Insightful newsletter of Drishtikone: Issue #238 - Internet as Human Right
You cannot have others put a target on your forehead as they prepare to shoot you and then complain about the atrocities! If the storm is coming, then raise the stakes, damn it!
Image by Judith Scharnowski from Pixabay
“You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.” ― James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room
A man was walking on the road. He saw this sexy woman walking on the other side. Taken over by his desires, he rushed to her and asked. “Will you sleep with me for a million dollars?” The woman coily replied “Absolutely!”
He then immediately said “How about for $10?” This enraged the woman. “What the heck do you think I am? A PROSTITUTE?”
“That I have already established, Ma’am,” he replied. “Now I am negotiating your price.”
The soul of the moral paragons are on sale. Mia Khalifa needs money. Greta Thunberg needs money. So does Rihanna. Someone pays. All of them don’t need to take their clothes off like Mia used to. They are ready to prostitute their morality. That should work.
Once a man who claimed he was close to Dhirubhai shared with me how someone from the Tatas walked up to Dhirubhai at a party and chided him for the three consecutive budgets that Pranab Mukherjee customized for Reliance (between 1982 and 1984).* Dhirubhai, as per this guy, smiled and replied. “You knew he was for sale, right? Why didn’t YOU buy him and gotten the budget for yourself? Shame on you!”
Yes, shame on India!
(* veracity of the story is not important, its import, however, is instructive)
global twitter storm
Yesterday, Rihanna, Greta Thunberg, and Mia Khalifa tweeted in solidarity with the Indian farmers.
Thunberg went a little further. She shared the “toolkit” that had been shared with her by her sponsoring agency. (Check her Toolkit here - Source)
The toolkit came with suggested tweets and photos that these people could use.
Greta and her oh-so-high morality are basically on sale in the market. As is the case with Rihanna and Mia Khalifa.
Someone paid for these women’s morality. And out came the outrage.
Now, what is interesting is that those who accessed the Google Docs link that Thunberg shared, they found one Nikita Jacob editing it. This lady has since deleted her Twitter account!
But is it just a one off conspiracy against India?
Internet as a Human Right - larger game
One of the problems we have in India with most analysts and commentators is that we don’t look at how the field of public policy and debate is changing and what the need for effective interventions are.
From Citizenship Amendment Act and Article 370 to Farm Bills, Shaheen Bagh to Singhu Border - the protests have been engineered and underlying fissures exploited.
The government has been pressurized by global and local commentaries before and during the so-called protests. And when the government has let the protests hit the roof, while collecting forensic evidence, the agencies have prosecuted the criminals.
However, it is losing a major battle of global polity debate in the process. A debate that is being structured in a very deep way to masterfully create mechanisms for a neo-colonial rule.
Let us look into this seriously.
The question of disruption of internet as a violation of Human Rights within the United Nation’s framework is not up for debate. It has been forced on people via a resolution in July 2016.
When it comes to branding governments or nation states as violators of Human Rights, when they shut down internet, we cannot start debating why it is not an issue.
IN the geopolitical sense, where “Incubator Babies” strategies (read Issue #224 - The Tech Armageddon to find out the context) are played out to destroy nations and governments, this is a very consequential resolution.
The disruptions have been defined and clearly laid out.
Based on those terms and context, when the data was compiled for past few years, the charts were self-explanatory.
This is where India was in 2016-17.
We may be coming to a point where the government’s explanation sans the propaganda backup that the adversaries enjoy, may actually be a tool to further implicate it. What the government says could be an indication of it being complicit in violation of human rights!
Government cannot be the only communication agent when its adversaries are using complex propaganda techniques and lobbying groups to route the message through foreign media, writers, government officials, Heads of states (Trudeau), five-star activists, performers and even porn stars.
We know what the truth is. We know the situation is far more nuanced than it seems in this diagram. But the truth does not matter. It did not matter whether babies had been thrown out of incubators or not and if the one who accused Saddam’s forces was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family or not. The fact of history is that that egregious lie was enough of a reason to raze Iraq to the ground. Righteously by the international forces!
So, government’s own version is not only not enough. It can become a problem! Propaganda countering cannot be done by the government agencies.
The push back needs professionals and many different channels.
The frameworks that put Internet as a Human Right at the center of future governance benchmarks are being solidified with active participation of many agencies. Including, and led by the United Nations.
Those who are behind this mischievous maneuvering realize that UN really doesn’t have enough teeth when it comes to nations and their power. So, they are now looking to target companies that abide by local rules, laws and executive orders but are not “following UN principles on Human Rights”
Although governments dictate blackouts, internet service providers are the ones who implement them. Companies frequently justify compliance with these requests as a matter of following local law, suggesting that they risk losing their licenses if they don’t. But providers should heed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the most widely accepted set of rights standards for businesses, and reconsider their blind cooperation. After all, the UN Human Rights Council has unequivocally condemned measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to or dissemination of information online as a violation of international human rights law. (Source)
What this means is that UN and its Human Rights Council is going above and beyond the power of states and their judicial, executive and legislative branches to directly target the “service providers.”
If Reliance Jio, or Airtel or Vodafone idea goes ahead and abides by the law enforcement orders from the Indian government, they can be held to have run afoul with the UN human rights standards.
This may be used as a tool to put several sanctions against such companies globally. For example, if this whole game plays out, it could be possible for UN to freeze bank accounts of Reliance Jio and its executives because they did not follow the principles of Human Rights and “sided with the anti-democratic Government of India.” Now, do you understand the basis being built for demonization of “Adani and Ambani”? Those billionaires like perfect idiots can’t even do a fraction of George Soros despite their means and power while he can brazenly delegitimize them. That showcases their level of vision!
What we are witnessing in effect is delegitimizing of the governing branches of nation states and force imperial rule across the world!
Organizations linked to George Soros are also involved in furthering this whole idea (Source)
This whole policy structure, which is fundamentally imperialist in nature, is backed by atrocity literature dished out by those whose work is flawed and compromised. For example, this “expert” warned about the whole internet shutdown situation and how it will backfire for India and result in violence. (Source)
The data as of August 2020 clearly showed a remarkable decline in the violence in Kashmir. The terrorist violence incidents fell to 70 vs 170 in the same period in 2019. The number of active terrorists in the valley were below 200 as opposed to reports of over 350 waiting in the terror launch pads. (Source)
All that does not matter in the overall global perception context because not just the James Mill type writers (see yesterday’s newsletter) in Washington Post, NYT etc were sharing warnings and spreading falsehoods, the internal fake news factories like TheWire and ThePrint were doing the same as well.
What is the way out?
You cannot put this genie back in the box. It - the internet and technology - have become far bigger than we can imagine. They define the world today. And the powerful corporations and their political lackeys decide their rules.
The only way out is to either deconstruct these large corporations using the moral arguments as the basis and creating a large enough “victim card” or becoming a bigger power than everyone else around.
Amnesty International’s take on how the large tech companies are endangering the human rights by their “surveillance” monopoly is a great lever to work on - Facebook and Google’s pervasive surveillance poses an unprecedented danger to human rights. Read this report on Surveillance Giants by Amnesty. The smaller countries and those who still do not have the wherewithal to push back on this global neo-colonial war should use this as the basis!
The other part is to unleash multiple channels of propaganda. Everybody and their souls are purchaseable. Buy them. Patriotism in US, UK, Canada and EU have a price. The powerful have already paid for some and are wielding that power.
When you are in Mahabharat, you cannot use of monkhood principles. Do to Karna what is needed.
market corner: 10 quick bytes
Amazon’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos to step down as CEO; Andy Jassy named successor - more
The Dispute Resolution Committee proposed to be set up in the Budget will have multiple benches which will give an opportunity to small taxpayers to settle tax matters without going through the appellate process - more
Modi govt’s Rs 3 lakh cr ECLGS scheme - launched May 2020 - for MSMEs crosses three-fourth mark in sanctioned loan amount - more
NHAI eyes high-quality standards in highway development; announces up to Rs 10 crore fine for major lapses - more
AstraZeneca's first vaccine dose cuts Covid transmission by 67%: Study - more
Over 2 cr farmers benefitted from govt's MSP procurement in 2019-20 - more
SpaceX loses another Starship prototype as it explodes during landing - more
Microsoft backs Australian plan to make Google pay for news - more
India’s service sector activity continued to expand in January on the back of new work even as employment declined further and exports contracted - more
Redmi India names Sonu Sood as its brand ambassador for smartphones - more
nota bene
Anti-ship Missile Demo: The Indian Navy's Long Range Maritime Reconnaissance aircraft Ilyushin 38SD successfully fired Combat Kh35E anti-ship missiles during the ongoing Theatre level Readiness and Operational Exercise 2021 (TROPEX-21), a defence statement said (Source)
NRI is NASA’s Chief of Staff: NASA’s newly appointed acting Chief of Staff is Indian-American scientist Bhavya Lal. She will be responsible for the day to day operations at the US space agency headquarters and will work towards shaping its strategic direction. The new appointee, Lal has served as a member of Biden Presidential Transition Agency Review Team for NASA and oversaw its transition under the administration of President Joe Biden. (Source)
Government warns Twitter: The Centre on February 3 sent a notice to Twitter for reinstating accounts and Tweets supporting the farmers’ protest despite a directive by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) to block them for posing a threat to public order. The notice warns the social media platform of penal action for "non-compliance of directions issued under section 69-A of the IT Act”. (Source)
USTR Push-back: India does not agree with the United States Trade Representative (USTR) report that the country's two percent equalization levy on foreign e-commerce firms discriminates against American companies, Commerce Secretary Anup Wadhawan has said (Source)
Yet another Mutation: Public Health England is investigating cases of coronavirus with 'worrying' new genetic changes that have been found in some regions of the UK. Tests show they have a mutation, called E484K, that is already seen in the South Africa variant. Although this change may reduce vaccine effectiveness, the current ones in use should still work, say experts. (Source)
video corner: what Balakot attack did and how it was confirmed
So many issues were brought up about the Balakot attacks by the Indian Airforce. So much propaganda was done against India. No one explained what happened and the evidence of all that like Abhijit explains.
In such situations, it is people Abhijit Iyer who needs to head the government communication engine to get the facts across.
One wishes that the Indian media did a better - more professional - job of such content!
Today’s ONLINE PAPER: Check out today’s “The Drishtikone Daily” edition. - THE DRISHTIKONE DAILY
SUPPORT DRISHTIKONE: If you consider our work important and enriching and would like to contribute to our expenses, please click on the button below to go to the page to send in your contribution. You can select the currency (for example, INR or USD, etc) and the amount you would like to contribute. Contribute to Drishtikone
If you like this post - please share it with someone who will appreciate the information shared in this edition
If you like our newsletter, please share it with your friends and family