Podcasts about alt news

In the wake of the most intense India-Pakistan escalation in two decades, experts are still trying to make sense of the role that the information war played in the physical one. In this episode, Tech Policy Press Associate Editor Ramsha Jahangir speaks to two experts from India and Pakistan who tirelessly navigated the deluge of rumor and disinformation during the crisis, and who came away with thoughts about the role of social media platforms and the incentives they create, particularly in times of conflict:Pratik Sinha, co-founder and editor at Alt News—one of India's major fact-checking websites, and Asad Baig, founder of Media Matters for Democracy—a non-profit focused on media literacy and development in Pakistan.Sinha and Baig reflect on how the India-Pakistan conflict played out across digital platforms—and how it revealed a deeper, more dangerous dysfunction in the information ecosystem.

The U.K.'s The Guardian newspaper announced earlier this month that it will no longer be posting on X, claiming that it is “a toxic media platform” and that its owner, Elon Musk, “has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.” Is social media a useful tool or is it becoming a threat to democratic societies? Here we discuss the question Guests: Alan Rusbridger, Editor of Prospect Magazine, former editor-in-chief of The Guardian and a member of Meta's Oversight Board, which makes content and policy recommendations for Facebook, Instagram, and Threads; Pratik Sinha, co-founder and editor of AltNews, a fact-checking website Host: Priscilla Jebaraj

They started out busting misinformation. Then, as fake news became weaponized at an industrial scale, they become warriors not just for truth, but for a better society. Mohammed Zubair and Pratik Sinha join Amit Varma in episode 396 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about their life, their work and their country. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Mohammed Zubair on Twitter, Instagram and Alt News. 2. Pratik Sinha on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Alt News. 3. Alt News. 4. Fighting Fake News — Episode 133 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Pratik Sinha). 5. Sample SSR conspiracy theory: He's alive! 6. PeerTube and BigBlueButton. 7. India Needs Decentralization -- Episode 47 of Everything is Everything. 8. Mohammed Zubair interviewed by Alishan Jafri. 9. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India — Akshaya Mukul. 10. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism — Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 11. Whatever happened To Ehsan Jafri on February 28, 2002? — Harsh Mander. 12. Hussain Haidry, Hindustani Musalmaan — Episode 275 of The Seen and the Unseen. 13. Kashi Ka Assi — Kashinath Singh. 14. Kaveri's thread about the new scam in town. 15. BR Ambedkar's BBC interview. 16. The Life and Times of Teesta Setalvad — Episode 302 of The Seen and the Unseen. 17. Aakar Patel Is Full of Hope — Episode 270 of The Seen and the Unseen. 18. The Swiss Family Robinson -- Johann David Wyss. 19. The Historybook -- Jannik Hastrup. You can SUPPORT ALT NEWS by donating here. This episode is sponsored by The 6% Club, which will get you from idea to launch in 45 days! Amit's newsletter is active again. Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new video podcast. Check out Everything is Everything on YouTube. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘Fighting Leviathon' by Simahina.

Using Food as a Weapon and Justin Trudeau Worried About Alt. News Join Jim as he discusses the world leaders plans to possibly use food as a weapon against the common people of the world, Justin Trudeau's coming out against alternative media and much more!

Using Food as a Weapon and Justin Trudeau Worried About Alt. News Join Jim as he discusses the world leaders plans to possibly use food as a weapon against the common people of the world, Justin Trudeau's coming out against alternative media and much more!

Bryce Eddy is joined by Are David to discuss his news organization, Upward News, and how the Legacy Media has self-destructed, leaving a vacuum that Alt Media needs to fill before the globalists do. Putting the "MAN" back in mankind! Visit https://www.friendofbryce.com/ to talk to an Alliance member and get a free values alignments report to make a change TODAY. BE A THREAT TO THE GREAT RESET! Please subscribe and follow us on the following platforms! Rumble - https://rumble.com/c/TheBryceEddyShow Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0S9VEEBrxdXaKdLvSHPue6 Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bryce-eddy-show/id1635204267 Google Podcast - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9vbW55LmZtL3Nob3dzL2xpYmVydHktc3RhdGlvbi9wbGF5bGlzdHMvbGliZXJ0eS1zdGF0aW9uLnJzcw Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thebryceeddyshow/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The world is ending but the Airports are shining so people are happy. The Buffalo revisits the horror that was Venkatesh Prasad bowling in the 90s, Rajdeep Sardesai is back with his boomer takes & we discuss Md Zubair's therapists' trauma. An all around banger episode!

Dave and Susan Mayorga of Astrolunachick's Guide to the Universe Podcast goes over celeb and public figure Elon Musk's astrological chart. Susan will be doing astro surgery on the chart of The Elon #elonmusk #YouTube #Twitter

Welcome to Page 10! A show where our panel discusses news and current affairs and offer you a TL;DR of stories you might have read... or missed! in this edition of Page 10 , Abbas is joined by Meghnad and Journalist & Researcher at ALT News, Abhishek Kumar to discuss the following stories-  Propaganda Ads on Facebook (Abhishek's Twitter thread) : https://twitter.com/AbhishekSay/status/1642879143108055041 Changes in the NCERT Textbooks https://indianexpress.com/article/education/references-to-gujarat-riots-purged-from-social-science-books-for-ncert-classes-6-12-8538768/  'Show Your Degree' Campaign by Aam Aadmi Party:  https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2023/04/09/show-your-degree-aap-launches-campaign-days-after-kejriwal-fined-by-gujarat-hc.html Subscribe to All About Now on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0sxICr-rvhR9dvBsx4uoTA Follow Abhishek on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AbhishekSay Follow Abbas on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abbasmomin88/ Follow Meghnad on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meghnads/ New Editions every Monday!  The show is available across platforms:Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | JioSaavn | See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gang starts with RaGa ppt at Cambridge. Then talk Sisodia arrest. With special guest Kalim Ahmed from AltNews who talks about his work and personal challenges around working in such a high stress environment. We move to the ecosystem of nationalist influencers and white travel vlogers praising India. How is G20 being covered in India and abroad. And finally talk of our personal uncle based trauma events.

Vivek Agnihotri est réalisateur de cinéma en Inde. Il est devenu un coutumier des infox : auteur de l'un des plus grands succès du cinéma indien l'année dernière, il se vante régulièrement de recevoir de fausses récompenses, pour se faire mousser. De notre correspondant à New Delhi,Vivek Agnihotri est le réalisateur de The Kashmir Files, un film qui relate les persécutions et assassinats de centaines d'hindous par les séparatistes musulmans de la région du Cachemire au début des années 1990. Le cinéaste affirme que l'ampleur de ces faits a toujours été cachée par la gauche bien pensante, et que c'est en fait un « génocide » d'hindous qui s'est déroulée au Cachemire. Il présente donc The Kashmir Files comme un film militant, et les hindous comme des victimes d'un complot entre la gauche et les musulmans, destiné à ne pas révéler cette vérité. Cela lui a offert un soutien exceptionnel, logistique et idéologique, de la part du gouvernement nationaliste hindou. The Kashmir Files a toutefois été qualifié de film de propagande par le président du jury du plus grand festival international indien, du fait de sa description manichéenne des musulmans du cachemire.S'inventer des lauriersLe 10 janvier dernier, Vivek Agnihotri tweete que The Kashmir Files a été sélectionné pour les Oscars, et tous les acteurs choisis dans la catégorie des meilleurs acteurs, en publiant une capture d'écran tronquée où sont écrits ces noms. Cela a rapidement enflammé la toile, car Vivek Agnihotri est suivi par près de 900 000 abonnés sur Twitter. Et des messages ont commencé à fleurir pour célébrer la sélection d'un film indien aux Oscars, qui prend la défense des hindous.La réalité est toutefois bien différente : The Kashmir Files n'a été sélectionné dans aucun jury ou public. Il se trouve seulement dans la liste d'une centaine de longs métrages qui sont éligibles aux Oscars, pour la simple raison qu'ils durent plus de 40 minutes et ont été diffusés aux États-Unis pendant sept jours.Le cinéaste a récidivé le 21 février dernier : il annonce que son film a reçu le prix du meilleur film au festival Dada Saheb Phalke, mais a cité le prix Dada Saheb Phalke. Or les deux choses sont différentes : le festival est un événement privé, de moindre ampleur, alors que le prix du même nom est l'un des plus prestigieux. Encore une fois créant la confusion pour se faire mousser.Des mensonges contreditsPlusieurs plateformes de vérification de l'information, comme Alt News, corrigent régulièrement les affirmations de Vivek Agnihotri. Mais cela arrive souvent des jours après ses tweets enflammés, et l'information a déjà eu le temps de circuler en boucle sur beaucoup de télévisions en continu, qui soutiennent cette cause nationaliste hindou.Et même après ces contradictions factuelles, Vivek Agnihotri ne retire pas ses tweets, ni ne les corrige. Au contraire, il attaque : il a récemment publié un sondage, par lequel il demandait à ses abonnés de choisir ce qui est le plus dangereux pour l'humanité : les terroristes ou les vérificateurs de l'information. Un énoncé qui fait froid dans le dos.► À lire aussi : Singapour censure un film indien stigmatisant les musulmans du Cachemire

She's been a novelist, a playwright, a critic, an essayist, a memoirist, a journalist, a writer for cinema and a historian of theatre -- in both English and Marathi. Shanta Gokhale joins Amit Varma in episode 311 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about her remarkable life and times. (For full linked show notes, go to SeenUnseen.in.) Also check out: 1. Shanta Gokhale on Amazon, Wikipedia and her own website. 2. One Foot on the Ground -- Shanta Gokhale. 3. Living With Father: A Memoir -- Shanta Gokhale. 4. आमची आई : इंदिरा गोपाळ गोखले -- Shanta Gokhale. 5. The Engaged Observer: The Selected Writings of Shanta Gokhale -- Edited by Jerry Pinto. 6. Rita Velinkar (Marathi) (English) -- Shanta Gokhale. 7. Tya Varshi/Crowfall (Marathi) (English) -- Shanta Gokhale. 8. Playwright at the Centre: Marathi Drama from 1843 to the Present -- Shanta Gokhale. 9. Shivaji Park: Dadar 28: History, Places, People -- Shanta Gokhale. 10. Satyadev Dubey: A Fifty-Year Journey Through Theatre -- Edited by Shanta Gokhale. 11. The Scenes We Made: An Oral History of Experimental Theatre in Mumbai -- Edited by Shanta Gokhale. 12. Avinash: The Indestructible -- Shanta Gokhale. 13. Smritichitre: The Memoirs of a Spirited Wife -- Lakshmibai Tilak (translated by Shanta Gokhale). 14. The Loneliness of the Indian Man — Episode 303 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Nikhil Taneja). 15. The Adda at the End of the Universe -- Episode 309 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vikram Sathaye and Roshan Abbas). 16. Caste, Capitalism and Chandra Bhan Prasad — Episode 296 of The Seen and the Unseen. 17. The Never Never Nest -- Cedric Mount. 18. The Life and Times of Mrinal Pande — Episode 263 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Mrinal Pande). 19. The Female Eunuch -- Germaine Greer. 20. The Second Sex -- Simone de Beauvoir. 21. A Godless Congregation — Amit Varma. 22. Agarkar's Donkeys: A Meditation on God — Amit Varma. 23. The Life and Times of Urvashi Butalia — Episode 287 of The Seen and the Unseen. 24. The Kavita Krishnan Files — Episode 228 of The Seen and the Unseen. 25. Films, Feminism, Paromita — Episode 155 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Paromita Vohra). 26. The Will to Change — bell hooks. 27. The Loneliness of the Indian Man — Episode 303 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Nikhil Taneja). 28. The Three Languages of Politics — Arnold Kling. 29. Memories and Things — Episode 195 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aanchal Malhotra). 30. History of European Morals — WEH Lecky. 31. The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress — Peter Singer. 32. The Nurture Assumption — Judith Rich Harris. 33. Phineas Gage. 34. Don't think too much of yourself. You're an accident — Amit Varma's column on Chris Cornell's death. 35. The Rooted Cosmopolitanism of Sugata Srinivasaraju — Episode 277 of The Seen and the Unseen. 36. Dnyaneshwar, Tukaram, Arun Kolatkar and Dilip Chitre. 37. GN Devy on Amazon and Wikipedia. 38. Navyug Vachanmala and Arun Vachan -- PK Atre's series for elementary school and middle school respectively. 39. The State of Our Farmers — Episode 86 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Gunvant Patil). 40. Varun Grover Is in the House — Episode 292 of The Seen and the Unseen. 41. Hussain Haidry, Hindustani Musalmaan — Episode 275 of The Seen and the Unseen. 42. Storytel. 43. Pu La Deshpande, Raag Darbari and Kashi Ka Assi on Storytel. 44. The Refreshing Audacity of Vinay Singhal — Episode 291 of The Seen and the Unseen. 45. Stage.in. 46. A Doll's House -- Henrik Ibsen. 47. Looking for Ibsen in Maharashtra -- Shanta Gokhale. 48. The Vintage Book Of Indian Writing 1947 - 1997 -- Edited by Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West. 49. The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature -- Edited by Amit Chaudhuri. 50. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen on the creator ecosystem with Roshan Abbas, Varun Duggirala, Neelesh Misra, Snehal Pradhan, Chuck Gopal, Nishant Jain, Deepak Shenoy and Abhijit Bhaduri. 51. 1000 True Fans — Kevin Kelly. 52. 1000 True Fans? Try 100 — Li Jin. 53. Namdeo Dhasal on Amazon and Wikipedia. 54. Alice Munro on Amazon and Wikipedia. 55. Squid Game on Netflix. 56. Yada Kadachit (Part 1) (Part 2) -- Written and directed by Santosh Pawar. 57. Sakharam Binder (Marathi) (English) -- Vijay Tendulkar. 58. A Cricket Tragic Celebrates the Game -- Episode 201 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ramachandra Guha). 59. सप्तरंगी कोरिया एक अनुभव -- Sudha Hujurbajar-Tumbe. 60. Suyash Rai Embraces India's Complexity -- Episode 307 of The Seen and the Unseen. 61. Alice in Wonderland -- Lewis Carroll. 62. Charles Dickens, William Wordsworth, JB Priestley, George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare on Amazon. 63. The Lost Daughter -- Elena Ferrante. 64. The Lost Daughter -- The film by Maggie Gyllenhaal. 65. The Shadow Lines -- Amitav Ghosh. 66. Enid Blyton on Amazon. 67. This Life At Play: Memoirs -- Girish Karnad. 68. Sunil Shanbag and Shanta Gokhale in conversation with Girish Karnad. 69. Aranyer Din Ratri -- Satyajit Ray. 70. Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World -- Tim Harford. 71. A Room of One's Own -- Virginia Woolf. 72. A Passage to India -- EM Forster. 73. Kumar Shahani on Wikipedia and IMDb. 74. Middlemarch -- George Eliot. 75. Anna Karenina -- Leo Tolstoy. 76, Far From the Madding Crowd -- Thomas Hardy. 77. Vanity Fair -- William Makepeace Thackeray. 78. Ulysses -- James Joyce. 79. Picnic at Hanging Rock -- Peter Weir. 80. Why Read the Classics? -- Italo Calvino. 81. The Memoirs of Dr Haimabati Sen — Haimabati Sen (translated by Tapan Raychoudhuri). 82. Hercule Poirot on Amazon, Wikipedia and Britannica. 83. The Golden Age of Murder — Martin Edwards. 84. PG Wodehouse on Amazon, Wikipedia and Britannica. 85. A Meditation on Form — Amit Varma. 86. The Creative Process: A Symposium -- Edited by Brewster Ghiselin. 87. Nissim Ezekiel and Satyadev Dubey. 88. Avadhya -- CT Khanolkar. 89. Masaan — Directed by Neeraj Ghaywan and written by Varun Grover. 90. Tanjore Painting and Prabhakar Barwe. 91. Profit = Philanthropy — Amit Varma. 92. Where Have All The Leaders Gone? — Amit Varma. 93. What Have We Done With Our Independence? — Episode 186 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Pratap Bhanu Mehta). 94. The Gentle Wisdom of Pratap Bhanu Mehta — Episode 300 of The Seen and the Unseen. 95. Memoirs -- Habib Tanvir. 96. Sulabha Deshpande on Wikipedia and IMDb. 97. Sunil Shanbag on Wikipedia, IMDb and Instagram. 98. Atul Pethe on Book My Show and Facebook. 99. Shanta Gokhale's cameo in Ardh Satya (at 1:36:10). 100. My Friend Sancho -- Amit Varma. 101. Bend it Like Beckham -- Gurinder Chadha. 102. We Should Celebrate Rising Divorce Rates (2008) — Amit Varma. 103. Indira Sant on Amazon and Wikipedia. (And a translation of Ekti by Vinay Dharwadkar.) 104. The Loneliness of the Indian Woman — Episode 259 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shrayana Bhattacharya). 105. Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh — Shrayana Bhattacharya. 106. Private Truths, Public Lies — Timur Kuran. 107. Ranjit Hoskote, Arundhati Subramaniam and Jerry Pinto on Amazon. 108. Alt News, The News Minute and Scroll. 109. The Reflections of Samarth Bansal — Episode 299 of The Seen and the Unseen. 110. The Intellectual Foundations of Hindutva — Episode 115 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aakar Patel). 111. Aakar Patel Is Full of Hope — Episode 270 of The Seen and the Unseen. 112. Narendra Modi takes a Great Leap Backwards — Amit Varma (on Demonetisation). 113. Enabled by technology, young Indians show what it means to be a citizen — Amit Varma. 114. Beware of Quacks. Alternative Medicine is Injurious to Health — Amit Varma. 115. The Life and Times of Teesta Setalvad -- Episode 302 of The Seen and the Unseen. 116. Madame Bovary -- Gustave Flaubert. 117. The Brothers Karamazov -- Fyodor Dostoevsky. 118. The World as India -- Susan Sontag. In addition to the links above, Shanta recommended: Books: Women in Love (DH Lawrence), Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka), Ways of Seeing (John Berger), 84, Charing Cross Road (Helene Hanff), The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway), The Tin Drum (Gunter Grass), The Shadow Lines, The Glass Palace, Hungry Tide (all Amitav Ghosh), Solo (Rana Dasgupta), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera), Respected Sir (Naguib Mahfouz), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie), The Sense of an Ending, Flaubert's Parrot, The Noise of Time, Levels of Life (all Julian Barnes). Hindustani Classical Vocal: Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Amir Khan, Bhimsen Joshi, Padma Talwalkar, Dinkar Kaikini,  Venkatesh Kumar, Ulhas Kashalkar, Uday Bhawalkar (dhrupad), Mukul Shivputra. Carnatic Vocal: MS Subbulakshmi, DK Pattamal, TM Krishna, Sanjay Subrahmanyan. Instrumental: TR Mahalingam (flautist), Lalgudi Jayaraman (violin). Others: Geet Varsha (Kumar Gandharva), Aaj Jaane Ki Zid Na Karo (Farida Khanum), Dnyaneshwari (Lata Mangeshkar). This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! Episode art: ‘Reading the World' by Simahina.

Have you ever come across a post in social media which says, “The claim is disputed by third-party fact checkers”? Or have you ever come across the term fact checker? Are fact checkers journalists? To discuss these questions and the perils of fact checking and journalism in India, Anumita Goswami a doctoral researcher from Tampere University is joined by Pratik Sinha, co-founder of Altnews.in, a prominent fact checking site in India. Fact checking is a relatively new genre of journalism which has emerged with the advent of social media. India has a growing crop of fact checkers who have routinely debunked mis and disinformation online. Their work has been recognised globally with one of them, Altnews.in and its co-founders Pratik Sinha and Mohammad Zubair were deemed one of the favourites to win the Nobel Peace Prize by the Time Magazine. However, the fact checkers have also faced intimidation both from online violence and fear of arrest from the state. This episode sheds a light on doing fact checking under Modi's Hindu nationalist regime. To do so we are joined by Pratik Sinha one of the co-founders of Altnews.in. We will discuss questions relating to his organisation and its business model and fact checking as a genre of journalism. The episode will also cover, the problems he and his organisation have faced with the arrest of Zubair as well as the other forms of intimidation. Additionally, we also talk about the future of journalism and the journalistic community in the context of the former and the recent recognition they received. Pratik Sinha is one of the co-founders of Altnews.in, a prominent fact checking organisation in India. He started the organisation in 2017 with his friend Mohammad Zubair. Since then, he and his organisation has been routinely debunking mis and disinformation online. Their work was recently recognised when Time Magazine deemed one of the favourites to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. Anumita Goswami is a doctoral researcher at Tampere University. Her research covers topics of social media infrastructure (content moderation, terms of service etc), online disinformation and hate speech and fact checking in India. She was previously Google News Initiative-European Journalism Centre Fellow 2021 at Yle Kioski. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the University of Helsinki Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Have you ever come across a post in social media which says, “The claim is disputed by third-party fact checkers”? Or have you ever come across the term fact checker? Are fact checkers journalists? To discuss these questions and the perils of fact checking and journalism in India, Anumita Goswami a doctoral researcher from Tampere University is joined by Pratik Sinha, co-founder of Altnews.in, a prominent fact checking site in India. Fact checking is a relatively new genre of journalism which has emerged with the advent of social media. India has a growing crop of fact checkers who have routinely debunked mis and disinformation online. Their work has been recognised globally with one of them, Altnews.in and its co-founders Pratik Sinha and Mohammad Zubair were deemed one of the favourites to win the Nobel Peace Prize by the Time Magazine. However, the fact checkers have also faced intimidation both from online violence and fear of arrest from the state. This episode sheds a light on doing fact checking under Modi's Hindu nationalist regime. To do so we are joined by Pratik Sinha one of the co-founders of Altnews.in. We will discuss questions relating to his organisation and its business model and fact checking as a genre of journalism. The episode will also cover, the problems he and his organisation have faced with the arrest of Zubair as well as the other forms of intimidation. Additionally, we also talk about the future of journalism and the journalistic community in the context of the former and the recent recognition they received. Pratik Sinha is one of the co-founders of Altnews.in, a prominent fact checking organisation in India. He started the organisation in 2017 with his friend Mohammad Zubair. Since then, he and his organisation has been routinely debunking mis and disinformation online. Their work was recently recognised when Time Magazine deemed one of the favourites to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. Anumita Goswami is a doctoral researcher at Tampere University. Her research covers topics of social media infrastructure (content moderation, terms of service etc), online disinformation and hate speech and fact checking in India. She was previously Google News Initiative-European Journalism Centre Fellow 2021 at Yle Kioski. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the University of Helsinki Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

Have you ever come across a post in social media which says, “The claim is disputed by third-party fact checkers”? Or have you ever come across the term fact checker? Are fact checkers journalists? To discuss these questions and the perils of fact checking and journalism in India, Anumita Goswami a doctoral researcher from Tampere University is joined by Pratik Sinha, co-founder of Altnews.in, a prominent fact checking site in India. Fact checking is a relatively new genre of journalism which has emerged with the advent of social media. India has a growing crop of fact checkers who have routinely debunked mis and disinformation online. Their work has been recognised globally with one of them, Altnews.in and its co-founders Pratik Sinha and Mohammad Zubair were deemed one of the favourites to win the Nobel Peace Prize by the Time Magazine. However, the fact checkers have also faced intimidation both from online violence and fear of arrest from the state. This episode sheds a light on doing fact checking under Modi's Hindu nationalist regime. To do so we are joined by Pratik Sinha one of the co-founders of Altnews.in. We will discuss questions relating to his organisation and its business model and fact checking as a genre of journalism. The episode will also cover, the problems he and his organisation have faced with the arrest of Zubair as well as the other forms of intimidation. Additionally, we also talk about the future of journalism and the journalistic community in the context of the former and the recent recognition they received. Pratik Sinha is one of the co-founders of Altnews.in, a prominent fact checking organisation in India. He started the organisation in 2017 with his friend Mohammad Zubair. Since then, he and his organisation has been routinely debunking mis and disinformation online. Their work was recently recognised when Time Magazine deemed one of the favourites to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. Anumita Goswami is a doctoral researcher at Tampere University. Her research covers topics of social media infrastructure (content moderation, terms of service etc), online disinformation and hate speech and fact checking in India. She was previously Google News Initiative-European Journalism Centre Fellow 2021 at Yle Kioski. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the University of Helsinki

Have you ever come across a post in social media which says, “The claim is disputed by third-party fact checkers”? Or have you ever come across the term fact checker? Are fact checkers journalists? To discuss these questions and the perils of fact checking and journalism in India, Anumita Goswami a doctoral researcher from Tampere University is joined by Pratik Sinha, co-founder of Altnews.in, a prominent fact checking site in India. Fact checking is a relatively new genre of journalism which has emerged with the advent of social media. India has a growing crop of fact checkers who have routinely debunked mis and disinformation online. Their work has been recognised globally with one of them, Altnews.in and its co-founders Pratik Sinha and Mohammad Zubair were deemed one of the favourites to win the Nobel Peace Prize by the Time Magazine. However, the fact checkers have also faced intimidation both from online violence and fear of arrest from the state. This episode sheds a light on doing fact checking under Modi's Hindu nationalist regime. To do so we are joined by Pratik Sinha one of the co-founders of Altnews.in. We will discuss questions relating to his organisation and its business model and fact checking as a genre of journalism. The episode will also cover, the problems he and his organisation have faced with the arrest of Zubair as well as the other forms of intimidation. Additionally, we also talk about the future of journalism and the journalistic community in the context of the former and the recent recognition they received. Pratik Sinha is one of the co-founders of Altnews.in, a prominent fact checking organisation in India. He started the organisation in 2017 with his friend Mohammad Zubair. Since then, he and his organisation has been routinely debunking mis and disinformation online. Their work was recently recognised when Time Magazine deemed one of the favourites to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. Anumita Goswami is a doctoral researcher at Tampere University. Her research covers topics of social media infrastructure (content moderation, terms of service etc), online disinformation and hate speech and fact checking in India. She was previously Google News Initiative-European Journalism Centre Fellow 2021 at Yle Kioski. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the University of Helsinki Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

On September 10, Newslaundry and the Internet Freedom Foundation hosted FoE Con 2022, a forum that brought together media personalities and leading voices in the legal sphere to map the media and regulatory framework in contemporary India.The panel discussion “Court Stories” was moderated by Abhinandan Sekhri, founder of Newslaundry. He was joined by lawyers Rebecca John and Sonam Gupta, and Alt News cofounder Pratik Sinha. The panel discussed how press freedom in India is impacted by the misuse of laws, how journalists are at the receiving end of threats on social media, and the legal strategies available to tackle these issues. Rebecca remembered how when she started out as a lawyer, she was told “lawyers and journalists would never be touched because they have the potential to hit back”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brady and I discuss Mis-information, Dis-information, and Fake News. We discuss what it is, how it is used, and we are all a product and target for all of it. We discuss ways to avoid deception which leads to a philosophical discussion about truth, morals, and ethics. Brady takes a moment on the couch discussing how understanding the matrix for what it is can affect you on a personal level. Links and Resources: Definitely NOT real NEWS, but FUN to read: The Onion https://www.theonion.com/ The Weekly World News https://weeklyworldnews.com/ Mad Magazine https://www.madmagazine.com/ Fight Disinformation with Fact Checking Sites: Snopes (almost everything including politics, history, science, and technology) Snopes is one of the oldest fact-checking websites on the internet and it was started by David and Barbara Mikkelson in 1994. Apart from its huge repository of debunked stories, Snopes still tackles fake news and misinformation in a smart way. As fake information is getting more sophisticated in its language and tone, users are easily falling for it. So to counter the misinformation, Snopes offers detailed explanations from genuine sources (like WHO, CDC) and sets the facts straight. https://www.snopes.com/ Politifact (all about fact-checking political claims) PolitiFact is one of the largest political fact-checking newsrooms in the US and for its impressive work in 2008, the website was awarded Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. It’s run by the prestigious Poynter Institute (founder of International Fact-Checking Network) and reporters from the independent Tampa Bay Times. https://www.politifact.com/ FactCheck.org (political claims, rhetorics, deception, and lies) Primarily deals with political claims and rhetorics. However, the website also tries to bring accountability to public officials by exposing deception and their lies. It’s an attempt to bring more factual accuracy to the public discourse which is not just limited to politics, but also extends to TV ads, speeches, interviews, and news releases. https://www.factcheck.org/fake-news/ ProPublica (deep dive for hidden truth) ProPublica is an independent investigative online newsroom. More than a fact-checking website, but a portal where you can dive deep and find the hidden truth. For its far-reaching work in the public interest, ProPublica has been awarded several Pulitzer Prizes for public service, explanatory reporting, national reporting, and investigative journalism. As for the coverage, it goes beyond politics and looks into healthcare, education, finances, criminal justice and more. The website is funded by the Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, and other few philanthropic institutes. https://www.propublica.org/ OpenSecrets (politics) OpenSecrets finds the effects of money lobbying into electoral politics and fact-checks political speeches and claims. It tracks how a politician is being funded and who are the firms that are funneling money into politics. It was started by the Center for Responsive Politics (CSR) way back in 1983. And as a result of the long operation, OpenSecrets has now one of the largest public databases of donors and political beneficiaries. https://www.opensecrets.org/ Washington Post Fact Checker (critical analysis to what politicians have said this week) Fact-checking column under diplomatic correspondent, Glenn Kessler. It does not fact-check every claim on politics and economy, instead the website offers critical analysis to what politicians have said this week. It tries to underline facts and context against a seemingly factful narrative. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/ Full Fact (Fact-checking website focused on the UK and Europe) A one-stop online portal where you can find information on a wide variety of topics. Full Fact is quick to debunk claims with well-resourced articles and by citing research papers by academics and professionals. So, no matter if it’s a post about technology, medicine or some supernatural power, Full Fact sets the facts straight in a timely manner. It’s a team of independent fact-checkers and campaigners who find a multitude of viral posts from social media and expose them to counter misleading people on the internet. Full Fact runs a “Viral Posts on Facebook” page where it lists out all the outrageous claims and debunks them with detailed explanation and authentic sources. https://fullfact.org/ and for most recent https://fullfact.org/latest/ Alt News (fake claims and political misinformation in India) Alt News is also one of the few fact-checking websites in India which is certified by IFCN (International Fact-Checking Network). It’s run by Pravda Media Foundation and offers its fact-checking service in both English and Hindi. As for funding, Alt News primarily relies on user donations and other independent media trusts. The website is also in partnership with WhatsApp for busting fake news on its chat platform. Apart from that, Alt News regularly debunks claims made on social media platforms covering science, education, and society at large. https://www.altnews.in/ BOOM FactCheck (fact-checking website in India) This is a fact-checking website in India that exposes fake news on digital platformsIt. BOOM is a signatory of the IFCN Code of Principles and sticks to a high standard of fact-checking methodology. The website is run by Data journalist, Govindraj Ethiraj who earlier worked at Bloomberg. And like other fact-checking websites, Boom also relies on ads and user donations. Apart from this, Boom has a tie-up with WhatsApp to fight the war of misinformation. Boom offers its service in three languages i.e. English, Hindi, and Bengali. Further, it covers the current news cycle, political rhetorics, viral claims made on social media, urban legends, myths, and rumors. https://www.boomlive.in/ SM Hoax Slayer (fake information on social media platforms) SM Hoax Slayer is quick to debunk the claim and update the users through its social media channels. According to the founder, the project started as a place to puncture harmless lies, pranks, and rumors, but soon it developed into a full-fledged fact-checking website. Many mainstream newspapers and media houses including Aaj Tak and Navbharat Times cite SM Hoax Slayer as a reliable source for busting fake news. Coming to funding, SM Hoax Slayer is mostly run by volunteers and funded by user donations and ads. https://smhoaxslayer.com/ Reuters Fact Check (international news fact checking) https://www.reuters.com/fact-check Picks of the Week: Brady's Picks Tobii Pro: Optimizing User Experience and Advertising Research with Eye Tracking https://youtu.be/ConsSlIf6n4 Hotjar: Website Heatmaps & Behavior Analytics Tools https://www.hotjar.com/ Robert's Pick: House of the Dragon: The Game of Thrones prequel https://www.hbo.com/house-of-the-dragon Cool Shit: Realtime Global Cyber Attack Map https://threatmap.checkpoint.com/

Season 1, Episode 13Mis-information, Dis-information, and Fake News. You are a product and target for all of it.Brady and I discuss Mis-information, Dis-information, and Fake News. We discuss what it is, how it is used, and we are all a product and target for all of it. We discuss ways to avoid deception which leads to a philosophical discussion about truth, morals, and ethics. Brady takes a moment on the couch discussing how understanding the matrix for what it is can affect you on a personal level.Links and Resources:Definitely NOT real NEWS, but FUN to read:The Onionhttps://www.theonion.com/The Weekly World Newshttps://weeklyworldnews.com/Mad Magazinehttps://www.madmagazine.com/Fight Disinformation with Fact Checking Sites:Snopes(almost everything including politics, history, science, and technology)https://www.snopes.com/Politifact(all about fact-checking political claims)https://www.politifact.com/FactCheck.org(political claims, rhetorics, deception, and lies)https://www.factcheck.org/fake-news/ProPublica(deep dive for hidden truth)https://www.propublica.org/OpenSecrets(politics)https://www.opensecrets.org/Washington Post Fact Checker(critical analysis to what politicians have said this week)https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/Full Fact(Fact-checking website focused on the UK and Europe)https://fullfact.org/and for most recenthttps://fullfact.org/latest/Alt News(fake claims and political misinformation in India)https://www.altnews.in/BOOM FactCheck(fact-checking website in India)https://www.boomlive.in/SM Hoax Slayer(fake information on social media platforms)https://smhoaxslayer.com/Reuters Fact Check(international news fact checking)https://www.reuters.com/fact-checkPicks of the Week:Brady's PicksTobii Pro: Optimizing User Experience and Advertising Research with Eye Trackinghttps://youtu.be/ConsSlIf6n4Hotjar: Website Heatmaps & Behavior Analytics Toolshttps://www.hotjar.com/Robert's Pick:House of the Dragon: The Game of Thrones prequelhttps://www.hbo.com/house-of-the-dragonCool Shit:Realtime Global Cyber Attack Maphttps://threatmap.checkpoint.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

India Policy Watch #1: Futility Of Fighting Lies Insights on burning policy issues in India— RSJI have been following the case of Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of the fact-checking site Alt News with interest. He was granted interim bail by the Supreme Court a couple of weeks back. You can read more about the story here. I border on free speech absolutism, so my opinion on this case, as with many other similar cases in India, is simple. No one should be jailed for any speech unless they are violating Mill’s harm principle. In his essay On Liberty, Mill wrote:“That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind is warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”But free speech is not the only reason I have brought up the case of Mohammed Zubair here. The case illustrates a point I have made before in this newsletter: while countering lies with fact checks is a noble, worthwhile endeavour, it means nothing in an environment where people are intoxicated with half-truths and grand illusions about a ‘real’ past or an ‘imagined’ future.A few years back, I came across this wonderful essay ‘Monopolize the Pretty Lies’ by Bryan Caplan. While I understood it back then, reading it again now is insightful. Caplan writes:What then is the primary purpose of censorship?  It’s not to suppress the truth – which has little mass appeal anyway.  The primary purpose of censorship is to monopolize the pretty lies.  Only the powers-that-be can freely make absurdly self-aggrandizing claims. Human beings like to say – and think – whatever superficially sounds good.  Strict censorship allows rulers to exploit this deep mental flaw.  If no one else can make absurd lies, a trite slogan like, “Let’s unite to fight for a fantastic future!” carries great force.  Truthful critics would have to make crowd-displeasing objections like, “Maybe competition will bring us a brighter future than unity,” “Who exactly are we fighting?,” or “Precisely how fantastic of a future are we talking about?”  A rather flaccid bid for power!  Existing rulers tremble far more when rebels bellow, “Join us to fight for a fantastic future!”This is why I think this case won’t go anywhere. It will fizzle out here because fact-checkers don’t really matter. What will matter is if there is a counter-narrative based on dubious claims of an equally fantastic future. It explains why AAP is seen as a credible threat by the BJP.Caplan ends his essay with a rather pessimistic view of free speech:Doesn’t this imply that free speech is overrated?  Yes; I’ve said so before.  While I’d like to believe that free speech leads naturally to the triumph of truth, I see little sign of this.  Instead, politics looks to me like a Great Liars’ War.  Viable politicians defy literal truth in virtually every sentence.  They defy it with hyperbole.  They defy it with overconfidence.  They defy it with wishful thinking.  Dictators try to make One Big Political Lie mandatory.  Free speech lets a Thousand Political Lies Bloom.Yes, freedom of speech lets me make these dour observations without fear. I’m grateful for that.  Yet outside my Bubble, dour observations fall on deaf ears.  Psychologically normal humans crave pretty lies, so the Great Liars’ War never ends.I guess once you’ve gotten into the chakravyuha of the Mahabharata of lies, there’s no way of getting out. You will only find an avalanche of prettier lies from all sides engulfing you in future. India Policy Watch #2: Nature Of Representation Insights on burning policy issues in India— RSJDroupadi Murmu, the NDA presidential nominee, was elected as the 15th President of India a couple of weeks back. Murmu, a tribal leader from Mayurbhanj, Odisha, had earlier served as the governor of Jharkhand. That a woman from a historically marginalised section of the society now occupies the highest constitutional post is a moment to celebrate in the 75th year of Indian independence. It shows a kind of deepening of democracy. This is because we associate democracy with representation. It was no surprise therefore that a lot of opinion pieces reflected this sentiment while talking about her. Here’s Aditi Narayani Paswan writing for the Indian Express:“Droupadi Murmu is not just a source of inspiration for us; her life and struggle, determination and success in the face of great odds represent the hope and promise of New India.Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Indian democracy has become more representative and inclusive. The BJP represents the New India of prosperity, equality and socio-economic mobility, reflecting the true embodiment of samajik samarasta (social harmony). A tribal woman succeeding a Dalit to the highest constitutional post of the nation is a remarkable testimony to the deepening roots of Indian democracy.”And here’s a piece in Outlook:“What is really significant for us to understand here is that Murmu’s victory is not merely the victory of a specific party to power. Rather its implications can be drawn deep down to the very philosophy of what India as an independent nation has been striving to practically achieve. Whether or not her victory can bring goals of that philosophy to fruition is a matter of time to tell. But at the moment, from the point of view of a modern, multicultural, multi-ethnic nation-state, Murmu’s victory is the victory of representation.”Origin StorySince we are all talking about the victory of representation, I thought it would be useful to go deeper into the idea itself. What does representation mean in a democracy? How useful is it? Does an increasing emphasis on identity in society mean a greater opportunity for democracies to be truly representative? Is there such a thing as too much representation? To understand this, we will go back to the modern conception of the state and, therefore, to Hobbes. There are good reasons to go back to ancient history and the Roman republic or the Roman empire while talking about representation. But the political theory of the time concerned itself with the question of who was fit to rule us from among the people who should be ruling us. It didn’t answer the question of how we find who was fit to rule us. The process didn’t matter much then. So, we start with Hobbes again. This is a familiar territory for this newsletter so forgive me for going over it again. For Hobbes, human life in the state of nature is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. We would be a ‘fractious multitude’ forever at war with each other for scarce resources because there would be no powerful force to keep us in order. The solution, Hobbes wrote, was for people to come together to form a pact, let’s call it the ‘commonwealth’, where they voluntarily give up some of their freedoms to a powerful entity called the ‘sovereign’ in exchange for protection against the violence that’s inevitable in the state of nature. So that’s how the State worked. There were the multitudes, a notion of the commonwealth, and then there was the sovereign. The sovereign was all-powerful but ruled because of the legitimacy of the commonwealth. If the sovereign itself became brutish, the multitudes might dismantle the commonwealth and look for another. Hobbes didn’t care much about how to search for the sovereign. It could be through a parliament, or it could be a monarch; it didn’t matter so long as it had absolute power to maintain order which was in turn voluntarily offered to them by the people. The enlightenment thinkers who followed Hobbes concerned themselves with two big ideas. One was individual liberty and how it should be protected and championed in the face of a powerful sovereign. The other was the separation of the ‘church’ from the State or how to ensure the sovereign doesn’t bow down to another power in the name of God. The revolutions and political reforms in the late 18th century Europe and North America were a result of the excesses of the sovereign and the propagation of these ideas within those societies. The primacy of individual liberty, the weakening of monarchy and the separation of the church led to the evolution of the modern, representative democracy where the people chose who would lead them. The people would be sovereign through the mode of representation. A system of checks and balances between the legislature, executive and judiciary would limit the concentration of power in any one person. This became the democratic model to emulate. The Problem Of RepresentationThe problem of representation wasn’t too difficult to solve in the early days of democracy. There was no universal suffrage, people lived in villages over generations, their representatives knew their issues well, and the people chose someone who presented the best option to address their concerns. There was very little information asymmetry. This model started fraying with increasing industrialisation and deepening of capitalism leading to greater social and geographic mobility. Cities with diverse populations, new professions, break down of the feudal structure in the countryside and universal suffrage followed. This meant it was difficult for any representative to know their people as well as before. Even the people couldn’t keep pace with all the information around them. Like Walter Lippman would write, there was a world outside, and there was a picture of it inside our heads. We make our decisions based on this picture which is a second-hand view of the world because we cannot see all of the world. Because of this, we search for an authentic messenger who can explain the real world to us. The elites use the media to present themselves as the authentic messengers and shape public opinion. It is this elite then who influence representation for the public. Once this model got established, we saw the elites dominate representation in democracies for most of the 20th century. This wheel turned in the last decade when the excesses of the financial system, the concentration of the benefits of globalisation, the proliferation of media and greater disparity in opportunities led to a populist backlash against the elites.The Three NarrativesThere are now three competing narratives on representation today. The first is the old Burkean point on the role of a representative of people. His speech to the electors of Bristol in 1774 is a classic on the role of a representative:“Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”This is the model of an independent representative with a mind of his own. They work with autonomy using their judgment to do what they think is best for their people.The second narrative is about the representative being either an expert or who will rely on experts for finding the best answers to the concerns of the public. This narrative strengthens when a nation is in crisis because of a war, economic failure or an emergency (health or environment, for instance). These don’t last long, and an expert eventually falls out of favour unless they reinvent themselves. The last narrative is that of a representative who is like you and me, the proverbial US politician who you could have a chat with over a beer. This is the literal interpretation of representation where fealty to someone is drawn because of how closely they resemble us. In a world where every expertise can be questioned, where independent thinking is viewed with suspicion, and tribal loyalty is the highest virtue, this literal view of representation is the strongest. Of course, this isn’t to say that these narratives of representation cannot come together in the shape of a single person who could satisfy all of them. But that looks increasingly rare around the world these days. What’s easier is for a representative to fashion themselves in closer affiliation to a particular identity among the people and use that to come to power. Over-indexing on any one of these narratives and choosing representatives on that basis is bad for democracy. It weakens the state. It is something we must keep in mind while celebrating representation.  Matsyanyaaya: A New East Asian TransitionBig fish eating small fish = Foreign Policy in action— Pranay KotasthaneThis week’s news was dominated by the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. If you weren’t sleeping under a rock, you would have already read many views, claims, blames, and counter-claims around this event. Here’s another one, but from an Indian realist perspective.The dominant narrative sees this visit as another episode of the ongoing US-China great power rivalry. In this narrative, Taiwan by itself, is secondary. All that matters is to place the blame either on China or the US for the escalations. One framing is that this visit was unnecessary, provocative, and irresponsible. The argument goes that the US has worsened the security situation of China’s neighbours by inviting the latter’s aggression. The opposite framing suggests that the blame rests solely on China’s expansionist tendencies over the last five years. China’s response of activating a military response ahead of the upcoming 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party only shows what this event is really about.Both frames of the dominant narrative are missing a crucial element: the choices of the Taiwanese people. The great power rivalry framing often ignores that other nation-states also have the agency to make their sovereign choices, even if doing so sometimes involves playing one great power against another. Ukraine’s case is similar. Some people blame NATO’s expansion on Russia’s borders, while others point out that an invasion has no justification (I share this view). But we forget that most Ukrainians themselves want to move away from Russia and get closer to the West. Any final analysis needs to take this factor into account. My colleague Nitin Pai made a critical argument in early March: ““NATO/EU shouldn’t have expanded” is an insult to the agency of countries that have willingly exercised their choice to join. Accepting their sovereign decisions is also realism. Pretty silly to call yourself a ‘realist’ while pretending sovereign states don’t exist/lack agency.”So is the case with Taiwan. Some analysts are stuck in the old times, believing that Taiwan is China’s “internal issue”. They haven’t been paying enough attention to Taiwan’s domestic polity. The Taiwanese “nation”—the imagined community in Benedict Anderson’s conception— has been carefully constructed over the last few years. Democracy, freedom, and deep connections with the broader world are key foundations of Taiwanese nationalism. This kind of nationalism is antithetical to the mainland’s nationalism. The two consecutive electoral victories of the ruling party—Tsai Ing-wen’s DPP—is a sign that this Taiwanese identity has taken shape. The DPP defeated the grand old Guomindang, a party that has been soft on China. This is what Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu said in a BBC interview a couple of days ago:"We want to maintain the status quo, which is that Taiwan has no jurisdiction over mainland China and the People's Republic of China (CCP) has no jurisdiction over Taiwan. That is the reality… On the index of freedom Taiwan is ranked number one, on economic freedom Taiwan is also at the top. Taiwanese people enjoy democracy, freedom and the value of human rights, that put Taiwan in the democratic world…. We have the will and the capability. We need other countries to provide Taiwan with defensive articles, but defending Taiwan is our responsibility, we are not asking other countries to sacrifice their lives to protect Taiwan."Read the lines again. They are definitely not about a small internal issue or a minor historical, ideological tussle. What About Pelosi’s VisitHaving understood the categorical shift in Taiwan’s politics, we can better understand Ms Pelosi’s visit. The Taiwanese government knew what they were getting into. Taiwan orchestrated the visit precisely to clarify to the world that its differences with China are irreconcilable. Even the Guomindang came out in support of the visit. Having been under the threat of a mainland invasion for over 73 years, the Taiwanese know China’s intentions and actions better than most others.The visit, by itself, was just symbolic. It didn’t involve a leader from the Biden administration. Moreover, both Pelosi and the Biden administration made it clear that they are not reversing the “One China” principle. It was China that raised the stakes. China could’ve opted to let it pass by with a strong statement alone. But it chose to ratchet tensions, hoping that this tried-and-tested strategy would stare down Taiwan.But that was not to be. Taiwan and Pelosi called China’s bluff. And when that happened, China began conducting massive military drills, fired missiles and withdrew from important dialogue forums with the US. All this in response to just a symbolic visit by a legislators’ group! Just like the unsportsmanlike kid who walks away with his bat, ball and wickets after being adjudged out. (I know I’m breaking my injunction against anthropomorphising international relations.)How Should We in India Process This?Thus far, we have opted for our favourite position of taking a stance by not taking a stance. Foreign ministers of the US, Australia, and Japan jointly condemned China’s launch of missiles. The fourth Quad member was conspicuous by its absence.From an Indian perspective, Taiwan standing up to China’s expansionism is encouraging. India is familiar with China’s tantrums over visits by foreign diplomats. On every occasion a US Ambassador to India visits Arunachal Pradesh, the Chinese government gets riled up. Pelosi’s visit should be seen in the same context. China’s unreasonable demands and the disproportionate escalation when the demands aren’t heeded, deserve strong criticism short of any change in the “One China” formulation. At the same time, India should close the long-pending free-trade agreement with Taiwan. Its strategic value far outweighs the benefits of haggling over import duties.These words from Joseph Wu serve as a useful reminder to India and Indians:“Look at their[China’s] behaviour over Hong Kong, or claiming the East China Sea and the South China Sea. It is the typical expansionism of an authoritarian state.. Countries in this region need to watch out for what China is trying to do. Taiwan is not going to be the last piece in Chinese dream of expansionism.”Want to find out more about India and Taiwan? Start with this Puliyabaazi episode we recorded with Sana Hashmi, an Indian scholar of East Asian international relations (it’s in Hinglish). Earlier this year, Sana also anchored a comprehensive policy report analysing the India-Taiwan partnership for the Taiwan Asia Exchange Foundation. The report has twenty chapters on various facets of the relationship. I have co-written a chapter on semiconductors, while my colleague Shambhavi has a chapter on bilateral cooperation to tackle future pandemics. Finally, my colleagues have analysed a few cross-strait scenarios from an Indian national interest perspective in an excellent Takshashila Intelligence Estimate. Course Advertisement: Admissions for the Sept 2022 cohort of Takshashila’s Graduate Certificate in Public Policy programme are now open! Visit this link to apply.HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Blog] If you are interested in the semiconductor angle in the Taiwan-PRC tensions, we have a post on it in our High-tech Geopolitics newsletter. [Book] Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra Vogel is necessary reading to understand China better. [Tweet thread] Common mistakes we make in pronouncing Chinese names. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit publicpolicy.substack.com

In this week's ThePrint #ToThePoint, Vir Sanghvi explains why the arrest of Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair tells us that the very character of our democracy is at stake. As politicians have no respect for personal liberty and order arrests indiscriminately, it is alarming to see the inaction of the judiciary, he says. Read Vir Sanghvi's column here: https://theprint.in/the-fineprint/personal-liberty-in-india-is-ending-if-anyone-in-power-wants-to-fix-you-they-can-they-will/1057951/

In this episode, host Nidhi Suresh is joined by Newslaundry's Tanishka Sodhi and Pratyush Deep. Pratyush discusses his report from Assam, where a student was charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for allegedly backing banned separatist outfit United Liberation Front of Asom on social media. “The one line which led her to jail was apparently read by the police in the sense that she wanted to join ULFA at some point,” Pratyush says. He also discusses ULFA and notes much of the legacy media's apathy towards such stories. The discussion then shifts to Tanishka's report on Alt News cofounder Mohammed Zubair's bail hearing, and what transpired in the Supreme Court. This and a lot more as they talk about what made news, what didn't, and what shouldn't have.Tune in.Contribute to our NL Sena projects, Bulldozing a New Image in MP and The Yogi Who Has it All.Timecodes00:00:00 - Introduction00:01:50 - Assam students arrest 00:14:10 - Mohammed Zubair's bail00:32:41 - RecommendationsRecommendationsTanishka And Vernon's letters to his sonPratyushLand of Jade: A Journey from India through Northern Burma to ChinaNidhiOut of Cash and Out of Fuel Sri Lanka Runs on Patience Yo-Yo Ma - Bach: Cello Suite No. 1Produced, recorded and edited by Tehreem Roshan, edited by Umrav Singh. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hello, this is your daily dose of news from Onmanorama. Tune in to get updated about the major news stories of the day.

इस एपिसोड मे सुनिये, राष्ट्रपति चुनाव में जमकर क्रॉस वोटिंग, एनडीए उम्मीदवार मुर्मू का पलड़ा भारी, केरल में मिला मंकीपॉक्स का दूसरा मामला और आल्ट न्यूज वाले मोहम्मद जुबैर को सुप्रीम कोर्ट से राहत|

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry's Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal, Mehraj D Lone, and Anand Vardhan are joined by author Hilal Ahmed. They discuss rising religious intolerance and visible polarisation in India. “India is a highly diverse country to lead to such a situation,” says Hilal, responding to Abhinandan's question about whether the country was hurtling towards genocide. RecommendationsHilalNacohusIslam and Controversy: The Politics of Free Speech After Rushdie Main Azaad HoonManishaThe history of the politics of blasphemy in the Indian subcontinentBhadas4Media: Hindi media watchdog that thrives on guts and gossipMehrajDo we need a new theory of evolution?AnandStates, freebies and the costs of fiscal profligacyFact-Checking the Fact-CheckersRamanInside the Alt News office after Mohammed Zubair's arrestFunding to 'non-cooperation': One-sided reportage on Zubair, with help from anonymous sourcesZubair insulted ‘respected religious leader' Bajrang Muni's followers: UP police argue in Supreme CourtAbhinandanWhy Supreme Court's Nupur Sharma remarks are dangerousSocial Media Outbursts On Judges – Impact On Dispensation Of JusticeName's Bond, EM Bond: Like Roger Moore's spy roles, emerging markets deserve a fresh review. They are set for another solid run See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, host Basant Kumar is joined by Newslaundry's Nidhi Suresh and Ashwine Kumar Singh. They talk about Ashwine's story on Sudhir Chaudhary and what led to his resignation from Zee News. “Subhash Chandra's biggest issue with Sudhir was that he got bigger than the channel and that bothered Chandra to an extent that he asked Sudhir to host his own show alternate days a week,” says Ashwine. Ashwine also discusses his report on the money spent by the Punjab government on their campaign advertisements in the last two months. “There have been times when the AAP government in Punjab has spent more on the ads of the event than on the event itself,” he says.They also discuss Nidhi's report on how cofounder Mohammed Zubair's arrest has affected those working in the Alt News newsroom. “The absence of the person who everyday goes through social media and websites to identify fake news and then assign projects to his colleagues can affect the environment majorly, but Alt News is still trying to stand strong,” Nidhi says. This and a lot more as they talk about what made news, what didn't, and what shouldn't have.Tune in.Contribute to our NL Sena projects, Bulldozing a New Image in MP and The Yogi Who Has it All.Timecodes00:00:00 - Introduction00:02:28 - Sudhir Chaudhary's resignation from Zee News00:08:12 - Mohammed Zubair's case00:23:20 - Punjab government's ad spend00:54:00 - RecommendationsRecommendationsNidhiSomething Amiss In Zubair Case; Worrying That Many Judges Are Scared To Grant Bail : Justice Deepak GuptaAshwine‘I support Nupur Sharma' — how a single WhatsApp forward ‘led to Amravati chemist's murder'BasantIndia Today: Literature segmentProduced and recorded by Tehreem Roshan, edited by Samrendra K Dash and Umrav Singh. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this week's #NationalInterest, @ShekharGupta explains why nobody should be prosecuted, or jailed for their views and Mohammed Zubair should apply the same principle of what is offensive and avoid taking liberties with other people's gods too. Brought to you by  @Kia India  ----more----Read this week's National Interest here: https://theprint.in/national-interest/do-i-have-a-complaint-with-mohd-zubair-of-alt-news-heres-why-i-have-3-answers-no-no-yes/1031502/----more----Read Praveen Swami's article here: https://theprint.in/opinion/how-indias-first-blasphemy-murderer-was-made-pakistans-model-citizen/1022056/----more----https://theprint.in/national-interest/the-great-damagers-why-pakistan-will-debate-which-dictator-harmed-it-more-musharraf-or-zia/992000/----more----Read 50-Word's Edit here: https://theprint.in/50-word-edit/uk-must-cut-fiscal-deficit-rebuild-european-trade-just-tossing-out-captain-wont-help/1029954/----more----Watch Shivji Bihane Chale Palki song's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFPfRL9ySmo

Vivo moved the Delhi high court by the ED in connection with a money laundering case, Japanese PM Fumio Kishida strongly condemned the attack on the former PM Shinzo Abe, Supreme Court gave a temporary relief to Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair and other top news in today's bulletin.

Remember Aasij Mujitaba? The person who was behind the Shaheen Bagh riots & blockade? This individual has now started a new organization titles Miles2Smiles, aimed at crowdfunding and aiding illegal Rohingyas. M2S raised 1 crore in just 2 days! News now coming of his nexus with Zubair of Alt News! #shaheenbagh #jahangirpuri #M2S References: 1. https://twitter.com/thehawkeyex/status/1518233443443773440?s=20&t=x4oXYNNEWsLDukvRClAoWA

Big Story: We look at the arrest of Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News.Link-https://splainer.in/posts/2022/Arresting-Development Food For Thought: We talk about the accessibility and safety of abortions in India in context of the rollback of abortion rights in the US.Link- https://splainer.in/posts/2022/Rights--What-Rights- https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/what-happens-when-you-want-an-abortion-in-india/articleshow/91594937.cms Roast or ToastFave: 1) A brief history of women's eyebrows in art2) How an arrest uncovered an illegal Chinese club in Greater NoidaLeast Fave: The hottest boozy trend in LondonLink- https://hyperallergic.com/742148/a-brief-history-of-womens-eyebrows-in-art/ https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/chance-arrest-on-bihar-nepal-border-leads-tLinks One month free trial: https://splainer.in/referral/HYO2C6D Check out more at Daily SplainerFollow us on social media:Instagram | Twitter | Facebookhttps://www.instagram.com/splainerin/?hl=enhttps://twitter.com/splainerin?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthorhttps://www.facebook.com/splainerin/You can listen to this show and other awesome shows on the IVM Podcasts app on Android: https://ivm.today/android or iOS: https://ivm.today/ios, or any other podcast app.You can check out our website at https://shows.ivmpodcasts.com/featured

La Turquie a accepté de ne pas faire obstacle aux candidatures de la Suède et de la Finlande à l'OTAN. Une expansion vers l'est de l'OTAN semble plus probable. La Chine assouplit les restrictions COVIDpour les voyageurs internationaux. Les quarantaines ont été réduites et vendredi, le dirigeant Xi Jinping fera sa première incursion hors du continent – ​​à Hong Kong – depuis le début de la pandémie. Garuda Indonesia aurait redressé le navire. La compagnie aérienne soutenue par le gouvernement a réduit sa dette, réduit ses coûts et s'est penchée sur les voyages intérieurs. Un journaliste indien a été arrêté pour insulte à la religion. Le fondateur du site indien de vérification des faits Alt News, Mohammed Zubair, a déjà vécu cela auparavant, et les inquiétudes concernant la liberté des médias dans le pays grandissent. Les audiences du Congrès américain sur l'insurrection du 6 janvier ont fait un témoignage surprise. Un ancien assistant du chef de cabinet de Donald Trump a déclaré que le président de l'époque savait que ses partisans étaient armés, a tenté d'arracher le contrôle d'une voiture à son service de sécurité et a jeté une assiette contre un mur. La grève de l'énergie en Afrique du Sud est de retour dans les négociations. Les travailleurs d'Eskom ont été rappelés pour des négociations salariales après avoir lancé des bombes à essence sur les maisons des hauts gradés de l'entreprise de services publics. La journaliste de RADIOTAMTAM, Félicité VINCENT, a expliqué pourquoi le rebond du nombre de passagers prenant le ciel sera le plus lent en Afrique cette année Suivez l'actualité du continent en vous connectant aujourd'hui http://www.radiotamtam.org (c'est gratuit !) et en lisant notre dernière édition. Ensemble, mes chers amis, soutenez nous dès aujourd'hui, à partir de 1€ Pour continuer à s'efforcer de raconter des histoires convaincantes, provocantes et émouvantes – tout en faisant tout ce que nous pouvons pour nous assurer qu'elles atteignent les gens qui ont besoin de les entendre. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-pod-good-hiou/message

Top #news today: > Udaipur Man Beheaded For Post On Suspended BJP Leader Nupur Sharma> Shinde hints at Maharashtra return as Fadnavis meets governor> From uneasy to unbearable: Delhi heat at dangerous levels> Trump tried to grab steering wheel to go to US Capitol on January 6> Alt News co-founder Zubair remanded to four-day police custody over tweetListen here:@HindustanTimes #News #DailyNews #DailyUpdates #currentaffairs #Podcasts #HTSmartCast

On Cock & Bull today, we are joined by Ayushi Amin, Sriraam Padmanabhan, Silverie, & Abbas. Cyrus from the IVM Studio in Madrid today planned on getting Rafael Nadal to the podcast, but due to unforeseen circumstances, that could not happen. Talking about unforeseen circumstances, Silverie & Abbas both arrived super late at the studio. The show started with Silverie describing our panelists as correspondents and how Sriraam & Ayushi could be the hair correspondent & shipping correspondents, respectively, for the show. The panel further talked about Tanmay Bhat's streams, UNO's universal rules & regulations, the upcoming Barbie movie starring Ryan Gosling & Margot Robbie, and the trailer of Brahmastra. They also discussed the recent news about Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of AltNews, who got arrested for allegedly hurting religious sentiments. Tune in for this & much more!Check out Cyrus Says merch: ivm.today/3PLKo1mYou can follow Ayushi Amin on Instagram at @ayushia9You can follow Sriraam Padmanabhan on Instagram at @nsriraampYou can follow Antariksh on Instagram @antariksht: https://instagram.com/antarikshtYou can follow Abbas Momin on Instagram @antariksht: https://www.instagram.com/abbasmomin88/Do send in AMA questions for Cyrus by tweeting them to @cyrussaysin or emailing them at whatcyrussays@gmail.comDon't forget to follow Cyrus Broacha on Instagram @cyrus_broacha(https://www.instagram.com/cyrus_broacha)In case you're late to the party and want to catch up on previous episodes of Cyrus Says you can do so at: www.ivmpodcasts.com/cyrussaysYou can listen to this show and other awesome shows on the new and improved IVM Podcasts App on Android: https://ivm.today/android or iOS: https://ivm.today/ios

In light of cases against Nupur Sharma for her comments about Prophet Mohammed on Times Now and against Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair for his comments about Hindu seers, we look at how to define the right to free speech in our current political climate. As hate speech is becoming increasingly common, so are threats to free speech and press freedom. In the 2022 World Press Freedom index, India ranks at 150 out of 180 countries, falling several places over the years.  In this episode of TSIS, host Suryatapa Mukherjee speaks to V. Krishna Ananth. A former lawyer and a journalist, he now teaches history at the Sikkim University, Gangtok. Last year, he wrote a book called ‘Between Freedom and Unfreedom: The Press in Independent India' which chronicles the history of the Indian press. We look at what the law says about free speech and how our understanding of it has changed through history.  Kashmir is ground zero of press freedom clampdowns across India - Suno India Pegasus: Understanding the super spy that controls your phone - Suno India Nav-nirman Andolan of Gujarat, 1973-74: A new awakening | India Today Why the 1974 All-India Railway Strike Is Relevant Even Today | The Wire Article 19 in The Constitution Of India 1949 Section 124A in The Indian Penal Code Report of the Press Commission Part 1 1954 See sunoindia.in/privacy-policy for privacy information.

National Crime Records Bureau data showed that incidents of fake news and rumour circulation saw nearly a three-fold rise in 2020 over 2019. A total of 1,527 cases of fake news were recorded in 2020, compared to 486 cases in 2019 and 280 cases in 2018. Clearly, fake news and misinformation are a growing menace in India. But, what exactly qualifies as fake news? Let us find out. A lot of things you read online, especially in your social media feeds, might appear to be true. But often, they are not. Especially misleading are articles that read like and look like a news article. But, in fact, they are only mimicking a news article and are deliberately promoting false information. That is the strict and narrow definition, which says that any news article that is verifiably and intentionally false, and has been designed to manipulate your perception of real events, facts, and statements, qualifies as fake news. The phenomenon of fake news is closely associated with politics, especially in places where it is highly partisan. Therefore, some experts recommend that we avoid using the term fake news, as its close association with politics can lead to a very narrow definition that might not be adequate in describing the diverse forms of misinformation that are prevalent today. Instead, the term false information or misinformation might be preferable since it can refer to a diverse range of disinformation on topics such as the environment, health, and economics across all platforms and genres. While fake news is narrowly understood as false political news stories, the term misinformation, for example, can also cover WhatsApp forwards containing rumours and altered images. This broader definition is especially helpful when dealing with fake news and misinformation in the Indian context. According to experts, most misinformation in India comes in the form of images and videos, where the attached text blurb is most often the source of the misinformation. And, these are shared overwhelmingly over WhatsApp on mobile phones. Images and videos on the internet are often re-purposed to change their original context and then used to spread misinformation.   For example, Pakistani social media handles on February 27, 2019, shared a video which claimed to be showing a captured Indian Air Force pilot. These posts came after Pakistan claimed that it had shot down two Indian aircraft inside its airspace and arrested one pilot. However, an Alt News analysis of the video found that it was dated back to February 19. A day before the Aero India Show in Bengaluru when two Surya Kiran copters crashed during rehearsal, killing one pilot and injuring two others. The video shared on Pakistani social media was actually of a civilian in Bengaluru comforting one of the injured pilots who had parachuted out of his aircraft. Similarly, in January 2019, a viral video on Twitter gave

Buenos días, España es un programa informativo y de entretenimiento producido por RadioCadena y AltNews que se emite en más de 50 emisoras de España, 26 de ellas de FM. Secciones habituales de análisis de la actualidad con nuestros compañeros Sergio Fernández Riquelme, Yolanda Couceiro Morín y numerosos colaboradores que diseccionan la realidad para usted. Todo ello conducido por el periodista bilbaino Santiago Fontenla.

Buenos días, España es un programa informativo y de entretenimiento producido por RadioCadena y AltNews que se emite en más de 50 emisoras de España, 26 de ellas de FM. Secciones habituales de análisis de la actualidad con nuestros compañeros Sergio Fernández Riquelme, Yolanda Couceiro Morín y numerosos colaboradores que diseccionan la realidad para usted. Todo ello conducido por el periodista bilbaino Santiago Fontenla.

Buenos días, España es un programa informativo y de entretenimiento producido por RadioCadena y AltNews que se emite en más de 50 emisoras de España, 26 de ellas de FM. Secciones habituales de análisis de la actualidad con nuestros compañeros Sergio Fernández Riquelme, Yolanda Couceiro Morín y numerosos colaboradores que diseccionan la realidad para usted. Todo ello conducido por el periodista bilbaino Santiago Fontenla.

Buenos días, España es un programa informativo y de entretenimiento producido por RadioCadena y AltNews que se emite en más de 50 emisoras de España, 26 de ellas de FM. Secciones habituales de análisis de la actualidad con nuestros compañeros Sergio Fernández Riquelme, Yolanda Couceiro Morín y numerosos colaboradores que diseccionan la realidad para usted. Todo ello conducido por el periodista bilbaino Santiago Fontenla.

Buenos días, España es un programa informativo y de entretenimiento producido por RadioCadena y AltNews que se emite en más de 50 emisoras de España, 26 de ellas de FM. Secciones habituales de análisis de la actualidad con nuestros compañeros Sergio Fernández Riquelme, Yolanda Couceiro Morín y numerosos colaboradores que diseccionan la realidad para usted. Todo ello conducido por el periodista bilbaino Santiago Fontenla.

BUENOS DIAS ESPAÑA Completo 04/02/2022 Buenos días, España es un programa informativo y de entretenimiento producido por RadioCadena y AltNews que se emite en más de 50 emisoras de España, 26 de ellas de FM. Secciones habituales de análisis de la actualidad con nuestros compañeros Sergio Fernández Riquelme, Yolanda Couceiro Morín y numerosos colaboradores que diseccionan la realidad para usted. Todo ello conducido por el periodista bilbaino Santiago Fontenla.

India's fake news problem has been around for a while, but the production, dissemination and consumption exploded over the last decade. More than 400 million Indians now have access to and make use of the internet, but digital literacy and social media regulation are yet to catch up. So how exactly is misinformation or fake news spread? Who is producing this? How can social media companies help curb the spread of fake news? And what kind of policies should be put in place that can tackle fake news? Megha Bahree, Fellow at Esya Centre, speaks to Pratik Sinha, Co-Founder of Alt News to find out, in this episode of The Impact. About: The Impact is made in partnership with The Bastion, where we look at government policies and business decisions, or the lack of those, in a geopolitical and geoeconomics context. The idea is to understand how those decisions affect India's role in the world both politically—if it's a power play or a lost opportunity—and economically.

This week, host Akanksha Kumar is joined by Newslaundry's Nidhi Suresh, independent journalist Arshi Qureshi, and Alt News senior editor Pooja Chaudhari.The discussion surrounds the fake “auction” of Muslim women on an app called “Bulli Bai”. “They are targeted attacks on Muslim women,” says Arshi. “First, it was only social media trolls and abuse. But now, it's much more than we can ever imagine...It's a way of trying to shut up those active Muslim women who speak up against the government.”Pooja spotlights the incompetence of social media platforms in taking action against issues like these. The panel agrees with Arshi when she says, “This can't be an act of some young minds sitting in front of their laptops, auctioning women. But this is something really big which is yet to be discovered.”This, and a lot more as they talk about what made news, what didn't, and what shouldn't have.Tune in.RecommendationsArshiMaidYou cannot shame us into silencePoojaFarm laws: Sikhs being targeted by fake social media profilesAkankshaSulli Deals 2.0: “They target us because they know our faith is stronger”My Mom's Photo Was Misused on Bulli Bai, No Daughter Should Be Writing ThisSulli Deals: Organised attempt to blame a Muslim youth for the appRitesh Jha aka ‘Liberal Doge': The man behind the livestream spewing hate against Pakistani womenNidhiHow Jon Stewart Became a Fierce Advocate for 9/11 RespondersDo Indian Courts Face A Dilemma in Interpreting Hate Speech?Nilotpal Mrinal: Meet the man behind ‘Justice for SSR' storm See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Conservative Talk From Looney Land California w/ Marsi Latimer on 'Mars Bar' ~ EA Truth Radio ~ 09/26/2021This is Marsi's LIVE show from Sunday, September 26, 2021. Our Hosts' viewpoints don't always reflect what EA TRUTH Media believes as a whole!Thank you for tuning in!Please join us chatting on social media about our shows using hashtag #EATruthRadio Conservative Talk with host Marsi Latimer-- topics ranging from the border crisis, Trump rally, to standing strong for the truth in America!*** Visit our Media Site at www.EternalAffairsMedia.com & Please Consider Planting A SEED IN OUR MINISTRY! Sign up and become a Monthly Patron for EXCLUSIVE PERKS!& stand for your Christian, Conservative values with every call you make with www.PatriotMobile.com (tell them Curtis R Bizelli sent you) You can also send Bitcoin to: 3MrcjvjkVUyP5dDmELDZkqD5JT5TTYyQHnTHE TRUTH SHALL PREVAIL ~ WE ARE THE STORM! Our Independent Media Operation & End Times Ministry has been online for 10 years now since Curtis "Ray Biselliano" Bizelli FOUNDED EternalAffairsMedia.com in 2010 as a simple survivalist site after he woke up and became a pioneer preaching the truth powered by The TRUTH!!! We are on the frontlines leading the fight against the Fake News Mockingbird Media! Check out our Online Store and get some COOL GEAR! If there is anything you'd like to see that isn't there, message us! We wish to hear from you! The SILENT MAJORITY isn't going back to sleep! Corrupt, Sleepy, Pedo Joe & The Hoe STOLE this election! He will NEVER be our President! He's an enemy to the People! People are waking up! This is THE GREAT AWAKENING! God bless you & your loved ones! GOD BLESS THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA!  Support the show (https://donate.eamedia.online)

While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways.Audio narration by Ad-Auris.  India Policy Watch #1: Satyam Eva Jayate?  Insights on burning policy issues in India- RSJWe often talk about truth, disinformation and radically networked societies in this newsletter. Our interest in these issues is often on account of news stories around us. But that’s not all. We find there’s a more fundamental shift on the understanding of truth that’s underway in societies around the world. That is what fascinates us about truth. Now, truth or its nature is the basis of all philosophy from the time Socrates started asking questions of fellow Athenians at the public square many centuries ago. Yet we come back to the question of truth and certainty again and again over the course of our history. Not because attaining the truth is an epistemological necessity for our race. That it might be. Instead understanding the nature of truth is important to control it. And those who control the truth control power. Not only for the present but far into the future. So what’s the point of this random discourse on truth at the start? Truth Is The First CasualtyThere were a few news stories over the past couple of weeks that made me wonder about where we are on truth in India today. First, the kerfuffle between Twitter and the Indian government. A lot of commentary on this topic conflate two issues - one, Twitter not complying (yet) to certain parts of the new IT intermediary guidelines and two, Twitter tagging certain tweets by BJP spokespersons on the Congress ‘toolkit’ case as manipulated media. The first point is of limited interest to me. There are new guidelines and they must be followed if you want to be treated as an intermediary in India. Others have complied and Twitter has been lax. The second point is interesting. Twitter claims it has a global policy on tagging certain tweets as manipulated media and that’s what it followed in the Congress ‘toolkit’ case too. This claim has been attacked by many. Some have questioned Twitter’s commitment to free speech and alleged it suppresses right wing handles more than others. I haven’t seen any credible data to support this so I don’t know. But, more importantly, invoking freedom of speech argument here betrays a poor understanding of the concept. Free speech is a right of the citizens that has to be protected from the state which holds a legitimate monopoly on violence (Weber). Suppression of free speech is an issue only when the state is involved. Private entities don’t have that monopoly on violence. If they suppress free speech on their platform, well, there are other platforms. The other attack on Twitter is more credible. Who is Twitter to arbitrate on truth? How does Twitter know what’s the truth? These questions are closely linked to the other news story about a viral video involving an attack on a Muslim man in Ghaziabad. The UP police filed an FIR against Twitter and Mohammed Zubair among others for creating communal divide and intending to disrupt public peace. Zubair is the co-founder of AltNews, a fake news busting media outlet. Zubair and AltNews had done the forensic work debunking the Congress toolkit document on Twitter. It is possible that work could have been the reason for Twitter to have tagged certain tweets as manipulated. Now AltNews was being accused by the state for spreading fake news. Life has came full circle in two weeks for Zubair. Why has the question of truth become so fraught in our lives? Why are we inundated with versions of truth on social media each with its compelling argument and logic? Have we lost objectivity while looking for balance while reporting on truth? These are tough questions. I have no answers. Easy or otherwise. But since we have come so far with piece, like Crime Master Gogo, we need to go back with some takeaways. Truth And TruthfulnessWe live in times where we are suspicious of every claim of truth. We look for who is making the claim, we investigate it, we check on their politics and we debunk the claim if there’s even a whiff of their allegiance to the other side of the political divide from us. This is now the norm.Of course this has always been the case in politics. Political parties are formed on the basis of the belief among the members that theirs is the right path. That the party knows the truth that will lead the society or the nation to the lofty goals set out in the constitution. Politics has always been about '“our truth” versus “their truth”. It is a contestation on versions of truth.This we lived with. But the problem of our times is how deeply politics has pervaded every sphere. There’s not even a sliver of convergence on truths in any subject these days because politics cannot countenance it. No inch can be yielded to “their truth” anywhere. So, the effort on all sides is to bury the others in an avalanche of lies. The more tenuous your truth, the greater the desire to fight with an arsenal of lies. Bernard Williams, the great analytical British philosopher, wrote about this in his last book, Truth and Truthfulness (2002). For Williams, truth is a cultural value to be defended against the onslaught of lies. The accuracy and the sincerity with which we identify and then speak the truth across all social forms is worthy of a good fight. Else, we lose everything. I have excerpted from the first couple of pages of the book below. Williams had presaged the current times of the widespread suspicion of truth even before the advent of social media: “Two currents of ideas are very prominent in modern thought and culture. On the one hand, there is an intense commitment to truthfulness - or, at any rate, a pervasive suspiciousness, a readiness against being fooled, an eagerness to see through appearances to the real structures and motives that lie behind them. Always familiar in politics, it stretches to historical understanding, to the social sciences, and even to interpretations of discoveries and research in the natural sciences.Together with this demand for truthfulness, however, or (to put it less positively) this reflex against deceptiveness, there is an equally pervasive suspicion about truth itself: whether there is such a thing; if there is, whether it can be more than relative or subjective or something of that kind; altogether, whether we should bother about it, in carrying on our activities or in giving an account of them. These two things, the devotion to truthfulness and the suspicion directed to the idea of truth, are connected to one another. The desire for truthfulness drives a process of criticism which weakens the assurance that there is any secure of unqualifiedly stateable truth. Suspicion fastens, for instance, on history. Accounts which have been offered as telling the truth about the past often turn out to be biased, ideological, or self-serving. But attempts to replace these distortions with “the truth” may once more encounter the same kind of objection, and then the question arises, whether any historical account can aim to be, simply true: whether objective truth, or truth at all, can honestly (or, as we naturally put it, truthfully) be regarded as the aim of our inquiries into the past. Similar arguments, if not quite the same, have run their course in other fields. But if truth cannot be the aim of our inquiries, then it must surely be more honest or truthful to stop pretending that it is, and to accept that.We can see how the demand for truthfulness and the rejection of truth can go together. However, this does not mean that they can happily co-exist or that the situation is stable. If you do not really believe in the existence of truth, what is the passion for truthfulness a passion for? Or - as we might also put it - in pursuing truthfulness, what are you supposedly being true to? This is not an abstract difficulty or just a paradox. It has consequences for real politics, and it signals a danger that our intellectual activities, particularly in the humanities may tear themselves to pieces.…. My question is: how can we address this situation? Can the notions of truth and truthfulness be intellectually stabilised, in such a way that what we understand about truth and our chances of arriving at it can be made to fit with our need for truthfulness? I believe this to be a basic problem for present-day philosophy.” Pluralism, Balance And ObjectivityThe other challenge to truth has come from a total lack of understanding of the concept of value pluralism among the media. The construct, popularised by Isaiah Berlin, allows for two or more incommensurable values to be held at the same time by a polity each of which may be true and still be at odds with one another. For Berlin, these differences are unlike a titanic battle between the right and the wrong; instead they are about accepting contradictions and differences in values which then deliver diversity and strength to a society. The media has distorted the notion of pluralism to some kind of an elusive ‘balance’ in its coverage of any issue. Both sides must be represented is a common refrain. The role of the media is to unearth truth through objectivity. Balance doesn’t help in that. That the earth is round is a truth objectively established. Of course, there are ‘flat earthers’ still who think otherwise. The role of media is not to give air time to both in in the interest of pluralism or balance. That’s lazy journalism and an invitation to untruths of every stripe to be concocted to crowd out the truth. This is what has happened. Social media platforms have accentuated this generation of untruths. Over time these turn into ‘versions of truths’ which get quoted by mainstream media aiming for a balance by presenting both sides of the story. It is a systematic perversion of truth. We All Have Our Truths NowThere’s also the failure of liberalism to defend stoutly the core values it stands for in the past decade. It has been attacked from the outside by those with conventional suspicion of the liberals. But liberal ideas have withered under the attack from within from the supporters of relativism, moral scepticism and extreme identity politics. The reverence of relativism among the liberals has meant there’s no objective truth for them anymore. Everything is true in its context. Therefore, everything is false too. This ambiguity has meant everyone can claim their own truth based on some kind of a lived experience. Nothing is sacred in general anymore because everything can be questioned. Simultaneously, everything is sacred in particular because there’s a never ending contest to be purer than the next person. It is difficult to even define a truth in these circumstances. Forget defending it. This absence of a rigid commitment to an ideology by the liberals would lead to moral panic, anarchy and philistinism as Leo Strauss had warned. This is where we seem to have arrived.Lastly, there’s a vast majority who watch this battle of different versions of truth from the sidelines. They think of themselves as the audience. They aren’t. It is they who are being played in the arena. Yet, often, they know the truth and they see through the game. But they remain onlookers, reluctant to take sides and ever willing to be taken in by what’s unfolding in front of them. When truth is no longer valuable, it is they who end up paying the highest price. Like Ramdhari Singh Dinkar wrote:समर शेष है, नहीं पाप का भागी केवल व्याघ्र,जो तटस्थ हैं, समय लिखेगा उनका भी अपराध।Translation: This war over truth is eternal. Your adversary isn’t alone in the wrong. Those on the sidelines, unwilling to take a stand are culpable too. In time, they will face a reckoning. India Policy Watch #2: When Federating Units are ExtinguishableInsights on burning policy issues in India— Pranay KotasthaneMany reports of restoration of J&K’s statehood came out this week. In what appeared to be a step towards restoration, the PM and HM met leaders of significant political parties of the J&K Union Territory. And so it appears that a former state in the Indian Union — reduced to a UT a couple of years ago — might soon become a state again, albeit a truncated one, and on terms different from the ones before August 2019. Any issue involving J&K is a Pandora’s Box. So, for a moment, keep the particularities of J&K aside and consider this question: what does the Indian government’s flip-flop story tell us about the nature of federalism in India? Before answering this question, let’s take a detour to our western neighbour. As in many other areas, it teaches us what not to do. The One Unit ProgrammeThe four provinces of Pakistan as we know today didn’t exist between 14th October 1955 and 1 July 1970. These provinces, along with erstwhile princely states, were merged together into a single unit: the One Unit called West Pakistan. The primary reason was to create parity between the eastern and western wings of the country. East Bengal was renamed East Pakistan and the whole of its western wing became West Pakistan. Provincial governments of Sindh, NWFP, Balochistan, and West Punjab were dismissed and these units were relegated to being merely divisions of the province of West Pakistan.The One Unit of West Pakistan (1955–1970). Source: modified from wikimediaIn 1954, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Bogra, is believed to have expressed this hope:There will be no Bengalis, no Punjabis, no Sindhis, no Pathans, no Balochis, no Bahawalpuris, no Khairpuris. The disappearance of these groups will strengthen the integrity of Pakistan.We know how that turned out.Now, look at this from a federalism angle. Most federations have a centripetal bias meaning that the union is stronger than the states. But if provincial governments can be dismissed with the ease as it was done in Pakistan, can that system even be called a federal one?Perhaps not. I came across a key differentiation between federalism and decentralisation that sheds some light on this question in A Review of Indian Fiscal Federalism by Dr Govinda Rao:A federal system is the one in which the entire set of powers — legislative, fiscal and regulatory — are divided in the Constitution or conventions between different levels of government. There is a measure of permanency in the assignments and in particular, the powers given to lower level governments cannot be extinguished by higher level governments (Breton, 2000). Thus, checks and balances to safeguard the system is an inherent part of the federal system whereas, decentralisation does not necessarily entail that. In other words, all federal systems are decentralized whereas all decentralized systems are not federal. The Constitution and other institutions set up to ensure checks and balances and safeguard the domains of different levels of government are inherent components of a federal system.Seen from this lens, the Pakistani system was decentralised but not federal.What about the Indian system?Article 3 of the Indian constitution permits the Parliament to, by law:(a) form a new State by separation of territory from any State or by uniting two or more States or parts of States or by uniting any territory to a part of any State;(b) increase the area of any State;(c) diminish the area of any State;(d) alter the boundaries of any State;(e) alter the name of any State;At the same time, the ‘basic structure doctrine’ recognises Federalism as one of the basic and hence unalterable components of the Indian constitution. So, in all likelihood, if the Indian union were to embark on a One-Unit or Four-Units programme of its own, the Supreme Court would come in its way. In other words, the ‘measure of permanency of the Indian federation’ rests on the role of the judiciary.What about the J&K Reorganisation Act?Now, we return to the central question. Does J&K’s conversion into a UT go against the basic structure doctrine? I’m not competent to analyse the legal aspects of this question. As it stands, several cases are pending before the Supreme Court which argue that the act was unconstitutional because it goes against the basic structure doctrine. Even after two years, the Court hasn’t made a decision yet.From a non-legal perspective, it does seem to me that the J&K reorganisation goes against the spirit of federalism. This is perhaps the first time a full-fledged state of the Indian union has been converted into a union territory. This is an important distinction because the powers that J&K enjoyed as a state were in one fell swoop ‘extinguished’ by the Indian government. A notification in Oct 2020 allowing non-residents to own immovable property in the union territory illustrates this point further. This was not allowed under J&K’s pre-independence State Subject Laws. Many border states and regions in India still have such restrictions. Even beyond India, it is not unusual for peripheries of nation-states to be accorded special status, as a quid pro quo for accepting a higher sovereign. The undoing of this arrangement with J&K by a union government rule militates against ‘permanency in assignments of powers’ to lower levels of governments, a key requirement of federal systems.In sum, even if we keep the specifics of J&K aside, India took a step back on the issue of federalism on August 5, 2019. The move towards reversing some of the damage caused is welcome and much-needed. Pakistan should warn us about the costs of sacrificing federalism at the altar of national integration.Other good articles on the One Unit scheme:Formation of One Unit, The NewsFlashback: One Unit: a dark chapter in our history, DawnIndia Policy Watch #3: Phrases that Should Fall into DisuseInsights on burning policy issues in India— Pranay KotasthaneWords have meanings. They indicate the quality of a nation’s policy discourse. With this idea in mind, we are compiling a running list of words and phrases that should disappear from India’s public discourse. Here’s the first instalment.Haves and Have-nots. You would have come across this phrase in many policy discussions. It is easy to present every policy problem as an eternal class struggle between the ‘haves and the have-nots’. And yet, this understanding is misplaced. A speaker at an event I attended a few years ago said that ‘there is no such thing as haves vs have-nots. Instead, there are haves and want-to-haves’. A lightbulb went off in my head.The underlying story behind the haves/have-nots formulation is a zero-sum one. The implicit causality is that the haves have it because the have-nots don’t. The haves are the villains merely because they are successful, rich, or privileged. Structured this way, only one kind of policy recommendation can surface — take things away from the haves and distribute them to the have-nots. The alternate formulation of haves and want-to-haves has a positive sum game at its core. It acknowledges that individuals from both groups are united by the same purpose — to make their lives better off. It doesn’t vilify the haves. The policy recommendations derived from this perspective focus on the ways to increase opportunities for the want-to-haves. A language of confrontation is replaced by a language of competition.Centre/Central GovernmentThe DMK government in Tamil Nadu has raised this issue in recent times. And they are right. ‘Centre’ and ‘Central government’ are terms that are not mentioned even once in the Indian constitution. Not only is it inaccurate to call the union government as the central government, this formulation implicitly assumes that Delhi and the Union government are at the centre while other Indian places and state governments are at the periphery. Given that the Indian constitution explicitly devolves certain powers to states, there is no scope for a government that can claim centrality over the others. This is what well-known constitutional expert Subhash C Kashyap has to say on the matter:“From the point of the usage of the words, 'centre' indicates a point in the middle of a circle, whereas 'Union' is the whole circle. In India, the relationship between the so-called 'Centre' and States, as per the Constitution, is actually a relationship between the whole and its parts. The relation between the whole and its parts is definitely different from the relation between a centre and its periphery”.Population Bomb/Population Explosion.It is a national pastime to blame overpopulation for India’s problems. Maybe, population was a problem in the last decades of the Raj and the early years of the Republic. But those Malthusian concerns have long become irrelevant. India’s total fertility rate has dropped from six in 1950s to near replacement levels of 2.2 in 2020. This decline has happened across religions and regions in India. Note what the Population Foundation of India says:“Religion has little to do with fertility levels. Muslim dominated countries like Indonesia and Bangladesh, have out-performed India in terms of falling birth rates.  Even within India, the fertility rates among Muslims in Kerala is lower than the fertility rates among Hindus in Bihar. States like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh have proven that it is not religion that matters.  What has made the difference is education, employment opportunities and accessibility of contraceptives. In neighbouring Sri Lanka, fertility rates were stabilised by simply increasing the age at marriage, a move that was made more effective by ensuring girls were educated.”In fact, we might soon have the problem of a falling working-age population. By 2035, the dependency ratio — the proportion of working-age population to non-working age population — is expected to peak. So, we should get rid of Malthusian notions of overpopulation from our public discourse. Blame undergovernance, not overpopulation, as my colleague Nitin Pai says.HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Article] “Don't Give Up on Truth” in the Persuasion: Yascha Mounk and Jonathan Rauch discuss the dangers of disinformation, the limits on robust debate, and why truth is fundamental to preserving democracies around the world. [Article] The Population Foundation of India has a note on Lessons for India as China calls off two-child policy. Again, a case of a neighbour helpfully reminding India of the mistakes it should avoid.[Interview] The News Minute speaks to Subhash Kashyap on the differences between ‘centre’ and ‘union’.[Podcast] On Puliyabaazi, Saurabh and Pranay discuss China’s three-child policy, rising petrol prices in India, and implications of the economic and social disparities between India’s southern and northern states. Get on the email list at publicpolicy.substack.com

Fake news and misinformation are hampering India's battle with the coronavirus pandemic. Right from the origins of the virus to unproven alternative cures to efficacy of vaccines, a wave of mass anxiety has washed over the country's social media. While most misleading messages spread through online platforms, experts say senior leaders and influencers have also played a role in fuelling traditional sentiments that prefer alternative therapies to modern medicine. This has increased vaccine hesitancy, especially in rural India, and led to political as well as medical misinformation. Conspiracy theories and false claims not only spread rapidly, they also prompt people to take action in real life - often with severe consequences. What kinds of fake news have dominated India's coronavirus landscape? What role can tech companies play to keep this in check? And is the government a bigger stakeholder in fighting the fake news menace? Presenter: Devina Gupta Contributors: Pratik Sinha, co-founder, Alt News; Apar Gupta, executive director, Internet Freedom Foundation; Dr Vasundhara Rangaswamy, microbiologist, primary care physician

Why are political parties battling over toolkits on social media? Pratik Sinha, Co-founder of Alt News, Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia Policy Director and Senior International Counsel at Access Now, and ET's Vasudha Venugopal help us understand what toolkits are, and how new regulations will impact social media and freedom of expression. News Clips from Vice (HBO), AajTak, Wellness Today.

In the final part of my interview with Dr Sumaiya Shaikh, we discuss her work as a science communicator. She founded Altnews Science to challenge pseudoscience in India.She has noticed how much alternative medicines like Ayurveda, Homoeopathy, Naturopathy, Siddh and Unani have grown in our country and the dangers they pose to us and the ones we love.So she founded Altnews Science to debunk misinformation and share the real science behind the news. For example, she has written several excellent articles regarding COVID-19 and even the Patanjali Scam that tried to take advantage of people during the pandemic.All that and a lot more await you in this episode. Enjoy!References and links:Altnews Science: https://www.altnews.in/topics/science/Arsenicum Album to fight COVID-19: https://www.altnews.in/homeopathic-drugs-such-as-arsenicum-album-30-promoted-by-ayush-do-not-boost-immunity-against-covid/Patanjali's Corona Kit: https://www.altnews.in/no-patanjalis-coronil-has-not-been-approved-by-ayush-ministry/Rationable's Take on Patanjali's Corona Kit: https://www.berationable.com/rationable-blog/2020/6/coronakit-or-con-examining-patanjalis-coronavirus-treatmentDonate to Altnews: https://www.altnews.in/donate/More about Dr Sumaiya ShaikhTwitter: https://twitter.com/neurophysik?lang=enWebsite: http://sumaiyashaikh.com/Altnews Science: https://www.altnews.in/topics/science/Intro and outro music: Don't Stop performed by Nothing More, from their album, The Stories We Tell Ourselves. The sound clips have been used with their permission.For the full transcript along with links to citations and further reading, please visit www.berationable.com.Questions, suggestions or just want to get in touch? Find me on Instagram and Twitter @berationable and on Facebook @Rationable. Join the conversation on the Rationable Conversations Facebook group and email me at abhijit@berationable.com. For more content like this, visit www.berationable.com.

President Trump is being worshipped as an idol by some "X-tians" or cultural Christians, Young folks are growing horns on their skulls just like a reptilian,  Facebook is going to control people's cryptocurrency and create the most invasive spying company yet, two women lovers cut off nine year old son's penis, skin and murder him because they hated him, there are people drinking their own urine for alleged health benefits.