WSJ: Senators Urge White House to Disclose Efforts on N. Korea Crypto Heists

Written: 2023-08-05

Photo : YONHAP News

U.S. Democratic lawmakers are pressing President Biden to disclose efforts to crack down on North Korea's cryptocurrency theft, highlighting its threat to national security, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The report said Friday that three Democratic senators - Chris Van Hollen, Elizabeth Warren and Tim Kaine - are leaning on the Biden administration to disclose more information about its efforts to counteract North Korea’s dependence on stolen cryptocurrency to fund its nuclear program 

They also dubbed Pyongyang’s growing reliance on digital assets to evade sanctions a severe national security threat.

The Journal said the senators made the request in letters sent to national security advisor Jake Sullivan and Treasury under secretary for terrorism Brian Nelson on Thursday. They asked the administration to detail their efforts to address the problem including updated estimates on the scale and scope of revenue being generated by the regime's ill gotten gains. 

They also requested information on actors who have assisted the exchange of such currency into other types of assets such as materials that go into producing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

Senator Warren said that North Korea has methodically accumulated knowledge on digital assets over the years and the Treasury department must act swiftly in clampdown efforts to safeguard national security.

The Wall Street Journal reported in June that North Korean hackers stole three billion dollars worth of cryptocurrency in the past five years since 2018 and that the money is now used to fund about 50 percent of the regime's ballistic missile program.

Advocates rush to help those living with homelessness in record heat

Every year advocates for those experiencing homelessness in Arizona offer food and water, but this year's record heat offers a more urgent challenge.




By Scripps News Phoenix
Jul 28, 2023

Each year, the Phoenix Rescue Mission hands out more than 600,000 bottles of water to people living on the streets.

Every day, case managers with PRM, like Sergio Armendariz, load up a PRM Hope Coach with lifesaving essentials to hit the city's streets. Those essentials include water, snacks, and some basic necessities, like deodorant and a toothbrush.

"Especially in Phoenix, you could go down any area, and I can go through pretty much all or most of my hygiene and water just because of the amount of people who are living on the street," Armendariz said.

"This is typically a spot where there's always a lot of people," he said.

One man he came across, David, said he'd been experiencing homelessness for about two years.

"It's just tough out here," David said. "I can barely walk, or get out of bed."

He told Armendariz that he wanted to get out of the hot Phoenix sun that day. Armendariz called some of his contacts at PRM and other local non-profit organizations to see what was available.

A lot of times, that's not a quick or easy task for him because of the number of people experiencing homelessness looking to get off the streets.

"I think, with this job, that's the toughest part about it is being able to find bed space," Armendariz said. "Sometimes, it's just not enough. That's why I'm huge on more shelter space."

How much heat is too much for the human body?

Heat-related injuries or deaths are preventable when proper measures are taken.

David ended up not wanting to start a year-long recovery program, which would have gotten him a space at a shelter that had room that week.

Armendariz understands why making the decision to make a change can be difficult for some people. Five years ago, he was in the same place as the people he now serves.

"Every day, I get to wake up and I give thanks to God for having a place to sleep, a shelter, restoration with my family, restoration with my kids, with my extended family," he said.

"It's just been amazing, really. Freedom - the freedom to just live my life, go to work every day, and do something that I really enjoy doing, and it has its difficulties, but, ultimately, I'm here to help."

Phoenix Rescue Mission is currently doing its "Code:Red Summer Heat Relief" campaign through the end of August.

If you'd like to help or donate, visit their website.

This story was originally published by Amelia Fabiano at Scripps New Phoenix.

'Witch' — Ukraine's fearless mortar commander — orders walls of fire

Ukraine's 'Witch,' a lawyer turned mortar commander, shows Scripps News inside her command bunker, where she uses drone footage to direct her teams.


Scripps News
Jason Bellini

Jul 20, 2023

The commander of a Ukrainian mortar platoon, whose callsign is "Witch," barks orders to her drone operator, whose callsign is "User," on the southern edge of Bakhmut.

"User, don't zoom in so much," Witch states.

She needs User to give her eyes on the target so she can tell Pidsumky, one of her mortar operators, that it’s time.

"Pidsumky Fire!" Witch orders.

In rare footage from inside her command bunker, where she uses drone footage to direct her mortar teams, we see her eyes focused on the monitor, watching and waiting for impact.

"It's coming down on the edge of the forest," Witch says.

She recalibrates for the next volley from her battlefield bunker, in a rare view of how Ukrainians on the ground and below it fight the counteroffensive.

"Our main occupation is to defend our infantry, to make the fire in front of our front line of infantry," said Witch.

Scripps News met up with Witch, a Ukrainian lawyer-turned-warrior, in Chasiv Yar, a battle-scarred village six miles from Bakhmut, jolted 24-7 by the sound of outgoing Ukrainian artillery.

Jason Bellini: We were just hearing a howitzer right there.

Witch: That's a big howitzer.

Witch directs fire at the Russians from much closer; that’s the marvel of mortars.

Their boom may be smaller than artillery, but their impact is especially large.

That portability is especially important in a war in which Ukraine’s infantry is forced to move by foot.

Since tanks and other heavy armor would be caught in Russian minefields and artillery traps.

Ukraine's front line deminers: 'Always first, always forward'

De-mining equipment is sidelined due to massive Russian entrenchments. For now, human hands must perform the death-defying duty of clearing mines.

"We can move very fast with mortar, and we can change our position and we can give a fire from different places," said Witch.

Sometimes she plays defense.

"With our drones, we can see the corpses of our enemies, and we can count them, and we can estimate the success of our combat operations," said Witch.

But how successful has she been?

"If 30% of our enemy in the unit which was attacked us is dead or injured, that means this unit cannot go forward. That means our work was successful," she explains.

Now in Ukraine’s counteroffensive, infantry units count on Witch to provide them with their only cover since there is no air support.

Witch: The work on attack is harder.

Bellini: Harder? Why?

Witch: It's more complicated because we are moving forward and we have to be closer to our infantry units. And there is not a lot of firing positions.

Bellini: Not a lot of firing positions?

Witch: This is not so easy because our ammo is very heavy.

Bellini: And of course, the Russians are targeting you.

Witch: Of course, we are the main target for Russians. It's my job. I like it.

Bellini: What do you like about it?

Witch: Now for me, it's a time of revenge.

Bellini: Time for revenge?

Witch: Exactly.

Bellini: Have you been getting revenge?

Witch: Yes. Step by step, but we're moving forward.

Bellini: I have to ask, your callsign, "Witch"?

Witch: I promise I will tell about the story of all of this after the war because it is dangerous to talk about it now.

Bellini: You've got me really intrigued.

Witch: All will be uncovered when the war will stop. I promise.

This robot doctor can help in areas where human doctors can’t

The robot can take a patient’s temperature, check their pulse, and administer injections, among other tasks.

University of Sheffield  

By Chloe Nordquist
 Aug 2, 2023


This robot doctor was designed to go and treat patients where human doctors can’t.

“The medic could drive a robotic system to a location and perform a series of different kinds of triage tasks on that patient,” said David King, the head of digital design at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. King was one of the leaders of the project.

Medics can remotely operate the robot’s arms and talk to the patient.

“They wear a virtual reality headset and the robot itself has got a 360 degree camera on it,” he said.

The robot was developed by researchers at the University of Sheffield in the UK.

Robot-assisted surgery is revolutionizing heart procedures

Robot-assisted heart procedures are reducing recovery time and complications for patients who need the delicate surgeries.

The robot can take a patient’s blood pressure and temperature, check their pulse, and administer injections, among other tasks. All of this can be seen and performed by the remote medic controlling the robot in real time.

“It’s also [applicable] to anywhere where you've got casualties and you don't really want to be sending people,” King said.

This could include humanitarian disaster areas, like earthquake zones for example, war zones, and sites of biological or chemical accidents.

The robot is still being tested in representative outdoor terrain on dummies.

King said it took them 9 months to go from concept to functioning design, as part of a competition.

Researchers are looking for partnerships with organizations to deploy these into specific disaster zones.

Report: Big waves becoming more common off California as Earth warms

The report adds to the evidence that climate change is causing massive shifts in the world’s oceans.

Jeff Chiu / AP

By AP via Scripps News
Aug 4, 2023

Waves are getting bigger and surf at least 13 feet tall is becoming more common off California's coast as the planet warms, according to innovative new research that tracked the increasing height from historical data gathered over the past 90 years.

Oceanographer Peter Bromirski at Scripps Institution of Oceanography used the unusual method of analyzing seismic records dating back to 1931 to measure the change in wave height.

When waves ricochet off the shore, they collide with incoming waves and cause a ripple of energy through the seafloor that can be picked up by seismographs designed to detect earthquakes. The greater the impact, the taller the wave is.

Until now, scientists relied on a network of buoys by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that collect data on wave height along U.S. coasts, but that data along the California coast only went back to 1980.

"Until I stumbled upon this data set, it was almost impossible to make that comparison with any kind of reliability," Bromirski said.

To go back further, Bromirski gathered a team of undergraduate students to analyze daily seismic readings covering decades of winters. It was a slow, painstaking process that took years and involved digitizing drums of paper records. But he said it was important in learning how things have changed over nearly a century along California's coast.

They found that average winter wave heights have grown by as much as a foot since 1970, when global warming is believed to have begun accelerating. Swells at least 13 feet tall are also happening a lot more often, occurring at least twice as often between 1996 to 2016 than from 1949 to 1969.

Bromirski was also surprised to find extended periods of exceptionally low wave heights prior to about 1970 and none of those periods since.

"Erosion, coastal flooding, damage to coastal infrastructure is, you know, something that we're seeing more frequently than in the past," Bromirski said. "And, you know, combined with sea level rise, bigger waves mean that is going to happen more often."

Changes in waves are showing up in other ways, too.

"There's about twice as many big wave events since 1970 as there was prior to 1970," Bromirski said.

The study, published Tuesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, adds to the evidence that climate change is causing massive shifts in the world's oceans. Other studies have shown waves are not only getting taller but also more powerful.

Damage from intense storms and massive surf is already playing out. This winter, California's severe storms and giant waves collapsed bluffs, damaged piers and flooded parts of the state's picturesque Highway 1.

Bromirski said that is a harbinger of the future. Scientists say global warming may even be accelerating, ushering in even bigger waves.

As sea levels rise and storms intensify, bigger waves will cause more flooding in coastal communities, erode away beaches, trigger landslides and destabilize remaining bluffs, he said.

These issues are of particular concern along the California coast, where sea cliffs have already started crumbling and brought down homes in recent years. Because of sea level rise, projections at the end of the 21st century indicate even moderate waves might cause damage comparable to that of extreme weather events, according to the study.

Oceanographer Gary Griggs at the University of California Santa Cruz said while a jump of a foot in wave height over more than 50 years is not huge, the findings are consistent with what scientists know is happening to the world's oceans as they warm: They are becoming increasingly violent due to more extreme storms and wreaking havoc along coasts.

Griggs, who was not involved in the research, said it adds to growing scientific data showing how fast the world is warming and how quickly seas are rising.

"We know hurricanes are more intense and last longer, and now we've got, you know, waves increasing in power. So those are all consistent," he said. "The challenge ... is sort of how to really respond to that."

4 out of 5 people have felt climate change-driven heat this year

New analysis shows worldwide, more than 6.5 billion people experienced unusual heat driven by climate change in July.

John Locher / AP

By Scripps News Staff
Aug 2, 2023

July of 2023 was noticeably warmer for 4 out of every 5 people on Earth, according to a new analysis by the science nonprofit Climate Central.

The group found that sometime in July, more than 6.5 billion people experienced noticeably elevated temperatures due to the effects of climate change. More than 2 billion people experienced the effects of accelerated warming on a daily basis.

The analysis found fossil fuel emissions tripled the likelihood of elevated temperatures in 4,019 cities worldwide, or 85% of all cities that were measured.

A billion people, most of them in tropical regions, experienced temperatures that were three times more likely to be elevated during every single day of July.

In the U.S., more than 244 million people felt hotter temperatures due to climate change. The effect was most pronounced in Florida, and generally diminished as the measurement location moved north.

UN: 'The era of global boiling has arrived'

United Nations leaders say human-driven climate change is to blame for the hottest month in recorded history.

The findings have not yet been peer-reviewed, but experts who spoke to The Associated Press said the findings were credible.

And other data collected in July of this year shows that the month stood as a temperature outlier worldwide. Climate data has shown July of this year set multiple records for the hottest day, week and month ever recorded.

UH OH

Antarctic ice is unusually low right now, even in the middle of winter

Antarctica is gaining ice during its winter season — but it's never had less at this time of year.

Photo by: Climate.gov

By: Scripps News Staff
Posted Aug 04, 2023

It's the middle of winter in Antarctica, and the sea ice surrounding it is at a record low for this time of year.

Beginning around April, sea ice levels in Antarctica have typically entered an annual growth phase and approached their greatest extent for the year around October.

As recently as 2014, this growth phase peaked with a record high extent of sea ice. But since 2016, annual ice extent has declined, falling mostly below the 1981–2010 30-year average. Now NOAA says even though ice cover is still growing for the year, daily extents have been at record lows since April of 2023.

Melting sea ice doesn't contribute to sea level rise on its own, since it's already floating on the ocean surface. But the sea ice surrounds glaciers and other ice shelves on continental Antarctica — and the less sea ice there is, the less protection that inland ice has from warming temperatures.

SEE MORE: Study Finds Doomsday Glacier Shrinking Faster Than Expected

The water frozen there has the potential to significantly alter global sea levels, were it to melt.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is on land in Antarctica, this year experienced some of the most significant melting on the continent. If all of its ice melted, it could raise global average sea levels by more than 10 feet.

While such melting is not expected to happen all at once, the effects of ongoing melting are expected to grow more apparent in the coming years.

In 2022, NOAA predicted that in the U.S., sea levels may rise as much as 12 inches on average by 2050. The impacts may also vary regionally — the U.S. East Coast may see up to 14 inches, for example, and the Gulf Coast could experience as much as 18 inches of rise.

Researchers say what melts now will also make it more difficult for Antarctica to regain lost ice later.

Global ocean temperatures are climbing, which melts more ice.

And the less ice there is, the less sunlight is reflected by its bright surface. Instead, darker ocean water absorbs even more of that heat.


If ice maximums continue their downward trend, experts say, later years could see even more ice loss as the effects compound.

#KASHMIR IS #INDIA'S #GAZA

India’s Kashmir clampdown continues four years after Article 370 abrogated

The 2019 move heralded a slew of policies by the ruling BJP government to tighten New Delhi’s grip over the disputed region.

An Indian paramilitary trooper stands guard along a street in Srinagar 

[File: Tauseef Mustafa/AFP]

Published On 5 Aug 2023

Saturday marks four years of India scrapping the special status of Indian-administered Kashmir, New Delhi’s most far-reaching move against the disputed region in seven decades.

The abrogation of Article 370 of India’s constitution that granted the region partial autonomy in 2019 heralded a slew of policies by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government to tighten New Delhi’s grip over a region also claimed by its nuclear-armed neighbour, Pakistan.

Residents and critics slammed the move in India’s only Muslim-majority region as the BJP’s bid to impose “settler colonialism” aimed at changing its demography and land ownership patterns and depriving Kashmiris of their livelihoods.

Earlier this week, India’s Supreme Court began hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the BJP’s 2019 move.

But people in the valley say they have little hope anything will change.
Anxieties over land ownership

Article 370 barred outsiders from settling permanently or buying property in Indian-administered Kashmir.

However, a domicile law introduced in 2020 permits anyone who has lived in the region for 15 years or studied there for seven years to apply for a domicile certificate, entitling them to apply for land and jobs.

The policy proposes the provision of five marlas of land (.031 acres) and the construction of houses under the Prime Minister Housing Scheme-Rural – a government initiative to provide housing to the rural poor.

In another measure, the federal rural development ministry allocated a target of 199,550 new houses in the region for the financial year 2023-24 for people belonging to the economically weaker sections (EWS) and low-income groups in the region.

Kashmiri activists and politicians have raised suspicion over the schemes, accusing the government of a “deliberate ambiguity” over who the beneficiaries will be.

“[…] the wide discrepancy between figures for the landless and housing allocation raises suspicion. According to official figures, there were 19,047 landless people in the region in 2021,” said a report released on Thursday by the Forum for Human Rights in Jammu and Kashmir, a civil society group advocating for the rights of the people in the region.

“Presumably the allocation of 199,550 new houses … will cover urban migrants, including labourers, street vendors, and rickshaw pullers. According to the Jammu and Kashmir Housing Board, however, any citizen of India who migrated temporarily or permanently, for employment, education, or a ‘long-term tourist visit’, would be eligible to apply. If the affordable housing policy is implemented, it would lead to the inclusion of around a million people,” the report said.

Mehbooba Mufti, the former chief minister of the region, accused the government of “importing poverty and slums to the region under the pretext of providing housing to homeless individuals”.

“There is total disempowerment of the locals, whether it is in land or jobs,” Mufti told Al Jazeera.

‘The situation is bad’

A year before India scrapped the region’s autonomy, its elected legislative assembly headed by Mufti was dissolved in 2018.

Since then, the region is being ruled by the federal government through its hand-picked administrator as the regional pro-India political parties demand fresh elections.

Mufti accused the government of adopting policies aimed at “disempowering” the local residents and “being driven by a desire to increase their [BJP] vote bank, thus leading to a change in the demographic makeup”.

Mufti said the last four years were “full of surveillance and raids by investigative agencies”.

“Economically also, the situation is bad. Except for showcasing the so-called tourism, whether it’s the fruit industry or any other industry, they are killing it. With such surveillance, no one can express or talk,” she said.

But Altaf Thakur, spokesperson for the ruling BJP in Indian-administered Kashmir, claimed tourism is at an all-time high and for the first time, an international event such as a Group of 20 (G20) meeting on tourism took place in the region earlier this year.

“There is no strike, no stone pelting, no anti-national slogan is being raised. Kashmir is on the way to peace progress and prosperity,” he told Al Jazeera.

The government justifies its 2019 move by saying it ended a decades-long era of “stone-throwing protests”. The region’s administrative head Manoj Sinha says the BJP regime will establish peace in the region “rather than buy it”.

Crackdown on free media

Press freedom in Indian-administered Kashmir has seen an unprecedented crackdown since 2019.

Since last month, nearly a dozen journalists from the region writing for international publications have told Al Jazeera they received emails asking them to surrender their passports for being a “security threat to India”, or face action.

Three journalists from the region are currently jailed outside Indian-administered Kashmir under stringent laws, including the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

Security restrictions on reporting and travel have made the job of a journalist difficult. Many journalists, including Pulitzer Prize winner Sanna Irshad Mattoo, have been barred from travelling abroad.

“The freedom to report is increasingly getting restricted. For example, too many stories on human rights issues will inevitably bring allegations that you have an anti-national agenda,” a 31-year-old Kashmiri journalist told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity since he feared reprisal from the government.

“We have seen reporters facing summons, raids, detentions, no-fly-lists, and now passport seizures. So it automatically narrows down the scope of our reporting,” he said.

The journalist said conflating critical journalism with being anti-national hobbles the ability to gather information and report truthfully.

“No official wants to be seen as speaking to someone who is anti-national. It looks like journalism – unless it is devoted to praising the government or limiting criticism to potholes or lack of sanitation – is being criminalised.”

‘Break the Kashmiris’

At least 50 government employees in Indian-administered Kashmir have been terminated from their services since 2019 on vague charges of being a “threat” to the security of the state.

The law under which the termination was done allows the government to fire its employees without providing an explanation for it.

Meanwhile, unemployment in the region stands at 18 percent – nearly twice the national average – despite promises made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the government will “end the miseries of the youth”.

“Even if one protests over unemployment, it could be considered anti-national,” Muhammad Saqib, a 28-year-old engineering graduate, told Al Jazeera.

Mohamad Junaid, a Kashmiri anthropologist at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in the United States, told Al Jazeera India has enforced a “blanket silence” in Indian-administered Kashmir.

“Order after arbitrary order is autocratically issued and implemented to disempower, dispossess and break the Kashmiris,” he said.

“Not a single law passed in the last four years has had inputs from the Kashmiri population whose lives these laws are meant to radically alter.”

AL JAZEERA

Ambiguity surrounding BJP’s Kashmir policy

Durdana Najam

August 05, 2023

The writer is a public policy analyst based in Lahore. She tweets @durdananajam

Trump’s time in Washington is marked with three important decisions.

The first decision relates to Afghanistan, where the US had been engaged in one of the longest wars in history. Twenty years of mostly macabre presence did little to persuade the Afghans to shelf their traditional tribal warfare scheme of things in the national interest. The Afghan Taliban refused to comply with nothing less than the US exit from their country. Trump agreed to the quest with an argument that it was for the region to take care of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan and not a country that resided thousands of miles away.

The second decision relates to Israel. Washington recognised Jerusalem — a disputed territory between the Jews and the Palestinians — as Israel’s capital, upending seven decades of the American foreign policy. It coincided with the US-propelled decisions of the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco to recognise Israel as a part of the Middle East.

The third decision relates to the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act 2019. The law abrogated Article 370 and brought Kashmir under the direct control of India. The decision led to one of the longest lockdowns in Kashmir history, exacerbated by the Covid-19 lockdown.

All these decisions have had implications for regional and global peace and stability.

Ever since the annexation of Kashmir with India and the hasty, unprepared and unplanned exit of the Americans from Afghanistan, terrorism has returned to the Pak-Afghan borders with the ramification of spreading its wings farther into India and other neighbouring countries. The indifference exhibited by the international establishment is reminiscent of the hasty departure of the US from Afghanistan in 1989 that eventually led to international terrorism culminating in the felling of the twin towers and the attack on the Pentagon —the symbols of capitalism and the US defence power.

There is a similarity between the issue of Kashmir and Israel.

Under a senseless partition plan and an arrangement that backed Nehru’s proposal rather than that of the ailing Jinnah, Kashmir, the largest Muslim area aligned with two borders with Pakistan, was given to India.

The state of Israel is a story of usurpation. The Balfour agreement carved a place for the wandering Jews in Palestine without the latter’s consent. Once the French and the British left the Middle East and South East Asia, the conundrum built in the geographical demarcation became nastier. Not that peace is not welcomed; however, peace brokered against the will of the natives has a short shelf life.

Today is the fourth anniversary of India’s forced annexation of Kashmir — the application of force does not stop at that. It was the beginning of the never-ending cycle of BJP-led reforms, targeted at altering the demographics of Kashmir to axe the premise on which the issue of Kashmir — a Muslim-majority state — rests. One after another, the Kashmiri leadership has been pushed to the wall and incarcerated. The latest in the series was an attempt to execute Yasin Malik by commuting his life imprisonment into death sentence.

Sweden’s V-Dem Institute, which measures the health of democracies based on a comprehensive database, has categorised India as an “electoral autocracy” along with El Salvador, Turkey and Hungary and predicts India’s democracy falling to a new low.

It began with the election of Modi as India’s prime minister, now in his ninth year of rule. India has changed manifold under his rule. What once was a secular, socialist republic has transformed into a theocratic Hindu state, leaning on police and the militarised RSS to prosecute people on the other side of the ideological line.

On the frontline are Muslims. Despite evidence declaring Modi the insinuator of the Gujarat program that killed almost 2,000 Muslims, the so-called human rights champions in the West have failed to implicate him. BBC did try to do that through a documentary, but like many other international media and human rights organisations like Amnesty, the BBC office in Delhi was ransacked. Before becoming the prime minister, Modi was banned from entering the US. Now he is its geo-economic poster boy.

Modi is the darling of India’s business community. The essence of this love affair is apparent from Oxfam’s 2023 report, which shows that the top 1 per cent of India’s population owns more than 40 per cent of total wealth, while the bottom 50 per cent (700 million people) has around 3 per cent of total wealth. That makes India, according to Indian author Arundhati Roy, “a very rich country of very poor people”.

Instead of bringing actual reforms, the BJP government has built a false narrative about peace in Kashmir. The decision to hold G20 environmental meeting in Jammu and Kashmir was taken to prove that the valley and its adjutant areas were safe for tourists. However, deploying India’s elite National Security Guard, including its counter-drone unit and marine commandos, to help police and paramilitary forces secure the event venues said it all. China and Saudi Arabia refused to attend the huddle, with the former questioning India’s right to hold such an event in disputed territory.

According to the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, the entire valley has been turned into a Guantánamo Bay prison.

Recently the BJP allowed the Shia community, for the first time in 30 years, to take out processions on the 10th Muharram. The permission was welcomed with a pinch of salt because of the high security, creating a sense of awe and fear among the participants.

India’s insistence on painting the issue of Kashmir as an indigenous matter is a smokescreen that would eventually bust as more skirmishes like Manipur emerge, exposing India’s brutal handling of freedom of expression and right to live.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 5th, 2023.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDUISM IS FASCISM 

THIRD TIME LUCKY

Western Canada dock workers vote to accept contract offer

Reuters

August 4, 2023

10:32 PM MDT

A worker walks to the Port of Vancouver as International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) union members returned to clear a backlog of containers and bulk cargo from a 13-day strike in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, July 20, 2023. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo/File Photo

Aug 4 (Reuters) - Dock workers in Western Canada voted to accept an improved labor contract after a month-long dispute that affected trade and disrupted operations at the country's busiest ports, their union said on Friday.

The vote was 74.66% in favor of the terms of the settlement, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) said in a statement.

Disagreements in contract negotiations have disrupted billions of dollars in trade, raising concerns about fueling inflation.

‘Maus’ evades a ban in Iowa after school district cites ‘ambiguity’ in new state law

After uproar, Urbandale Schools outside Des Moines walks back removal of Holocaust graphic novel

By ANDREW LAPIN

Today, 

An illustrative image of Art Spiegelman's 'Maus.' (Philissa Cramer/JTA)

JTA — A new Iowa state law forbidding instruction on sexual and gender identity prompted one school district this week to briefly order staff to remove Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” and hundreds of other books from its shelves.

But days later, following national outrage, the district reversed course, issuing a trimmed-down list of 65 books for removal that contained neither “Maus,” nor several other Jewish-themed books on the first list.

The quick about-face in Urbandale Schools, a suburb of Des Moines, was the latest example of the confusing and often contradictory landscape for Jewish texts amid the growing nationwide “parents’ rights” movement targeting what its proponents say are inappropriate books in schools. In Iowa and other states, that movement has fueled legislation targeting educators who distribute content that could be interpreted as sexual.

“We have determined that there is ambiguity regarding the extent to which books that contain topics related to gender identity and sexual orientation need to be removed from libraries,” the district’s superintendent, Rosalie Daca, wrote in a memo to staff Thursday that an Urbandale spokesperson shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“As such,” the memo continued, with bolded emphasis, “we will pause removing books that reference gender identity and sexual orientation until we receive guidance from the Iowa Department of Education.”

The memo followed one from earlier this week that, as reported in the Des Moines Register, instructed staff to comb their libraries for more than 300 books in potential violation of the law, including “Maus,” Judy Blume’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” the Holocaust novel “Sophie’s Choice” and Jewish author Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play for adults, “Angels in America.” That initial list prompted a passionate response from the literary free-expression advocacy group PEN America, which implored the district not to follow through with its removals.

In pointed language, administrators blamed the state’s education department for issuing vague and unclear guidance on how to comply with the new law, which Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, signed in May and is scheduled to take effect in January 2024. The law states that it is “prohibiting instruction related to gender identity and sexual orientation in school districts” and also forbids “any material with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.”

It’s unclear how “Maus” wound up on the initial list of books flagged for removal, or how the district’s decision not to touch books related to “gender identity and sexual orientation” resulted in a stay of execution for Spiegelman’s book. “Maus” recounts the author’s parents’ traumatic experiences surviving the Holocaust, and doesn’t contain any discussion of gender or sexual identity. It does contain a single panel of a nude mouse representing Spiegelman’s mother after she dies by suicide.

The same image previously provoked the ire of a Tennessee school board, which removed “Maus” from its district’s middle-school curriculum over the image last year and catapulted the book into the center of the nationwide book-ban debate. Districts in Missouri also previously removed or considered removing “Maus” over the wording of a new state law forbidding the distribution of explicit materials.

Daca’s memo noted that the Urbandale district compiled its initial list of books by culling “book lists from other states who had passed similar laws.” The district did not respond to follow-up questions about ”Maus.”

Other Jewish books that have been rescued from district-wide book removals include “The Fixer” in South Carolina and “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” in Texas, though other districts in Florida have permanently removed the Anne Frank adaptation as well as a Holocaust novel by Jodi Picoult and a picture book about Purim featuring a same-sex couple.

One Jewish-themed book that remains on Urbandale’s removal list is Andre Aciman’s novel “Call Me by Your Name,” which details a Jewish LGBTQ youth’s coming of age and is explicit in its description of sexual acts.