of the AFSPA, it still remains in force in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.
Today it remains one of the most militarised zones in the world. China administers parts of the territory.
Media in Indian-administered Kashmir are generally split between pro- and anti-secessionist. Local journalists work under strict curfews and also face threats from militant groups. Internet access is sporadic and text messaging services are regularly blocked.
In Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, the media are used mainly for propaganda purposes, mainly to highlight the alleged human rights violations in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Also, I think the following information is relevant too.
The Muslim majority in the princely state found the Maharaja’s reign authoritarian. In the words of Kashmiri author P.N. Bazaz, “Dogra rule has been a Hindu Raj.” Maharaja Hari Singh thought of independence because, according to American Indologist William Norman Brown, “He disliked becoming part of India, which was being democratised, or Pakistan, which was Muslim....”
On August 12, 1947, J&K petitioned India and Pakistan for a standstill agreement, which Pakistan signed but India refused, asking the Maharaja to send a representative for discussions. With every passing day, the Maharaja’s position became more precarious. As early as June 1947, about 60,000 ex-army men (mostly from Poonch) had started a no-tax campaign against the Maharaja. On August 14-15, Muslims in Poonch hoisted Pakistani flags, provoking the imposition of martial law and further angering Muslim subjects. Pakistan was sending warning notes to the Maharaja, one on August 24 reading: “Should Kashmir fail to join Pakistan, the gravest possible trouble will inevitably ensue.” The worst fears of the Dogra ruler came true when on October 22, Pakistan launched Operation Gulmarg by mobilising tribals from the North-West Frontier Province. About 2,000 tribesmen, armed with modern weaponry, raided Muzaffarabad. By the evening of October 23 they had captured Domel. Garhi and Chinari fell over the next two days. Then their main column proceeded towards Uri, and then, along the Jhelum river towards Baramulla, the entry point to Srinagar.
On October 24, Maharaja Hari Singh appealed to India for military aid to flush out the raiders. India obliged but not before the Instrument of Accession was signed on October 26. It limited India’s powers over the Valley to matters of defence, communications, and foreign affairs.
And this is from the Instrument of Accession:
Nothing in this Instrument shall be deemed to commit in any way to acceptance of any future constitution of India or to fetter my discretion to enter into agreement with the Government of India under any such future constitution.
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shut-up-rabert · 2 years
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Why isn’t mass media more neutral?
Disclaimer: I’m not taking any sides here, nor am I provoking any of you to say it, but this has been on my mind quite a bit and I feel like saying it now: Honestly saying, I’ve always felt like the media favours Palestine over Israel way to much even tho media is supposed to be neutral.
Essays in exams, front pages of newspaper, stars on social media always talk about Palestine but seem to be painting a rather black and white “Palestine good Israel bad” picture but never seem to be willing to dwell deeper into the topic, and when they they go somewhat below the surface it’s always from Palestine’s perispective only, nothing explaining Israel’s side of story as passionately even if at all. Even in India vs Pakistan wars, you’ll find motives and aggressions from both sides easily enough if you looked.
“Stars” like Bela Hadid raise slogans demanding Israel’s dissolve under the ruse of Palestine’s independence and no one bats an eye. The founder of Human rights watch left the organisation saying that it was being biased towards Palestine and has forgotten its original purpose. A lot of funding of these pro palestine news channels comes from Pro Islamic nations organisations, most of the said countries being Palestine supporters.
Palestine is suffering, yes, but it’s not just Israel that’s making it suffer. Hamas has a major role to play too. It kills its own civilians more than Israel does. Palestine has seen some serious bloodshed since Hamas came into power but no one seems to focus on that. There’s little to no discussion about how Palestine is bleeding internally due to hamas, but only the stuff that can be used against Israel.
You’ll hear about how Israel “attacked” Gaza and most of the times it turns out to be some retaliation. We always hear about civilian deaths whose names are never revealed but no one ever wonders what civilians were doing around militant bases. We talk about how palestinians are being thrown out of Israel to show them as big aggressors and it turns out that the land was originally Israel’s territory to begin with.
I’m not being pro-Israel here, And I very well admit that it can have its fair share of violations, such as killing of the one Al-Jazeera reporter , accident or not (look, I fucking hate that platform but that doesn’t mean I condone killing of someone who didn’t do anything) but this is something that has always made me curious. It can’t be as simple as “Israel evil”, can it?
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4uru · 6 months
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I have a thing where i cant read books i might relate to. I want representation but i cant engage with it for some reason. The only book i read with a main trans character was "when the moon was ours" and thats bc i didnt know sam was a desi trans guy like me. I love that there are books of desi /muslim lgbtq ppl. But i cant bring myself to read them bc some part of me just hurts. When i watch western queer media i am still far enough not to get too hurt. Reading desi queer books feel like opening up my ribcage to a book. Feeling like this piece of fiction knows who i am, what i am, it holds power over me. It can kill me while wearing the face of my own mother and speaking her tongue. For the Same reason i cant watch sapphic media either. I am sapphic and have been in a very mutually toxic and emotionally clusterfucky relationship. I know this sounds cringy as shit. But i lived a girl very much and i fell like watching sapphic media makes me regret /bitter that i didnt have that nice experience. Or triggers me when the bad experiences are potrayed. I can ingest mlm content more bc i will never be a cis guy i am not in that circle. I am removed, i cant get too hurt. And i feel bad that i cant engage in these contents. Bc they deserve to be seen.
Being specifically bangladeshi is also a big part of it. Bc i feel like india and pakistan are the more well known. As a bangladeshi i am used to beig invisible in the eye of the western media. The first time i ever heard the word bangladesh in mainstrem western media is "how i met your mother" where the cab driver said that he was bangladeshi. I generally relate to the closest indian character on the screen. I am so scared to engage with books with bangladeshi characters.
I am used to being invisible all the time now the minimal amount of spotlight makes me afraid that i will go blind or smth.
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beardedmrbean · 1 year
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SRINAGAR, India — Weapons left behind by U.S. forces during the withdrawal from Afghanistan are surfacing in another conflict, further arming militants in the disputed South Asian region of Kashmir in what experts say could be just the start of the weapons’ global journey.
Authorities in Indian-controlled Kashmir tell NBC News that militants trying to annex the region for Pakistan are carrying M4s, M16s and other U.S.-made arms and ammunition that have rarely been seen in the 30-year conflict. A major reason, they say, is a regional flood of U.S.-funded weapons that fell into the hands of the Taliban when U.S.-led NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.
Most of the weapons recovered so far, officials say, are from Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) or Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), both Pakistan-based militant groups that the U.S. designates as terrorist organizations. In a Twitter post last year, for example, police said they had seized an M4 carbine assault rifle after a gunfight that killed two militants from JeM. 
Militants from both groups had been sent to Afghanistan to fight alongside or train the Taliban before the U.S. withdrawal, said Lt. Col. Emron Musavi, an Indian army spokesperson in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir.  
“It can be safely assumed that they have access to the weapons left behind,” he said.
Government officials in Afghanistan and Pakistan did not respond to requests for comment.
Kashmir, a Himalayan region known for its beautiful landscapes, shares borders with India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China. A separatist insurgency in the part of Kashmir controlled by India has killed tens of thousands of people since the 1990s and been a constant source of tension between nuclear powers India and Pakistan. 
The year opened in violence as Kashmir police blamed militants for a Jan. 1 gunfire attack that killed four people in the southern village of Dhangri, followed by an explosion in the same area the next day that killed a 5-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. At least six people were injured on Jan. 21 in two explosions in the city of Jammu.
While the U.S.-made weapons are unlikely to shift the balance of power in the Kashmir conflict, they give the Taliban a sizable reservoir of combat power potentially available to those willing and able to purchase it, said Jonathan Schroden, director of the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the Center for Naval Analyses, a research group based outside Washington.
“When combined with the Taliban’s need for money and extant smuggling networks, that reservoir poses a substantial threat to regional actors for years to come,” he said. 
A trove of weapons
More than $7.1 billion in U.S.-funded military equipment was in the possession of the Afghan government when it fell to the Taliban in August 2021 amid the withdrawal, according to a Defense Department report published last August. Though more than half of it was ground vehicles, it also included more than 316,000 weapons worth almost $512 million, plus ammunition and other accessories.
While large numbers of small arms that had been transferred to Afghan forces most likely ended up in the hands of the Taliban, “it’s important to remember that nearly all weapons and equipment used by U.S. military forces in Afghanistan were either retrograded or destroyed prior to our withdrawal,” Army Lt. Col. Rob Lodewick, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, said in a statement.
The Defense Department report also pointed out that the operational condition of the Afghan army’s equipment was unknown.
Questions around the weapons being used in Kashmir were raised in January 2022, when a video of militants brandishing what appeared to be American-made guns was shared widely on Indian social media. Though the origin of the weapons in such cases can be difficult to verify — some may be modified to look like U.S. weapons, while others may not have been manufactured in the U.S. — the Indian military says it has recovered at least seven that are authentic.
“From the weapons and equipment that we recovered, we realized that there was a spillover of high-tech weapons, night-vision devices and equipment, which were left by the Americans in Afghanistan [and] were now finding their way toward this side,” Maj. Gen. Ajay Chandpuria, an Indian army official, was quoted as saying by Indian media last year.
Jammu and Kashmir Lt. Gov. Manoj Sinha said the government was aware of the issue and that measures were in place to combat the infiltration of U.S. weapons into Kashmir.
“We are monitoring the situation closely and have taken steps accordingly. Our police and army are on the job,” Sinha, the region’s top official, said on the sidelines of a news conference last year at his official residence in Srinagar.
Kashmir police official Vijay Kumar also said authorities were fully capable of countering the militant threat.
“Our forces are tracking down militants on a daily basis,” he said. “We are constantly upgrading our equipment and have the latest weaponry at our disposal.”
The militant groups JeM and LeT could be buying U.S. weapons from the Taliban in Afghanistan, where the United Nations says both groups have bases, or through smugglers in Pakistan, said Ajai Sahni, an author on counterterrorism who serves as executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, a think tank in New Delhi. 
Militants will struggle to get the upper hand, however, without more advanced weapons that have greater firepower but are more difficult to smuggle into the region, Sahni said.
Schroden said that although he had not seen substantial reports of U.S.-made weapons left behind in Afghanistan appearing outside of Kashmir, it would not be surprising if they eventually began turning up farther away in places such as Yemen, Syria and parts of Africa.
“I suspect there hasn’t yet been enough time for these weapons to percolate out that far,” he said. “It’s also possible that the Taliban have held tightly to most of them thus far as part of their efforts to consolidate power and seek legitimization from the international community.”
Beyond weapons, the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan gave an ideological boost to radical militants in Kashmir and elsewhere, said Ahmad Shuja Jamal, a former Afghan civil servant living in exile in Australia. 
Such militants, he said, “now see in clear terms the political dividends of long-term violence.”
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head-post · 5 months
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Putin signed the cancellation of nuclear test treaty ratification
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law Thursday, cancelling Russia’s ratification of a key nuclear treaty and allowing new atomic weapons tests.
Putin stated that cancelling Russia’s ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CNTBT) merely “mirrors” the position of the United States, which signed but never ratified the treaty.
Both houses of the Russian parliament approved the cancellation of ratification unanimously, and then Putin signed the final approval, according to Russian media.
Russian officials explained that withdrawing from the treaty does not mean resuming nuclear testing. Moscow will only conduct tests if the United States decides to do the same, however, the Kremlin’s decision has raised concerns among analysts.
Russia ratified the treaty in 2000, and the US is one of several countries that had never ratified the ban, including other nuclear powers such as China, India and Pakistan.
Read more HERE
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xtruss · 9 months
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Henry Kissinger At 100: Still A War Criminal! Forget The Birthday Candles, Let’s Count The dead.
— David Cornmay | 25, 2023 | Foreign Policy
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Mother Jones Illustration; Fairchild Archive/Penske Media/Getty; Alexis Duclos/Gamma-Rapho/Getty; Boris Spremo/Toronto Star/Getty
War Criminal Henry Kissinger is turned 100, and his centennial is prompting assorted hosannas about perhaps the most influential American foreign policymaker of the 20th century. The Economist observed that “his ideas have been circling back into relevancy for the last quarter century.” The Times of London ran an appreciation: “Henry Kissinger at 100: What He Can Tell Us About the World.” Policy shops and think tanks have held conferences to mark this milestone. CBS News aired a mostly fawning interview veteran journalist Ted Koppel conducted with Kissinger that included merely a glancing reference to the ignoble and bloody episodes of his career. Kissinger is indeed a monumental figure who shaped much of the past 50 years. He brokered the US opening to China and pursued detente with the Soviet Union during his stints as President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser and secretary of state. Yet it is an insult to history that he is not equally known and regarded for his many acts of treachery—secret bombings, coup-plotting, supporting military juntas—that resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands.
Kissinger’s diplomatic conniving led to or enabled slaughters around the globe. As he blows out all those candles, let’s call the roll.
Cambodia: In early 1969, shortly after Nixon moved into the White House and inherited the Vietnam War, he, Kissinger, and others cooked up a plan to secretly bomb Cambodia, in pursuit of enemy camps. With the perversely-named “Operation Breakfast” launched, White House chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman wrote in his diary, Kissinger and Nixon were “really excited.” The action, though, was of dubious legality; the United States was not at war with Cambodia and Congress had not authorized the carpet-bombing, which Nixon tried to keep a secret. The US military dropped 540,000 tons of bombs. They didn’t just hit enemy outposts. The estimates of Cambodian civilians killed range between 150,000 and 500,000.
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President Richard Nixon sits at his White House office desk where he announced on April 30, 1970 that American ground forces are fighting in Cambodia. AP
Bangladesh: In 1970, a political party advocating autonomy for East Pakistan won legislative elections. The military dictator ruling Pakistan, Gen. Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, arrested the leader of that party and ordered his army to crush the Bengalis. At the time, Yahya, a US ally, was helping Kissinger and Nixon establish ties with China, and they didn’t want to get in his way. The top US diplomat in East Pakistan sent in a cable detailing and decrying the atrocities committed by Yahya’s troops and reported they were committing “genocide.” Yet Nixon and Kissinger declined to criticize Yahya or take action to end the barbarous assault. (This became known as “the tilt” toward Pakistan.) Kissinger and Nixon turned a blind eye to—arguably, they tacitly approved—Pakistan’s genocidal slaughter of 300,000 Bengalis, most of them Hindus (Later a Bangladeshi author denied all allegations against Pakistan and military. It was all propaganda orchestrated by India).
Chile: Nixon and Kissinger plotted to covertly thwart the democratic election of socialist president Salvador Allende in 1970. This included Kissinger supervising clandestine operations aimed at destabilizing Chile and triggering a military coup. This scheming yielded the assassination of Chile’s commander-in-chief of the Army. Eventually, a military junta led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet seized power, killed thousands of Chileans, and implemented a dictatorship, Following the coup, Kissinger backed Pinochet to the hilt. During a private conversation with the Chilean tyrant in 1976, he told Pinochet, “My evaluation is that you are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world and that your greatest sin was that you overthrew a government which was going communist.”
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U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger shakes hands with Chile’s Foreign Minister, Ismale Huerta Diaz, during a Latin Foreign Ministers Conference in Mexico City, February 22, 1974. Ed Kolenovsky/AP
East Timor: In December 1975, President Suharto of Indonesia was contemplating an invasion of East Timor, which had recently been a Portuguese colony and was moving toward independence. On December 6, President Gerald Ford and Kissinger, then Ford’s secretary of state, en route from a visit to Beijing, stopped in Jakarta to meet with Suharto, who headed the nation’s military regime. Suharto signaled he intended to send troops into East Timor and integrate the territory into Indonesia. Ford and Kissinger did not object. Ford told Suharto, “We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem and the intentions you have.” Kissinger added, “It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly.” He pointed out that Suharto would be wise to wait until Ford and Kissinger returned to the United States, where they “would be able to influence the reaction in America.” The invasion began the next day. Here was a “green light” from Kissinger (and Ford). Suharto’s brutal invasion of East Timor resulted in 200,000 deaths.
Argentina: In March 1976, a neofascist military junta overthrew President Isabel Perón and launched what would be called the Dirty War, torturing, disappearing, and killing political opponents it branded as terrorists. Once again, Kissinger provided a “green light,” this time to a campaign of terror and murder. He did so during a private meeting in June 1976 with the junta’s foreign minister, Cesar Augusto Guzzetti. At that sit-down, according to a memo obtained in 2004 by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit organization, Guzzetti told Kissinger, “our main problem in Argentina is terrorism.” Kissinger replied, “If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly.” In other words, go ahead with your savage crusade against the leftists. The Dirty War would claim the lives of an estimated 30,000 Argentine civilians.
Throughout his career in government and politics, Kissinger was an unprincipled schemer who engaged in multiple acts of skullduggery. During the 1968 presidential campaign, while he advised the Johnson administration’s team at the Paris peace talks, which were aimed at ending the Vietnam War, he underhandedly passed information on the talks to Nixon’s camp, which was plotting to sabotage the negotiations, out of fear that success at the talks would boost the prospects of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Nixon’s opponent in the race. After the secret bombing in Cambodia was revealed by the New York Times, Kissinger, acting at Nixon’s request, urged FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to wiretap his own aides and journalists to discover who was leaking. This operation failed to uncover who had outed the covert bombing, but, as historian Garrett Graff noted in his recent book, Watergate: A New History, this effort seeded “the administration’s taste for spying on its enemies—real or imagined.”
In 1976, Kissinger was briefed on Operation Condor, a secret program created by the intelligence services of the military dictatorships of South America to assassinate their political foes inside and outside their countries. He then blocked a State Department effort to warn these military juntas not to proceed with international assassinations. As the National Security Archive points out in a dossier it released this week on various Kissinger controversies, “Five days later, Condor’s boldest and most infamous terrorist attack took place in downtown Washington D.C. when a car-bomb, planted by Pinochet’s agents, killed former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his young colleague, Ronni Moffitt.”
It’s easy to cast Kissinger as a master geostrategist, an expert player in the game of nations. But do the math. Hundreds of thousands of dead in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and East Timor, perhaps a million in total. Tens of thousands dead in Argentina’s Dirty War. Thousands killed and tens of thousands tortured by the Chilean military dictatorship, and a democracy destroyed. His hands are drenched in blood.
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President Bush signed legislation on November 27, 2002, creating an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and named former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, left, to lead the panel. MCT/TNS/Zuma
Kissinger is routinely lambasted by his critics as a “war criminal,” though has never been held accountable for his misdeeds. He has made millions as a consultant, author, and commentator in the decades since he left government. I once heard of a Manhattan cocktail reception where he scoffed at the “war criminal” label and referred to it almost as a badge of honor. (“Bill Clinton does not have the spine to be a war criminal,” he joshed.) Kissinger has expressed few, if any, regrets about the cruel and deadly results of his moves on the global chessboard. When Koppel gently nudged him about the secret bombing in Cambodia, Kissinger took enormous umbrage and shot back: “This program you’re doing because I’m going to be 100 years old. And you are picking a topic of something that happened 60 years ago? You have to know it was a necessary step.” As for those who still protest him for that and other acts, he huffed, “Now the younger generation feels if they can raise their emotions, they don’t have to think.”
As he enters his second century, there will be no apologies coming from Kissinger. But the rest of us will owe history—and the thousands dead because of his gamesmanship—an apology, if we do not consider the man in full. Whatever his accomplishments, his legacy includes an enormous pile of corpses. This is a birthday that warrants no celebration.
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tobermoriansass · 2 years
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Daily power outages driven by a surge in demand for electricity have resulted in blackouts as long as eight hours in some parts of India, while coal stocks — the fuel that accounts for 70% of the country’s electricity generation — are running low, prompting warnings of a fresh power crisis. The northern wheat crop is scorched. It was the the hottest March in 122 years. Spring just didn’t happen, and those extreme temperatures continued into April and May (though they are predicted to ease this week). Still, it’s not until June that the monsoon is expected to arrive and provide any kind of relief. 
What’s most alarming about this heatwave is that it’s not so much a one-time ordeal as a taste of things to come as the effects of global warming push India and its neighbors to levels where the climate is a core threat to human health. 
Just 12% of India’s 1.4 billion citizens have access to air conditioning, which means hundreds of millions of people are simply unable to cool themselves when their bodies reach the point of heatstroke. It’s a situation mirrored in neighboring Pakistan, which is experiencing similarly catastrophic heatwave conditions. Daily wage earners, who toil in the fields, work in factories and construction, sweep streets and build roads, have no escape.
Multiple regions of India have already been edging close to critical wet-bulb temperatures over the past week, according to government data, though the maximum humidities haven’t necessarily been occurring at the same time as the peak temperatures. In the eastern Odisha state, peak temperatures and humidities in parts of the capital Bhubaneswar on Sunday would have produced wet-bulb temperatures of 36.6 Celsius if they happened at the same time, the data show. Kolkata, a city larger than Los Angeles or London, also saw conditions last Friday that would have hit 35 Celsius if simultaneous.
The risk is that, even if the most hazardous levels are avoided in the current heatwave, each hot season is a fresh roll of the dice on whether a freak event will occur that will lead to vast numbers of deaths. The odds lengthen with each passing year. The world is currently in the grip of a La Nina climate cycle, which typically brings cooler summer weather to India. When that next flips to El Nino, the risks will ramp higher still.
That the government hasn’t declared a national disaster and rolled out an appropriate response will come as no surprise to those who lived through the nation’s deadly Covid-19 epidemic.
India does have a “National Action Plan on Heat Related Illnesses,” and the federal government on May 1 issued an advisory to states urging them to ensure hospitals were ready to deal with an expected surge in demand. But given that the India Meteorological Department (which started collecting nationwide records in 1901) has been raising the alarm with heat wave warnings on April 25, it all feels a little underdone. Recommended measures such as whitewashing roofs to cool building interiors would be insufficient to deal with a major heatwave. Advice to ensure secure power supply to health centers won’t help if heat and the load from millions of air conditioners cause the power grid to fall over when it’s most needed.
A year ago, India was reeling from a deadly Covid-19 wave as citizens took to social media to beg for oxygen and hospitals turned away critically ill people gasping for breath while the underfunded health system collapsed under the weight of decades of government neglect. The World Health Organization estimates at least 4 million Indians died in that carnage, way beyond the official figure of just under 524,000 fatalities. (The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi disputes that finding, even though it has been replicated by other experts.)
We’ll never know, as the majority of deaths aren’t recorded in the world’s largest democracy. So many of those who expire from the heat, dying on the baking pavements they sleep on or in the unbearably hot slums on the city’s fringes, will similarly go uncounted. That means governments, state and federal, will never properly plan for heatwaves, nor will they invest in the infrastructure and systems needed to provide relief and help reduce the intensity of these climate change-driven disasters. With a warming planet and the increasing intensity of extreme weather events, that has to change. 
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mariacallous · 1 year
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Ayla recalls her early days in Sindh, Pakistan at school, when it was nothing but a strange building. Her home was so different and so was her neighborhood.
I remember my teacher, Ms. Sindhu, who lived three houses away from mine, once asked me to narrate a story about a camel ride. We have many camels around us, so I became excited and wanted to share, but I just couldn’t. I just struggled to say what I knew, what I have enjoyed and wanted to say. It felt like my tongue froze.
Ms. Sindhu asked Ayla to narrate this story in English, a language that was unfamiliar to her at the time. If asked in Sindhi, Ayla would not only have communicated her experience but also received her teacher’s energy of affirmation in return. Language is an invisible source of familiarity in school that children hold on to—it is through language that they have experienced the world so far. In this way, language becomes a bridge between school and home, allowing children to safely cross between the two worlds.
Despite the abundance of literature and experience supporting the benefits of teaching in a familiar language, an estimated half of all children in low- and middle-income countries are not taught in a language they understand. The case of Pakistan is no different. After 200 years of colonial rule under British India, Pakistan was born in 1947. Today, the country is home to over 70 languages, including the official languages of Urdu and English (a language that stayed, even after the British left). Urdu and English are utilized by the government, corporate sector, media, and—most relevantly—educational institutions.
As is the case with many other post-colonial nations, Pakistan is afflicted with “English-medium fever,” a desire to keep English as the medium of instruction in schools due to its perceived superiority and association with wealth, status, and power. This fever has led to a deep disconnect between the languages of the home and the school. Only 2 out of over 70 indigenous languages are formally recognized in schools in Pakistan. Most of the other languages remain “informal” in their usage, given little to no recognition outside of everyday use.
Despite the desire for English-medium instruction, for most students “English-medium” schooling only means that the textbooks and exams are in English. Research has demonstrated that a large portion of teachers in Pakistan do not understand English. Instead, teachers rely on local languages to teach and communicate with students, and students memorize and replicate text without comprehension. Students are subjected to learning unfamiliar content in a foreign language by a teacher who has not mastered the language. This places a burden on students, thereby furthering the inequality between themselves and more privileged students.
The gap between policy and practice in the language of instruction
Pakistan’s national education policies provide provinces with the option to use native languages in the early years of schooling and encourage the inclusion of mother tongues.
This leads us to ask why Pakistan’s national policies are not inspiring practice within provincial and private school systems. If the intention to teach children in languages they understand is there, why are a significant numbers of schools continuing to teach children using textbooks in Urdu or English, despite those languages collectively only being the native tongue of 8 percent of the population?
One crucial gap is that while policy details the importance of learning in one’s own language, there is no guidance on how this policy should be implemented. School systems are left on their own to design curriculum and develop the necessary material to implement this policy. Moreover, the examination boards for Matric and Intermediate students are still held predominantly in Urdu and English, thereby discouraging schools from investing in teaching children in familiar languages and instead facilitating the rote memorization of unfamiliar language textbooks that students will later replicate on exams. Parents also fear that their children will do poorly on these exams, lose opportunities if they study in their own language, and forgo learning in the English language.
This is contributing to a growing crisis where children are attending school but struggling to comprehend. When these children decide to no longer pursue an education, we say they “dropped out.” But the truth of the matter is that these children are pushed out due to a systemic failure.
A language ladder can help bridge multilingual instruction 
Languages can provide access to opportunities and serve as a bridge between a child and the outside world. However, to ensure academic success, cognitive development, and positive identity formation, children must be taught in languages familiar to them. Research finds that after children have developed proficiency in their familiar language(s), it is easier for them to learn foreign languages like English. Conversely, learning in an unfamiliar language is too demanding for a young child. This disadvantage disproportionately impacts children facing other educational barriers, such as poverty, hunger, and poor learning conditions.
So, how can a mother tongue-based multilingual education policy be translated into the classroom? To answer this, The Citizens Foundation, which operates one of the largest networks of independently run, nonprofit schools in the world, began a research study in 2018 that includes a socio-linguistic survey, interviews and focus groups with stakeholders and experts, and literature reviews. We combined more than five years of research findings to develop a “language ladder” (or language progression plan) that outlines how children can be taught in their native language in the early years and then transition to learning multilingually to optimize learning and future opportunities (see image below).
The language ladder can be adapted to any context; all it requires is that a thorough socio-linguistic survey be conducted in the community to ensure that the aspirations and needs of the community are understood and are reflected in the language progression plan. The development of a language ladder is a first step toward teaching children in languages they understand.
TCF is currently piloting this language ladder across 19 schools and 84 classrooms—from pre-KG to grade 2—in Tharparkar, Pakistan. It will be scaled to close to 100 schools in the upcoming school year. The model adopts the most familiar language as the medium of instruction in the early years (until grade 3), undergoes a gradual transition from familiar to unfamiliar language in the late primary and early secondary years (grades 3 to 7), and finally completely transitions to the language most demanded beyond schooling in the late secondary years (grade 8 onward).
The multilingual language ladder puts comprehension at the center. It insists on the use of a familiar language to teach unfamiliar content so that there is a higher likelihood that the student will thrive in their environment. To ensure this goal is achieved, it is not enough to develop a policy that simply endorses mother-tongue instruction. There is also a need for technical guidance as to how multilingual schools can implement such policy on a classroom level.
Designing and introducing a language ladder can support policymakers and practitioners in addressing multilingual teaching within their individual contexts. It is crucial to continue to longitudinally study the effects of such solutions, to identify what’s working and what can be potentially scaled up, and ultimately, to create a world where Ayla and the millions of children like her can learn and share their experiences with confidence, ease, and excitement.
You can learn more about the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Program at The Citizens Foundation here and a recent policy brief related to school language policy here.
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naturalrights-retard · 4 months
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“Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.” (Revelation 18:4-5)
by Brian Shilhavy
In my last article, I documented how a modern-day interpretation of Biblical prophecy taking into account recent events that have occurred since 2020 and the Great COVID Scam can easily lead one to conclude that the “revived Roman Empire” that many see in the book of Revelation can really only be applied to the United States as “The Great Prostitute” and “Babylon”, which is the object of God’s fierce anger and “last day” judgments against “Babylon”, and “the Beast” which is the financial system. See:
Is Lady Liberty (Columbia) the “Great Prostitute” of Prophecy Residing in Washington D.C., the Revived Roman Empire to Fall During the “Last Days”
As I write this today, on December 7, 2023, world events are rapidly developing into what many people are referring to as an imminent “doomsday” scenario. These events are unfolding so fast right now, that I just simply do not have time to cover all of them, even though I am staying on top of them.
Here are some of the news items (much of it censored in the U.S. Corporate Media) that have occurred in the past few days that suggest time is short now before major, cataclysmic events erupt:
Image source.
Israel Lambasts UN Chief For Invoking Article 99 In Rare Move; Pressure Mounts On U.S. Israel has lashed out at the UN secretary-general for invoking article 99 over the Gaza war. This is the first time in Antonio Guterres’ tenure and in five decades that the article has been invoked. The rare and powerful move allows the UN secy-gen to bring any issue seen as threatening international peace to security council’s attention. It was invoked last in 1971 during the India-Pakistan crisis that led to the birth of Bangladesh. Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said that the tenure of Guterres is “a danger to world peace,” and his letter shows that he backs Hamas. (Source.)
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bopinion · 2 years
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2022 / 31
Aperçu of the Week:
"How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy?"
(Sting / Russians)
Bad News of the Week:
Nuclear Weapons. For decades, the epitome of terror. Even though it's often sold as a deterrent. As someone who grew up in Central Europe in the 70s and 80s of the last century, I know what I'm talking about. In childhood, I had to learn how to behave in the event of a nuclear attack. And in my youth I took to the streets against nuclear weapons - but "Petting instead of Pershing" did not really reflect the seriousness of the situation. And then the iron curtain fell. The "cold war" was over. But unfortunately not the end of the nuclear arms race.
Today marks the 77th anniversary of the terrible destruction of Hiroshima. It was the first and penultimate time in human history that an atomic bomb was actually used. With devastating consequences - for hundreds of thousands and for decades. Have we all lost this from our memory? Just because it wasn't reported on social media at the time, but only in the newsreels? That can't be true. That has to be not true. Because current history teaches us that there is still a problem. A fundamental one.
In the week that is coming to an end, the meeting on the "Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons" began in New York - as it does every five years. Unfortunately, lately rather a content-empty shell. For nothing new is to be heard from the five official nuclear powers - USA, Russia, China, France and Great Britain. The USA and Russia are modernizing their arsenals and accusing each other of violating control mechanisms. China is basically keeping its cards close to its chest. France and Britain are clinging to this dubious show of strength, as they do in the UN Security Council, in order not to lose even more geopolitical importance.
And then there are India and Pakistan as de facto nuclear powers, which are suspicious of each other - there, too, the "thanks" go to the United Kingdom. And Israel, which wants to use them to assert itself against perceived Arab superiority. Iran would like to have nuclear weapons, but is probably not yet ready. North Korea could already be further than it lets one sleep calmly. And when was the last time anything was heard from South Africa? Most recently, Russia actually seemed to be discussing the use of "strategic mini-nukes" in Ukraine - of all places, the country where the consequences of the Chernobyl meltdown are still being felt.
UN Secretary General António Guterres is once again living up to his role as chief moral prosecutor, saying the world is in a "time of nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War." And only one misunderstanding or miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation. Only the final destruction of all nuclear weapons would be a safe way out for humanity. After all, all the theories about deterrence, nuclear sharing, and balance of terror barely conceal what this Pandora's box really is: a gun powder keg. And we're all sitting on it.
Good News of the Week:
With ever new, mostly specious arguments, Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia had held up the Biden administration's climate protection and welfare package. Officially, the last word was that he wanted to curb avoidable spending in times of inflation. In truth, however, he fears only for his own wealth, which is based on coal production. His power in the Joe vs. Joe game is simply based on the fact that without his vote there would be no Democratic majority in the Senate, which has otherwise rarely been so clearly divided according to party.
But now Manchin has abandoned his opposition in negotiations with majority leader Chuck Schumer. This has cleared the way for a package - albeit a much slimmed-down one - that includes $369 billion over the next ten years for investments in climate protection and energy security. Financed by closing tax loopholes for large corporations. So it makes twofold sense. And finally a success for this so far richly bruised presidency.
"Build back better," then, could also apply to Joe Biden's historically low approval ratings. Perhaps the upswing - if it comes - will come just in time for the midterm elections in November. And Republicans may not succeed in winning a majority in both chambers of Congress that would pave the way for Trumpism to win the 2024 presidential election - whether with the original or Ron DeSantis.
Personal happy moment of the week:
As a freelancer, I always have a hard time taking vacation. Because what I don't do, doesn't get done. And doesn't get any better. And doesn't bring any money. That's why it's always hard for me to switch off when I’m not working. These days I'm trying something different during the six-week summer vacations: I'll work three days a week as normal and then take a four-day weekend. My plan is that nothing will be left undone for more than 48 hours. And I could therefore manage to clear my head. Right now is the first of these long weekends. It doesn't quite work yet, but all beginnings are difficult. But I am on a good way. And that feels good.
I couldn't care less...
...that Russia's judiciary sees itself as independent jurisprudence. First, Ukrainian militias are labeled as terrorists in order to be able to significantly increase their sentences. A joke - but it's probably about demoralizing Ukrainian troops. Then US basketball player Brittney Griner is sentenced to nine years in prison for importing drugs. This means waping cartridges and 5 grams of cannabis oil that was prescribed to her by her sports doctor as a painkiller. A joke - but it's probably about making an example against the class enemy. And about leverage for a prisoner exchange. Jurisprudence? A Joke.
As I write this...
...the Voyager 1 spacecraft has already traveled 23.4 billion kilometers since 1977. And it's still sending signals. But these are recently only an incomprehensible gibberish, which NASA cannot explain. I can. Because I have seen the movie "Contact" by Robert Zemeckis with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey. On the other hand - as the saying goes: the proof that there is intelligent life in the universe is that no contact has been made with us.
Post Scriptum:
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has visited Taiwan. As #3 in the U.S. political system, it was the highest-ranking visit in 25 years. Which was not officially on behalf of the government. And explicitly does not change the "One-China" stance of the US. So it was a pure PR action full of flowery words like "We stand by the side of every free people" or "It is important to show our solidarity." Beijing's announced reaction began immediately: sanctions against Pelosi personally as well as the freezing of virtually all bilateral discussion formats, including on climate, maritime security or transnational crime.
But above all, a gigantic military maneuver - with real ammunition, cyber attacks, violation of airspace, etc. Experts see it as an exercise to cut off Taiwan's sea lanes. Be it in an invasion to finally reunite the motherland or "just" to cut off trade, the country's economic lifeline. Combined with export restrictions from China itself, this would make the Western world feel its dependence on Far Eastern manufacturing. Again. Globalization and multilateralism only work if everyone goes along. Xi Jinping is currently being shown by Vladimir Putin how to put the "free world" in a bind. Let's see how far his hubris reaches.
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