AS SILICON VALLEY TRIES TO ENLIST, THE PENTAGON STRANGLES INNOVATION

STEVE BLANK
APRIL 15, 2022
COMMENTARY


Looking at a satellite image of Ukraine online, I realized it was from Capella Space — one of our Hacking for Defense student teams who now have seven satellites in orbit. Hacking for Defense is a university course I and others created to connect students interested in learning lean innovation methods to solve the toughest national-security challenges.

They’re not the only startup in this fight. An entire wave of new startups and scaleups are providing satellite imagery and analysis, satellite communications, and unmanned aerial vehicles supporting Ukraine’s struggle.

For decades, satellites that took detailed pictures of Earth were only available to governments and the high-resolution images were classified. Today, commercial companies have their own satellites providing unclassified imagery. The government buys and distributes commercial images from startups to supplement their own and shares them with Ukraine as part of a broader intelligence-sharing arrangement that the head of Defense Intelligence Agency described as “revolutionary.”

At the onset of the war in Ukraine, Russia launched a cyber attack on Viasat’s KA-SAT satellite, which supplies internet across Europe, including to Ukraine. In response to a (tweeted) request from Ukraine’s vice prime minister, Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite company shipped thousands of its satellite dishes and got Ukraine back on the internet. Other startups are providing portable cell towers — both “backpackable” and fixed. When these connect via satellite link, they can provide phone service and Wi-Fi.

Drone technology was initially only available to national governments and militaries. In Ukraine, drones from startups are being used as automated delivery vehicles for resupply, and for tactical reconnaissance to discover where threats are.

Equipment from large military contractors and other countries are also part of the effort. However, the equipment listed above is available commercially at dramatically cheaper prices than what’s offered by the large existing defense contractors, and developed and delivered in a fraction of the time.

While we should celebrate the organizations that have created and fielded these systems, they illustrate much larger issues in the Department of Defense.

America’s national security is inexorably intertwined with commercial technology, such as drones, AI, machine learning, autonomy, biotech, cyber, quantum, high-performance computing, and commercial access to space.

Most of these companies were founded or funded by the Defense Department’s orphan-child — the Defense Innovation Unit. Established in Silicon Valley in 2015 by then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, the organization has offices in Austin, Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. This is the one defense organization with the staffing and mandate to go head-to-head with any startup or scaleup. The Defense Innovation Unit is America’s most promising effort to bridge the divide between pressing national security requirements and the commercial technology needed to address them with speed and urgency. This capability is exactly what the Department of Defense needs. It accelerates the connection of commercial technology to the military. Just as importantly, the Defense Innovation Unit helps the department learn to innovate at the same speed as tech-driven companies.

China views combining its military-civilian sectors as a national effort to develop a “world-class” military and become a world leader in science and technology. A key part of Beijing’s strategy includes developing and acquiring advanced dual-use technology.

Given that the Defense Innovation Unit is the Department of Defense’s most successful organization in developing and acquiring advanced dual-use technology, one would expect the department to scale the Defense Innovation Unit. The threats are too imminent and stakes too high not to. So what happened?

Congress cut the budget by 20 percent.

Why? The defense ecosystem is at a turning point. Defense innovation threatens entrenched interests. Given that the Pentagon budget is essentially fixed, creating new vendors and new national champions of the next generation of defense technologies becomes a zero-sum game.

The traditional suppliers of defense tools, technologies, and weapons — the prime contractors and federal labs — are no longer the leaders in next-generation technologies such as drones, AI, machine learning, autonomy, biotech, cyber, quantum, high-performance computing, and commercial access to space. They know this and know that weapons that can be built at a fraction of the cost and upgraded via software will destroy their existing business models.

Venture capital and startups have spent 50 years institutionalizing the rapid delivery of disruptive innovation. In the United States, private investors spend $300 billion a year to fund new ventures that can move with the speed and urgency that the Department of Defense now requires. The Pentagon’s relationship with startups and commercial companies, already an arms-length one, is hindered by a profound lack of understanding about how the commercial innovation ecosystem works and its failure of imagination about what it could do.

The department has world-class people and organization for a world that no longer exists.

A radical reinvention of America’s civil-military innovation relationship is necessary if it wants to keep abreast of its adversaries. This would use Department of Defense funding, private capital, dual-use startups, existing prime contractors and federal labs in a new configuration along the following lines.

Create a new defense ecosystem encompassing startups and mid-sized companies at the bleeding edge, prime contractors as integrators of advanced technology, federally funded research-and-development centers refocused on areas not covered by commercial tech (nuclear and hypersonics come to mind). Make it permanent by creating innovation doctrine and policy.

Create new national champions in dual-use commercial tech areas such as AI, machine learning, quantum, space, drones, autonomy, biotech, underwater vehicles, shipyards, etc., that are not the traditional vendors. Do this by picking winners. Don’t give out door prizes. Contracts should be larger than $100 million so high-quality venture-funded companies will play.

Integrate and create incentives for the venture-capital and private-equity ecosystem to invest at scale. Ask them what it would take to invest at scale — one example might be to create massive tax holidays and incentives — to get investment dollars in technology areas of national interest.

Recruit and develop leaders across the Defense Department prepared to meet contemporary threats and reorganize around this new innovation ecosystem. The threats, speed of change, and technologies the United States faces in this century will require radically different mindsets and approaches than those it faced in the 20th century. Today’s Department of Defense leaders of consequential organizations must think and act differently than their predecessors, even their predecessors from only a decade ago. Leaders at every level now need to understand the commercial ecosystem and how to move with the speed and urgency that China is setting.

Buy where you can; build where you must. Congress mandated that the Department of Defense should use commercial off-the-shelf technology wherever possible, but the department fails to do this. (See this industry letter to the Department of Defense for more details.)

Acquire at speed. Today, the average Department of Defense major acquisition program takes anywhere from nine to 26 years to get a weapon in the hands of a warfighter. The department needs a requirements, budgeting, and acquisition process that operates at commercial speed (18 months or less), which is 10 times faster than its current procurement cycles. Instead of writing requirements, the department should rapidly assess solutions and engage warfighters in assessing and prototyping commercial solutions.

Coordinate with allies. Expand the National Security Innovation Base to an Allied Security Innovation Base. Source commercial technology from allies.

Change is hard — especially on the people and organizations inside the Department of Defense who’ve spent years operating with one mindset only to be asked to pivot to a new one. But America’s adversaries have exploited the boundaries and borders between its defense and commercial and economic interests. Current approaches — both in the past and under the current administration — to innovation across the government are piecemeal, incremental, increasingly less relevant, and insufficient. It’s a politically impossible problem for the Defense Department to solve alone. Changes at this scale will require congressional action: hard to imagine in the polarized political environment. But not impossible.

These are not problems of technology. It takes imagination, vision, and the willingness to confront the status quo. So far, all are currently lacking. But if more can be found, we may see more successes like those seen in Ukraine.


Steve Blank is an adjunct professor at Stanford and a founding member at Stanford’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. Steve consults for the national security establishment on innovation methods, processes, policies, and doctrine. Steve’s latest class at Stanford, Technology, Innovation, and Great Power Competition, is providing crucial insight on how technology will shape all the elements of national power.

Image: Starlink satellite launch

Who was the Exodus Pharaoh?

Some believe that the absence of the Pharaoh’s name demonstrates that the story we read over Passover is not historical in any way—that it’s just an old campfire tale from Canaan.

(April 15, 2022 / JNS) It almost seems like a joke. The author of Exodus 5:2 has Pharaoh tell Moses: “Who is this Yahweh that I should obey him and let Israel go?” But by now, more people have wondered: Who is this pharaoh? The Torah doesn’t bother to say. It’s as if the biblical author wanted future generations to scratch their heads. As if we’re meant to remember God’s name and not some transient earthly king’s.

Some believe that the absence of the Pharaoh’s name demonstrates that the story we read over Passover is not historical in any way—that it’s just an old campfire tale from Canaan. Egyptian records, the skeptics point out, don’t mention any Hebrew escape. But, then again, it would be surprising if they did. “The ancient Egyptians didn’t record defeats; they had a different conception of history than we do,” notes Egyptologist Bob Brier. Smitten foes, not successful slave revolts, made the hieroglyphic headlines.

And despite the missing name, other details in the biblical narrative suggest the author was immersed in Egyptian culture. Take Exodus 8:32, when “Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people go.” That verse is likely an allusion to the Egyptian theological notion that the heart is made heavy with evil deeds. Ancient papyri and tomb walls depict afterlife scenes wherein the deceased’s heart is weighed against the feather of Ma’at (order and justice). Cleverly, the Exodus author is making use of this Egyptian mythology of sin in order to represent the Pharaoh’s twisted inner life.

Or look at the verse from Exodus 2:3, when Moses’s mother “got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch; and she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.” All the italicized words in this single verse in the Hebrew Bible are of Egyptian etymology, according to Egyptologist James Hoffmeier. He further points out that several Israelites of the Exodus generation had Egyptian names: Miriam, Merari, Phineas, Putiel. Moses, too, is Egyptian, meaning “is born,” a fitting appellation for a baby saved from a riverbank.

Some Hebrews even had names derived from Egyptian deities. Assir, for example, is from Osiris. Ahira integrates the name of the sun god Re. And Hur, Hori and Harnepher come from the sky god Horus—a deity that was one of the most revered divinities in the Nile Delta region, where Hebrew slaves were said to have built Egyptian storehouses made of mudbricks with straw. And that, incidentally, is another provocative historical detail: Bricks with straw were not made in Canaan. Those were common in the very area where the Exodus storyteller places the Hebrews.

Other archaeological evidence further attests to the presence of a Levantine slave force in ancient Egypt. The famous scene from the Tomb of Rekhmire, circa 1450 BCE, depicts Semitic and black slaves making and hauling bricks at Karnak. Then there is the Papyrus Brooklyn (17th century BCE) that, according to archaeologist Titus Kennedy, lists domestic servants with feminine Hebrew names such as Ashera (Asher), Menahema (Menahem), ‘Aqoba (Yaqob), as well as Shiphrah, Haya-wr (Chaya) and even Hy’b’rw, which may be an Egyptian rendition of “Hebrew.”

Now, if the above linguistic and archeological evidence lends some historical credence to the Exodus drama, when might it have happened? Hard to say. Scholars are bitterly divided into two or three broad camps. All of them (as far as this layman can tell) examine the same biblical and extra-biblical evidence, but each camp deduces radically different dating schemes because of their differing epistemological and mathematical presuppositions about the Bible narrative.

One prominent camp locates the Hebrew emancipation in the 15th century BCE, which would mean the Exodus Pharaoh is either Thutmose III (1479-1425) or Amenhotep II (1427-1400). Another influential camp of scholars—and the Disney Corporation—tell us it happened later in the 13th century BCE, thus making Ramses II (1279-1213) the royal villain. Both camps, interestingly, have Bible-believing religious members in their scholarly ranks. But none so far seems to have conclusively revealed the pharaoh’s name.

The Exodus author has therefore left us with an enduring historical mystery. And maybe, just maybe, that was intended—and worth thinking about over Passover.

As philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked about the historicity of scripture, “But can’t we say: It is important that this narrative should not have more than quite middling historical plausibility, just so that this should not be taken as the essential, decisive thing. So that the letter should not be believed more strongly than is proper and the spirit should receive its due. In other words, what you are supposed to see cannot be communicated even by the best, most accurate historian; therefore, a mediocre account suffices, is even to be preferred. For that too can tell you what you are supposed to be told—roughly in the way a mediocre stage set can be better than a sophisticated one, painted trees better than real ones, which distract attention from what matters.”

JONAH COHEN

Jonah Cohen is the communications director for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).

UK plan to fly asylum-seekers to Rwanda draws outrage


April 15, 2022
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, by the RNLI, following a small boat incident in the Channel, Thursday April 14, 2022.

Gareth Fuller/AP

LONDON — Britain announced a deal with Rwanda on Thursday to send some asylum-seekers thousands of miles to the East African country — a plan it said would stop people-smugglers sending desperate migrants on treacherous journeys across the English Channel.

U.K. opposition politicians and refugee groups condemned the move as inhumane, unworkable and a waste of public money, and the United Nations said it raised "a number of human rights concerns."

The plan would see some people who arrive in Britain as stowaways on trucks or in small boats picked up by the U.K. government and flown 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) to Rwanda, apparently for good.

EUROPE
At least 31 people are dead after a migrant boat capsizes in the English Channel

Critics accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson of using the issue to distract attention from a scandal over government gatherings that breached pandemic lockdown rules. Johnson is resisting calls to resign after being fined by police this week over the parties.

Migrants have long used northern France as a launching point to reach Britain, either by hiding on trucks or ferries, or — increasingly since the coronavirus pandemic shut down other routes in 2020 — in small boats organized by smugglers. More than 28,000 people entered the U.K. in boats last year, up from 8,500 in 2020. Dozens have died, including 27 people in November when a single boat capsized.

On Thursday, dozens of men, women and children were picked up by British lifeboats and brought ashore at the Channel port of Dover as Johnson, speaking just a few miles away, outlined the plan.

"Anyone entering the U.K. illegally ... may now be relocated to Rwanda," Johnson said in a speech to troops and coast guard members at an airport near Dover. Action, he said, was needed to stop "vile people smugglers (who) are abusing the vulnerable and turning the Channel into a watery graveyard."

The Rwandan government said the agreement would initially last for five years, and Britain had paid 120 million pounds ($158 million) up front to pay for housing and integrating the migrants.

Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister Vincent Biruta said the agreement "is about ensuring that people are protected, respected, and empowered to further their own ambitions and settle permanently in Rwanda if they choose."

He said his country is already home to more than 130,000 refugees from countries including Burundi, Congo, Libya and Pakistan.

Johnson denied the plan was "lacking in compassion" but acknowledged it would inevitably face legal challenges and would not take effect immediately.

Rwanda is the most densely populated nation in Africa, and competition for land and resources there fueled decades of ethnic and political tensions that culminated in the 1994 genocide in which more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis, and Hutus who tried to protect them, were killed.

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Johnson insisted that Rwanda had "totally transformed" in the last two decades. But human rights groups have repeatedly criticized President Paul Kagame's current government as repressive.

Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said the claim Rwanda was a safe country "is not grounded in reality."

"Arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture in official and unofficial detention facilities is commonplace, and fair trial standards are flouted in many cases," Mudge said.

Britain says relocation decisions will not be based on migrants' country of origin but on whether they used "illegal or dangerous routes" to reach the U.K. from a safe country such as France. Not all such arrivals will be considered suitable to be sent to Rwanda; it was unclear what the criteria for making the decisions would be, though the British government said children would not be sent to the African country.

The United Nations' human rights office said it had raised its "concerns directly with the U.K. authorities."

A spokeswoman for the office said the U.K. was "shifting ... its responsibilities and obligations under international human rights and refugee law onto a country which is already taking great asylum responsibilities."

Previous policies of sending refugee applicants abroad have been highly controversial.

In 2013, Australia began sending asylum-seekers attempting to reach the country by boat to Papua New Guinea and the tiny atoll of Nauru, vowing that none would be allowed to settle in Australia. The policy all but ended the people-smuggling ocean route from Southeast Asia, but was widely criticized as a cruel abrogation of Australia's international obligations.

Israel sent several thousand people to Rwanda and Uganda under a contentious and secretive "voluntary" scheme between 2014 and 2017. Few are believed to have remained there, with many trying to reach Europe.

Steve Valdez-Symonds, refugee director at Amnesty International U.K., said the British government's "shockingly ill-conceived idea will go far further in inflicting suffering while wasting huge amounts of public money."

The chief executive of the U.K.-based Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, called it "dangerous, cruel and inhumane."

Rwandan opposition figure Victoire Ingabire told the AP that her government's decision to take in migrants was questionable, given that the country is also a source of refugees.

The British and French governments have worked for years to stop the cross-Channel journeys, without much success, often swapping accusations about who is to blame for the failure.

Britain's Conservative government has floated myriad proposals, not all of them workable, including building a wave machine in the Channel to drive boats back. Johnson said Thursday that the Royal Navy would take charge of responding to small-boat crossings, but that the idea of pushing vessels back towards France had been rejected as too dangerous.

Several earlier proposed locations for the U.K. to send migrants — including the remote Ascension Island, Albania and Gibraltar — were rejected, at times angrily, by the nations in question.

The Rwanda plan faces hurdles both in Britain's Parliament and in the courts. Johnson's Conservative government has introduced a tough new immigration bill that would make it more difficult for people who enter the country by unauthorized routes to claim asylum and would allow asylum-seekers to be screened abroad. It has not yet been approved by Parliament, with the House of Lords seeking to dilute some of its most draconian provisions.

Labour Party lawmaker Lucy Powell said the Rwanda plan might please some Conservative supporters and grab headlines, but was "unworkable, expensive and unethical."

"I think this is less about dealing with small boats and more about dealing with the prime minister's own sinking boat," Powell told the BBC.

UK says Rwanda flights to start in weeks; critics slam plan

By JILL LAWLESS

1 of 4

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, England, by the RNLI, following a small boat incident in the Channel, Thursday April 14, 2022. Britain's Conservative government has struck a deal with Rwanda to send some asylum-seekers thousands of miles away to the East African country. Opposition politicians and refugee groups are condemning the plan as unworkable, inhumane and a waste of public money. (Gareth Fuller/PA via AP)

LONDON (AP) — The British government said Friday that it plans to start putting asylum-seekers on one-way flights to Rwanda within weeks, as it defended a deal that has outraged refugee groups and humanitarian organizations.

Britain and Rwanda announced Thursday that they had struck an agreement that will see some people arriving in the U.K. as stowaways on trucks or in small boats sent 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) to the East African country, where their asylum claims will be processed and, if successful, they will stay.

The British government says the plan will discourage people from making dangerous attempts to cross the English Channel, and put people-smuggling gangs out of business.

But critics of the Conservative government said legal and political hurdles mean the flights may never happen. They accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson of using the headline-grabbing policy to distract attention from his political troubles. Johnson is resisting calls to resign after being fined by police this week for attending a party in his office in 2020 that broke coronavirus lockdown rules.

Conservative lawmaker Andrew Griffith, a senior Johnson adviser, said the flights to Rwanda could start “in weeks or a small number of months.”

Migration Minister Tom Pursglove said the drastic plan was needed to deter people trying to reach Britain in dinghies and other boats from northern France. More than 28,000 migrants entered the U.K. across the Channel last year, up from 8,500 in 2020. Dozens have died, including 27 people in November when a single boat capsized.

“Nobody should be coming in a small boat to come to the United Kingdom,” Pursglove told Sky News. “We quite rightly have a rich and proud history in this country of providing sanctuary for thousands of people over the years. …. But what we can’t have, and we can’t accept, is people putting their lives in the hands of these evil criminal gangs, and that’s why we think it is important that we take these steps.”

The deal — for which the U.K. has paid Rwanda 120 million pounds ($158 million) upfront — leaves many questions unanswered, including its final cost and how participants will be chosen. The U.K. says children, and families with children, will not be sent to Rwanda.

Refugee and human rights groups called the plan inhumane, unworkable and a waste of taxpayers’ money. The United Nations’ Refugee Agency urged Britain and Rwanda to reconsider.

“Such arrangements simply shift asylum responsibilities, evade international obligations, and are contrary to the letter and spirit of the Refugee Convention,” said the agency’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Gillian Triggs. “People fleeing war, conflict and persecution deserve compassion and empathy. They should not be traded like commodities and transferred abroad for processing.”

Previous schemes to ”offshore” asylum-seekers have been highly controversial.

In 2013, Australia began sending asylum-seekers attempting to reach the country by boat to Papua New Guinea and the tiny atoll of Nauru, vowing that none would be allowed to settle in Australia. The policy all but ended the people-smuggling ocean route from Southeast Asia, but was widely criticized as a cruel abrogation of Australia’s international obligations.

Critics of the U.K.-Rwanda plan say it is certain to face legal challenges. The prime minister acknowledged Thursday it would likely be challenged in court by what he called “politically motivated lawyers” out to ”frustrate the government.”

The Law Society of England and Wales, which represents solicitors, chastised the government for offering “misleading suggestions that legal challenges are politically motivated.”

“Legal challenges establish if the government is abiding by its own laws,” said society President I. Stephanie Boyce. “If the government wishes to avoid losing court cases, it should act within the law of the land.”
___

Follow AP’s coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

Israeli-Palestinian Clashes Erupt in Jerusalem as Holidays Converge

The violence broke out at the Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, on the first day of a rare concurrence of Ramadan, Passover and Easter.


Palestinian demonstrators and the Israeli police clashing at the Aqsa Mosque 

compound in Jerusalem on Friday.

Credit...Mahmoud Illean/Associated Press

By Patrick Kingsley and Raja Abdulrahim
April 15, 2022

JERUSALEM — Clashes between Israeli riot police and Palestinians erupted at one of the holiest sites in Jerusalem early on Friday, the first day of a rare convergence of Ramadan, Passover and Easter, culminating weeks of escalating violence in Israel and the occupied West Bank.

The clashes between the Israelis and Palestinians throwing stones lasted for hours at the site, the Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, as tens of thousands of Muslim worshipers were gathered there for dawn prayers on the second Friday of Ramadan, the holy fasting month.

Many more people were expected to pour into the Old City during the day for the Muslim weekly Friday Prayer and to celebrate Good Friday and the first night of Passover, which begins at sundown.

The Israeli police fired sound grenades and rubber bullets during hours of clashes at the site, which is sacred to both Muslims and Jews. The police expelled many of the worshipers, but some returned afterward. At least 117 Palestinians were injured, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. The Israeli police said that several officers had also been injured.

The confrontation raised the risk of further escalation following a recent wave of Arab attacks on Israelis and deadly Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank. Tensions and violence around the Aqsa Mosque compound played a central role in the buildup to an 11-day war last May between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza.

Patrick Kingsley is the Jerusalem bureau chief, covering Israel and the occupied territories. He has reported from more than 40 countries, written two books and previously covered migration and the Middle East for The Guardian. @PatrickKingsley

Raja Abdulrahim is a correspondent in Jerusalem focused on Palestinian affairs. @RajaAbdulrahim

Israeli police, Palestinians clash at Jerusalem holy site

According to cops protestors entered compound, revered by Jews as Temple Mount and by Muslims as Noble Sanctuary, to break up a violent crowd that remained at the end of morning prayers

Palestinian protestors clash with Israeli security forces.
Reuters

Reuters | Jerusalem | Published 15.04.22

At least 152 Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli police at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the Palestine Red Crescent said, two weeks into the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Israeli security forces have been on high alert after a series of deadly Arab street attacks throughout the country during the past two weeks, and confrontations at the sacred Jerusalem site carry the risk of sparking a slide back into wider conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

In a statement, Israeli police said hundreds of Palestinians hurled firecrackers and stones at their forces and toward the nearby Jewish prayer area of the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City after Ramadan morning prayers.

Police entered the Al-Aqsa compound to "disperse and push back (the crowd and) enable the rest of the worshippers to leave the place safely", it said, adding that three officers were injured in the clashes.

Reuters video showed officers, some in riot gear, chasing a small number of people after most of the crowd had left.

Israeli police arrested more than 80 Palestinians, Sheikh Omar Al-Kiswani, director of Al-Aqsa Mosque, told Palestine TV.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said it "holds Israel fully and directly responsible for this crime and its consequences".

“Immediate intervention by the international community is needed to stop Israeli aggression against Al-Aqsa mosque and prevent things from going out of control,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who governs self-ruled areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls Gaza, said Israel "bears responsibility for the consequences".

The Al-Aqsa compound, which sits atop the Old City plateau and is known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif, or The Noble Sanctuary, and to Jews as Temple Mount, is the most sensitive site in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Tensions this year have been heightened in part by Ramadan coinciding with the Jewish celebration of Passover.

Last year saw nightly clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police during the Muslim fasting month. Threats of Palestinian displacement in East Jerusalem and police raids at Al-Aqsa helped ignite an 11-day Israel-Gaza war that killed more than 250 Palestinians in Gaza and 13 people in Israel.

Since March, Israeli forces have killed 29 Palestinians as in the course of carrying out raids in the West Bank after Palestinian assailants killed 14 Israelis in a string of attacks in Israeli cities.

Al-Aqsa is the third holiest in Islam and is also revered by Jews as the location of two ancient temples.

Israel captured the Old City and other parts of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and claims the entire city as its eternal, indivisible capital. Palestinians seek to make East Jerusalem, including its Muslim, Christian and Jewish holy sites, the capital of a future state.

At least 67 Palestinians injured after clashes erupt at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque

By Euronews with AP • Updated: 15/04/2022 - 

Israeli security forces gather during clashes with Palestinian demonstrators at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City - 

 Copyright AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean

Israeli security forces entered the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem before dawn on Friday as thousands of Palestinians were gathered for prayers during the holy month of Ramadan.

The resulting clashes wounded at least 67 Palestinians, medical teams on the scene said.

Israel said its forces entered to remove rocks and stones that had been gathered in anticipation of violence.

The clashes come at a particularly sensitive time. Ramadan this year coincides with Passover, a major weeklong Jewish holiday beginning Friday at sundown, and Christian holy week, which culminates on Easter Sunday.

The holidays are expected to bring tens of thousands of faithful into Jerusalem's Old City, home to major sites sacred to all three religions.


Israeli police scuffle with protesters in Sheikh Jarrah

Israeli forces 'kill Palestinian attacker' after manhunt following Tel Aviv shooting

Videos circulating online showed police firing tear gas and stun grenades and Palestinians hurling rocks and fireworks on the sprawling esplanade surrounding the mosque.

Others showed worshippers barricading themselves inside the mosque itself amid what appeared to be clouds of tear gas.

The Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service said it evacuated 67 people to hospitals who had been wounded by rubber-coated bullets or stun grenades or beaten with batons.

The endowment said one of the guards at the site was shot in the eye with a rubber bullet.
Police acted to prevent violence, Israeli authorities say

The Israeli police said three officers were wounded as a result of “massive stone-throwing”, with two evacuated from the scene for treatment.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said dozens of masked men carrying Palestinian and Hamas flags marched to the compound early Friday and gathered stones.

“Police were forced to enter the grounds to disperse the crowd and remove the stones and rocks, in order to prevent further violence,” it tweeted.

The police said they waited until prayers were over and the crowds started to disperse. In a statement, it said crowds started hurling rocks in the direction of the Western Wall, a nearby Jewish holy site, forcing them to act. They said they did not enter the mosque itself.

Israel's national security minister, Omer Barlev, who oversees the police force, said Israel had “no interest” in violence at the holy site but that police were forced to confront “violent elements” that confronted them with stones and metal bars.

He said Israel was committed to freedom of worship for Jews and Muslims alike. Police said Friday's noon prayers at the mosque — when tens of thousands of people were expected — would take place as usual.

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Palestinians view any large deployment of police at Al-Aqsa as a major provocation.

The holy site, which is sacred to Jews and Muslims, has often been the epicentre of Israeli-Palestinian unrest, and tensions were already heightened amid a recent wave of violence.

Clashes at the site last year sparked an 11-day war with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

Israel captured east Jerusalem, home to Al-Aqsa and other major holy sites, in the 1967 war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally.

Palestinians want the eastern part of the city to be the capital of a future independent state including the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel also captured during the war nearly 55 years ago.

The mosque is the third holiest site in Islam. It is built on a hilltop in Jerusalem's Old City that is the most sacred site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because it was the site of the Jewish temples in antiquity.

It has been a major flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian violence for decades and was the epicentre of the 2000-2005 Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
Tensions keep soaring

Tensions have become increasingly heightened in recent weeks following a series of attacks by Palestinians that killed 14 people inside Israel.

Israel has carried out a wave of arrests and military operations across the occupied West Bank, setting off clashes with Palestinians.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said a 17-year-old died early Friday from wounds suffered during clashes with Israeli forces in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, the day before.

At least 25 Palestinians have been killed in the recent wave of violence, according to an Associated Press count, many of whom had carried out attacks or were involved in the clashes, but also an unarmed woman and a lawyer who appears to have been killed by mistake.

Weeks of protests and clashes in Jerusalem during Ramadan last year eventually ignited an 11-day war with the Islamic militant group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.

Rocket barrage fired at Israel after Hamas commanders killed

Israel strikes Hamas targets as Gaza conflict continues

Israel had lifted restrictions and taken other steps to try and calm tensions ahead of Ramadan, but the attacks and the military raids have brought about another cycle of unrest.

Hamas condemned what it said were “brutal attacks" on worshippers at Al-Aqsa by Israeli forces, saying Israel would bear "all the consequences." It called on all Palestinians to “stand by our people in Jerusalem.”

Earlier this week, Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza had called on Palestinians to camp out at the Al-Aqsa mosque over the weekend. Palestinians have long feared that Israel plans to take over the site or partition it.

Israeli authorities say they are committed to maintaining the status quo, but in recent years nationalist and religious Jews have visited the site in large numbers with police escorts.

In pictures: Israeli forces storm al-Aqsa Mosque in dawn raid


Israeli forces have injured scores of Palestinian worshippers inside al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem

MEE and agencies
15 April 2022 

Israeli security forces entered the al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem before dawn on Friday as thousands of Palestinians were gathered for prayers during the holy month of Ramadan (Reuters)



Footage showed worshippers attempting to barricade themselves inside the mosque as Israeli forces stormed the area (Reuters)



Scores of people were injured as Israeli security officers fired rubber-coated steel bullets, teargas and stun grenades inside the courtyards and prayer halls of the mosque (AFP)



Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, condemned the raid and said Israel "bears responsibility for the consequences" (AFP)



Medics, journalists, mosque volunteers and women were targeted, according to Palestinian media reports (AFP)



The raid came ahead of the Jewish holiday of Passover, set to start on Friday and last until 23 April, during which far-right Israeli settlers have vowed to raid al-Aqsa Mosque and slaughter animals inside its courtyard as a religious sacrifice (Reuters)

More than 100 hurt in Jerusalem clashes as religious festivals overlap


By AFP
Published April 15, 2022
Guillaume Lavallee

More than 100 people were wounded Friday in clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli police at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, in fresh violence as Jewish and Christian festivals overlap with Ramadan.

Israeli police said that before dawn “dozens of masked men” marched into Al-Aqsa chanting and setting off fireworks before crowds hurled stones towards the Western Wall — considered the holiest site where Jews can pray.

A Palestinian Red Crescent official said 117 people were rushed to hospitals and “dozens of other injuries” were treated at the scene. Israeli police said three officers were hurt.

The latest clashes come after three tense weeks of deadly violence in Israel and the occupied West Bank, and as the Jewish festival of Passover and Christian Easter overlap with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Al-Aqsa is Islam’s third-holiest site. Jews refer to it as the Temple Mount, referencing two temples said to have stood there in antiquity.

Witnesses said Palestinian protesters threw stones at Israeli security forces, who fired rubber-coated bullets and sound grenades towards some of them.

An AFP photographer said more than 100 Palestinians were seen hurling projectiles towards the Israeli security forces.

– ‘Violent riot’ –

Last year during the Muslim month of fasting, clashes that flared in Jerusalem, including between Israeli forces and Palestinians visiting Al-Aqsa, led to 11 days of devastating conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip’s Islamist rulers Hamas.

The mosque compound is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, falling within Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

Israeli police said that on Friday, dozens of masked men “marched into Al-Aqsa mosque at 04:00… chanting inciting messages and setting off fireworks” and collecting “stones, wooden planks and large objects, which were then used in a violent riot”.

“Despite these actions, police forces waited until the prayer was over,” a statement said.

“Crowds then began to hurl rocks in the direction of the Western Wall… and as the violence surged, police were forced to enter the grounds surrounding the Mosque,” it said, adding police “did not enter the mosque.”

The violence subsided later in the morning, AFP correspondents said.

“We have no interest in the Temple Mount becoming a centre of violence, which will harm both the Muslim worshippers there and the Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall,” Israeli Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev said on Twitter.

Before Ramadan began this month, Israel and Jordan stepped up talks in an effort to avoid a repeat of last year’s violence.

Jordan serves as custodian of the mosque compound, while Israel controls access.

– Spiralling violence –

Israel has poured additional forces into the West Bank and is reinforcing its wall and fence barrier with the occupied territory after four deadly attacks in the Jewish state that have mostly killed civilians in the past three weeks.

A total of 14 people have been killed in the attacks since March 22, including a shooting spree in Bnei Brak, an Orthodox Jewish city in greater Tel Aviv, carried out by a Palestinian attacker from Jenin.

Twenty-one Palestinians have been killed in that time, including assailants who targeted Israelis, according to an AFP tally.

On Thursday Israel announced it would block crossings from the West Bank and Gaza Strip into Israel from Friday afternoon through Saturday, the first two nights of the week-long Passover festival, and potentially keep the crossings closed for the rest of the holiday.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has given Israeli forces a free hand to “defeat terror” in the territory which Israel has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War, warning that there would “not be limits” for the campaign.

Some of the attacks in Israel were carried out by Arab citizens of Israel linked to or inspired by the Islamic State group, others by Palestinians, and cheered by militant groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Three Palestinians died Thursday as Israeli forces launched fresh raids into the West Bank flashpoint district of Jenin, a week after the Bnei Brak attack.

FBI says North Korean hackers stole more than $800 million in cryptocurrency in single hack


By CNN Apr 15, 2022

The FBI has blamed hackers associated with the North Korean government for stealing more than $810 million in cryptocurrency last month from a video gaming company, the latest in a string of audacious cyber heists tied to Pyongyang.

"Through our investigation we were able to confirm Lazarus Group and APT38, cyber actors associated with the DPRK, are responsible for the theft of US$620 million in Ethereum reported on March 29th," the FBI said in a statement.

"DPRK" is an abbreviation for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and Ethereum is a technology platform associated with a type of cryptocurrency.

The FBI has blamed hackers associated with the North Korean government for stealing more than $810 million in cryptocurrency. (Getty)
The FBI was referring to the recent hack of a computer network used by Axie Infinity, a video game that allows players to earn cryptocurrency.
Sky Mavis, the company that created Axie Infinity, announced on March 29 that unidentified hackers had stolen the equivalent of roughly $810 million — valued at the time of the hack's discovery, on March 23 from a "bridge," or network that allows users to send cryptocurrency from one blockchain to another.
The US Treasury Department on Thursday sanctioned Lazarus Group, a wide swath of hackers believed to work on behalf of the North Korean government.

Treasury sanctioned the specific "wallet", or cryptocurrency address, that was used to cash out on the Axie Infinity hack.

Cyberattacks have been an important source of revenue for the North Korean regime for years as its leader, Kim Jong Un, has continued to pursue nuclear weapons, according to a United Nations panel and outside cybersecurity experts.

READ MORE: How the youth vote could shape this election

North Korean leader AND FASHIONISTA  Kim Jong-un. 

(AFP via Getty Images)

North Korea last month fired what is believed to be its first intercontinental ballistic missile in more than four years.

Lazarus Group has stolen an estimated $2.4 billion worth of cryptocurrency in recent years, according to Chainalysis, a firm that tracks digital currency transactions.

"A hack of a cryptocurrency business, unlike a retailer, for example, is essentially bank robbery at the speed of the internet and funds North Korea's destabilising activity and weapons proliferation," said Ari Redbord, head of legal affairs at TRM Labs, a firm that investigates financial crime.

"As long as they are successful and profitable, they will not stop."

While many cybersecurity analysts' attention has been on Russian hacking in light of the war in Ukraine, suspected North Korean hackers have been far from quiet.

Scams to watch out for
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Researchers at Google last month disclosed two different alleged North Korean hacking campaigns targeting US media and IT organisations, and cryptocurrency and financial technology sectors.
Google has a policy of notifying users who are targeted by state-sponsored hackers.

Shane Huntley, who leads Google's Threat Analysis Group, said that if a Google user has "any link to being involved in Bitcoin or cryptocurrency" and they get a warning about state-backed hacking from Google, it almost always ends up being North Korean activity.

"It seems to be an ongoing strategy for them to supplement and make money through this activity," Mr Huntley said.

 DICTATORSHIP IS NO LAUGHING MATTER

North Korea Bans Laughing And More For 11 Days

You will be taken away if you flout the rules.

Jasmine Turner
December 16th, 2021

North Korea is reported to have banned laughing for 11 days, as part of a long mourning for the 10th death anniversary of their previous leader, Kim Jong Il. Not only has laughing been banned, but displays of happiness, shopping and drinking have also been banned.

Citizens are not allowed to partake in leisure activities, and on the day of the death anniversary itself, grocery stands are not allowed to operate either. People who do not look to be “sufficiently mourning” will also be penalized and taken away. Anyone seen to have been flouting these rules can be taken away without warning and treated as ideological criminals.

Kim Jong Il ruled North Korea from 1994 to 2011 before being succeeded by his youngest son, Kim Jong Un. His death is registered as December 17, 2011.

FEMINISM
The Witch’s Tale: Women In Indian Horror Films

The ghost as the empowered woman is a new theme in Hindi horror movies

Photograph: Shutterstock

Rakhi Bose
UPDATED: 08 APR 2022 

Chutni Mahato lived to tell her tale—branded a witch in her in-laws’ village in Jharkhand’s Seraikela-Kharsawan district, stripped and paraded naked and forced to drink urine. Once a woman is branded a witch—a superstition rife in many states in India—her chance of survival is very low; lynching of women over suspicion of witchcraft is widely prevalent in many parts. But Mahato managed to escape. That was 1995. She is now an activist battling such social evils. In 2019, Mahato won the Padma Shri—India’s fourth-highest civilian honour—for helping nearly 150 women, all victims of witch-hunting and persecution.

A few years before she was honoured, a film purportedly inspired by her life was released. But Kaala Sach: The Black Truth turned out to be the typical Bollywood horror fare—instead of depicting her empowerment, the film is full of scenes of sexual violence, its dialogues replete with expletives and innuendos. Mahato does not know about the film but says they can’t do justice to the struggle faced by women branded witches and hunted down by an unforgiving society. “They (films) show witches with bulging eyes, with feet turned backward and matted hair. She is in search of men to seduce and children whose blood she can d­rink,” Mahato tells Outlook over the phone. “In real life, though, ‘witches’ are not demons but women just like you and me,” she adds.

ALSO READ: Horror As The Theme Of Our Lives

For decades, Hindi horror films stuck to a hackneyed characterisation of women—sexist and mis­ogynistic. Be it as the ‘ghost’ or a living character, women have only pandered to the voyeuristic desires of the male audience. And one of the most common and often misrepresented sub-genres within the horror universe in India has been the daayan film and the rape-revenge genre where a pious or pure woman becomes impure due to the wrongs done to her by men and turns into an all-powerful, bloodthirsty demon. Popular films like Chudail (1991), Khoon Ki Pyaasi, (1996) and Khoon Ki Pyaasi Daayan (1998)—with their exp­loitative storylines and focus on women’s bodies as objects of lust—nevertheless laid the groundwork for later films like Raagini MMS (2011), Ek Thi Dayan (2013), Pari (2018) and Bulbbul (2020) which strived to subvert the trope of the witch to depict powerful, feminist women and themes of violence against women. While many films followed the ‘sexploitation’ sub-genre, some of them, in their own right, paved the way for more layered women characters in horror films.
Another Aspect That Outlined The Narrative Of Women In Indian Horror Films Is An Exp­ression Of Internalised Cultural Beliefs, Mythology And Pop Culture.

Horror film buff and author Aditi Sen, however, has an interesting take on the Hindi films of the ’80s, when the Ramsay brothers’ sex-horror films had acquired cult status. Sen, a history professor at Queen’s University and a researcher on South Asian horror cinema, argues that while the films were definitely exploitative and objectifying women for eyeballs, they were also giving glimpses of women with more agency and independence. “In Purana Mandir (1984), for instance, a group of men and women go to an abandoned place for a weekend of casual sex with their partners. That’s unthinkable in a mainstream Hindi film of the time, for women to have that kind of freedom,” says Sen.

ALSO READ: How OTT Turned Into A Game-changer For Horror Movies

In 2002, the film Raaz was one of the biggest runaway hits of the year. Though the film did not have the traditional witch, it developed a different kind of woman fiend—the lonely woman spirit who is just looking for love. It was a more boisterous, sexualised reincarnation of the ‘lonely, lovelorn woman ghost’ of the sixties who wore a white saree and sought men who reminded her of her estranged lover. Sen, who has written a chapter on the film in the 2020 book Bollywood Horrors, says Raaz was a turning point. “It reinforced beliefs about women being tasked with the job of ‘fixing’ men and accepting their follies, but also opened a starting point for more films that showed wom­en not just as accessories but movers of the plot.”

Another aspect, Sen says, that outlined the narrative of women in Indian horror films is an exp­ression of the country’s internalised cultural beliefs, mythology and pop culture. In Raaz, for instance, Bipasha Basu—the wife—is the Devi while the ghost—the other woman—is a wronged woman or chudail. The ‘Devi’ can only obliterate the evil spi­rit by giving her a proper funeral. In later dep­ic­tions of the daayan or chudail, filmmakers have used the daayan as a twisted allegory for the div­ine. “It is because filmmakers (and all men) know the power of Shakti and that no man can actually stand up to it. None of the films, of course, have shown a near accurate representation of witches, even though in India, witches are as old as gods,” says Anubhuti Dalal, 42, who lives in Delhi and claims to be a tantrika. “I am what they sometimes call a dakini. I belong to the Aghori clan of tantriks,” she says. A practitioner of tantra, an ancient sect of Hinduism that predates the age of “organised religion”, as Dalal puts it, she and other dakinis like her worship the Dasha Maha Vidya—a pantheon of 10 feminine energies, each representing a form of the supreme goddess. In ancient texts, the dakini is defined as a ‘fiendish’ spirit who worships Kali.

ALSO READ: The Horror Of The Haunted House And Lonely People

In India, Dalal explains, the reason why women are repeatedly depicted as horrible, monstrous entities in the form of a chudail or daayan can be traced to the fear and patriarchy of Bra­hmins. Accepting the power of the woman as a divine healer meant accepting the power of her wrath. “When it comes to the battle between Mahakaal and Mahakali, the goddess will always win. Brah­mins and all men know that. Perhaps that is why they have always picked up their pitchforks and torches to behead and burn the ‘witch’. Bec­ause deep down they know they can’t kill the wit­ch just as they can’t kill the goddess,” she says. A slew of recent Bollywood filmmakers seem to have picked up on that trend.

In 2018, Amar Kaushik’s film Stree stumped aud­iences with its feminist horror-comedy approach to the witch. The film retold an old folk story abo­ut a witch who roamed the streets hunting young men with not-so-subtle subversions in gender roles. The witch in Stree, for instance, sought consent from her male victims before seducing them. In 2020, debut filmmaker Anvita Dutt’s horror film Bulbbul won two Filmfare OTT awards and accolades for retelling the story of the vigilante daayan who employs her own brand of justice system to punish those who hurt her, and the drivers of patriarchy. In both films, the witch in the end becomes a metaphor for power.

ALSO READ: Fatal Attraction: In Horror, Our Lives Are Redeemed

Film writer Amborish Roychowdhury feels that while sexual violence has been an ill-used trope in Bollywood horror films in the past, it continues to be a popular theme in horror films as it is a living reality for most women. “Horror is one of the mo­st expressive genres of film. I think filmmakers today are realising the potential of the platform to tell powerful stories about women and violence is a big part of many women’s lives,” he says. “Here lies the credit and intent of the filmmakers—are they using it as a bit to draw in audiences or are they using it to make audiences uncomfortable and ask questions about the society they live in?”

Away from the world of films, Aloka Kujur lives in the land of so-called witches. “In Jharkhand, daayan pratha is still a relevant practice and every year, hundreds of women are persecuted and even killed in the name of being a witch,” Kujur, who works for the rights of such women under the Adivasi Jan Adhikar Manch, tells Outlook. In Jharkhand, most of these cases are rel­ated to property disputes. “Women who have property and are single or elderly are often the target of such tactics, often by relatives and neighbours who want to usurp her property.” Kujur, however, says that films like Bulbbul that romanticise the daayan are equally bad as the B-grade films. She explains that in states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, tales of the witch are much more believable as they are deeply woven into the social fabric. “These films reinforce the idea of daayan and chudail.”

(This appeared in the print edition as "The Witch’s Tale")

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Women's Solidarity Through Witchcraft

The concept of the ‘witch’ draws from the European Wicca traditions. Wicca is a Neo-pagan religion that was introduced to the world in a codified form in 1945 by former British civil servant Gerald Gardner.

Witches through the ages Shutterstock


Outlook Web Desk
UPDATED: 13 APR 2022 

We have all grown up with images of the scraggly witch on a broomstick in a pointy witch’s hat. Or the Indian witch or ‘dayan’ with bulging eyes, reversed foot and knotted unruly hair. The myth of witches has existed in India ever since time immemorial. Be it the ‘chudail’ or ‘Pichal Pairi’ of North India, Pishachini or Petni of West Bengal, or simply ‘Dayan’, the idea of the witch in either a demonic form or in the form of an evil priestess has been popularised in countless folk tales, films and pulp fiction horror stories. But much of the representation of witches in Indian films and literature is largely inaccurate. This is due to reasons — one is the misunderstanding of witches and witchcraft, and the second is patriarchy. Nevertheless, witches have usually been the demon of choice when it came to feminists representing themselves through the horror metaphor.

The concept of the ‘witch’ draws from the European Wicca traditions. Wicca is a Neo-pagan religion that was introduced to the world in a codified form in 1945 by former British civil servant Gerald Gardner. However, its origins can be traced to pre-Christian times. It encompasses various denominations and sects that are based on witchcraft and the duo theistic worship of the Supreme Gods and God. The religion is characterised by various rituals and was the first to formally acknowledge the pagan community of witches (men and women) that existed and practised for ‘Witchcraft’. While the community represented more than just witches, later representation in pop culture associating Wicca with cauldron swilling pagan witches further solidified the idea of Wiccan witches. Many followers of Wicca claim to believe in “magic” as a science. As performative magician and occultist Alistair Crowley had put it, magic is “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will”.

The Witch’s Tale: Women In Indian Horror Films


In 1968, a manifesto by a women's group called WITCH read, "Witches have always been women who dared to be: groovy, courageous, aggressive, intelligent, nonconformist, explorative, curious, independent, sexually liberated, revolutionary...You are a witch by being female, untamed, angry, joyous and immortal". Thus witches have been a socio-political statement for women as much as a horror staple.

There is a thriving Wiccan witch community in India. The country’s first noted openly Wiccan witch was Ipsita Ray Chakravarty, daughter of a diplomat who grew up in Canada. According to interviews, she felt her first supernatural experience at the age of 10. In the late 80s, Chakravarty started speaking about the ancient tradition of witchcraft in India and has often spoken sternly against the representation of witches in Indian films as monstrous ‘dayans’.

The Wiccan tradition is what gives us the witch on a broomstick with a pointy hat trope. Today, many women in India claim Ito follow witchcraft. A thriving community of Wiccan witches on social media exists in which women not only talk about their experiences with witchcraft but also sell ‘magical’ items like totems, spells, incantations, even wands. The Harry Potter series of books also brought a new perspective on witches for urban Indian audiences who came face to face with anthropomorphised teen witches and wizards.

Nevertheless, the myth of the ‘Daayan’, the desi and monstrous version of the witch has remained popular in Indian horror films. Recent retellings o the witch’s tale have seen writers and directors experiment with themes of sexual violence and patriarchy to subvert the horror plots creating ‘daayans’ out of victims of patriarchy.

But the witch’s influence in Indian films and literature goes further back than just fiction or folk tales. In India, witchcraft is deeply rooted in Vedic Hindu religion. Witchcraft - or tantra Sadhna, is a pre-Vedic tradition part of the Tantra sect of Hinduism. Its followers, called Tantriks and Tantrikas, as often associated with witchcraft. While the men have been termed ‘sadhu’ or ascetic, however, women have often been dubbed as ‘witches’.

In fact, Daakinis and tantrikas were among the original healers before organised religion. According to Anubhuti Dalal, a practising Tantrik, daakinis have the ability to use magic, concoct potions and use their knowledge of herbs and poisons to heal people of both physical, and mental and metaphysical afflictions. They could make women stay young forever and make men fall in love. They could fix a broken heart or heal an infected body. This kind of manifestation of women’s power to manipulate energy has been recorded across the world including in Europe where a community of pagan witches have long existed under the Wiccan tradition. Witch societies are today studied through a feminist lens in that they have historically provided a safe space for women that organised religion could not provide.

In that way, the Indian Tantrik tradition has been similar to Wicca in providing a safe space and sisterhood to women within the community. Witches or practitioners of witchcraft often have their own language and ways of communication.

“A village daakini, before anything, is a friend of the persecuted women. She was supposed to be the custodian of women’s rights at a time when women had no representation. She could punish men for their wrong-doings, set things right for the woman at her household and empower them with justice,” adds Dalal. Dakinis, like Wiccan witches, are also known to be great doctors. Researchers of Wiccan witch rituals found that the ‘spells’ and recipes used by witches often use scary code names for herbs and plants. Newt’s eyes and dogs’ tongue - the famous ingredients used by Macbeth’s witches, for instance, actually refer to mustard seeds and the highly toxic plant houdstounge.

The Modern Witch Trials era in the West during which scores of women were burnt at the stake across England and other Anglo-Saxon countries vilified witches as sorceresses worshipping the Horned God. Later, Gardern's reiteration of Wicca brought forth evidence of the worship of the Mother Goddess - representing life and fertility - thus helping pagan witches destigmatise their image and move away from the Shakespearean representation of evil witches to a more free-spirited, pagan witch who used magic for good rather than evil.

Both Dalal and Wiccan witches like Ipsita have objected to the representation of witches in India. The skewed narratives of women in Indian (as well as Western) horror films and literature is an expression of the internalised cultural beliefs, mythology and pop culture. But today, women writers and filmmakers have tried to take over the genre and write stories that depict the witch not as a monster but as an avenger and vigilante. The change in tonality can be seen as a reflection of the growing empowerment of women and acknowledgement of culture and mythology as important building blocks of gender roles.

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INDIA
'Angrez Chudail' And 'Nakalchi Bhoot': The Ghosts Of Shimla Live On

The former British capital, Shimla in Himachal Pradesh is home to many legends and lore of ghosts of former Imperialists haunting the streets of the hill town to this day,

The Ghosts of Shimla Babli Thakur


Ashwani Sharma
UPDATED: 13 APR 2022

Just as he parked his car on a narrow, lonely, forested road leading to Shimla’s leading boarding school, Ankur Chauhan, 28, felt a hand grip his collar from behind, even as he knew there was no one else sitting back .

“I remember the touch on my shoulder. It was a human hand, a real one. But who was it in my car? I knew there was no one else except me in the vehicle. For moments, I swear, I was numb and shivering down my legs in shock. I shouted out loud – who is in there, come out, come out!” Chauhan recalls as he narrates his horrifying encounter with a “ghost” some years back.

It had been around 11.30 pm and the night was dark. He had joyfully taken his US-returnee former schoolmate Piyush on an evening drive for a quick drink in the car - a school time nostalgia from Shimla streets and secluded meeting corners, where they used to invite their girlfriends away from everyone’s eyes.

While in the boarding school, where he and Piyush studied, Ankur had heard dozens of tales about ‘english ghosts’—the spirit of white men and women - former imperialists, haunting old Shimla schools, most of which were set up by the British.

One most frequently talked about ghost story was about an ‘english ghost’ often visiting the chemistry lab of the school, and another of a another headless man—a Prince visiting another school to offer flowers to girls. Several such scary tales of haunted Shimla buildings of colonial era have persisted in the former colonial city for decades.

But, for Ankur, an alumni of Bishop Cotton School (BCS) and now an entrepreneur in the health care sector, this was the 'supernatural' encounter. That's when he realised that the "dark world of phantoms" is very much here.

This is what Rudyard Kipling wrote about them in “My Own True Ghost Story" about the many spirits wandering around hills of Shimla, Mussoorie and Murree.

“Nearly every other station owns a ghost. There are said to be two at Simla, not counting the woman , who blows the bellows at Syree dak-bungalow on the Old Road," Kipling wrote about sundry ghosts who allegedly still haunt the erstwhile summer capital.

Veteran writer Ruskin Bond also brought-out horrifying tales of native Ghosts in his book “Ghost Stories from the Raj”--- recently adapted for a digital series titled Parchayee.

In 2005, Minakshi Chaudhry, Shimla’s own young author and former journalist, went on exploring some of the haunted settings of Shimla hills and brought out two books –a collection of 35 popular tales based on direct personal experiences of people, authentic folklores and her own spine–chilling adventures with the spirits in Shimla. Ruskin Bond wrote a foreword for her first book which became a best seller in the town.

“Whether ghosts exist or not, I can’t say. Yet, after visiting myriad 'haunted' places—even during the night, and listening to real stories of people as part of my research, I can say there is usually some iota of reality behind native folktales or legends. There is, however, no archived evidence of documentation on it,” Minakshi admits.

But ghosts, she observes, are not all bad. They have their own problems and seem to represent an aspect of human struggle that is as relevant in life as in death. With Shimla remaining under the British till 1948, the town's colonial hangover is still potent and many find it natural to believe that the spirits of the former rulers may still be wandering the streets of their former 'summer capital'. But, none of these ghosts or supernatural spirits in the living memory of Shimla residents has been known to harm anyone. What makes them scary is the fact that they were real people who once lived and walked these very streets, unlike characters of myths from fiction.

Speaking about her book, Meenakshi says, “There are enduring stories about unrequited love and the idea of spectral romance - like the story about a young girl who died in an accident, leaving her romance unfulfilled. Or the one about the ghost of Viceregal Lodge - a Prince who haunted a local school with a red rose, looking for his lady love. Then there were stories of the Angrez Churail (English witch) - a woman on a rickshaw (a common site in Shimla during colonial days) and a Nakalchi bhoot (copycat ghost) -- always trying to imitate human actions. Every story I write is an ode to the city's nostalgia and the authentic folk tales of these hills.”

While ghosts have not troubled her, Meenakshi however, has often had unpleasant experiences with humans in her quest for the macabre. Her search for untold tales of horror and the unknown have often led her to people who were either unwilling to share the anecdotes or embarrassed to admit they had seen a ghost on their property for fear of ostracisation.

“I faced a lot of public ire and unexpected angry reactions from the families and occupants of some of the private spaces believed to be frequented by ghosts. One of the families I went to interview set their ferocious dogs on me. Employees at a central government-owned British era heritage building detained me for hours till they checked my credentials with Shimla’s Deputy Commissioner, under whom my husband (an IAS officer) had worked as they mistook me for a spy talking about ghosts” she narrates.

While Kipling in his book had admitted that no native ghost has yet been authentically reported to have frightened an Englishman, both local and Desi ghosts are popular in Himachali folktales.

“There are, in this land, ghosts who take the form of fat, cold, pobby corpses, and hide in trees near the roadside till a traveler passes…They wander along the pathways at dusk, or hide in the crops near a village, and call seductively. Their feet are turned backwards that all sober men may recognize them," one of the descriptions go.

In her horror stories, Minakshi Chaudhry talks about haunted houses, schools, rivulets, cemeteries and fascinating mountains with snowy peaks and pine-covered valleys. It seems that though the British left the country after Independence, left their ghost behind.

Shimla–born retired IPS officer Balbir Thakur also recollects his two encounters with a supernatural spirit—‘Bansheera’ when his late father and former DySP was posted at Junga—a sub-urban town and headquarter of the Central Striking Reserve Force (CSRF) police battalion .

“I was returning home after watching two back-to-back films at Shimla’s Rivoli and Regal cinemas – both don't exist anymore now. It was almost nearing midnight when I reached Down-Kothi—a haunted site, little short of Junga. I had heard several local accounts from a few cops who used to frequently travel between Shimla and Junga," he recounts .

That night, Thakur spotted a tall, faceless man walking next to him. Initially, he thought it was a native, or some battalion personnel returning to the CSRF HQ from Shimla. The next moment, however, the man mysteriously disappeared, almost as if he was gobbled up by the darkness. Within seconds,it reemerged and started suspiciously walking towards him.

“Startled, I screamed, 'who are you? What the hell are you doing out here?' After this I ran almost at bullet's speed towards home, shivering and sweating. The moment I stepped inside my house, I fell unconscious to the floor. My mother who later called a local ghost-buster or some oracle and relieved me of evil spirit,” Thakur recalls.

Another most talked about haunted place in Shimla is “Chudail Baudi”, a wayside place between Chotta Shimla and St.Bedes’ college Nav Bahar on Shimla's Carter Road. Locals claim that any car or vehicle that crosses this space is automatically slowed down and an old woman with her feet turned backwards stops the cars to ask for a lift. If ignored, the woman leaps into the car anyway.

“We had heard such stories, but not any first-hand account has been reported so so far during the past three-decades of my being in Shimla” says a fruit seller at Chhota Shimla.

A few years ago, the Himachal Pradesh government rolled out a plan to compile all spooky tales of the town, based on folklore and personal experiences of the locals. The book was intended to compile these haunted attractions of the heritage town for attracting tourists. The plan never took off.

Yet the tourists visiting Shimla do pick up Meenakshi Chaudhry and Ruskin Bond books on ghost stories from a leading bookshops and the tales of the 'English ghosts' of Shimla live on.

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New Orleans Mamas Normalized Breastfeeding During Mardi Gras Season


Carmen Green

MADAMENOIR
Tue, April 12, 2022

Breastfeeding
Source: Photo by Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz / Pexel

The City of New Orleans rejoiced when Mayor Latoya Cantrell announced that Mardi Gras was on for 2022. The annual Carnival celebration was passed over in 2021, due the COVID-19 outbreak that sacrificed so many lives. The appropriate public health measure put in place required cancellation of gatherings statewide. This year was refreshing, but one of the best parts was a focus on breastfeeding. Several mamas were breastfeeding in the parade crowds. The temperature swung and the breasts hung, signaling a cultural shift. The moment also proved birthing people in New Orleans are not scared of social stigma, ogling eyes or negative comments. —And though New Orleans is pretty much the most progressive city in the state of Louisiana, it’s rare to see people breastfeeding at parades.

RELATED CONTENT: BLACK BREASTFEEDING WEEK: So Many Women Like Me, Who Want To Be Able To Breastfeed But Can’t

The cultural shift towards public breastfeeding is a strategic win on behalf of advocacy from organizations like Healthy Start and the network of Baby Cafe’s. Impact from waves of collaborative federal and philanthropic funding partnerships have included the Institute for Women Ethnic Studies, National Birth Equity Collaborative and the city-wide Maternal & Child Health Coalition. The past 3-5 years of funding still doesn’t touch the decade of work Sista Midwife Productions and Birthmark Doula Collective has invested into changing the landscape for mamas in the city through programming, community building, holding mamas and catching babies.

Laissez les bon lait rouler—Let the good milk roll!

The joy that comes from bearing witness to the progress of the painstaking work from the birthing community to undo generations of harm and misinformation that convinced Black women that breastfeeding is not for us. The organizations mentioned may not have legacy funding and are working hard to sustain staff while doing this culture-shifting work. Funding cycles take these leaders on a ride chasing the dragon—or rather chasing the float—of fleeting resources. Some prefer to be unbothered and unattached to these temporary waves of funding. The movement of breastfeeding in New Orleans has been led by birth workers and organizations but most importantly, the mamas in the community are creating the experience they want.

Regardless if the shift has come from community-led funding or sheer feminine will, the results are visible. Shout out to new mamas in 2022.

“This is my baby’s first Mardi Gras!” left many mamas lips, while holding 18-month-old toddlers. “Happy Mardi Gras Baby!”

RELATED CONTENT: BLACK BREASTFEEDING WEEK: Black Women Have Been Doing It For The Culture Since Day One

Black Maternal Health Week runs April 11-April 17. Register for National Birth Equity Coalition’s rundown of events and workshops at birthequity.org/BMHW22.

Black Maternal Health Week

Source: Courtesy of NBEC / NBEC