RAINN'S NATIONAL SEXUAL ASSAULT HOTLINE SEES SURGE IN CALLS FOLLOWING HARVEY WEINSTEIN CONVICTION

BY CHANTAL DA SILVA ON 2/27/20

The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) saw a 23 percent surge in calls in the days following disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein's rape conviction.

On Monday, Weinstein, 67, was found guilty on two sex abuse charges, including rape in the third degree and committing a criminal sexual act. He was acquitted of three further charges, including the two most serious charges against him of predatory sexual assault and rape in the first degree.

While the film producer has been accused of attacking dozens of women, predominantly in the film industry, the charges in this case centered around accusations made by two women: Jessica Mann and Miriam Haley, who accused Weinstein of targeting them early on in their careers.

On the day of Weinstein's conviction and on the following day, a Tuesday, RAINN said its national sexual assault hotline experienced a 23 percent increase in call volume.

In a statement shared with Newsweek, Erinn Robinson, RAINN's press secretary, said she believed "the media attention surrounding Harvey Weinstein's case is leading many more survivors to reach out for help."

In many cases, she said, women were coming to share their stories "for the first time."

Robinson said RAINN has experienced a similar effect throughout the course of other high-profile cases, including that of Bill Cosby, who had also faced widespread sexual misconduct allegations and was convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault in April 2018.
Disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein enters New York City Criminal Court on February 24, 2020 in New York City. Weinstein was convicted of sexual assault charges.SCOTT HEINS/GETTY



During the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing into accusations of sexual misconduct against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, RAINN saw a massive surge in calls to its sexual assault hotline.

As Christine Blasey Ford delivered her testimony before the committee, RAINN said it had seen a 147 percent increase in calls compared with a typical weekday.

The rise in calls was so significant that RAINN had to notify users it was experiencing "unprecedented wait times" for its online chat system, while the organization encouraged those to call its hotline, 800.656.HOPE instead.

"Hearing about sexual violence in the media and online can be very difficult for survivors and their loved ones," RAINN had said in a Twitter statement. "Remember to take care of yourself during these times."

"Hopefully, the facts that a defendant with all of the power and legal resources that money can buy can be found guilty, and that public opinion was heavily in favor of the victims, will give hope to other survivors and prosecutors that these cases will be taken seriously and that they too can get justice," Robinson said in a separate statement to Newsweek.

"Having already seen an uptick in visitors to the National Sexual Assault Hotline this week, we anticipate that more survivors will reach for support. We are humbled to be able to help these survivors in their healing," she said.

This article has been updated to include a statement from RAINN's Erinn Robinson.
Correction: This article previously stated that the surge in calls to RAINN's sexual assault hotline occurred on the Tuesday and Wednesday following Weinstein's Monday, February 24 conviction. It occurred on the day of his conviction and the day following.

OPINION
ROBERT REICH: BERNIE'S PLANS ARE AMBITIOUS. BUT THEIR COSTS ARE PEANUTS COMPARED TO THE PRICE OF INACTION | OPINION

ROBERT REICH , NEWSWEEK COLUMNIST AND CHANCELLOR’S PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
ON 2/25/20

In last Wednesday night's Democratic debate, former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg charged that Senator Bernie Sanders' policy proposals would cost $50 trillion. Holy Indiana.

Larry Summers, formerly chief White House economic advisor for Barack Obama, puts the price tag at $60 trillion. "We are in a kind of new era of radical proposal," he told CNN.

Putting aside the accuracy of these cost estimates, they omit the other side of the equation: what, by comparison, is the cost of doing nothing?

A Green New Deal might be expensive, but doing nothing about climate change will almost certainly cost far more. If we don't launch something as bold as a Green New Deal, we'll spend trillions coping with the consequences of our failure to be bold.

Medicare for All will cost a lot, but the price of doing nothing about America's increasingly dysfunctional healthcare system will soon be in the stratosphere. A new study in The Lancet estimates that Medicare for All would save $450 billion and prevent 68,000 unnecessary deaths each year.

Investing in universal childcare, public higher education and woefully outdated and dilapidated infrastructure will be expensive too, but the cost of not making these investments would be astronomical. American productivity is already suffering and millions of families can't afford decent childcare, college or housing – whose soaring costs are closely related to inadequate transportation and water systems.

Focusing only on the costs of doing something about these problems without mentioning the costs of doing nothing is misleading, but this asymmetry is widespread.

Journalists wanting to appear serious about public policy continue to rip into Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (whose policies are almost as ambitious) for the costs of their proposals but never ask self-styled moderates like Buttigieg how they plan to cope with the costs of doing nothing or too little.

A related criticism of Sanders and Warren is that they haven't come up with ways to pay for their proposals. Sanders "only explained $25 trillion worth of revenue, which means the hole in there is bigger than the size of the entire economy of the United States," charged Mayor Pete.

Sanders' and Warren's wealth tax would go a long way toward paying for their plans.

But even if their wealth tax paid a small fraction of the costs of their proposals, so what? As long as every additional dollar of spending reduces by more than a dollar the future costs of climate change, inadequate healthcare and insufficient public investment, it makes sense to spend more.

Republican administrations have doled out gigantic tax cuts to big corporations and the wealthy without announcing specific cuts in public spending or other tax increases because – despite decades of evidence to the contrary – they claim the cuts will generate economic growth that will more than make up for any lost revenue.

Yet when Warren and Sanders propose ambitious plans for reducing empirically verifiable costs of large and growing public problems, they are skewered by fellow Democrats and the press for not having ways to pay for them.

A third line of criticism is that Sanders' and Warren's proposals are just too big. It would be safer to move cautiously and incrementally.

This argument might be convincing if the problems Sanders and Warren address were growing slowly. But experts on the environment, health, education and infrastructure are nearly unanimous: these problems are worsening exponentially.

Young people understand this, perhaps because they will bear more of the costs of inaction. An Emerson poll of Iowa found that 44 percent of Democrats under 50 support Sanders and 10 percent favor Warren. In New Hampshire, Sanders won more voters under 30 than the other candidates combined, according to CNN exit polls. In Nevada, he captured an astonishing 65 percent of voters under 30.

The reason to support Sanders' and Warren's proposals isn't because they inspire and mobilize voters. It is because they are necessary.

We can no longer pretend that climate change, a wildly dysfunctional healthcare system and a yawning deficit in public investment pose insignificant challenges. Doing nothing or doing too little will make them far worse.

Obsessing about the cost of addressing them without acknowledging the cost of failing to address them is dangerously irresponsible.

Robert Reich's latest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Change It, will be out in March.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own.​​​​​

IDLIB IS THE NEW FACE OF CONFLICT. THE WORLD NEEDS TO CATCH UP

OPINION DAVID MILIBAND ON 2/26/20 

The scenes and stories from Idlib province in Syria should be shocking – but it seems from the lack of reaction by western governments that we have been numbed. Children freezing to death in -11 degree temperatures after being bombed by their own government should never be normalized. But in fact the type of conflict we are seeing in Idlib is the new face of conflict. Diplomats and humanitarians need to catch up.

The assault on Idlib is not just another turn in the Syrian conflict. It is intended to be one of the last. And the statistics show that it is the most brutal at least as measured by the flight of victims. 900,000 people have fled since December, over 100,000 in the past seven days alone, and over 300,000 still risk joining them. This is the largest civilian displacement since the conflict started nine long years ago. Among those forced to flee are 30 local IRC staff who, despite being displaced themselves, have continued their work helping others in the areas in which they've relocated.

There is a current UN Inquiry into the attacks on health facilities and other civilian infrastructure. But it is limited to a mere seven incidents and it remains unclear if the findings will be made public and if the report will name perpetrators. So, it is not providing a credible deterrent to the current escalation of violence, or the ongoing attacks on civilians and the facilities they depend on for their survival. In the past few weeks alone, the IRC and the organizations it works with have had to suspend operations in a number of health facilities and relocate an entire fleet of ambulances. Faced with ongoing and deliberate targeting of aid workers, medical staff and their facilities, it is legitimate to fear that there will be no doctors and nurses left to help spare life and limb on the ground.

The catastrophe in Idlib is a symptom of the utter failure of diplomacy and abandonment by the international community of Syrian civilians. But it also foreshadows an even darker trend towards an Age of Impunity—an era characterized by the total disregard for the rule of law and an equally grave deficit of international diplomacy, which allows the suffering of civilians to continue unabated. These changes create greater risks for civilians and aid workers and increase the likelihood that we'll be dealing with the repercussions for a generation. The danger is that Syria becomes not just a disaster, but a precedent for a new normal of brutal, divisive, contagious conflict—a testament to a global shift in the waging of war in four key ways.

First and foremost is where the conflict is taking place—in crowded urban areas, not the hills of Verdun, the fields of Gettysburg, or the deserts of Kuwait. The urbanization of war has put more civilians at risk, not just from the direct harms of bullets and shrapnel, but from the indirect impacts of airstrikes and artillery attacks on health facilities, water and sanitation systems, bakeries, and housing—all of which have been targeted in the most recent Idlib offensive. This is a major reason why the conflict in Syria has displaced more than 11 million people, and it represents a significant shift from wars of previous generations. Since 1945 an average of 5 people were displaced for every one person killed. In Syria that ratio has been 25 to 1.

Second, the battlefield in Syria is increasingly crowded, filled by non-state actors like the constellation of armed opposition groups, militant and sanctioned organizations, and other forces backed by foreign powers—some of whom are also directly present in Syria. The involvement of so many groups, more than 100 in Syria according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, has fractured the battlefield geographically with so many different groups controlling different territory, but also hierarchically given the often unclear chain of command structure within each group. For civilians living in Syria, this means fewer areas of stable control as groups compete and fight over territory, and a more complicated environment to navigate, with competing allegiances and constantly shifting alliances.

Third, conflicts are lasting longer. The large presence of foreign militaries has made the conflict deadlier for civilians due to the increased firepower they bring, as demonstrated by widespread Russian air strikes on cities like Idlib. But the internationalization of this war has also made the conflict last much longer. It is unlikely the conflict would have lasted this long without the surge of support in the form of arms, money—and sometimes direct support—from regional and international powers. We are approaching the tenth year of this conflict, which means many of those 11 million displaced Syrians have been without a home for nearly a decade. According to David Armitage in his book Civil Wars, this is the new norm.

Fourth, the protracted nature of the conflict in Syria, along with the proliferation of armed groups with few ties to the laws of war and the involvement of multiple foreign militaries who have shown little regard for war crimes or civilian casualties, have made the conflict an avatar for the Age of Impunity. This is an era in which civilians are seen as fair game for armed combatants, humanitarians are viewed as an impediment to military tactics and therefore unfortunate but expendable collateral, and investigations of and accountability for war crimes are considered an optional extra for state as well as non-state actors. In Syria, far too many of the militaries, militias and mercenaries involved have learned the dangerous lesson that "the rules are for suckers."

The danger is that Syria becomes not just a disaster, but a precedent for a new normal of brutal, divisive, contagious conflict. If the UN Security Council remains gridlocked, and the UN frozen out of peacemaking by the Astana group of Russia, Turkey, and Iran, then the UN Secretary General should go himself to meet the people of Idlib, shuttle from Ankara to Moscow and back to New York, and urge the Presidency of the Security Council (currently Belgium) to summon Foreign Ministers to New York for serious talking. This is not normal, but neither is the situation on the ground. The UN Human Rights Council is meeting this week for the first time in 2020 and the high level segment this week with Foreign Ministers present is a critical opportunity for an emergency meeting on the situation in Idlib. However, it is unclear whether this dire situation will even be discussed, let alone a resolution calling for a ceasefire adopted.

The immediate priorities should be a ceasefire, strengthening humanitarian access, and delivering accountability for the crimes committed and civilians needlessly suffering. Beyond the immediate emergency, accountability not impunity needs to be restored as the watchword of the age. NGOs and businesses can help with that—in the way the German NGO the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has issued indictments under the principle of universal jurisdiction for human rights crimes in Syria.

For too many it is too late in Syria. The very least we can do to honor their memory is build a new system of prevention and accountability that makes "never again" more than a hollow slogan.

David Miliband is CEO and president of the International Rescue Committee (IRC). The IRC is a member of the Global Emergency Response Coalition, who has launched an appeal this week to raise funds for the Syria crisis. The Global Emergency Response Coalition is a lifesaving humanitarian alliance made up of leading U.S.-based international aid organizations.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own.​​​​

OPIOID-RELATED DEATHS IN THE U.S. COULD BE FAR HIGHER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT, STUDY SUGGESTS

BY KASHMIRA GANDER ON 2/27/20

Addiction In America - The Shocking Statistics

The number of deaths linked to opioids in the U.S. over the past two decades could be almost 30 percent higher than previously thought, a study has revealed.

Researchers looked at data on people who died of drug overdoses between 1999 to 2016 from a database kept by the National Center for Health Statistics in the U.S., which included a total of 632,331 cases. This enabled the team to match up information on death records with drug overdoses without a specific cause.

Of those, 78.2 percent of cases had information on the drug involved, while 21.8 percent didn't. The team found that 71.8 percent of unclassified drug overdoses over the course of the study involved opioids, or approximately 28 percent more than previously reported. That amounts to 99,160 additional deaths linked to prescription opioids, heroin, or fentanyl.

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The team found states including Alabama, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Indiana, had the highest discrepancies. According to a statement by the University of Rochester where the researchers are based, the number of reported opioid-related deaths in Pennsylvania, for instance, was 12,374, but the research puts the figure at 26,586.

The research comes amid an opioid overdose epidemic which kills 130 Americans every day on average, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of the over 70,200 individuals who died of a drug overdose in 2017, around 68 percent had taken an opioid. That included prescription and illegal drugs like heroin and its stronger synthetic counterpart fentanyl. The crisis started after a rise in opioid prescriptions in the 1990s.

Andrew J. Boslett, Alina Denham, and Elaine L. Hill co-authored the paper published in the journal Addiction. They told Newsweek: "We suspect that the driver of underreporting of opioid overdoses in the United States may be due to a lack of resources for medical examination, as well as continued (though decreasing) reliance on coroners, who are elected officials with potentially only limited experience in medical examination."

Explaining why they carried out the study, they said: "A number of researchers have speculated that socio-economic malaise in many areas of the country over the last twenty years has played a role in increasing drug overdose-related abuse and mortality.

"Over the last few years, we have been developing research on whether the shale boom, coal bust, and other economic shocks have influenced the drug overdose epidemic, in a meaningful way. As we developed this study, we noticed by looking at the data and reading through the literature that around 20 to 25 percent of drug overdoses did not have a drug-of-cause listed in the death record.

"We realized that this was an issue, not only for our studies—which would rely on high-quality estimates of local drug and opioid overdose rates across space and time—but also for the country's understanding of the toll of the opioid overdose epidemic."

The team went on: "We suspect that the driver of underreporting of opioid overdoses in the United States may be due to a lack of resources for medical examination, as well as continued (though decreasing) reliance on coroners, who are elected officials with potentially only limited experience in medical examination."

Highlighting the limitations of their study, the team they could have applied more advanced tools in machine learning.

2,000-Pound Great White Shark Unama'ki Spotted Near New Orleans

A TON O' FUN

A white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) has been tracked west of the Mississippi River in the Gulf of Mexico, near the Louisiana coast. 

According to the ocean research group OCEARCH, this is the first time the species has been located in this particular stretch of coast.

© Dave J Hogan/Getty OCEARCH have been tracking white sharks like the one pictured to monitor their activity and migrating behavior. 2000-pound Unama’ki was recently pinged near the Louisiana coast—just in time for Mardi Gras.

"Is this a whole new piece to the white shark puzzle?" OCEARCH said on Twitter.

Wow look where white shark Unamâki is! She has moved west of the Mississippi River in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s the first time we’ve tracked a white shark to this area off the coast of Louisiana. Is this a whole new piece to the white shark puzzle? pic.twitter.com/fUz2WmrN1q— OCEARCH (@OCEARCH) February 24, 2020

The 2,000-pound female, named Unama'ki, swooped into the area on Sunday (February 23)—seemingly in time for Mardi Gras. OCEARCH posted a screenshot of her location on Monday, revealing she appears to have found some cooler water nearer the coast.

"The water temperature at her most recent ping off the Louisiana coast is around 70 degrees Fahrenheit," said OCEARCH.


White shark Unamaâki seems to have found some of the cooler water available in the Gulf of Mexico right now. The water temperature at her most recent ping off the Louisiana coast is around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. pic.twitter.com/M2vonT3rUF— OCEARCH (@OCEARCH) February 24, 2020

Her shark tracker pinged again on Fat Tuesday (February 25), showing she had drifted further out into the Gulf of Mexico only a couple of days after arriving. The tracker tagged her location as just south of New Orleans.

"Looks like white shark Unama'ki wants to participate in #MardiGras2020 after all!" said OCEARCH.

Looks like white shark Unamaâki wants to participate in #MardiGras2020 after all! She turned around after pinging much farther west than we usually see white sharks go in the Gulf. Her newest ping is south of New Orleans. pic.twitter.com/BIq60H7d1x— OCEARCH (@OCEARCH) February 25, 2020

Non-profit OCEARCH started tracking Unama'ki and several other sharks last year. She was tagged near Scaterie Island in Nova Scotia, Canada, on September 20, 2019 and scientists have been keeping an eye on her progress down North America's east coast ever since.


The 15 feet 5 inches great white, whose name means "land of the fog" in the language of the indigenous Mi'kmaq people of Nova Scotia, made swift gains, arriving in the Gulf of Mexico in time for Halloween 2019.

To reach the U.S.' southernmost tip by the end of October, she had to complete a 2,000-mile trip in less than 2 months.

By tracking several sharks living in the Northwest Atlantic, scientists with OCEARCH have learned a lot about the populations living on North America's east coast over the last few years. They believe there are two sub-populations—one that spends the summer and autumnal months in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and one that spends the time in Canada.

On Tuesday, another of the great whites spending a winter in Florida was seen speeding up the east coast. Helena—a 1,300-pound, 12 feet 5 inches female—was located at a spot near Charleston, South Carolina on Tuesday, three weeks after she had pinged in the Florida Keys.

"Look how fast @helena_shark is moving north. She was down in the Gulf of Mexico last month and a new ping today shows her off the South Carolina coast," said OCEARCH.


Look how fast @helena_shark is moving north. She was down in the Gulf of Mexico last month and a new ping today shows her off the South Carolina coast. pic.twitter.com/hcB7YY0ZFY— OCEARCH (@OCEARCH) February 26, 2020

Decoding the Christian paradox: Evangelical historian explains how right-wingers ignore Jesus to support a corrupt and greedy president

Published February 23, 2020 By Chauncey Devega, Salon - Commentary


To quote the bumper sticker: “What would Jesus do?”

Assuming that he existed and held the views imputed to him, Jesus Christ would not support Donald Trump.

Donald Trump’s behavior, values, policies and their consequences are the opposite of what Jesus Christ represented. Trump has put migrants and refugees in cages and delighted in their suffering. He feels contempt for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable and the needy. He has lied at least 16,000 times. He is corrupt and wildly greedy.

Donald Trump is violent, a militarist, a nativist and a white supremacist. He has given aid and comfort to anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and other hate-mongers.
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We are told that Jesus Christ lived a life of love, humility and sacrifice. Donald Trump has lived a life of selfishness, greed and wanton cruelty.

Why are white evangelical Christians so overwhelmingly supportive of Donald Trump? While some have tried to present it as a riddle with no evident solution, the answer is quite simple: Donald Trump does the bidding of the Christian right. He has advanced its policies in a war against secular society, women’s freedom, LGBTQ rights, multiracial democracy and the U.S. Constitution.

But it’s important to note that the Christian evangelical community is not a monolith. There are many people within it who oppose Donald Trump and his movement, because they see it as antithetical to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

One such voice is historian John Fea, a professor at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. His new book is “Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump.” Fea recently published an op-ed in USA Today entitled “‘Evangelicals for Trump’ was an awful display by supposed citizens of the Kingdom of God,” in which he explained that he had spent his “entire adult life in the evangelical community” following a “born-again experience” at age 16:

But I have never seen anything like what I witnessed as I watched President Donald Trump speak to a few thousand of his evangelical supporters at King Jesus International Ministry, a largely Hispanic megachurch in Miami, during the kickoff to his “Evangelicals for Trump” campaign…Trump painted himself as a president who is protecting American evangelicals from those on the political left who want to “punish” people of faith and destroy religion in America. …

I am used to this kind of thing from Trump, but I was stunned when I witnessed evangelical Christians — those who identify with the “good news” of Jesus Christ —raising their hands in a posture of worship as Trump talked about socialism and gun rights.

I watched my fellow evangelicals rising to their feet and pumping their fists when Trump said he would win reelection in 2020.

Trump spent the evening mocking his enemies, trafficking in half-truths in order to instill fear in people whom God commands to “fear not,” and proving that he is incapable of expressing anything close to Christian humility.

His evangelical supporters loved every minute of it. That night, Christians who claim to be citizens of the Kingdom of God went to church, cheered the depraved words of a president and warmly embraced his offer of political power. Such a display by evangelicals is unprecedented in American history.

I usually get angry when members of my tribe worship at the feet of Trump. This time, I just felt sad.

I recently spoke to John Fea about the rise of Trump and his power over Christian evangelicals and the Christian right. Fea explained that the Age of Trump is a continuation of a long history in America where too many white Christians have supported racism, nativism and other regressive social causes. Fea also argued that while the “dark side” of Christian evangelicalism is flourishing under Donald Trump, the groundwork for this moment was laid down decades ago by the likes of Jerry Falwell Sr. and Pat Robertson.

Fea also told me that evangelicals have begun to use religious language about “demons” and Satanic power as a way of publicly targeting the Democrats and others who oppose Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

You recently wrote a USA Today op-ed about Donald Trump’s corruption of evangelical Christianity and his power over its adherents. How are you feeling?

I’ve had my ups and downs. It’s been an emotional roller coaster since Donald Trump got elected. It started out with anger. I can honestly say that I’ve gotten rid of that anger. It’s not anger towards Trump per se. Trump is Trump. He’s a fool, he’s absurd, he’s a narcissist. What bothers me are the Christians, the evangelical community, who are so supportive of Trump, who are so willing to look the other way when he does these blatantly and grossly immoral things.

I’m an academic by nature, so I want to try to step back at times and try to understand what gave rise to Trumpism and his power over Christian evangelicals. Sometimes I’m numb. Sometimes I’ve debated whether or not I still belong in that faith community. I am still an evangelical. That is how I identify. But this has all been a roller coaster ride.

What’s really affected me the most is being on the road with my new book, “Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump.” It came out in 2018, and talking to people who are hurting and emotionally scarred from how they’ve been treated in evangelical churches, simply because they don’t support Trump and what he represents, has really impacted me.

What are some of those personal stories?

At first, I believed that I would have all these Trump supporters criticizing me, yelling at me at my book talks. But what actually happened was that I encountered people who were looking for some kind of community, as they sought out like-minded evangelicals, or former evangelicals, who were looking for other Christians who do support Donald Trump. We would talk for hours after my events. People were sharing with each other how they were more free having a conversation here at this book talk than talking to people about politics in their own churches. That was a huge eye-opener for me.

There were a lot of tears. I prayed with people. Many of these people were women who were struggling not only with the fact of evangelicals supporting Trump, but the misogyny that went along with it. They were also struggling with how the misogynistic attitudes within American evangelicalism were foregrounded by the Trump election. There were also people at my talks sharing how they were ostracized from their church in 2008 or 2012 because they voted for Barack Obama. There were also people who had spoken out about sexual harassment in the evangelical community and were then told to remain quiet by their pastors and other church leaders.

Most of the people I talked to were just saying, “How could I have worshiped with these people all these years and not have realized that they would have supported everything that Donald Trump stands for, both in terms of his character and his policies?”

Some of them would tell me that they are “pro-life” but that there are other more important issues. They would explain how they are willing to put that issue to the side right now because there are issues which are much more important with the Trump presidency, such as immigration, his personal character, religious liberty for non-Christians or just Trump’s blatant lying to the American people.

In the United States white Christianity, especially in the South, was a tool for enforcing and legitimating white supremacy against nonwhites. Why is there any surprise about Donald Trump — who is an evident white supremacist — being a natural partner and champion of right-wing Christians?

I know the history of evangelicalism. I still had hope in 2016 that evangelicals were going to do the right thing and not vote for Trump. They’re my tribe. I was optimistic that Christian evangelicals were going to do the right thing and make the right decision and oppose what Trump stands for.

It took me a few days, not long, to take off my scorned evangelical hat and replace it with my historian’s hat. So yes, you are exactly correct. There is a dark dimension of evangelicalism. One sees that wherever there were moments of demographic change within United States history. There is always a backlash to those changes in American history and it is usually evangelical Christians who are not only part of the backlash but are largely leading that backlash.

I would also argue that there are many things that evangelicals do and have done throughout American history that have brought about some moral improvement in our country. That would include anti-slavery causes, international relief in poverty-stricken countries, actions in support of social justice and other forward-looking issues and concerns. That is not the dimension of the evangelical tradition tapped into by the 81% of white evangelical voters who voted for Donald Trump. Donald Trump appealed to all the darkest sides of American evangelicalism in 2016.

Part of what my work since 2016 has been trying to get evangelicals, a group who are largely an anti-intellectual bunch, to think about the fact that they should not have been surprised by the rise of Donald Trump and the evangelical community’s relationship to it. My book is dedicated to the 19% of evangelicals who did not support him. My book’s message is, “Let’s not pretend that Trump is new. Let’s come to grips with the fact that Trump is just the latest manifestation of a long string of dark moments within our faith’s history in America.”

Did Trump just give right-wing evangelicals permission to be who and what they really are?

The dark side of Christian evangelicalism flourishes under Trump. Did Trump create these racist evangelicals or is he just a manifestation of racism in that faith community? I would probably say it’s the latter.

Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, conservative evangelicals in the Moral Majority, such as prominent figures like Jerry Falwell Sr., Pat Robertson and others, began engaging with politics with the goal of trying to reclaim and renew and restore America’s “Christian” roots. They were very disappointed with Jimmy Carter for a variety of reasons and they began to turn towards Reagan and the GOP. We began to see a political playbook develop. A generation of white evangelicals embraced a strategy of “elect the right people, elect the right president, appoint Supreme Court justices, change the world, and bring about Christian witness in the world through the pursuit of political power.” In many ways that political power is normally associated with fear.

Much of this is driven by a fear-mongering narrative about white Christian America: We’re going to lose our “Christian nation” that we believe the country was founded upon. We need to make America great again, as if it was great in the 1950s or the 1920s with Jim Crow and other forms of oppression. We need to revisit the past, as if it was a much more moral Christian era — which it wasn’t. The right-wing Christian leaders were and are essentially longing for an era that never really existed in the first place.

Now, what’s fascinating about Trump is for many white evangelicals that political playbook was always associated with a Republican candidate. In the minds of most white evangelicals, they believed that person would be of moral character. A Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush or John McCain or Mitt Romney were, in the eyes of white evangelicals, people of moral character. As compared to Donald Trump, they would not be tweeting out lies every day. Yes, they were liars, but they weren’t doing it to the extent of Trump. Most evangelicals would admit Donald Trump does not have the same kind of character as a Reagan or a Bush. Would the evangelical political playbook survive with a person that most evangelicals believed was not a person of moral character? As we discovered, the answer is yes.

When the Christian right talks about “religious freedom” and says that America is a “Christian nation,” what do they really mean?

No one was debating whether the United States was a “Christian nation” until the 1970s. It was manifested through a culture war debate and trying to superimpose that assumption about a “Christian nation” onto the founding fathers who were never asking the question to begin with.

There are two ways of considering that claim. One is the historical argument. The Christian right will make this case that the Constitution is somehow a “Christian” document even though it never mentions God or Jesus. They also try to make a claim about the Declaration of Independence. That document contains four references to God. Most of them are these vague references to a kind of deist God. There’s nothing in the Declaration of Independence about a God who sacrificed his son for the sins of the world or anything of that manner.

There is also an argument that the larger ethos of the culture was Christian and somehow it seeped into to the mindset and the framework of the founders. There is no empirical evidence to suggest such a thing.

So how do you connect that with religious liberty? I think within the Christian right’s mindset, you saw a real transition in the rhetorical approach of the Christian right after Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage. But once they lost that battle, unlike Roe v. Wade — which the Christian Right still fights — they were like, “Hey, we lost this and we’re never going to get it back.”

Then the Christian right begin to switch their rhetorical strategy to “religious liberty,” which is something they rarely spoke about before a period of 2000 to 2010. Now the narrative is, “We have a traditional view of marriage and we have all of these traditional values that we uphold, and we want the liberty to be able to continue to practice these values without the government interfering.” For them, “religious liberty” is always the right of white conservative evangelicals to uphold their position.

What moved you to write the USA Today op-ed? Who was your specific audience?

There was a time when I could have written that essay in a place like Christianity Today or in some other periodical that most evangelicals read. But evangelicalism is so diverse at present. Evangelicals are fractured. There is no longer any kind of mass publication for that community. My thinking was, given that there is no flagship evangelical publication, let me try to pitch this to USA Today. I wanted to speak to my fellow evangelicals — but not the ones who were at the Trump rally I wrote about in the USA Today op-ed. They’re not going to listen to me. There is a group of evangelicals that do not want to listen to reasoned arguments. They are politically calcified.

I was trying to write to the evangelicals who voted for Trump in 2016 because they couldn’t stand Hillary Clinton. I wanted to get those evangelicals to see how our people are sitting in a house of worship and raising their hands singing praises to this morally corrupt individual. I also wanted to show that not all evangelicals support Donald Trump. We are not homogeneous.

How do right-wing evangelicals reconcile Trump’s obvious wicked behavior with their claims to be Christian?

I think it’s mixed. I believe that there are people from within certain sectors of evangelicalism, these are mostly charismatic Pentecostals, who really do believe that Donald Trump is the chosen one. They really believe that Donald Trump is anointed by God for “such a time as this.” He is a new King Cyrus and they know this because they have received prophecies telling them that this is the case. God has told them.

We can laugh at that or say such a belief is foolish, but there’s a world of charismatic Pentecostal evangelicalism that is deeply committed to their leaders, who argue that Donald Trump is the chosen one. They have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of followers. These are large communities. They are led by very strong and powerful personalities. Paula White, counselor to Trump, is one of these leaders. Lance Wall is another one. He actually made the prediction about Donald Trump and King Cyrus. He had a vision of Trump as King Cyrus. As to these prophetic visions, I really do believe that some of these evangelicals, especially charismatic Pentecostals, think their visions are true. And yes, there are some who use it for political gain.

Many of the evangelicals and other people who I wrote about in my USA Today op-ed probably do believe that Donald Trump is an anointed figure from God who will deliver us out of the clutches of secularism and socialism, the latter being largely understood by most of these anti-intellectual evangelicals as some kind of a Soviet-style socialism. In the uneducated evangelical mind, there is no ability to separate a democratic kind of socialism from Joseph Stalin.

When right-wing Christians, especially evangelicals, start talking about “demons” and “the devil” attacking Donald Trump and that they need to use “spiritual warfare” against Trump’s “enemies,” what do they mean?

Evangelicals have always talked about demonic forces in the world and spiritual warfare. In their minds, God and Satan are still battling with each other, and then one day at the great battle of Armageddon or something akin to it, Satan will be defeated and we’ll move into a new heaven. For evangelicals, the world is always enchanted. There are always angels and forces of evil and devils and demons and so forth. That’s how they see the world around them. What’s fascinating about these discussions of spiritual warfare, though, is that they normally take place behind the closed doors of churches. Now evangelicals are bringing this type of talk and logic to American public life in defense of Donald Trump.

Evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham and others have recently been saying, “There are forces out there that are trying to undermine this president.” If someone who is not a Christian evangelical were to hear the word “forces,” they would think that means the Democrats or the deep state. But any evangelical who hears someone like Franklin Graham say that knows exactly what those forces are. These are demonic forces.

After the impeachment, evangelicals upped their game. “Demonic” and “spiritual battle” and “the devil” did not come into the public discourse in the way they are at present until Donald Trump was impeached. When the impeachment inquiry started, you had all these people saying that this is the devil at work trying to undermine God’s anointed. Devils are trying to undermine a nation and its president who is trying to bring that nation back to its godly roots.

If right-wing Christian leaders are saying that the Democrats are demonic forces, is that an encouragement to violence?

Perhaps I am naïve, but I guess I have enough faith in my fellow evangelicals to prevent this from moving towards violence. But to affirm what you’re saying, I think you’re right. The logical implications of this certainly could be, at this point, very harsh, un-Christian like attacks on people who do not support Trump.

What do right-wing evangelicals and other Christians want? What is the Christian right’s dream for America?

There’s a theological concept in the New Testament known as the “Kingdom of God.” Many non-evangelicals and non-Christians become very concerned when they hear Trump cabinet member Betsy DeVos or someone else with power saying, “We want to bring about the Kingdom of God.” Outsiders see that as a kind of dominionist, reconstructionist, theocratic kind of statement. But when evangelicals theologically talk about the Kingdom of God, they’re normally talking about what the world would be like if Jesus was King and if you put Jesus on the throne of the so-called Kingdom of God. We’re all citizens of this kingdom as believers. I think they’ve confused this idea of a Kingdom of God” with some form of American exceptionalism or the idea that America is a “City on a Hill” and that God has specially blessed us.

When they talk about the nation becoming more Christian, again, it’s all filtered through this recent history of the last 40 years. So how do we create a Christian nation? Well, we fight against abortion. We fight for religious liberty for our views only. We try to privilege Christianity, our version of Christianity, above everything else. If you push many of these Christian right leaders, it is hard to find an answer as far as what they actually want this vision to look like in practice.

For example, they are against abortion. What does that look like in practice? Do you want to take every woman who had an abortion and put her in prison? Put abortion doctors in prison? What is the logical outcome of these kinds of policies? And they would immediately back off and say, “Oh, no, no, no. We don’t want to create a theocratic state, or a state governed by the teachings of the Bible.” But in some ways, they do.

Most evangelicals, because they’ve committed to this notion of reclaiming America as a “Christian nation,” have no model for pluralism. They cannot grasp any idea of a pluralistic society in which there are people who differ from them and question what American evangelicals believe. How do white evangelicals live together in a society with people who have deep differences on a variety of issues?

How do right-wing Christians reconcile the public policies they support with the actual teachings of Jesus Christ? The contradictions are obvious and stark. Jesus would not be a Republican or a conservative.

They ignore it. They don’t try to make sense of it. They completely ignore the contradictions between Trump’s behavior and the Bible. Or they might talk about what their church is doing locally. They would say, “We have a food pantry in our church, or we help the homeless in our community through our church,” and so forth. But when it comes to public life and national life, that is not what they are focusing on. Culture is the national state of the nation. These evangelicals do not possess an integrated view of the way their faith and practices are related to American culture as a whole.

To me, this is a great advertisement for why religion really should not be included in government. This is exactly why we have separation of church and state. Faith is a belief in that which cannot be proven by empirical means. Faith is not part of empirical reality. How does one litigate matters of faith, and other types of magical thinking, relative to a proper government?

I believe that politics is generally a corrupt sphere. Politics is the best example, the best kind of microcosm of that brokenness. What are we as a church doing mixing ourselves up in politics? Our religious convictions can lead us toward certain policy issues. But when we’re arguing in the public square in a pluralistic society and using demons and the Bible and these kinds of things as evidence, there is a problem. Evangelicals are awful at not understanding those distinctions and the problems that result.

Evangelicals think their private internal language is somehow going to convince secular humanists that a given policy should be enacted because the Bible says it’s true. That is just one example where evangelicals have not thought through political engagement in a serious way.

Chauncey DeVega is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

Prince Harry And Meghan Markle Will Lose Canadian Police Protection When They Step Down As Working Royals

However, the family will still be protected by (taxpayer-funded) UK police — even while in Canada.

 February 27, 2020 Ellie Hall is a reporter for BuzzFeed News 

and is based in Washington, DC.

Mark Cuthbert / Getty Images

The Canadian government will stop providing security support for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (aka Prince Harry and Meghan Markle) when they step down as senior members of the royal family "in the coming weeks," Canada's Office of the Minister of Public Safety confirmed to BuzzFeed News Thursday.

"The Duke and Duchess of Sussex choosing to re-locate to Canada on a part-time basis presented our government with a unique and unprecedented set of circumstances," a spokesperson for the minister said in a statement.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have been assisting the UK Metropolitan Police with the Sussexes on-the-ground security "intermittently" since November 2019.

"As the Duke and Duchess are currently recognized as Internationally Protected Persons, Canada has an obligation to provide security assistance on an as needed basis," per the statement. "The assistance will cease in the coming weeks, in keeping with their change in status."


HARRY LANDS IN SCOTLAND SAS PROTECTION IN TOW

Although the Sussexes have not confirmed when they will be "stepping down" as senior royals for a one-year trial period, March 31 has been widely reported as the specific date. (A spokesperson for the couple told BuzzFeed News that they were not providing guidance on the exact date of the transition.)

However, Harry, Meghan, and their son, Archie, will still be protected by (taxpayer-funded) UK police — even while in Canada.

In a statement Friday, the Sussexes said that they required "effective security" because of "[Harry's] public profile by virtue of being born into the royal family, his military service, [Meghan's] own independent profile, and the shared threat and risk level documented specifically over the last few years."

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declined to comment on the Canadian government's decision.


Justin Trudeau@JustinTrudeau

Prince Harry, Meghan, and Archie, we’re all wishing you a quiet and blessed stay in Canada. You’re among friends, and always welcome here.01:55 AM - 21 Dec 2019

The government's decision will likely be popular with most Canadians. Per surveys compiled by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, only 1 in 5 believe that Harry and Meghan's security should be funded by taxpayers. In January, a petition protesting the use of taxpayer money for the Sussexes' security garnered 80,000 signatures in six days.

Here's the full statement from the Office of the Minister of Public Safety:
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex choosing to re-locate to Canada on a part-time basis presented our government with a unique and unprecedented set of circumstances.

The RCMP has been engaged with officials in the UK from the very beginning regarding security considerations. As the Duke and Duchess are currently recognized as Internationally Protected Persons, Canada has an obligation to provide security assistance on an as needed basis. At the request of the Metropolitan Police, the RCMP has been providing assistance to the Met since the arrival of the Duke and Duchess to Canada intermittently since November 2019. The assistance will cease in the coming weeks, in keeping with their change in status

THE ROYAL TEA
Harry And Meghan Will Drop The "Royal" From Their Brand And Have Laid Out Their Future PlansEllie Hall · Feb. 21, 2020

A Royal Divorce And The Curious Slant Of Leaks To The Press Ellie Hall · Feb. 21, 2020

Let’s Break Down Why Prince Harry And Meghan Markle Are In Canada Ellie Hall · Jan. 21, 2020

No Email. No WhatsApp. No Internet. This Is Now Normal Life In Kashmir.

Normal life has ground to a halt in the region as businesses lay off workers, hospitals struggle to care for patients, and ordinary people despair.

Pranav Dixit BuzzFeed News Reporting From New Delhi February 26, 2020

Sopa Images / Getty Images



A Kashmiri vendor walks past closed shops during the shutdown in Srinagar.


Like the snowcapped mountains and grassy meadows, men with guns are part of the landscape in Kashmir. Some are cops, some are from the Indian army, and some belong to a counterinsurgency force. Only locals, who have grown up with these men patrolling their streets for generations, can tell who is who.

On a cold winter morning in late January, a dozen of these armed men stood atop the roof of a one-story restaurant in Srinagar, Kashmir’s largest city and the region’s summer capital, and gazed down at the traffic below. I watched them watching my car, their bodies silhouetted against a steel sky. Blocks of snow lined the road, and as my car trundled into the heart of the city, my breath came out in misty puffs. When I instinctively pulled out my phone to check the weather, however, it was useless: Since August 5, Indian authorities have kept the people of Kashmir in a digital blackout, restricting most internet access. At 205 days and counting, it’s the longest-running internet shutdown in any democracy so far, seven months in March. That means no email. No WhatsApp. No maps. And no weather.

On August 5, India’s government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, revoked Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which granted the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir a measure of autonomy. The government split the state, a region disputed between India and Pakistan, into two territories. Supporters of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party hailed the move, while Kashmiris, many of whom want to see Kashmir join Pakistan or become independent, were angered. To prevent public opposition from turning into open rebellion, India’s government detained Kashmiri politicians, arrested thousands of activists and academics, and imposed a complete communications blackout. Overnight, mobile phones and landlines stopped working, broadband lines were frozen, and text messaging stopped.

Over the last six months, the government has relaxed some of these restrictions: Landline phones came back after five weeks, and in October, people who had postpaid mobile connections found they could make calls again. Last month, texting was allowed again, and eventually large swathes of Kashmir were able to access, at glacial speeds, a few hundred government-approved websites — which excluded social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and messaging apps like WhatsApp. The lockdown continues despite India’s Supreme Court in January deeming “indefinite” suspension of internet services illegal.

“This internet shutdown is a human rights violation,” said Irfan Mehraj, a researcher at the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, a federation of human rights organizations in Kashmir that releases an annual report of Kashmir’s human rights situation each year. “It’s to break the will of the Kashmiri people.”

So, I went to see what the shutdown has done — the business people begging the police to restore access, the students clandestinely sharing videos, the doctors unable to do their jobs, and everywhere, the men with guns.

Almost every week since August, Isma Salaria has made the six-mile journey from her home in Srinagar to the Jammu and Kashmir police headquarters. The heavily guarded police department operates out of a sprawling, modern building fronted by panes of shiny blue glass and a sloping blue roof. During each visit, men frisk her half a dozen times.


She endures for a simple reason: Without internet access, her business, a center where students across the valley take online exams like the TOEFL, has nearly closed down. Unable to meet payroll, she’s had to lay off 20 of her 23 employees. One of the few women who owns a technology firm in the region, she’s grown desperate.

“I’ve pleaded so many times before [the authorities],” she says behind a wooden desk in a cramped room that has been her office for the last eight years. “I told them to give it to us on just one laptop. I told them, ‘Track the usage on that computer if you want.’ But no. They haven’t budged. This is the worst thing that could have happened to my business.”

“I was flying to New Delhi from Srinagar twice a week just to check my email.”


Internet access in Kashmir shows where you stand in the social hierarchy: If you’re powerful, you have it; if you’re not, you don’t. When I interviewed a senior police officer in Kupwara, he paused our conversation midway to talk to his dad in another part of the country on a WhatsApp video call — because law enforcement officials are among those at the top.

According to a Jammu and Kashmir government order, the government has 844 “e-terminals” and 69 special counters for tourists — relatively high in the pecking order — across the region to book train and flight tickets. But nobody seemed to know where to find one; when I finally do, it’s unstaffed and unusable.

Salaria's office is located in Rangreth, an area on the outskirts of Srinagar that locals refer to as Kashmir’s Silicon Valley. It’s a stretch of land a few miles long on a sloping hillside that is home to more than 30 software companies — everything from internet service providers to consulting firms that make bespoke software for international clients — which collectively employ around 1,200 people and bring in tens of millions of dollars yearly.

In December, a report released by the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that the lockdown had cost Kashmir’s economy more than $2.4 billion — and many of its leaders are frightened to speak out, facing economic losses, layoffs, and uncertainty.

“They have cut our throats,” says the CEO of a large Kashmiri IT company and internet service provider who declined to be identified because he was scared of police retaliation. “They’ve set us back 15 years.”

In August, immediately after the internet was shut down, Kashmiri law enforcement detained a senior official of his company for eight days in a cell 6 feet long and 6 feet wide for keeping communication lines open for an hour after an official shutdown was ordered. “I can’t tell you how worried his family was,” the CEO says.

Another CEO says his company received limited access after he petitioned the police more than 20 times to restore access. The agreement that he had to sign with the police before he got it states that his employees would not use social media or VPN software, send or receive encrypted files, and would use the internet strictly for business reasons.

“It was necessary,” he says. “I was flying to New Delhi from Srinagar twice a week just to check my email.”

But the company still lost millions of dollars in revenue from international clients and had to lay off nearly two-thirds of its 370 employees.

Dozens of IT companies in Srinagar have been signing these agreements with the police, but only a few of them have been allowed back online. Salaria is one of those who has yet to receive access, which has put her business on the brink of insolvency. In a November letter to the inspector general of the police in Kashmir, she pleaded with them to reactivate her connection. “We have suffered an unbearable loss,” she wrote.

When she spoke to me, she was a lot more blunt.

“Shutting down leased lines that are used by businesses is the stupidest thing you can do!” she says. “It’s a blot on democracy.”

Salaria has been to the police headquarters so often that officers there are now familiar with her. They scoff when they see her. “Oh look, these internet people are back,” she says. “They treat us like untouchables.”


Nurphoto / Getty Images
Kashmiri journalists protest against the continuous internet blockade for the 100th day outside the Kashmir Press Club in Srinagar.

For hundreds of years, religion and politics have been intertwined in Kashmir.

In 1339, the first Muslim ruler conquered the region, beginning a period of Islamic rule that lasted for some five centuries. By the time the area came under British rule in 1846, the vast majority of the inhabitants practiced Islam — though not its titular Hindu rulers. At the time of partition in 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh dithered between joining Pakistan or India or remaining independent — until the issue was forced by an invasion by tribal forces from Pakistan. Singh appealed to India for troops, and the country agreed on the condition that he join his territories to theirs. He did, setting off the first Pakistan–India war, which lasted until the following year.

Although the United Nations called in for a plebiscite to determine which country Kashmir should join, no vote has ever taken place. Armed conflicts broke out again in 1965, 1971, and 1999.

In the ’90s, when the insurgency in Kashmir was at its peak, the Kupwara district, which lies on the border between the two countries, and which was one of the first two districts of Kashmir where access to government-approved websites over 2G speeds was approved in the middle of January, had some of the highest numbers of violent incidents in the region. Just over a hundred thousand people live in Kupwara. Most Indians wouldn't be able to find it on a map. The heavily militarized border between India and Pakistan known as the Line of Control, which US president Bill Clinton called "the most dangerous place in the world" lies on its west. Insurgency in Kupwara has calmed down in the last two decades, but as recently as 2018, Indian security forces killed 52 militants trying to infiltrate into Kupwara from across the border.

It’s here that Mir Hanan is waiting, desperate to speak. The 17-year-old Kashmiri medical student had been texting with me all day, but the inexpensive mobile plan that he used caps at 100 texts a day. “Can you call me?” he texts. “My SMS pack is almost exhausted.”

Hanan wasn’t yet born in the ’90s, but he’s grown up hearing stories of the insurgency. Right now, he’s worried about the future. “I don’t know what my future is,” he says.

When the current communications shutdown started in August, Hanan didn’t think much of it. Most Kashmiris, he says, are used to internet bans. “We are numbed to them,” he says. Young Kashmiris like Hanan grew up believing the internet would set them free. But unlike their peers around the world, regular shutdowns meant they learned to never take it for granted.

Since 2012, Indian authorities have shut down the internet in Kashmir 180 times, according to the Software Freedom Law Centre, a legal services organization in New Delhi that keeps a track of internet shutdowns. In 2017, for instance, the Kashmiri government abruptly blocked 22 social media platforms for a month to prevent them from “being misused by anti-national and anti-social elements.” At the time, Mohammed Faysal, founder of WithKashmir.org, a blogging platform for Kashmiris, told me how important social media was to Kashmiris. “Social media has allowed Kashmiris to humanize their struggles through photos and videos,” he said. “In a region torn by violence, platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter are 90% of our social lives. That’s what you’re taking away when you block them.”

The blackout has also spawned a medical emergency that could use the skills of someone like Hanan, as pharmacies run out of medicine and hospitals struggle to function. Last September, a month into the blackout, Javid Parsa, a restaurateur in New Delhi, told me about a bootleg network he had created to ship medicine into the region after communications were cut, using his popular Instagram page as a hub.

“Each day, I get three or four people traveling to Kashmir messaging me and offering to carry and deliver medicines and other essentials to people's families who are stuck there unable to ask anyone for help. Just yesterday, we found five patients in Southern Kashmir who urgently needed blood pressure medication,” he said in September.

People outside of Kashmir use his page as a place to organize shipments of medicine to family members in the region, creating a logistical network that spans some 550 kilometers by road.

“Thanks to my Instagram, we were able to find a guy driving there from Delhi who was able to carry the medicines and deliver them,” he said. “Unfortunately, thanks to the blackout, the people who do receive these medicines have no way of letting me know right now.”

In September, Al Jazeera reported from Srinagar on patients running out of money and doctors improvising surgeries. The following month, the New York Times reported that at least a dozen patients had died as a consequence. The British Medical Journal ran an editorial with the headline “Kashmir Communications Blackout Is Putting Patients at Risk, Doctors Warn.”

On a freezing Friday morning, I head to Kupwara to meet Hanan and his friends. Vast paddy fields smothered by snow and sprawling orchards dotted with trees, their branches bare and bony, flash by on either side of the winding road.

Halfway through the journey, outside the town of Sopore, two men in Indian Army fatigues and rifles slung across their chests flag us down and ask us to open our trunk. “They’re looking for guns,” says my traveling companion.

But it’s not just guns that the authorities are searching for. To enforce an internet blackout, the government has to ferret out all the ways people try to circumvent it, and stop them.

“When they question you in Kashmir, refusing is never an option.”
Last week, after a video went viral of an ailing, 90-year-old separatist leader named Syed Ali Geelani stating where he wished to be buried after his death, authorities filed complaints against people using VPN software to access social media under a law that lets the government imprison anyone it suspects belongs to “unlawful associations, terrorist gangs or terrorist organizations” for up to seven years.

A 32-year-old government contractor, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his safety, told me how members of the Indian Army stopped his car at a military checkpoint in Srinagar as he was driving home. “They made me get down from the car and unlock my phone,” he says. “Then they asked me if I had any VPN apps installed on my device.

“They stood there and watched over my shoulder to make sure I deleted those apps,” he says. “Refusing to show them your phone is never an option,” he added. “When they question you in Kashmir, refusing is never an option.”

Hanan and his friends meet us shortly before noon at Grand Resort, a small restaurant tucked away on a snow-covered lane in downtown Kupwara. We sit at a large table near a window at the back, trying to be inconspicuous, and order coffees and warm buttered toast, a popular snack in Kashmir. Nobody looks at their phones — there’s nothing to see on them.

The most obvious effects of the blackout are economic. Sofi Musaib, a high school senior who was preparing for the med school entrance exam when the shutdown began, says he’s decided to sit out a year because he’s simply not prepared. “Academic books and study material are expensive. But a mobile data plan is 149 rupees ($2) a month, so I used to rely on YouTube for watching lectures related to my course,” he says. “I don’t have Wi-Fi at home and I am not rich enough to move out of Kashmir to study somewhere else in the country.”

Zahid Ul-Aslam, a 17-year-old high school senior, calls the last six months a “black time.” Most of what we do on our phones is low stakes, and it’s no different for him. Ul-Aslam spent hours with friends, family, and college professors in a dozen WhatsApp groups, playing PUBG, an online multiplayer game, tracking cricket updates, catching up on news, and swiping through TikTok videos. “I don’t know what’s going on in the world anymore,” he says.

“I feel like there’s an iron curtain between the rest of the world and us,” says Khushgufter Afimed Shah-Pirzada, a 20-year-old linguistics undergrad. “We can move around, but we can’t see, feel, or breathe.”

“I thought it was bad enough when Burhan was martyred,” says Hanan, “but this is worse.”

In 2016, Indian security forces gunned down Burhan Wani, the leader of the Hizbul Mujahideen, Kashmir’s largest insurgent group, which wants the territory to become part of Pakistan. A handsome young man with a close-cropped beard, Wani differed from many militants because his claim to fame was social media.

Pictures and videos of Wani and his cohort wearing combat fatigues and cradling automatic weapons went viral on Facebook and WhatsApp across the valley. Wani not only threatened Indian security forces, but called upon young Kashmiris to revolt. To the Indians who killed him, Wani was a terrorist, but for the young Kashmiris sitting at the table with me, he was a symbol of resistance.

After Wani’s death, thousands of Kashmiris attended his funeral in the town of Tral, where he was born. One attendee called it a “carnival of martyrdom.” In the wake of violent protests following his death, in which more than 40 people died, authorities shut down the internet and mobile services for nearly six months.

Long before internet-enabled smartphones emerged as tools of dissent in India, and long before Wani, Kashmiris have used them to resist the Indian government. As a journalist based in Srinagar who didn’t want to be named for fear of retaliation said, “We had an Arab Spring in Kashmir long before the Arab Spring.”

Since Kashmir’s internet blackouts have made streaming services practically impossible to access, Kashmir has become a thriving black market for content. The current favorite is a Turkish historical epic called Resurrection: Ertugrul, which locals describe as a “Muslim Game of Thrones.” Kashmiris swap content over ShareIt, an app that zaps video and audio files, documents, and apps from phone to phone at high speeds without internet access, like AirDrop, but for Android. When Ul-Aslam opens the app, it shows that he has traded nearly a terabyte of content — as much as 15 full days of streaming Netflix would use — in the last six months.

His phone’s home screen is littered with VPN apps, which he’s gotten through ShareIt after the 2G network was restored in Kupwara. VPN software typically hides a user’s real location and encrypts data, which means that someone based in Kashmir could use a VPN to make it seem like they were located somewhere else in the country, bypassing local restrictions. The government bans people from using VPN during the shutdown, but enforcement is spotty.

When 2G-speed services were restored to Kupwara, Ul-Aslam fired them up one by one to see if he could bypass the restrictions and access the full internet, but nothing worked. “Now I just keep them on my phone,” he says with a rueful smile, “for hope.”


Hindustan Times / Getty Images
Journalists use internet facilities at the designated media center of the government's information department in Srinagar, Jan. 15.

The shutdown has also hampered the work of some members of Indian law enforcement.

At the end of January, Jammu and Kashmir police seized nearly $10 million in narcotics from two people in Kupwara. According to reports, the drugs were brought in through a network of smugglers from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

“The narco trade fuels a lot of the valley’s militancy because it brings in money,” a senior intelligence officer, who requested anonymity to speak freely, tells me at an Indian army camp near Kupwara. “Once the channel to bring in the drugs is set, they switch to bringing in weapons and, eventually, militants from across the border.”

To bust these operations, intelligence officials rely on tracking the cellphones of the people involved in them and intercepting calls and messages. But the shutdown put an end to that.

“The quality of intelligence has gone down drastically since the shutdown started,” the officer says. “Sure, it’s impacted militant networks too, but they don’t just rely on phones. Their physical networks and infrastructure are well established as well.”

The lack of mobile internet, especially, has made it harder for informants to reach out to Indian intelligence officials, he says.

“Whistleblowers would rarely call or text us,” he says, “because those things aren’t encrypted. They would either message or call over an encrypted app like WhatsApp or come and meet us in person.”

Since August, this officer says, he’s been unable to connect with any of his sources over WhatsApp. He now meets them only in person and has had to reestablish most of his network.

“The official reasons for shutting down the internet such as to prevent anti-national activities are true,” he says. “But shutting down the internet also impacts your ability to track the bad guys.”

Just off Residency Road, a wide, sycamore-lined street in the heart of Srinagar, sits a series of low-slung buildings with sloping green tin roofs inside a barbed wire fence.

Inside, two bored-looking security guards wave me through a metal detector. One of them has an automatic rifle casually slung across his chest. Directly across me is a thick, black curtain, which I brush aside to enter a space about the size of a small hotel room.

The air is stuffy, and it’s tough to move around without bumping into someone. Against a wall is a row of cubicles where groups of hassled men stare into flatscreen monitors. Some people sit on wooden chairs and tap on laptops connected to snaking ethernet cables. Someone trips across one, grabs my shoulder to steady themselves, and mutters an apology.

This is Kashmir’s Media Facilitation Center, a makeshift facility set up by the government for journalists, and one of the few places in Kashmir with unrestricted internet access. The center is segregated by gender — the space for women journalists is down a long corridor that leads to filthy restrooms — and has become the nerve center for local, national, and international media. There are nine desktop computers and a handful of ethernet cables to serve the approximately 300 journalists who work in Srinagar — though I doubt they could all fit in here at once. There’s no Wi-Fi, but Connectify, a crafty piece of software that lets you turn a laptop attached to an ethernet cable into a Wi-Fi hotspot that other devices around it can connect to, is all the rage.

“It’s not allowed, it’s restricted by the government,” a reporter tells me with a wink as he punches in the password. “But we do it anyway.”

When I check the laptop I’m mooching off, I discover there are 26 other people connected. “It can’t handle so many people using it at once” laughs the owner. In the corner, someone is downloading nursery rhymes from ChuChu TV, India’s largest YouTube channel for kids, on an iPad.

Few professions in Kashmir have been hit as badly by the internet shutdown as the region’s press. Newspapers and websites, unable to get in touch with their reporters, stopped publishing for weeks. Since August 5, the day the blackout was imposed, the government has detained dozens, withdrawn all-important government advertising from local newspapers, and stopped journalists at military checkpoints as they moved around the region. Official information comes in a trickle via anodyne press briefings.

“We’re not doing journalism anymore,” says Sajjad Haider, editor-in-chief of the Kashmir Observer, one of the region’s largest publications and the first to launch an online edition in 1997. “We’re putting out trash. We’re afraid of our readers. If they had a choice, they would stop reading Kashmiri newspapers.”

“We’re not doing journalism anymore. We’re putting out trash.”

Like most other publications in the region, a major source of Haider’s revenue source was ads in his newspaper taken out by the government. But since the shutdown, government advertising has dropped by half, he says. Private advertising from local businesses such as handicrafts and tourism, which have already been hit due to the shutdown, has disappeared almost completely. Nearly a dozen Kashmir Observer staffers lost their jobs because the paper couldn’t afford their salaries.

Haider has approached authorities multiple times since the shutdown but says that they have “absolutely not” been responsive to his pleas to restore access. “Every time, they just feign ignorance. You have to go higher and higher, and ultimately, we are told that the buck stops at New Delhi.”

Greater Kashmir, the region’s oldest and the largest newspaper, put more than half its newsroom on “standby” — leave without pay — according to executive editor Arif Wani. It last updated its website in December, for which a staff member had to travel outside the region to upload stories. That proved to be too expensive and unfeasible, and so it now sits frozen.

When I ask Haider, a grizzled news veteran, how he manages to keep up with the news, his eyes bulge and his hands fly up into the air. “I don’t!” he shouts. “I read old books! Old books on my bookshelves!”

Later that evening, I catch an auto rickshaw from Haider’s office to the center of the city, to attend a press conference by Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s Information and Technology and Communications minister, who is in town to inaugurate a post office staffed exclusively by women. A throng of journalists waits for nearly 45 minutes watching dozens of heavily armed Indian Army personnel standing outside the gates.

Finally, Prasad draws up in an enormous black car, bulletproof windows shielded with dark film, followed by a convoy. We try to follow him, but the way is blocked: Only a few media outlets have been handpicked to attend the press conference. The rest of us trudge home.

A day later, India’s largest news agency publishes two paragraphs about Shankar’s visit to Srinagar. “Ravi Shankar Prasad interacts with locals,” reads the headline. It doesn’t mention the shutdown.

“You have to understand that the internet here is not just a utility,” a journalist who works for a national news website and who wished to remain unnamed tells me. “It’s now a tool for a new social hierarchy. At the top is the ruling class, the politicians. At the bottom — below the rest of the people, below the boat owners, below the auto rickshaw drivers — are the journalists. We are at the bottom, the wretched of the earth.”


Sopa Images / Getty Images
A Kashmiri man installs a VPN application on his mobile phone in Srinagar.

On Republic Day, India marks the adoption of its constitution, which states that the country is a “sovereign socialist secular democratic republic”. Across the nation, people hoist the tricolor in public places. Patriotic songs blare from speakers, and members of the Indian Armed Forces showcase their might while marching down Rajpath, a ceremonial boulevard in New Delhi that leads to the official residence of the Indian president.

In Kashmir — which the constitution had, up until August, granted a degree of autonomy — Republic Day means lockdown. Mobile phones are shut off entirely. Roads are barricaded and concertina wire strung everywhere. Men clasping automatic rifles and bulletproof vests patrol every few feet. Stores and businesses close down, and most people stay indoors.

On my last day in Kashmir, hours before boarding my flight back to Delhi, I am finally plunged into the total communications blackout that Kashmiris lived through for weeks in August.

On the TV, every news channel is tuned in live to the Republic Day parade in New Delhi. On the screen, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wears a bright saffron turban and gives a firm handshake to India’s official Republic Day guest, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.

I crack my window open and gaze down at the empty street below. Nothing moves. Five minutes later, a dozen army men wearing metal helmets and carrying ballistic shields walk past. One of them detaches himself from the group and positions himself directly across the street. Once in a while, he looks up and stares at me staring down at him and our eyes meet in an unblinking gaze that he doesn’t break for a long time. I shut the window and draw the curtain.

Shortly after 10 a.m., I step out of the front door of the hotel and walk out into the empty streets of Srinagar. “Don’t go out if you don’t have to,” warns the man at the front desk, noting that I might be stopped and frisked and asked for ID.

Lal Chowk, Srinagar’s main city square, is a site of historical significance. In 1948, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, unfurled the Indian flag and promised Kashmiris a referendum to choose their political future. Four decades later, members of the Hindu nationalist BJP hoisted the tricolor a short distance away.

On this Republic Day, dozens of gun-toting men in army uniforms surround the tower. A small 5-year-old girl wearing pink, rabbit-shaped ear muffs holds her mother's hand and skips past the men. When I pass them again, I see a lanky young man with a camera clicking freely. He says he’s a photographer with an international wire service. “Don’t they get bothered when you do that?” I ask. “They do,” he shrugs. “Sometimes, they trash you.”

Shortly after lunchtime, I set off for the airport. My flight back home isn’t scheduled to take off before evening, but security is tight around the city on Republic Day and I don’t want to take any chances. In the eight-mile drive to the airport, army personnel stop my car twice, make me and the driver get off, and demand ID. When I tell them I have a flight to catch, they ask me to show my ticket. Half a mile before we reach the airport, I am stopped again, and this time, one of the men with guns pats me down and runs a wand over my bag.




As the cab pulls into the airport, a huge billboard with Modi’s face on it looms large beneath half a dozen tall sycamores. “Digital India, Developed India,” it says, name-checking one of the prime minister's flagship campaigns.

Moments before I board the flight, the Republic Day mobile ban is lifted, and backed up text messages start streaming in. It reminds of something Hanan told me in Kupwara. “They’ve made their point,” he had said. “Even if they give us the internet back, they can take it away any time again whenever they want, and as long as they want.” ●

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Pranav Dixit is a tech reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Delhi.