Podcasts about indian supreme court

The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India (Oxford UP, 2024) tells the story of one of contemporary India's most contentious disputes: a long-running struggle over women's access to the Hindu temple at Sabarimala. In 2018, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the temple, which had traditionally been forbidden to women aged ten to fifty because their presence offended the presiding deity, was required to open its doors to all Hindus. The decision in Indian Younger Lawyers Association rocked the nation: protests were launched around India and throughout the diaspora, a record-setting human chain called the ‘Women's Wall' was coordinated, and dozens of petitions were filed asking the Supreme Court to review, and potentially reverse, its landmark opinion.  Perhaps most significantly, IYLA led the Court to openly reconsider the Essential Practices Doctrine that has been a mainstay of Indian religious freedom jurisprudence since 1954. In this first monograph-length study of the dispute, legal anthropologist Deepa Das Acevedo draws on ethnographic fieldwork, legal analysis, and media archives to tell a multifaceted narrative about the ‘ban on women'. Reaching as far back as the eighteenth century, when the relationship between temple deities and the government was transformed by an ambitious precolonial ruler, and coming up to the litigation delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Das Acevedo reveals the complexities of the dispute and the constitutional framework that defines it. That framework, Das Acevedo argues, reflects two distinct conceptions of religion-state relations, both of which have emerged at various stages in the—still unresolved—battle for Sabarimala. 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

The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India (Oxford UP, 2024) tells the story of one of contemporary India's most contentious disputes: a long-running struggle over women's access to the Hindu temple at Sabarimala. In 2018, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the temple, which had traditionally been forbidden to women aged ten to fifty because their presence offended the presiding deity, was required to open its doors to all Hindus. The decision in Indian Younger Lawyers Association rocked the nation: protests were launched around India and throughout the diaspora, a record-setting human chain called the ‘Women's Wall' was coordinated, and dozens of petitions were filed asking the Supreme Court to review, and potentially reverse, its landmark opinion.  Perhaps most significantly, IYLA led the Court to openly reconsider the Essential Practices Doctrine that has been a mainstay of Indian religious freedom jurisprudence since 1954. In this first monograph-length study of the dispute, legal anthropologist Deepa Das Acevedo draws on ethnographic fieldwork, legal analysis, and media archives to tell a multifaceted narrative about the ‘ban on women'. Reaching as far back as the eighteenth century, when the relationship between temple deities and the government was transformed by an ambitious precolonial ruler, and coming up to the litigation delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Das Acevedo reveals the complexities of the dispute and the constitutional framework that defines it. That framework, Das Acevedo argues, reflects two distinct conceptions of religion-state relations, both of which have emerged at various stages in the—still unresolved—battle for Sabarimala. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India (Oxford UP, 2024) tells the story of one of contemporary India's most contentious disputes: a long-running struggle over women's access to the Hindu temple at Sabarimala. In 2018, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the temple, which had traditionally been forbidden to women aged ten to fifty because their presence offended the presiding deity, was required to open its doors to all Hindus. The decision in Indian Younger Lawyers Association rocked the nation: protests were launched around India and throughout the diaspora, a record-setting human chain called the ‘Women's Wall' was coordinated, and dozens of petitions were filed asking the Supreme Court to review, and potentially reverse, its landmark opinion.  Perhaps most significantly, IYLA led the Court to openly reconsider the Essential Practices Doctrine that has been a mainstay of Indian religious freedom jurisprudence since 1954. In this first monograph-length study of the dispute, legal anthropologist Deepa Das Acevedo draws on ethnographic fieldwork, legal analysis, and media archives to tell a multifaceted narrative about the ‘ban on women'. Reaching as far back as the eighteenth century, when the relationship between temple deities and the government was transformed by an ambitious precolonial ruler, and coming up to the litigation delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Das Acevedo reveals the complexities of the dispute and the constitutional framework that defines it. That framework, Das Acevedo argues, reflects two distinct conceptions of religion-state relations, both of which have emerged at various stages in the—still unresolved—battle for Sabarimala. 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

The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India (Oxford UP, 2024) tells the story of one of contemporary India's most contentious disputes: a long-running struggle over women's access to the Hindu temple at Sabarimala. In 2018, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the temple, which had traditionally been forbidden to women aged ten to fifty because their presence offended the presiding deity, was required to open its doors to all Hindus. The decision in Indian Younger Lawyers Association rocked the nation: protests were launched around India and throughout the diaspora, a record-setting human chain called the ‘Women's Wall' was coordinated, and dozens of petitions were filed asking the Supreme Court to review, and potentially reverse, its landmark opinion.  Perhaps most significantly, IYLA led the Court to openly reconsider the Essential Practices Doctrine that has been a mainstay of Indian religious freedom jurisprudence since 1954. In this first monograph-length study of the dispute, legal anthropologist Deepa Das Acevedo draws on ethnographic fieldwork, legal analysis, and media archives to tell a multifaceted narrative about the ‘ban on women'. Reaching as far back as the eighteenth century, when the relationship between temple deities and the government was transformed by an ambitious precolonial ruler, and coming up to the litigation delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Das Acevedo reveals the complexities of the dispute and the constitutional framework that defines it. That framework, Das Acevedo argues, reflects two distinct conceptions of religion-state relations, both of which have emerged at various stages in the—still unresolved—battle for Sabarimala. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India (Oxford UP, 2024) tells the story of one of contemporary India's most contentious disputes: a long-running struggle over women's access to the Hindu temple at Sabarimala. In 2018, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the temple, which had traditionally been forbidden to women aged ten to fifty because their presence offended the presiding deity, was required to open its doors to all Hindus. The decision in Indian Younger Lawyers Association rocked the nation: protests were launched around India and throughout the diaspora, a record-setting human chain called the ‘Women's Wall' was coordinated, and dozens of petitions were filed asking the Supreme Court to review, and potentially reverse, its landmark opinion.  Perhaps most significantly, IYLA led the Court to openly reconsider the Essential Practices Doctrine that has been a mainstay of Indian religious freedom jurisprudence since 1954. In this first monograph-length study of the dispute, legal anthropologist Deepa Das Acevedo draws on ethnographic fieldwork, legal analysis, and media archives to tell a multifaceted narrative about the ‘ban on women'. Reaching as far back as the eighteenth century, when the relationship between temple deities and the government was transformed by an ambitious precolonial ruler, and coming up to the litigation delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Das Acevedo reveals the complexities of the dispute and the constitutional framework that defines it. That framework, Das Acevedo argues, reflects two distinct conceptions of religion-state relations, both of which have emerged at various stages in the—still unresolved—battle for Sabarimala. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India (Oxford UP, 2024) tells the story of one of contemporary India's most contentious disputes: a long-running struggle over women's access to the Hindu temple at Sabarimala. In 2018, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the temple, which had traditionally been forbidden to women aged ten to fifty because their presence offended the presiding deity, was required to open its doors to all Hindus. The decision in Indian Younger Lawyers Association rocked the nation: protests were launched around India and throughout the diaspora, a record-setting human chain called the ‘Women's Wall' was coordinated, and dozens of petitions were filed asking the Supreme Court to review, and potentially reverse, its landmark opinion.  Perhaps most significantly, IYLA led the Court to openly reconsider the Essential Practices Doctrine that has been a mainstay of Indian religious freedom jurisprudence since 1954. In this first monograph-length study of the dispute, legal anthropologist Deepa Das Acevedo draws on ethnographic fieldwork, legal analysis, and media archives to tell a multifaceted narrative about the ‘ban on women'. Reaching as far back as the eighteenth century, when the relationship between temple deities and the government was transformed by an ambitious precolonial ruler, and coming up to the litigation delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Das Acevedo reveals the complexities of the dispute and the constitutional framework that defines it. That framework, Das Acevedo argues, reflects two distinct conceptions of religion-state relations, both of which have emerged at various stages in the—still unresolved—battle for Sabarimala. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India (Oxford UP, 2024) tells the story of one of contemporary India's most contentious disputes: a long-running struggle over women's access to the Hindu temple at Sabarimala. In 2018, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the temple, which had traditionally been forbidden to women aged ten to fifty because their presence offended the presiding deity, was required to open its doors to all Hindus. The decision in Indian Younger Lawyers Association rocked the nation: protests were launched around India and throughout the diaspora, a record-setting human chain called the ‘Women's Wall' was coordinated, and dozens of petitions were filed asking the Supreme Court to review, and potentially reverse, its landmark opinion.  Perhaps most significantly, IYLA led the Court to openly reconsider the Essential Practices Doctrine that has been a mainstay of Indian religious freedom jurisprudence since 1954. In this first monograph-length study of the dispute, legal anthropologist Deepa Das Acevedo draws on ethnographic fieldwork, legal analysis, and media archives to tell a multifaceted narrative about the ‘ban on women'. Reaching as far back as the eighteenth century, when the relationship between temple deities and the government was transformed by an ambitious precolonial ruler, and coming up to the litigation delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Das Acevedo reveals the complexities of the dispute and the constitutional framework that defines it. That framework, Das Acevedo argues, reflects two distinct conceptions of religion-state relations, both of which have emerged at various stages in the—still unresolved—battle for Sabarimala. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India (Oxford UP, 2024) tells the story of one of contemporary India's most contentious disputes: a long-running struggle over women's access to the Hindu temple at Sabarimala. In 2018, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the temple, which had traditionally been forbidden to women aged ten to fifty because their presence offended the presiding deity, was required to open its doors to all Hindus. The decision in Indian Younger Lawyers Association rocked the nation: protests were launched around India and throughout the diaspora, a record-setting human chain called the ‘Women's Wall' was coordinated, and dozens of petitions were filed asking the Supreme Court to review, and potentially reverse, its landmark opinion.  Perhaps most significantly, IYLA led the Court to openly reconsider the Essential Practices Doctrine that has been a mainstay of Indian religious freedom jurisprudence since 1954. In this first monograph-length study of the dispute, legal anthropologist Deepa Das Acevedo draws on ethnographic fieldwork, legal analysis, and media archives to tell a multifaceted narrative about the ‘ban on women'. Reaching as far back as the eighteenth century, when the relationship between temple deities and the government was transformed by an ambitious precolonial ruler, and coming up to the litigation delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Das Acevedo reveals the complexities of the dispute and the constitutional framework that defines it. That framework, Das Acevedo argues, reflects two distinct conceptions of religion-state relations, both of which have emerged at various stages in the—still unresolved—battle for Sabarimala.

The US Federal Reserve is likely to cut interests rates tomorrow. We discuss the implications with experts in the United States. And why the Indian Supreme Court is stepping into the row about female doctors' safety at the Kolkata Hospital where a young medic was raped and murdered on her rest break. And on the ground in Sri Lanka ahead of this weekend's election, we hear how the country's slow recovery from economic turmoil will be an important factor in the vote.

New York international arbitration partner J.P. Duffy discusses the Singapore International Arbitration Centre's (SIAC) current accomplishments and future plans for the Americas with SIAC's registrar, Kevin Nash, and SIAC's director and head of the Americas, Adriana Uson. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Hello and welcome to Arbitral Insights, a podcast series brought to you by our International Arbitration Practice lawyers here at Reed Smith. I'm Peter Rosher, Global Head of Reed Smith's International Arbitration Practice. I hope you enjoy the industry commentary, insights, and anecdotes we share with you in the course of this series, wherever in the world you are. If you have any questions about any of the topics discussed, please do contact our speakers. And with that, let's get started.  J.P.: Welcome back to the next episode of Arbitral Insights, in which we'll discuss the Singapore International Arbitration Center's America Initiative with Kevin Nash, who is SIAC's registrar, and Adriana Uson, who is the SIAC's director and head for the Americas. Let me begin by introducing myself. I'm J.P. Duffy. I'm an international arbitration partner based in New York that acts as both counsel and arbitrator in international arbitration seated around the the world under a variety of governing laws and arbitral rules. I'm qualified in New York, England and Wales, and the DIFC courts in Dubai, where I previously practiced. I routinely represent clients in arbitrations involving India, the GCC, and East Asia, and I also had the good fortune to be listed on the SIAC arbitrator roster. As I mentioned, with me today is, first, Kevin Nash. Kevin is a Canadian lawyer and the SIAC's Registrar. As Registrar, Kevin leads the 25-member SIAC Secretariat in the provision of case management services. Over the course of the past decade, Kevin has overseen the administration of thousands of international cases under all versions of the SIAC and UNCITRAL rules. Under the Singapore International Arbitration Act 1994, Kevin is also gazetted as an appointing authority, serves as the statutory taxation authority, and is empowered to authenticate and certify awards and arbitration agreements. And last but not least is Adriana Uson. Adriana Uson is the director and head of the Americas for the SIAC, where she leads and oversees SIAC's activities in North and Latin America. In 2020, Adriana established the SIAC's first office outside of Asia in New York. She has more than a decade of experience in dispute resolution and and has served as counsel on international arbitrations, as arbitrator, and as the institutional representative. Adriana first joined SIAC as counsel, during which time she administered hundreds of cases across a range of seats and governing laws. She was also involved in the drafting of the SIAC Rules 2016 draft, SIAC Investment Arbitration Rules 2017, and the SIAC Practice Note on Third-Party Funding. Prior to rejoining the SIAC, Adriana was a disputes lawyer at a global law firm where she advised and represented clients in international arbitrations conducted under the auspices of the SIAC, the ICC, ICSID, and the HKIAC. So as you can tell, we have a wealth of knowledge with us today, and we're really, really fortunate to have both Kevin and Adriana with us today. So with that, let's jump right in and hear from our guests. So let me just set the stage a bit by giving some of the SIAC background, and then we'll have Kevin and Adriana chime in on that a bit. So the SIAC is a not-for-profit arbitral administrator that was established in 1994 in Singapore with the objective of providing a neutral, efficient, and reliable dispute resolution institution in Asia. Kevin, can you give us a bit of background on what's gone on with the SIAC over the last 33 years, I guess.  Kevin: Sure. Thanks, J.P. It's great to be here. Thank you to you and to Reed Smith. I'm actually a listener to this podcast, so it's really good to be here. Giving a bit of background, 33 years of operation, SIAC started as functionally a regional center, and you can really see a very compelling growth trajectory. The real proper administration of SIAC's cases started in 2007. You can then see sets of rules in 2010, 2013, 2016. And now we're in the draft public consultation for the seventh edition of the SIAC rules. Along the way, we went in the Queen Mary University of London White and Case Survey is the second most preferred arbitral institution in the world and the most preferred in Asia. And that's really what has helped bring SIAC to global prominence, that we have this expertise in Asia, but we also have parties from all around the world.  J.P.: That's great. And it has been meteoric growth. It's been really impressive to watch. The SIAC didn't exist, as you say, when I first started practicing, and now it's almost default in Asia, if not the default for most parties. And let's talk about that growth outside of Asia a bit. So while the SIAC began in Singapore and has had a lot of acceptance in Asian markets, it is not simply an Asian administrator, as you say. It's really accepted around the globe. What's really been the Singapore secret to that, Kevin?  Kevin: I suppose that's the million-dollar question, or when you look at some of SIAC's cases, is the $7 billion or $10 billion question, is what does Singapore and SIAC have been able to do to put itself at the forefront of international arbitration? When I look at the Singapore arbitration ecosystem, I see language from decisions like the rule of law is applied without fear or favor, and there is an unequivocal judicial philosophy of the facilitation and promotion of arbitration. So it's really the entire ecosystem in Singapore that has helped build up SIAC. One of the most important moments, and Adriana and I were quite involved in this, was in the SIAC rules 2016. Previously, it used to be a default Singapore seat of arbitration. So unless the parties otherwise agreed, if it was left silent, then it would default to a Singapore seat. But because of the popularity in the Americas, the then President Gary Bourne knew that for us to really grow as a global institution, that had to be left to the parties or to the tribunal to decide. So we've got the benefit of the Singapore ecosystem. So you have a very pro-arbitration bench. You have all of the hardware and software, modern legislation based on the UNCITRAL model law. And to a certain degree, it's based on where we are in the world. Singapore, much like New York, is an international center for finance. Singapore has that reputation of effectively being Switzerland in Southeast Asia. And maybe you just can almost encapsulate it by putting out a question that if you were a significant U.S. Entity, would you be comfortable being a moving claimant against a very prominent Singapore respondent? And I think that the answer is overwhelmingly yes. Parties know that they're going to get a fair adjudication of their dispute when they come to Singapore, and certainly when they file a case at SIAC. When I look at that 25 member SIAC secretariat, I am quite moved by the fact that we only have one Singaporean lawyer. So the rest of the Singapore SIAC secretariat are all lawyers qualified in 13 jurisdictions around the world. So I think that gives parties the confidence.  J.P.: Now, Kevin, where are some of those lawyers qualified in the secretariat?  Kevin: You know, I would have to run through the jurisdictions, India, Indonesia, United States, UK, Vietnam, Ecuador, Georgia. I feel like I'm missing a few, Canada, Malaysia. So anywhere in the world where we have our top jurisdictions and particularly where we have those applicable laws at play, we really need to have a lawyer in the secretariat qualified in those jurisdictions. I can think of five years ago in Vietnam, a very fast-growing jurisdiction, because there's a lot of procedural nuances in that jurisdiction, surely we need to have a Vietnamese qualified lawyer. China, we have a fair amount of Chinese language arbitration, so we need to have Chinese qualified counsel. And certainly, we have so many cases involving Indian parties, so we have three Indian qualified lawyers in the secretariat as well.  J.P.: Well, that certainly gives a good overview of the breadth that the SIAC covers. And I think just to reinforce that a bit, let's talk about some of the offices that the SIAC has outside of Singapore before we get to the one in New York. So, am I correct that in 2013, SIAC opened up its first overseas office in Mumbai and then Seoul? Is that right? Seoul, Korea?  Kevin: That's right.  J.P.: And then in 2016, SIAC opened up in Shanghai, correct?  Kevin: Yep.  J.P.: And then in 2017, SIAC opened up a second office in Gujarat in India, right?  Kevin: Also correct, yeah.  J.P.: Now, what was the impetus for opening all those offices?  Kevin: Really, it's to have a presence on the ground. So one thing that we do very well at SIAC is have a lot of analytics looking at economic indicators. We're looking at both sides of the contract. So you're seeing where, for instance, Indian parties, where those inflows and outflows of economic activity is happening. And I think that it matters to users to have a presence on the ground. I can see with the incredible amount of interest that we have in the Americas with Adriana on the ground here. So whether it's being able to call and say that you're filing a notice, I'm starting to think that notwithstanding the fact that I'm the Registrar, that more American users are actually liaising with Adriana. In fact, we had a purely European dispute where they were calling Adriana to say, hey, we filed a notice. So I think that it's made a difference to have that on the ground presence. And we're looking at perhaps a few other offices that are going to be opened up in the reasonably near future. I think what's important for the Americas and one thing that I've talked about publicly quite a bit is potentially that move to setting up a case management office in New York.  J.P.: Interesting. Well, let's talk about that New York office then. So now, Adriana, you opened up the New York, the SIAC New York office in December of 2020, correct?  Adriana: Yeah, that's correct, J.P.  J.P.: That's a challenging timing. How did you find that process?  Adriana: Oh, that was really a very challenging time. I think that was the height of the pandemic, if I wasn't mistaken, back in 2020. And so what we did was really to leverage off technology, J.P. I think that's even the first time where we met was by Zoom. So what we've done is that we've used Zoom, we've used webinar to engage with our users. I remember that time I probably had a Zoom meeting every single day for over a year or even two years. And really, the challenge was creating that rapport and that relationship to deepen those relationships during that time.  J.P.: Yeah, that was certainly a challenging time. And I do recall meeting for the first time by Zoom. Now, Adriana, does the New York office, I think Kevin just touched on this, but does Does the New York office administer cases as well?  Adriana: Not at the moment, J.P., but we're looking into the possibility of administering cases from our New York office to provide real-time access for our users in America. So that's something to watch out for.  J.P.: Good. Well, we'll keep a heads up for that one. Now, what then was the impetus for opening the New York office? What was its purpose when you decided to open it in December of 2020?  Adriana: I think really, J.P., it's because of the growing number of American parties that we have been seeing in our docket. So every single year for the last 13 years, American parties actually ranked amongst our top five users. And there are certain years where you'll see that American parties would even rank number one amongst our foreign users ahead of China and India, which is saying a lot. And that is without us even having any significant engagements in the US. So it was us ripe for us to open an office during that time. It just so happened that it happened right smack at the height of the pandemic. But apart from that, our relationships with the Americans or the US is quite strong. As you know, our immediate past president, Gary Bourne, is an American. Our current president, Lucy Reed, is also a New Yorker. The number three or sometimes fourth most appointed arbitrator by nationality with SIAC are Americans as well. We have American counsel qualified at the secretariat, and we've been really engaging with a lot of U.S. law firms in SIAC. So I think with all of these, it just made sense for us to open an office in New York.  J.P.: Yeah, I think it tends to give a lot of comfort to U.S. parties when they know they have a local contact that they can reach out to. And certainly that helps with with, you know, explaining to a US party, like, yeah, this is not this might be an international undertaking. But there's an office right here in New York. Here's Adriana, here's someone we can reach out to. Now with that, Adriana, what is your day to day look like in the New York office, if you don't mind sharing that with the audience?  Adriana: Oh, I mean, I wouldn't even know myself out my day would would go but typically it would be speaking with our stakeholders. So be it, you know, at a law firm or roundtable session with some corporates or lecturing in some universities. Mostly I'm traveling. So SIAC, New York office really covers from Canada all the way to Chile, including Caribbean, Central America. So then you'll find me in different parts of America. And I think that that's how it looks like at the moment.  J.P.: Yeah, I would imagine it's probably a pretty exciting and pretty action-packed day. Okay. Well, let me just transition a bit so that people in the audience can get a bit of a sense because we were talking about case administration and, you know, for instance, Kevin mentioned, you know, a purely European case in which people were reaching out to you. How many cases did SIAC administer in 2023?  Kevin: Yeah thanks, J.P. I should also say, reaching back to the past question that much of Adriana's day involves me reaching out to her, asking about US arbitrators, a filing that's coming in. But moving to the question, how many cases SIAC administered? So we had 663 cases in 2023. Our previous high had been more than a thousand cases. And this is really significant when you you think that we were starting from the place of two cases filed in 1991 when we first opened our doors. Unsurprisingly, both of those would have been ad hoc conversion cases. And you have some of these cases that might just be a few thousand dollars, two cases, some of the big major projects and giga projects in the mini billions. From a case management standpoint, what is critical for us, the independent and neutral SIAC secretariat, is you treat every case the same. Every case gets the same amount of care and attention. And that's what we've really tried to focus on when we've moved from a regional institution to a global institution. The idea of this accessibility, where we're still treating every case like it is the most important case on the docket. Counsel can reach out to us, certainly not ex parte, but can certainly reach out to us on matters of procedure, the same with arbitrators. And that's been really important to our growth. At any one time, we have more than a thousand active cases. And now in most years, we're getting more than 500 cases a year, which from an international caseload standpoint, really puts us at the top of the chart for arbitral institutions.  J.P.: Yeah, that's quite an impressive growth and impressive numbers. Now, are there particular industries that many of those cases come from, or are there particular industries that you see more cases come from? I'd just be interested to know.  Kevin: J.P., it really runs the gamut and our only limitation really is arbitrability. So you could have cases arising out of contracts, treaties, investment contracts, and it's a lot of mirroring with these economic corridors. So there's certainly a lot of international trade. I can remember during the pandemic, it felt like I was becoming an expert in the sale and purchase of masks. We had lots of those cases. We get some of the big construction and engineering cases, corporate, JV, maritime and shipping. Singapore has the second largest container port in the world. So we really want to be able to administer any kind of case with any type of law applying and increasingly in different languages of the arbitration.  J.P.: Well, that's interesting. It's unsurprising, I guess, that some of the caseload would follow economic trends. And it's also unsurprising that some of the cases would just follow what goes on in Singapore generally. Now, I think you mentioned earlier some of the top users for SIAC are China, India, the US. What countries were the top five users in 2023?  Kevin: In 2023, we had lots of cases from mainland China, Hong Kong, Americas, India. What I found very compelling in those 2023 statistics is that our fifth most frequent user was Emirati parties. And often we had Emirati parties on both sides of the contract. And it's really a hallmark of the flexibility of international arbitration. So you may have UAE parties on both sides. They may choose an onshore or offshore seat in the UAE. They may choose a Singapore seat. And then the rest of the top 10 and those users that are starting to really matter is really a balance between common law jurisdictions and civil law jurisdictions. And if you follow SIAC and if you chart SIAC, what we really try to do is give effect to both the common law tradition and the civil law tradition. What we have been seeing increasingly with US parties and in large part to the work of Adriana is some of those real chunky disputes are coming from the Americas. When you're looking at the highest summon dispute, the mean summon dispute, the median summon dispute, we are getting some of those very significant cases from the Americas.  J.P.: Well, that's really interesting. And before we move on to the Americas, I just want to hit on a couple of points. And I guess my first question is, are you seeing trends in where cases are coming from in countries? Like, for instance, you just mentioned the top five user being Emirati. Would that have been the case a few years ago as well, or is that a newer development?  Kevin: We've seen some signs of interest from Emirati parties and in MENA generally, but it is because of the amount of work. And it's almost like you can look at some of the fastest growing economies and some of those most dynamic economies, and then you will start to see SIAC's caseload increase. And as I mentioned earlier, what's important for us is to be able to market both sides of the contract and have the users have confidence on both sides of the contract. So a classic case involving the Americas might be a party from the U.S. And an Indian party, a party from the U.S. And an ASEAN party, and a party from the U.S. and a Chinese party. What place are both of those parties going to choose increasingly at Singapore and SIAC? J.P.: Yeah, that's great to hear and unsurprising, I guess. Now, are those transactions ones that would be, for instance, just global transactions, or are they ones that might have some sort of geographic center in Asia?  Kevin: One of my favorite disputes that we've had recently was a functionally domestic US dispute where there were parallel court proceedings in the Pacific Northwest. I was looking for an Asian nexus. I have still yet to find it. So most of these, I mean, I mean, obviously, arbitration is the preferred method to resolve cross-border disputes, but in the UAE, in the Americas, a lot of times in India, these are domestic disputes where they're choosing Singapore and SIAC. And J.P., you might remember that it took some time for the Indian Supreme Court to give clarification on whether two Indian parties could choose a foreign seat. That clarification has now arrived. But even before that, because of the power of Singapore as a seat and the trust and confidence into the SIAC, Indian parties were still using SIAC for functionally domestic disputes.  J.P.: Yeah, it's interesting because that has been the case for many, many years before the Indian Supreme Court clarified that, as you say, almost akin to the way that some Brazilian parties use other institutions as well as the SIAC for purely Brazilian domestic disputes. It's a vote of confidence in arbitration generally, I think, as well as the institution. Well, let's shift gears a bit and talk some more in a little more detail about the Americas. And Adriana, what, obviously, by opening an office here in New York, SIAC is targeting, you know, the US and New York in particular. But what other markets is SIAC targeting with its New York office?  Adriana: J.P., there's really a lot of ground to cover in terms of targets. And as a starting point, SIAC's choice to open our America's office in New York was important. And it was very consequential and sent a message about our future direction. As all of us who live in the city would be aware, New York is the epicenter of so many things. So international arbitration and legal services, banking and finance, international trade, retailing, media and advertising, and so many others. But our users come from all over the US and across various sectors. Let's see if I can recall all of them. So over the past five years, we have seen parties from California, Connecticut, Delaware. Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, I think New Jersey, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio. We've seen some from Texas, Virginia, and Washington, to name a few. We have been busy see deepening these relationships and engaging with the local arbitration communities, establishing partnerships such as with the Silicon Valley Arbitration and Mediation Center. But our New York office really covers the whole Americas from, like I said, from Canada to Chile. Latin America is especially exciting for us because of its increasing trade with Asia. Right now, we have cases coming from Belize, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador. We also have cases from Mexico, Panama, and Uruguay, and we are eager to further expand our reach in the Americas. In fact, one of the first few things we did, J.P., when we opened the Americas office was to enter into partnerships with local centers such as the Lima Chamber of Commerce, the Santiago Arbitration and Mediation Center, and the Quito Chamber of Commerce, to name a few. And we have been very active in the region since.  J.P.: That's really impressive. That's really impressive. And, you know, people, you know, think of the Americas and they, they sometimes think of a few large, a few large jurisdictions, but you're mentioning really a number of countries in the Americas that are seeing capital flows between, between their countries in Asia. Now, what are some of the, what are some of the largest, Latin American markets that you're seeing activity in at the moment, other than the ones, you know, I think you just mentioned a few, but are there others that you're seeing in particular as ones that are producing a lot of disputes?  Adriana: I would say there has been an uptick in our Mexican and Brazilian caseloads. Kevin, you've seen a lot of these cases coming in. I think there are queries coming in from Ecuador as well. That's an area that we're quite interested. In fact, we did hire an Ecuadorian counsel in our secretariat because of that.  J.P.: Impressive. How about jurisdictions like Argentina and Peru?  Adriana: Yeah, actually, Argentina and Peru, one of our main targets, especially Peru, I think in Peru, they've now mandated arbitration as part of their law for public contracts. There's a lot of arbitration going on in Peru. And just before actually this podcast, I was on a webinar for the Peruvian Institute. So we are very active in Peru as well.  J.P.: That's great. I would assume Colombia is an important market as well. well?  Adriana: Yes, absolutely. Colombia, Panama, because of the Asian trade, that's also a very important market for us.  J.P.: Interesting. And are you seeing disputes come out of issues involving the canal in Panama?  Kevin: We actually have J.P. And I should say, because Adriana has been in this role for, is it three years?  Adriana: Yeah.  Kevin: In or around. There is that sort of timeline when SIAC clauses go into contracts and when you get the eventual dispute. And we have very strong indicators for many of those jurisdictions that you named that some significant entities are starting to use SIAC as their preferred dispute resolution choice. And that's one of the challenges of marketing an institution because you actually don't want parties to go to dispute. You hope that that they don't have to go to an arbitration, but that they have confidence to use SIAC arbitration clauses. So we're just as happy when we know if it's an entity from Panama, Peru, Argentina, as the case may be, that they're starting to use SIAC clauses. And whether or not that goes to a dispute, hopefully it doesn't. Maybe they're able to settle on their disputes or because of the confidence in SIAC as an institution, the parties tend to keep to their bargains because they know if they go to arbitration, it's likely going to be very fast and very cost effective for the counterparty.  J.P.: Yeah, well, that is certainly the case. I think we all always hope when we're drafting arbitration clauses that they never get invoked. But, you know, it's certainly my experience, at least, that, you know, 15 to 20% of those will end up at a certain point in time in arbitration. And so it's good to see that SIAC clauses are being written. And I know certainly clients that we have are extremely interested in that. And not simply when there's any sort of, you know, Asian nexus. It can be just about anything at this point. Well, that raises a really good question, which is, what would you say, Adriana and Kevin, have been the biggest accomplishments that SIAC has had in the Americas since opening? I mean, it's been a really challenging time, but you've obviously put SIAC on the map even more so in the Americas. So what would you see as the biggest accomplishment in the last, I guess, three or four years?  Kevin: J.P., I might just start and then I'll pass it over to Adriana. So the joke that I always make internally about Adriana setting up the New York office is that she effectively came here with a paperclip and ended up bartering her way into having a very well-running office. So certainly that was a challenge for Adriana coming all the way from Singapore and being able to set up this vibrant office that is doing some really interesting things. Effectively just with a paperclip and bordering her way and navigating New York City to get this office up and running. But I'll pass it over to Adriana.  Adriana: Thanks, Kevin. I guess aside from what Kevin just said, I would say getting new users from new jurisdictions would be one of our biggest accomplishments, J.P. Since opening the New York office in December 2020, we have gained new users from places like Argentina with the first ever case from that jurisdiction filed just last year and Colombia, which we spoke about. What's interesting about the case involving Colombia is that the counterparty is from Switzerland, showing the potential for cases in the Americas with no Asian nexus. We're also seeing a rising trend in cases from Panama. I think we've touched on that earlier. And more and more of our clauses are also making their way into contracts across Latin America. Just yesterday, we received an email from a firm in Guayaquil and Quito informing forming us, they've included SIAC clauses across a suite of contracts. A Spanish law firm with Latin American clients recently also indicated they're trying SIAC, including us in contracts for the first time. Peru, like. I mentioned earlier, a Peruvian law firm also told us that they're currently handling a contract with an SIAC clause for the first time. So this could be SIAC's first Peruvian case if the clause is activated. There was also a prominent U.S. entertainment company that requested information on SIAC as it considers switching from U.S. arbitral centers to SIAC. And speaking on the U.S., we've seen a rise in filings since the launch of our New York office. Another notable trend is that But while SIAC is often chosen when Asian parties are involved in, you know, repeating what Kevin just said, we're now handling cases between American parties or between Americans and Europeans without any Singapore-Asian connection. And I think this trend really highlights SIAC's growing international reach and reputation.  J.P.: Well, that is certainly impressive meteoric growth. And, you know, it's an old, it's a trite old song lyric, but the song lyric that if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere really is true. And you certainly have. Let me ask then just a concluding question for you, Adriana. And obviously, Kevin, you should feel free to jump in as well. But where would you like to see the New York SIAC office in, say, five years? What would you think that looks like?  Adriana: I think in the next five years, we see SIAC becoming a major player in the arbitration landscape across the Americas. We're focused on establishing a strong presence and building solid relationships with businesses, legal professionals, and arbitration practitioners throughout North and South America.  J.P.: Good. Kevin, anything you want to add there?  Kevin: Maybe just that it almost goes to the mandate of an institution, is what is an institution really there for? And I think that we believe that we are there to promote the advantages of international arbitration and to really be a contributor. And that's what we've tried to be with the America's Office in New York, is to be a part of the international arbitration community. And one thing that I would say about where we want to be in five years or 10 years is from a case management standpoint, we just want to keep getting better and better. Arbitration is not like it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. You have to be fast, thoughtful, precise. The case management matters. And that's what we focus on. And we're going to continue to listen to our users and try to be updating ourselves for 2024 beyond.  J.P.: Well, those are all good goals to have. And I think we'll keep our ear to the ground for future developments on things like case management and new rules. And I think I'll exercise my prerogative to reserve my right to call you guys back to discuss those things in the near future, because I think there's been such incredible growth and so many incredible developments, and I'm sure there'll be more to discuss again in the near future. But with that, I think we should conclude our discussion. And I want to thank you both. I want to thank our guests, Kevin Nash and Adriana Uson from the SIAC for offering their invaluable insights. And I want to thank you, the listeners, for tuning in. You should feel free to reach out to Reed Smith about today's podcast with any questions you might have. I'll take the initiative and speak for both Adriana and Kevin and say you should feel free to reach out to them as well about any questions you might have. We look forward to having you tune in for future episodes in the series. So thank you again to Adriana and Kevin, and we look forward to having you back.  Adriana: Thank you, J.P.  Kevin: Thank you.  Outro: Arbitral Insights is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. For more information about Reed Smith's global international arbitration practice, email arbitralinsights@reedsmith.com. To learn about the Reed Smith Arbitration Pricing Calculator, a first-of-its-kind mobile app that forecasts the costs of arbitration around the world, search Arbitration Pricing Calculator on reedsmith.com or download for free through the Apple and Google Play app stores. You can find our podcast on Spotify, Apple, Google Play, Stitcher, reedsmith.com, and our social media accounts at Reed Smith LLP on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.  Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers.  All rights reserved.

Though the plea to recognize same-sex marriage was quashed by the Indian Supreme Court, queer life continues to bloom in India in many different colors making December a veritable Pride Month.

Over the past decade, India has witnessed significant conflict within—and around—several democratic institutions meant to act as a check on executive power. One of the most important theatres of conflict has been the judiciary—more specifically, the Supreme Court.A new book by the legal scholar Gautam Bhatia, Unsealed Covers: A Decade of the Constitution, the Courts and the State, takes readers through some of the most controversial cases that have come before the court during this critical decade. Gautam is a lawyer who has been personally involved in several important contemporary constitutional cases. He is the author of multiple books of fiction and non-fiction and founder of the influential, “Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy” blog.Gautam joins Milan on the show this week to talk about the relationship between judicial assertiveness and the strength of the government in power, disconcerting signs of excessive judicial deference, and ongoing debates over the right to privacy.Plus, the two discuss the controversial issue of electoral bonds, the government's proposed law outlining new procedures to select election commissioners, and the vagaries of the controversial anti-defection law.1. Gautam Bhatia, “Decoding the Supreme Court's Election Commission Judgment – I,” Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy (blog), March 3, 2023.2. Gautam Bhatia, “A case that scans the working of the anti-defection law,” Hindu, February 24, 2023.3. Gautam Bhatia, “The Supreme Court's Right-to-Privacy Judgment,” Economic & Political Weekly 52, no. 44 (November 4, 2017).

Salman Akram Raja is one of the top lawyers of Pakistan, currently he is Imran Khan's Lawyer and in the past he has represented Nawaz Sharif too. Salman Akram Raja comes on The Pakistan Experience to discuss the Judiciary, the Lawyers Movement, the cases against Imran Khan, the Panama Case, NAB, Article 63-A, the Constitution, Supreme Court Rules, Elevation of Judges and Pakistan's legal crisis. The Pakistan Experience is an independently produced podcast looking to tell stories about Pakistan through conversations. Please consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thepakistanexperience To support the channel: Jazzcash/Easypaisa - 0325 -2982912 Patreon.com/thepakistanexperience And Please stay in touch: https://twitter.com/ThePakistanExp1 https://www.facebook.com/thepakistanexperience https://instagram.com/thepakistanexpeperience The podcast is hosted by comedian and writer, Shehzad Ghias Shaikh. Shehzad is a Fulbright scholar with a Masters in Theatre from Brooklyn College. He is also one of the foremost Stand-up comedians in Pakistan and frequently writes for numerous publications. Instagram.com/shehzadghiasshaikh Facebook.com/Shehzadghias/ Twitter.com/shehzad89 Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 1:30 Being Nawaz Sharif's Lawyer and Pakistan's Judicial Crisis 6:30 Truth and Accountability of the Judiciary 10:51 Iftikhar Chaudhry and the Lawyers Movement 17:00 Removing Yousouf Raza Gillani and Nawaz Sharif 22:00 Pressure on Judges and Judiciary 25:30 NAB 30:00 Interpretation of 63-A and the role of the Judiciary 42:00 Dissolution of the Assembly and 58 2(B) 52:30 The Legality and the Principle of Military Courts 58:30 Objectives Resolution and Understanding the Constitution 1:04:00 Basic Structure of the Constitution and how the Indian Supreme Court decided 1:11:30 Supreme Court Rules Act and the Order against it 1:21:00 Elevation to the Supreme Court 1:30:30 Supreme Judicial Council 1:31:50 Lawyers arguing and speaking on cases you are personally involved in 1:40:45 Audience Questions and Imran Khan's cases

In recent years, there has a growing concern that the Supreme Court of India is not firing on all cylinders. Critics have argued that the court functions in an opaque manner, exhibits excessive deference to the executive, is sluggish in concluding cases, and is hampered by an excessive reliance on super-lawyers who can get their cases heard for exorbitant fees.A new book, Court on Trial: A Data-Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India, examines each of these critiques, using hard data from the Court's own functioning. Milan's guest on the show this week is one of the book's authors, constitutional lawyer Aparna Chandra.Aparna is an associate professor of law at the National Law School of India, and has previously worked at the National Judicial Academy in Bhopal and the National Law University in Delhi, where she founded the Centre for Constitutional Law, Policy and Governance.Milan and Aparna talk about the institutional crisis facing the Court, the Court's shocking backlog, and the arbitrary powers of the Chief Justice. Plus, the two discuss the controversy around judicial appointments, the excessive deference the Court pays to the government of the day, and what if anything can be done to improve the Court's effectiveness. Episode notes:“A Court in Crisis? Interview with the authors of 'Court on Trial', a data-driven analysis of the Supreme Court of India,” Bar&Bench, September 7, 2023.[VIDEO] “How do we fix the Supreme Court of India?” Scroll Ideas, September 1, 2023.Soutik Biswas, “Supreme Court: Why India's powerful top court is in a 'crisis,'” BBC News, July 31, 2023.

The episode begins with a roundup of the latest LGBTQ+ news stories. This week we are in Manchester at the same time as the Tory party but for very different reasons! With a live studio audience in UNTOM in the Northern Quarter, Graeme catches up with Ghislain Pascal, the founder of queer fine art photography series BOYS BOYS BOYS, about freedom of expression and censorship. We hear some highlights of the live Q&A that you can hear in full on our next episode. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/outcastuk/message

The Indian Supreme Court was established nearly seventy-five years ago as a core part of India's constitutional project. Does the Court live up to the ideals of justice imagined by the framers of the Indian Constitution? Critics of the Supreme Court point out that it takes too long to adjudicate cases, a select group of senior advocates exercise disproportionate influence on the outcome of cases, the Chief Justice of India strategically assigns cases with an eye to outcome, and the self-appointments process-known as the collegium-is just another 'old boy's network'.  Building on nearly a decade of original empirical research, Aparna Chandra's book Court on Trial: A Data-Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India (India Viking, 2023) examines these and other controversies plaguing the Supreme Court today. The authors provide an overview of the Supreme Court and its processes which are often shrouded in mystery, and present data-driven suggestions for improving the effectiveness and integrity of the Court. 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

The Indian Supreme Court was established nearly seventy-five years ago as a core part of India's constitutional project. Does the Court live up to the ideals of justice imagined by the framers of the Indian Constitution? Critics of the Supreme Court point out that it takes too long to adjudicate cases, a select group of senior advocates exercise disproportionate influence on the outcome of cases, the Chief Justice of India strategically assigns cases with an eye to outcome, and the self-appointments process-known as the collegium-is just another 'old boy's network'.  Building on nearly a decade of original empirical research, Aparna Chandra's book Court on Trial: A Data-Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India (India Viking, 2023) examines these and other controversies plaguing the Supreme Court today. The authors provide an overview of the Supreme Court and its processes which are often shrouded in mystery, and present data-driven suggestions for improving the effectiveness and integrity of the Court. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

The Indian Supreme Court was established nearly seventy-five years ago as a core part of India's constitutional project. Does the Court live up to the ideals of justice imagined by the framers of the Indian Constitution? Critics of the Supreme Court point out that it takes too long to adjudicate cases, a select group of senior advocates exercise disproportionate influence on the outcome of cases, the Chief Justice of India strategically assigns cases with an eye to outcome, and the self-appointments process-known as the collegium-is just another 'old boy's network'.  Building on nearly a decade of original empirical research, Aparna Chandra's book Court on Trial: A Data-Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India (India Viking, 2023) examines these and other controversies plaguing the Supreme Court today. The authors provide an overview of the Supreme Court and its processes which are often shrouded in mystery, and present data-driven suggestions for improving the effectiveness and integrity of the Court. 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

The Indian Supreme Court was established nearly seventy-five years ago as a core part of India's constitutional project. Does the Court live up to the ideals of justice imagined by the framers of the Indian Constitution? Critics of the Supreme Court point out that it takes too long to adjudicate cases, a select group of senior advocates exercise disproportionate influence on the outcome of cases, the Chief Justice of India strategically assigns cases with an eye to outcome, and the self-appointments process-known as the collegium-is just another 'old boy's network'.  Building on nearly a decade of original empirical research, Aparna Chandra's book Court on Trial: A Data-Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India (India Viking, 2023) examines these and other controversies plaguing the Supreme Court today. The authors provide an overview of the Supreme Court and its processes which are often shrouded in mystery, and present data-driven suggestions for improving the effectiveness and integrity of the Court. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Over the course of this episode, Lea and Casey talk about what it's like to travel as a lesbian, particularly when heading towards less queer-friendly destinations, and Lea gives us an insight into her travel experiences so far.After discussing a topic close to Lea's heart, namely the discussion concerning the legalization of same-sex marriage by the Indian Supreme Court, our hosts discuss tactics for finding the best queer spots and events while traveling. If you want even more chances of meeting hot new queers while traveling, make sure you listen until the very end of the episode for Lea's unmissable pick-up line.Share your favorite "women loving women" space in your city here. We'll put a full list together and share it with you all.Outline:00:00 – 09:39 – Intro and updates from Casey and Lea since the release of episode 509:40 – 16:22 – Today's topic: traveling as a lesbian and picking travel destinations16:23 – 23:15 – Lea's experience in Cote d'Ivoire and Morocco during the World Cup events23:16 – 29:16 – Lea's travels in India: attitudes towards same sex relationships and the LGBTQ+ community29:17 – 34:42 – Same sex marriage and the Indian Supreme Court34:43 – 43:21 – Queer travel research: finding queer spaces and events while travelling43:22 – 47:22 – Hearing back from the community: travel survey47:23 – 49:35 – Lea's pick-upCreditsCo-hosts: Casey, LéaProducers: Elle, MariaMusic: ‘Free the Nip', by MuMuArtwork: LaureFind us on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you or someone you know wishes to apply please visit: APPLY to Semester at Sea To donate to this world shifting experience, please visit: DONATE to Semester at Sea The main segment this week features Justice K.G. Balakrishnan who served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India between 2007 and 2010 and at the time of recording in 2015 was the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission of India.  On the day of the MV Explorer's arrival in Cochin, Justice Balakrishnan spoke to Spring 2015 voyagers about his career and the contemporary state of human rights in India. To close us out this week, John Roseburg is back! This week John treats our ears with a musical adaption of "Red Red Rose" by the Scottish National poet Robert Burns.

An Indian Supreme Court ruling coupled with calls by Indian Muslims for an end to sustained Islamophobic attacks on the world's largest Muslim minority put Hindu nationalists on the spot.

In this episode we go over the multiple definitions of Hindu identity, from religious leaders, the Indian Supreme Court, and more. We end with the stories of Fred Stella and Drishti Mae, who were raised Catholic and Muslim respectively, but adopted Hinduism later in life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A Constitution Bench judgement of the Indian Supreme Court on March 2 took the appointment of Election Commissioners out of the sole hands of the political executive and assigned it to a three-member committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Chief Justice and the leader of the largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha. Appointments will take place through this panel till a law is made on this subject by Parliament. The bench headed by Justice K.M. Joseph said in its judgement that a person who is weak-kneed should not be appointed as an Election Commissioner. Neither should that person be in a state of obligation or feel indebted to the person who appointed him. The judgment also made a “fervent appeal” to the Union of India / Parliament to put in place a permanent secretariat for the Election Commission and charging its expenditure to the Consolidated Fund of India to make it truly independent.

The two hundred-eighth episode of the DSR Daily Brief.   Stories Cited in the Episode France to deliver ‘light tanks' to Ukraine Meta fined €390m over use of data for targeted ads India top court stays demolition of over 4,000 homes in Haldwani  China urges WHO to take 'just position' on Covid-19 after data criticism US sentences former Bolivian minister to 6 years for bribery Al-Shabaab claims twin Somalia car bombings as death toll climbs to 19 Serbian president rejects calls for sanctions against Russia Why this congressman is using Superman comic for swearing-in Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A version of this essay was published by thepamphlet.in at https://www.thepamphlet.in/en/shadow-warrior-a-deplorable-supreme-court-decision-on-demonetization/The Supreme Court, in a 4:1 judgment, held that the 2016 Demonetization was acceptable. The dissenting judge, well, dissented, saying that it was flawed. This decision sets an awful precedent that will come back to haunt us all, and the judiciary is respectful of precedent. The law of unintended consequences will strike.It is not that demonetization per se was a bad idea, or that it was executed poorly, or that its goals were not met. It was a pretty good idea, it was executed moderately well, and the declared goals, to reduce corruption, terror funding through counterfeit notes, and to increase the proportion of ‘white' money in circulation, were met to an extent. No, the problem is twofold: one, an unprecedented and unwarranted level of judicial overreach and encroachment into the domain of the Executive; two, the common sense principle of fait accompli: this is a done deal, and it is essentially impossible to undo it. The point is that the judiciary has its role, which is in hair-splitting legal jargon and in particular the verbiage of the Constitution. With all due respect, judges are not trained in other disciplines, and would be hard-pressed to understand economics, or engineering, or medicine, or military affairs. They simply will not be able to make judicious decisions (to give them credit, the majority opinion did concede this). But then, they should not take up such cases in the first place. I can imagine motivated petitioners waiting in the wings to now ask the Supreme Court to undo the 1971 Bangladesh War, the decision to impose covid-related mandates, or the Mangalyaan space probe. In fact, you could find somebody to make a cogent argument that the Constitution should not have been accepted in 1950, and that it should be rolled back. There is no end to such litigation, and if it is allowed to proliferate, it would clog up the entire judiciary. Of course, the entire judiciary is already clogged up with 30 million cases, so why open the flood-gates and invite more frivolous litigation?As for the law of unintended consequences, there is the recent experience of the Democrats in the US. After years of claiming ex-President Trump's tax returns would reveal deep, dark secrets, they forced him to reveal them: and it was a damp squib, with nothing of significance, no tax evasion. But the precedent has been set, and the Republicans will now use this to harass every Democrat alleging skeletons in their tax closets. The Indian Supreme Court should stick to its fundamental task: interpreting the Constitution. Not being a lawyer, I cannot say authoritatively that there is no constitutional issue in the anti-demonetization lawsuit, but I doubt it. It is a purely administrative issue, and thus the domain of the Executive, just as making a multitude of daily decisions is. The activist Indian courts have long been accused of interfering in everything while at the same time creating cozy little fiefdoms for themselves, for instance in the continuous creation of post-retirement sinecures for judges, the most recent being the demand that retired judges should be on the committee choosing the Chief Election Commissioner.The most obvious example of bad faith is the judiciary's closed and opaque Collegium system, wherein they nominate and appoint themselves, with the predictable result of nepotism and hereditary elites. It is high time that Parliament put a stop to this, and created new laws that mandate a role for the Executive. The proposed NJAC could be one way forward. If the NJAC is unconstitutional, well then, bring in a constitutional amendment. Many people have talked about judicial reforms; I too took a stab at it a few years ago (“Can we fix the deeply troubled judiciary?” Swarajya, May 2018). One of my points was the radical restructuring of the system into a Supreme Court that only hears constitutional cases, and a new set of regional Courts of Appeal, with status almost equivalent to the Supreme Court, that hear other things beyond the ken of state High Courts. There is a serious concern about which cases the Supreme Court chooses to hear. At the moment, it appears whimsical. Why on earth would the SC hear cases about cricket, which is a mere entertainment? Why on earth would the SC not hear petitions about the 1990s ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus (it has refused to do so three times already).The terror onslaught in Jammu and Kashmir is not history. We saw with horror the terrorist attack on Hindus in Jammu's Rajouri just days ago, where the attackers reportedly identified Hindus by their Aadhar cards, and then shot them. This is an urgent, ongoing problem, and why does the court refuse to hear it, while at the same time accepting a case on the 1948 assassination of Mahatma Gandhi? Next, someone will file a PIL demanding the undoing of that assassination.Why does the SC accept PILs (Public Interest Litigations) put up by motivated NGOs, often with foreign funding? These people are able to get, through the back door, rapid decisions that affect the entire country, whereas the cases should properly be heard at the local level in District Courts, and only be elevated to the Supreme Court through a proper process if they actually have merit.Apart from this, some actions are virtually impossible to undo: time and tide wait for no man. How could the SC, like King Canute who ordered the waves to retreat, even possibly consider the undoing of demonetization? How will it be done? What about the major moves in digitization that resulted, the UPI revolution, the trillions of rupees flowing through a payment system that is now ubiquitous and available to anyone with a mobile phone?India has now become one of the most digitally connected countries in the world, but the amount of cash in the system is now even greater than at the time of demonetization. Can the court explain why? So it is not as though cash suddenly disappeared. Yes, there was a temporary crunch, and yes, it was hardship for many, but on average, most people have recovered.Malign NGOs have continually opposed national interests: remember Sterlite? Or the Sardar Sarovar dam? By accepting a plea that was clearly inappropriate, probably politically motivated, and in any case something that would be virtually impossible to undo, the Supreme Court has set a poor precedent. The Indian judiciary acts as a law unto itself, unaccountable to anybody else. This is wrong. As the President and the Vice President mentioned recently, it is time the judiciary reformed itself. I suspect it will have to be done forcibly, not voluntarily.1090 words, 3 Jan 2023 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

The Indian Supreme Court set free the remaining six convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, extending to them the benefit of its order releasing their co-convict A G Perarivalan. Mr Trichy Velusamy who is an ardent supporter and has been advocating their release for many years spoke to RaySel. - இந்தியாவில் ராஜீவ்காந்தி கொலை வழக்கில் ஆயுள் தண்டனை அனுபவித்துவந்த நளினி உள்ளிட்ட 6 பேரையும் இந்திய உச்ச நீதிமன்றம் விடுதலை செய்துள்ளது. இவர்களின் விடுதலை குறித்து தனது கருத்துக்களை பகிர்ந்துகொள்கிறார் திருச்சி வேலுசாமி அவர்கள். இவர்களின் விடுதலைக்காக பல ஆண்டுகளாக குரல் கொடுத்துவருகின்ற திருச்சி வேலுச்சாமி அவர்கள் காங்கிரஸ் கட்சியின் செய்தித் தொடர்பாளரும், 'ராஜீவ் படுகொலை - தூக்குக் கயிற்றில் நிஜம்!' என்ற புத்தகத்தை எழுதியவருமாவார். அவரோடு உரையாடியவர்: றைசெல்.

In this week's episode, JD vance is afraid his children will turn into chipmunks without his permission, Herschel Walker tries to win a debate with a Carrot Top gambit, and the kids these days just won't stay off of David Icke's lawn. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show's hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show's sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --- Headlines: Herschel Walker denies abortion ban support and brandishes ‘police badge' in Georgia debate: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/15/us-midterm-elections-herschel-walker-abortion-ban-police-badge-georgia-senate-debate-warnock https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/14/us/politics/walker-warnock-georgia-senate-debate.html GOP Senate candidate demands schools notify parents if their kids identify as chipmunks: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/10/gop-senate-candidate-demands-schools-notify-parents-kids-identify-chipmunks/ Ted Cruz mocked for sharing fake article about LGBTQ people and refusing to apologize: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/10/ted-cruz-mocked-sharing-fake-article-lgbtq-people-refusing-apologize/ https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/10/school-board-meeting-descends-chaos-protestors-demand-book-bans/ Oklahoma bans gender-affirming care for minors at state-funded hospital: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/10/oklahoma-bans-gender-affirming-care-minors-state-funded-hospital/ One million moms backtracks after prematurely dancing on uncancelled show's grave: https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/one-million-moms-little-demon-cancellation/ --- This Week in Misogyny: Religious freedom group urges commission of inquiry into Iranian crackdown on hijab protests: https://religionnews.com/2022/10/14/religious-freedom-group-asks-for-un-commission-of-inquiry-into-irans-crackdown/ Indian Supreme Court liberalizes abortion laws: https://religionnews.com/2022/10/03/in-india-where-hindu-majority-has-complex-views-supreme-court-liberalizes-abortion-law/ SBC President endorses forcing 10 year old rape victims to have babies: https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/bart-barber-60-minutes-interview-showed-the-cruelty-of-southern-baptists/

Before we get into the details of the current case, let's learn some history. In the 1980s, Parvinder Singh inherited Ranbaxy from his father, Bhai Mohan Singh, a wealthy contractor who hailed from Rawalpindi. What had started out as a small pharma business in Amritsar had by then grown into an empire. At a time when most Indian drug-makers were looking inwards, Parvinder decided to take Ranbaxy into international markets. By the time he passed away in 1999, he left behind a global pharma major. And, the way in which Parvinder's sons, Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, squandered away the empire in subsequent years has become the stuff of corporate folklore. According to reports, Malvinder and Shivinder squandered away Rs 22,500 crore over the span of just one decade. So, what are the particulars of the case in which the latest orders have come? Former Ranbaxy promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Singh have been accused of concealing information about wrongdoings at Ranbaxy when they sold a majority stake in it to Daiichi Sankyo, a Japanese firm, in 2008. In 2016, the Singapore tribunal awarded Daiichi Rs 3,500 crore in damages. In 2018, Daiichi Sankyo approached the Indian Supreme Court with the allegation that the Singh brothers were diverting funds using a number of shell companies to avoid the payments. Daiichi had also approached the apex court to stop a deal between Fortis and Malaysia-based IHH Group. As part of the deal, the IHH Group was set to acquire a 30 per cent stake in the Fortis group for 1.1 billion dollars with an open offer of 26 per cent stake. While the deal was signed in August 2018, the SC stayed the IHH open offer in December that same year. But, this too is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg since there are several other cases against the Singh brothers. In October of 2019, Malvinder and Shivinder were arrested by the Economic Offenses Wing of the Delhi Police for allegedly diverting money and causing losses to the tune of Rs 2,397 crore. The allegations were related to Religare Enterprises Limited, or REL, a company that was once led by the brothers. They were accused of diverting money from Religare Finvest Limited, or RFL, an REL subsidiary. According to the allegations, the brothers and other REL officials took loans in RFL's name and then diverted the money to other firms. In 2019, the Serious Fraud Investigation Office, or SFIO, was also probing their role in an alleged fund diversion at Fortis Healthcare. After its initial probe, the SFIO had said that it believed that the fraud could be to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore. The Securities and Exchange Board of India and the SFIO suspected that the Singh brothers had diverted public money from Fortis Healthcare to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas and other religious bodies. Long before the recent wranglings, there was also the episode with Dinesh Thakur, the whistle-blower who put Ranbaxy in the dock. Thakur joined Ranbaxy in 2003. But, in 2005, Thakur quit and waved a red flag about alleged violations and irregularities at the pharma company. Thakur ended up working with US authorities to expose the fraud and even filed a lawsuit to hold Ranbaxy accountable. Eventually, Ranbaxy pleaded guilty to making fraudulent statements to US regulatory authorities about how it tested drugs at its Indian plants. The firm had to pay $500 million to resolve the civil and criminal violations. It remains to be seen if the recent developments will be the final chapter of their downfall, or whether more skeletons might tumble out of their cupboard. What we know for sure is that Malvinder and Shivinder Singh have all but destroyed the legacy of their grandfather Bhai Mohan Singh and father Parvinder. 

Today, we're starting a new series on the podcast -  #TDLxILADialogues   This series is in collaboration with the International Legal Alliance (ILA) - a network of independent legal practitioners, across more than 150 countries, working together on a best friend basis to provide effective solutions to clients and advocate on important issues with the judiciary.   I am so proud to announce that The Daily Lawyer is now part of the ILA Network :)    In this series, we will be having conversations on various aspects of the law, from law professionals within the ILA who practice in those areas. It was only right that we started this series with Mr, Jamshed Mistry, the founder of ILA and a counsel at the Bombay High Court. Most of you by now may have heard that the Supreme Court of India, is allowing live streaming of constitutional law cases. This is a big win and a positive step forward for the future. Jamshed along with Senior Advocate Indira Jaising ably argued this matter, and I was thrilled when he agreed to come on the podcast to share how this journey started, and what the implications of this would be.   Tune in to listen to this mini-episode and do tell us what you think.     You can find Jamshed on - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamshed-mistry-061a769/ And more about ILA at www.internationallegalalliance.com     For more such interesting content, please follow The Daily Lawyer Podcast on your favourite Audio listening platforms. You can connect with us  On Instagram @thedailylawyerig On LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-daily-lawyer Our website - www.thedailylawyer.in   Or simply write to us at thedailylawyer@gmail.com

How does one make a world-class city? By image management! And dislocating the poor. Between 1995 and the Commonwealth Games held in New Delhi in 2010, the PIL went from being used for the poor, to against the poor. The building of malls and flyovers were prioritized over core municipal concerns: sanitation, health and education. How did this happen? By the judiciary turning into the executive and issuing orders. This episode of The Longest Constitution looks at slum eviction as well as how contempt of court has widened progressively over the years, severely crippling the freedom of expression.On Sahara and contempt of court:Bhatia, Gautam, 2016, Offend, Shock, or Disturb: Free Speech under the Indian Constitution, (New Delhi: OUP). Chapter 9. https://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/book/story/book-review-sahara-the-untold-story-42920-2013-12-05https://indiankanoon.org/doc/158887669/Slum eviction:https://indiankanoon.org/doc/842898/Ghertner, Ashner, T., 2015, Rule by Aesthetics: World-Class CIty Making in Delhi (Oxford University Press).Bhuwania, Anuj, 2016, Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India, (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press). Judicial independence: Sengupta, Arghya and Ritwika Sharma, 2018, Appointment of Judges to the Supreme Court of India: Transparency, Accountability and Independence (Delhi: OUP) Krishna, Justice B. N (retd.) 2016, “Judicial Independence”, in Choudhry, Sujit (et al), The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution, (OUP: New Delhi). https://thewire.in/law/aadhaar-verdict-money-bill-rajya-sabhaYou can follow Priya on social media:Instagram: (https://www.instagram.com/thelongestconstitution_/ )Twitter: (https://twitter.com/fundamentallyp )Linkedin: ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/priya-mirza-73666310/ )You can listen to this 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/featuredDo follow IVM Podcasts on social media.We are @IVMPodcasts on Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram.Follow the show across platforms:Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Gaana, JioSaavan, Amazon MusicSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shownotes: For the 6th episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast in partnership with India Justice Report - we focused on the overburdened Indian prisons. For a very long time India's prison system has been known for overcrowding, unhygienic conditions and the disproportionate number of under trials in the prison population.  The covid-19 pandemic led the Indian Supreme Court to issue directions to the High Court for decongestion of prisons in order to prevent the outbreak of the epidemic in closed spaces. The court directed the constitution of High-Powered Committees (HPCs) at state-levels to oversee the decongestion efforts, while also directing the Under trial Review Committees (UTRC), a district-level body mandated to review cases of prisoners, to meet every week.  However, despite several measures to decongest prisons overcrowding has remained a serious issue, along with a shortage of staff and medical officers. The level of vacancies at the National level means 1 in every three posts has not been filled When we were thinking of the focus for this episode - it was about culling out lessons from the pandemic. Lessons that could help support the drive to sustainably decongest Indian prisons. Is it training for the police to prevent indiscriminate arrests, or is it giving more power to the prison authorities to refuse to intake a prison when maximum sustainable number have been reached? It was also about understanding whether magistrates who know the conditions of local prisons shape their remand powers to ensure that there is no overcrowding.  What is the role of legal aid in solving this problem?  Most importantly, central to the conversations is the role of multiple stakeholders - whose actions and frequent inactions contribute to the overcrowding. How can they be corrected and made accountable, what processes and systems need to be put into place to enable positive action.  I was privileged to speak with Justice Madan B Lokur, a former judge of Supreme Court of India and Sugandha Mathur from the Human Rights Initiative to get their insights on progressing the agenda of prison reform. Thank you Maja and Valay for your support and insights.  Memorable Passages from the podcast

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In the 10th episode of Justify Season 3, Dr Arghya Sengupta discusses the Gyanvapi controversy with Valay Singh, a journalist and author of the acclaimed work, ‘Ayodhya: City of Faith, City of Discord', and Ronojoy Sen, Research Lead at National University of Singapore, and the author of ‘Articles of Faith: Religion, Secularism, and the Indian Supreme Court'. In this respect, they examine the Places of Worship Act, 1991 and the approach being taken by the judiciary in deciding questions relating to religious places.

Podcasts have the power to inspire and help make changes for the better; that is what Mission ISRO / 377 has done in India    Gaurav Vaz quit a comfortable IT job to pursue a career in music. When he set up his production company All Small Things, he was forced to pivot to podcasts during the pandemic   Hear the story of how India's space programme, with its uncommon characters and impossible odds, have inspired millions through its retelling on a podcast; while the podcast 377 has helped bring lasting positive change to the LGBTQIA+ community in India by contributing to the abolition of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. About Mission ISRO Born into violence, poverty and the desolation of colonial exploitation, newly independent India was a nation working hard to find its footing. But its head was held high––high as the clouds. The story of India's space programme is such an unlikely one, with so many uncommon characters, filled with such impossible odds, that it can sometimes seem like science fiction rather than science. This is that story.   About 377 377 is a scripted narrative podcast about the legal action and accompanying social movement against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. This anti-sodomy law was largely used to target MSM (men who have sex with men) populations in India and though rarely enforced, it was wielded as a threat against LGBTQI+ populations until 2018, when it was finally read down by the Indian Supreme Court.   About All Things Small Gaurav Vaz is the co-founder and COO of All Things Small, a media company aiming to tell true stories. The company started back in October 2019. A bunch of people who never worked together had an idea - "creating content, which is true stories focused or non-fiction focused, coming out of the Indian subcontinent, and being told to the world." Their one-line vision was ready, but they did not decide on the format of the content. They did not want to be restricted by format or by platform. The aim was to build the skill and ability to tell incredible stories from India in whatever format works best. Website: https://allthingssmall.in/ About Asia Podcast Podcast Awards For Asia by Singapore, the Asia Podcast Awards celebrate the best in Asia podcasting. By creating the platform to organise and honour the members of the Asian podcasting community, we will empower Asian voices and celebrate our voices and diversity with the rest of the world.  

This week an Indian court in the southern state of Karnataka ruled to uphold a ban on wearing the hijab in classrooms.

Professor Davinderpal Singh Bhullar is a Sikh political prisoner jailed in India since January 1996. He was earlier sentenced to death in 2000 and remained on death row for about 14 year as on 31 March 2014 his death sentence was concerted into imprisonment for life by Indian Supreme Court. This News/Article All About Prof. Davinderpal Singh Bhullar, His Case and the Issue of His Release appeared first on Sikh Siyasat News.

Guests featured in this episode:Professor Andras Sajo, former judge at the European Court of Human Rights & founding Dean of Legal Studies Department at the Central European University, Democracy in Question?  is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: Novel Follow us on social media!• Central European University: @CEU• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentreSubscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks!  Bibliography: Constitutional Topography: Values and Constitutions  by Andras Sajo& Renata Uitz (editors) Eleven International Publishing, 2010Ruling by Cheating: Governance in Illiberal Democracy by Andras Sajo, Cambridge University Press, 2021Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law Michel Rosenfeld &Andras Sajo (editors) Oxford University Press, 2013 Glossary: What is Max Weber's view on charismatic leadership? (at 00:9:20 or pg. 2 in the transcript)In his essay “The Three Types of Legitimate Rule” published in 1958, the influential German sociologist Max Weber introduced his theory of authority which was based on tripartite classifications of authority: traditional authority, rational-legal authority and charismatic authority (also referred to as charismatic leadership or domination). According to Weber, order is based on two fundamental forms: norms and authority. Charismatic leadership, according to Weber, is found in a leader with extraordinary characteristics of individual, whose mission and vision inspire others. In such, this charismatic leader is seen as the head of any social or political movement, sometimes gifted with divine powers such as: religious prophets and Gurus. However, charismatic leadership is considered unstable as it is related to faith and belief; once these fade, the authority and leadership dissolve.Thus, charismatic authority depends on the extent to which a religious or political figure is able to preserve moral influence and prosperity to his followers. Weber favoured charismatic leadership and saw its inevitable influence over the other two authorities with the use of soft power in both the traditional and legal-rational authorities. Source What is India's Citizenship Amendment Act? (at 00:21:51 or pg. 5 in the transcript)In December 2019, the Indian Parliament passed the  Citizenship Amendment Act 2019. The Act amended the law to fast-track citizenship for religious minorities, specifically Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians, from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who entered India prior to 2015. However, the Act does not extend to Muslim minorities, for example: the Ahmadiyya from Pakistan; the Rohingya from Myanmar; and the Tamil from Sri Lanka. Opponents of the Act have claimed that it is unconstitutional as it links citizenship to religion and marginalises India's Muslim population. However, the Government has argued that the law protects religious minorities.The Act has been referred to the Indian Supreme Court. In January 2020, the Court said it would not put the implementation of the law on hold but asked the Government to respond to the petitions challenging the law's constitutional validity within a month.Some Indian states have announced that they will not implement the law. However, the Government has stated that states have a “constitutional duty” to do so.The Act has led to widespread protests, with activists and human rights organisations, such as Amnesty International, criticising the police and the Government for the response. Source What is the concept of constitutional patriotism?(at 00:23:02 or pg. 5 in the transcript)The purpose of constitutional patriotism, -Jürgen Habermas's well-known theory-  as a set of beliefs and dispositions, is to enable and uphold a liberal democratic form of rule that free and equal citizens can justify to each other. The object of patriotic attachment is a specific constitutional culture that mediates between the universal and the particular, while the mode of attachment is one of critical judgment. Finally, constitutional patriotism results in a number of policy recommendations that are clearly different from policies that liberal nationalists would advocate. Source Who was Gustav Radbruch?  (at 00:27:30 or pg. 6 in the transcript)Gustav Radbruch, German jurist and legal philosopher, one of the foremost exponents of legal relativism and legal positivism. He also served the Weimar government as a Minister of Justice (1921–22; 1923). Radbruch's legal philosophy grew out of the neo-Kantian principle that law is defined by and depends upon moral values. In such a system, there are no absolutes; thus, the concepts of right and  justice are not absolute but are relative to time and place and to the values of the parties in a given legal proceeding. As a result of Nazi rule in Germany, however, a radical change in Radbruch's outlook occurred in his later years. He abandoned relativism and turned toward a philosophy of natural law that recognized certain absolute, innate properties of law and justice. Source 

Nick Dunn is a British citizen and a former British Army Parachute Regiment soldier. He served in Afghanistan and Iraq. After leaving Her Majesty's Forces, he continued to work in security. Nick was working as an armed security guard onboard the MV Seaman Guard Ohio in October 2013 alongside another 5 British former Army soldiers when he and the other members of the crew and guards were arrested by the Indian coast guard. They were wrongfully imprisoned in India for 4 years. Nick and these other 5 Brits were collectively known as the Chennai 6.This week's episode is part two of our three-part interview with Nick Dunn himself. On this episode, Nick talks about using his military training to survive prison, the Chennai 6 make an appeal, their case goes to the Indian Supreme Court, judgement day, getting acquitted, leaving prison and the journey back home to his family waiting for him at Newcastle airport. Follow Pod Hostage Diplomacy on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to keep up to date with our work.Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/PodHostageDiplo)

In Episode #83, we are joined by Sital Kalantry, Professor of Law at Seattle University, author, and attorney. We discuss: The hierarchy of India's court system, from state courts to high courts to the Indian Supreme Court with 34 sitting judges The recent appointment of three female judges to the Indian Supreme Court (but a significant disparity remains) India's first female chief justice Indian litigation vs. arbitration Judicial appointments and the significant turnover compared to the U.S. Supreme Court The increase of more women CEOs in Indian and its legal profession (higher percentages than the U.S.) Where India still has room for improvement Listening, and watching recommendations from: Sital Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo Gully Boy on Amazon Prime Jonathan WomanStats Country Notes (Council on Foundations) Fred The Americans on FX We'll see you next week for another exciting and informative episode when we sit down with Weston Konishi, Former Director of Partnerships and Development at U.S.-Japan Council!

In this latest news from India in Hindi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurates Purvanchal Expressway in Uttar Pradesh; Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti demands judicial inquiry in the Hyderpora encounter; Indian Supreme Court directs Delhi government to act against air pollution.

Dr Subramanian Swamy and Ace Journalist J Gopkrishnan discuss #Pegasus software - WoW #Ep133. J Gopirkrishnan walks us through terms of reference of Indian Supreme Court appointed committee and Dr Swamy canvas the episode around it, budget involved, sanctioning authorities and its possible effect which may flow out in this must listen episode

In this second podcast episode about data localization, we spotlight India. Since 1993 the world's largest democracy has enacted data localization laws aiming to keep certain personal records within India or otherwise restrict data transfers of Indians' personal data. When in 2017 the Indian Supreme Court found personal privacy to be a fundamental constitutional right, a Personal Data Protection Bill (PDPB) was promptly drafted. It has since been percolating towards adoption. The draft bill defines certain personal data as “critical” and so must be stored only within India. Other data is called “sensitive,” and may be processed outside of India with a copy kept within India. A third category of “regular” data could be transferred abroad, pursuant to data transfer rules. Unlike China, reviewed in the last podcast episode (episode 73,) India has a robust tech industry heavily involved in processing foreign data. India processes more personal data than any other country, so that parochial data laws would stand in stark contrast to this essential industry of India. Yet, Amazon, Facebook, Google and other global businesses dominate the Indian home markets, unlike their absence from China. Protectionist forces within India are calling for strict data controls, purportedly to protect the privacy of Indian residents while also favoring the interests of local tech and other firms. Indian businesses such as Reliance talk of “data colonization,” the idea that foreign companies control too much of the data of Indian residents and are plundering the wealth of India as measured by the data of its 1.3 billion people. Indian sources expect the PDPB to be enacted in the winter session of 2021-22. The enacted version will reveal whether India adopts a protectionist approach to data or embraces a more global approach to how personal data is collected and processed. This in turn will affect how other nations will respond. The outcome will affect how data privacy is enhanced or diminished as the rules governing data evolve country by country. If you have ideas for more interviews or stories, please email info@thedataprivacydetective.com.

Justice B. N. Srikrishna discusses his career, reflects on his tenure on the Indian Supreme Court, and shares thoughts about his work as an arbitrator. Joined by India Business Team Chair Gautam Bhattacharyya, Srikrishna discusses best ways for arbitration to thrive, and also shares tips for aspiring practitioners.

377 is a narrative show about the legal action and accompanying social movement against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. The anti-sodomy law was largely used to target MSM (men who have sex with men) populations in India and though rarely enforced, it was wielded as a threat against LGBTQI+ populations. It was enacted when India was still under British rule, and survived well until 2018, when it was finally read down by the Indian Supreme Court. In this show, we delve into the complex history of the law — how it came about, how it became closely intertwined with another crisis (the HIV/AIDS public health crisis), and how, in 2001, an NGO decided to contest the law's constitutionality in the Delhi High Court. The story of the fight against 377 is a great example of how a legal movement became a broader equal rights movement, but with its fair share of drama and narrative twists and turns!

Ashish Saraff says he's confident both that India will soon allow dual citizenship and that the Indian investment migration market will become the world's largest within a decade.In this episode of the Mobility Standard, we spoke to Ashish Saraff of Aretha Capital Partners. Himself an Indian by birth, Ashish has, for many years, been intimately involved in developing the Indian investment migration market, initially focusing on EB-5 and more recently on investment funds in European golden visa jurisdictions.We raised a number of questions we had about what Ashish says he is confident will become the single largest investment migration market in the world within the next decade, including:Why isn't India a bigger market for investment migration? On a per-capita basis, RCBI participation in India is far lower than among the other subcontinental economies, like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Why aren't Indians equally interested?Indian outbound investment grew 10x in the six years to 2019. Why didn't investment migration grow at a similar clip?What's the right way to enter the Indian IM market? An enormously diverse, regionalized country means that few one-size-fits-all solutions are available for those who wish to penetrate the market. What works in Mumbai may not work in Bangalore, and vice versa. Should you focus on a B2B strategy that involves building relationships with local service providers and institutions, or are you better off going directly to market with a B2C approach?What are the push factors motivating Indians to invest in second residencies and citizenships? Is it true that the prospect of taxing non-resident Indians are driving demand? What about pollution and health concerns?How does the restriction on dual citizenship quell demand? Is it possible we'll soon see dual citizenship legalized in India?The Indian Supreme Court has ruled that foreign lawyers cannot give legal advice in India. What constitutes legal advice? Can foreign RCBI specialists still operate legally in India?

In India, the legal status of crypto and cryptocurrency trading remains a hot and murky topic. India's divisions, differences in opinion and all-out tug-of-war over the legality of crypto have been on full display in recent years. First there was a central bank ban on banks doing business with crypto firms. Then the Indian Supreme Court overturned that banking ban. Earlier this year, India's Parliament upped the ante by drafting a bill that would ban crypto outright. That crypto ban bill hasn't gone anywhere — yet. But with that threat in the shadows, what are India's crypto holders and companies to do? As India's crypto community awaits official clarification, many companies are now taking matters into their own hands through a voluntary and self-imposed code of conduct that would make them compliant with reasonable regulations, said Nishcal Shetty, founder of WazirX, in an interview with Forkast.News. WazirX, which launched just three weeks before the Reserve Bank of India's issued its ban on crypto banking in 2018 and has since grown into one of the nation's biggest crypto exchanges, recently joined a new collaboration between India's Blockchain and Crypto Assets Council and India's Internet and Mobile Association to develop guidelines for self-regulation among India's crypto exchanges. “The idea as an industry was, should we really just wait till the law comes in and just have anyone operate according to their own wishes? Or can we sort of try to build a template and sort of show the government that even on our own, we're still responsible and it's not the Wild West out here,” Shetty said. “I think with that objective, we decided we should all come together, exchanges in the country and adhere to some set of guidelines which we will all follow.” An entrepreneur at heart, Shetty took a hard look at India's lagging position in the blockchain and cryptocurrency global ecosystem and realized that creating access was the first step to foster technological innovation and growth in the nation of 1.4 billion. Throughout his journey in the space, Shetty has discovered that among the oscillating government positions, that there are nuances in even hardline stances and a willingness by government officials to learn and understand the disruptive new technology. Shetty also believes the crypto industry can help the hundreds of millions of citizens who do not have access to mainstream financial services, such as having a bank savings account. “If you look at the whole equity space in India, we have probably 70 million people into it, that's about 4% and that's an industry that has existed for many, many years,” Shetty said. “Now, here you have an industry which sort of in India — I think it's been only four or five years since crypto really became a popular term — if you look at it in isolation, yes, it seems like just 1%. But if you think about it, it's already 25% of the whole equity space in a very short period of time. So that growth trajectory is something which is very, very visible.”

In India, the legal status of crypto and cryptocurrency trading remains a hot and murky topic. India's divisions, differences in opinion and all-out tug-of-war over the legality of crypto have been on full display in recent years. First there was a central bank ban on banks doing business with crypto firms. Then the Indian Supreme Court overturned that banking ban. Earlier this year, India's Parliament upped the ante by drafting a bill that would ban crypto outright. That crypto ban bill hasn't gone anywhere — yet. But with that threat in the shadows, what are India's crypto holders and companies to do? As India's crypto community awaits official clarification, many companies are now taking matters into their own hands through a voluntary and self-imposed code of conduct that would make them compliant with reasonable regulations, said Nishcal Shetty, founder of WazirX, in an interview with Forkast.News. WazirX, which launched just three weeks before the Reserve Bank of India's issued its ban on crypto banking in 2018 and has since grown into one of the nation's biggest crypto exchanges, recently joined a new collaboration between India's Blockchain and Crypto Assets Council and India's Internet and Mobile Association to develop guidelines for self-regulation among India's crypto exchanges. “The idea as an industry was, should we really just wait till the law comes in and just have anyone operate according to their own wishes? Or can we sort of try to build a template and sort of show the government that even on our own, we're still responsible and it's not the Wild West out here,” Shetty said. “I think with that objective, we decided we should all come together, exchanges in the country and adhere to some set of guidelines which we will all follow.” An entrepreneur at heart, Shetty took a hard look at India's lagging position in the blockchain and cryptocurrency global ecosystem and realized that creating access was the first step to foster technological innovation and growth in the nation of 1.4 billion. Throughout his journey in the space, Shetty has discovered that among the oscillating government positions, that there are nuances in even hardline stances and a willingness by government officials to learn and understand the disruptive new technology. Shetty also believes the crypto industry can help the hundreds of millions of citizens who do not have access to mainstream financial services, such as having a bank savings account. “If you look at the whole equity space in India, we have probably 70 million people into it, that's about 4% and that's an industry that has existed for many, many years,” Shetty said. “Now, here you have an industry which sort of in India — I think it's been only four or five years since crypto really became a popular term — if you look at it in isolation, yes, it seems like just 1%. But if you think about it, it's already 25% of the whole equity space in a very short period of time. So that growth trajectory is something which is very, very visible.” Watch Nishcal Shetty's full interview with Forkast.News Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau to learn more about his thoughts on India's future with crypto, what regulators are doing to facilitate the industry's growth, how crypto can help the impoverished, and more.

DEFITIMES

Most western academics were skeptical about the future of India, the world’s largest democracy, throughout the 1950s to the 1970s. It succeeded beyond all expectations in mobilizing large-scale electoral participation especially among poor and illiterate voters. And yet today its very existence seems to hang in the balance as the country faces a deep crisis of liberal, secular democratic norms, values and institutional practices. Freedom House even downgraded India from a free democracy to a "partially free democracy" last year. So what ails Indian democracy so suddenly? Yogendra Yadav (a leading political theorist and leader of the Swaraj India party established in 2016) helps us make sense of the past, present and future of democracy in India.Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:• The Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna: IWM• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Excellence Chair and Soft Authoritarianism Research Group in Bremen: WOC• The Podcast Company: Earshot StrategiesFollow us on social media!• Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna: @IWM_Vienna• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentreFollow Yogendra Yadav on Twitter: @_YogendraYadavSubscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! BIBLIOGRAPHY• Making Sense of Indian Democracy. (2020).• Crafting State-Nations: India and Other Multinational Democracies. (2011). Co-authored with Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan.• Electoral Politics in Indian States: Lok Sabha Elections in 2004 and Beyond. (2009). Co-edited with Sandeep Shastri and K.C. Suri.• Learn more about Swaraj India. GLOSSARYWhat is universal Adult Franchise?(00:05:00 or p. 4 in the transcript)Universal Adult Franchise means that all adult citizens of the country should have the right to vote without any discrimination of class, caste, religion, or gender. Ornit Shani, Associate Professor of Modern Indian History writes: “From November 1947 India embarked on the preparation of the first draft electoral roll on the basis of universal adult franchise. […] Turning all adult Indians into voters over the next two years against many odds, and before they became citizens with the commencement of the constitution, required an immense power of imagination. Doing so was India’s stark act of decolonisation. This was no legacy of colonial rule: Indians imagined the universal franchise for themselves, acted on this imaginary, and made it their political reality. By late 1949 India pushed through the frontiers of the world’s democratic imagination, and gave birth to its largest democracy.” Read more.What does Balkanization mean?(00:10:30 or p. 6 in the transcript)Balkanization is a pejorative term used to describe the division of a multinational state into smaller ethnically homogeneous entities. The term also is used to refer to ethnic conflict within multiethnic states. It was coined at the end of World War I to describe the ethnic and political fragmentation that followed the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, particularly in the Balkans. Learn more.What does Hindu nationalism refer to?(00:10:30 or p. 6 in the transcript)For more context information we recommend this and this New York Times article.What is the European nation-state approach and how does it differ from a state-nation approach?(00:11:30 or p. 6 in the transcript)Nation-state approaches aspire to a congruence between state borders and the boundaries of the national community, so that the national group is contained in the territory of its state and the state contains only that nation. In his 2011 book “Crafting State-Nations” Yadav argues that this European approach has led to enormous bloodshed in the 20th century and instead proposes a “state-nation approach”, where deep cultural differences should be accommodated within political boundaries of a state. In his book Yadav argued that India was one of the prime examples of a successful state-nation. Learn more.What is the BJP?(00:14:50 or p. 8 in the transcript)Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a Hindu nationalist party, which has ruled India uninterruptedly since 2014. BJP is led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Learn more.What happened to Babri mosque and what did the Indian Supreme Court say?(00:33:00 or p. 17 in the transcript)The dispute over the 16th-century Babri mosque, in Ayodhya, goes back decades. In December 1992, Hindu militants razed the mosque, which is on a disputed religious site in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, triggering clashes with Muslims that left 2,000 people dead and plunged the country into political crisis. In September 2020 the Supreme Court has acquitted all senior figures in India’s ruling party of their role in the demolition of the Babri mosque by Hindu rioters. All 32 men, including the former deputy prime minister LK Advani, three leaders from the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) and a sitting BJP politician, were cleared of inciting the violence in 1992 that led to the mosque being torn down by an armed Hindu nationalist mob. Click here to learn more.What are the farmers’ protests in India about?(00:37:15 or p. 19 in the transcript)Indian farmers object to new laws that constitute the most sweeping reform to agriculture for decades. The government of the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, says the laws will bring necessary modernization and private competition to an ailing sector that has left millions of farmers destitute. Farmers say the laws were passed without consultation and will allow private corporations to control the prices of crops, crush their livelihoods and take away their land. Learn more.Which incident of police firing in the state of Madhya Pradesh is Yadav referring to?(00:28:15 or p. 20 in the transcript)In 2017 six farmers were killed in police firing during protests in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh. The farmers, who had been protesting for several days, were seeking loan waivers and appropriate pricing for their produce.

It is Time to Dismantle the World Health Organization Richard Gale & Gary Null PhD Progressive Radio Network, April 19, 2021   The ultimate international authority for infectious diseases is the World Health Organization (WHO). Due to its widespread acceptance by the world's national governments, it has been extremely successful in assuming the helm to monitor regional and global infectious diseases and dictate medical intervention policies to international health agencies. The organization has become the final word to rule whether the spread of a serious pathogen is a pandemic or not. For the majority of the medical community, the media and the average person, the WHO is the front line command post for medical prevention (i.e., vaccination) and treatment.  Consequently its rulings are often regarded as the gold standard.  On matters of global health, the WHO holds dominance.  For approximately a year the WHO has propagated the belief that the first line of defense for curtailing the COVID-19 pandemic is self-isolation, distancing, masks and, ultimately, vaccination. Although it approved Ivermectin as a cost-effective treatment against SARS-CoV-2 infections, it disapproved hydroxychloroquine in favor of Gilead Bioscience’s and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease’s (NIAID) Anthony Fauci’s novel and costly drug Remdesivir.  Much of it’s funding efforts have been reserved for mass-vaccination with the new generation of experimental vaccines. Throughout these efforts, the WHO has allied itself with the US's and UK’s national health systems, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and his Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) initiative.  Most people wrongly assume the WHO acts independently from private commercial and national government interests for the welfare of the world's population. The legitimacy of the WHO as a gold standard of health is dubious. The organization has frequently been accused of conflicts of interests with private pharmaceutical companies and mega-philanthropic organizations such as the Gates’ Foundation, as well as being riddled with political alliances, ideologies, and profiteering motives. Despite it’s mega-pharmaceutical interests and consultants representing private vaccine interests, in the past the WHO has had the audacity to ridicule the pharmaceutical industry of corruption. “Corruption in the pharmaceutical sector occurs throughout all stages of the medicine chain, from research and development to dispensing and promotion…. A lack of transparency and accountability within the medicines chain can also contribute to unethical practices and corruption.” These are similar charges that have been leveled against the WHO. An article in the National Review called the WHO "scandal plagued" with "wasteful spending, utter disregard for transparency, pervasive incompetence, and failure to adhere to even basic democratic standards." In his book, Immunization: How Vaccines Became Controversial, University of Amsterdam professor emeritus Dr. Stuart Blume raises the serious problem of the WHO’s most influential advisors on emergency health conditions, such as the current Covid-19 pandemic and earlier the 2009 H1N1 swine flu scare that never was, serve as consultants for the vaccine industry. During times of global emergencies and crises, the WHO confers with a separate group of advisors outside its formal sitting Strategic Advisory Group of Experts or SAGE; the names of this group’s members are not made public.  We would add that the WHO’s level of incompetence has resulted in serious misinformation about pandemics, medical risks of vaccines and other health-threatening chemicals.  For example, during the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, the organization reported it could not find any evidence of human transmission. However, the WHO has repeatedly kowtowed to China’s demands and unscrupulously accepts whatever statistics and statements the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) provides. Responding to a petition signed by over 700,000 signatories demanding the resignation of the current WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom, Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso told the Japanese parliament that the organization “should be renamed the Chinese Health Organization” for favoring China’s policy to stall and obstruct international investigations and for lauding unsubstantiated praise on the country’s transparency and handling of the pandemic. Back on December 31, 2019, Taiwan – which has been barred from WHO membership due to China’s political maneuvering – had been warning of a possible human-to-human transmission contrary to the wet-market narrative, but this was largely ignored in order to avoid upsetting the CCP. The UK’s Sunday Times reported that Chinese scientists were forced to destroy their proof of the virus shortly after its discovery. In the province of Hubei, authorities ordered the cessation of further testing and the destruction of existing samples. Other researchers who made efforts to warn the public were punished.  Writing for The Hill, University of Texas at San Antonio professor Bradley Thayer wrote, “Tedros apparently turned a blind eye to what happened in Wuhan and the rest of China and… has helped play down the severity, prevalence and scope of the Covid-19 outbreak.” Thayer concludes, “Tedros is not fit to lead the WHO.” He has no formal medical training as a physician or any international management experience in global health. Many others have voiced similar criticisms pointing out Tedro’s unsuitable background.  Moreover, the Director General’s conflicts of interest with China abound. Immediately before and after his tenure as the Health Minister for Ethiopia’s ruling Communist party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, China had donated an estimated $60 million to the terrorist government and its social programs. Now heading the WHO, Tedros appears to continue lobbying on China’s behalf. In 2017, the Washington Post noted the fundamental problem:  “[China] worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help Tedros defeat the United Kingdom candidate for the WHO job, David Nabarro. Tedros’s victory was also a victory for Beijing, whose leader Xi Jinping has made public his goal of flexing China’s muscle in the world.” Upon assuming his new position at the WHO, Tedros had left Ethiopia’s healthcare system in ruin.  As one young healthcare worker reported, there was no “bare necessities of a health care office…. Sterile gloves, paper exam gowns and covers, cotton swabs, gauze, tongue depressors, alcohol prep pads, chemical test strips, suturing equipment, syringes, stethoscopes… were non-existent. This is a fact in most health care centers in Ethiopia.”  During the more recent re-investigation of SARS-CoV-2 origins, the Chinese authorities refused to provide raw case data and created repressive conditions to curtail reliable analysis and disclosure. The WHO’s final report concluded that the virus had an animal origin and did not escape Wuhan’s high security pathogen laboratory. But there are viable reasons to discredit the report as untrustworthy at best and perhaps intentionally deceptive.  First, the entire agenda of the investigation was staged theater rather than a deep investigation to uncover empirical evidence. The team simply inspected seafood and open-air markets. Consequently, the WHO team returned empty handed and without laboratory records for a proper forensic examination. To call the entire WHO effort gross incompetence would be an understatement. Based upon all the evidence that has emerged, a large number of professional medical voices are calling the entire investigation a farce. Most problematic is the appointment of Peter Daszak on the WHO’s group to carry out the investigation. Daszak, the founding president of the shadowy non-profit organization EcoHealth Alliance, has headed many hunting adventures worldwide to identify the emergence of potential pathogens that could become pandemics. With the intention to divert attention away from an escaped laboratory virus, Daszak stated on a Going Viral podcast there was no evidential reason to visit and inspect the Wuhan laboratory. According to Independent Science News, despite Daszak’s denial of a lab origin, “EcoHealth Alliance funded bat coronavirus research, including virus collection, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and thus could themselves be directly implicated in the outbreak.” The research at the Wuhan lab included ‘gain of function” efforts on coronaviruses, and received funds directly approved by Anthony Fauci. Newsweek reports the NIH had given a total of $7.4 million to the Chinese lab for the research. The organization has received over $100 million from a variety of sources, including the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, the NIH and undisclosed amounts from the Chinese government. Daszak himself has authored 25 studies funded by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, think tanks, universities, military institutions, and ministries directly connected with the Chinese Communist Party.  Given the halls of power within the WHO, we are outlining some of the more salient reasons why the organization's declarations about infectious diseases, pandemics and vaccination should not be trusted.  Vaccine Promotional Misconduct For many years the WHO's recommendations for certain vaccines were kept secret. Writing in a 2006 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Marc Girard uncovered "scientific incompetence, misconduct or even criminal malfeasance" over the intentional inflation of vaccines' benefits while undermining toxicity and adverse effects. Dr. Girard testified as a medical expert for a French court in a criminal trial against the WHO after French health officials obliged the organization to launch its universal Hepatitis B vaccine campaign. The campaign resulted in the deaths of French children. Girard gained access to confidential WHO documents. He noted that the WHO's "French figures about chronic liver diseases were simply extrapolated from the U.S. reports." He further accused the WHO serving "merely as a screen for commercial promotion, in particular via the Viral Hepatitis Prevention Board (VHPB), which was created, sponsored, and infiltrated by the manufacturers." Now during the Covid-19 pandemic, as early as last July, the WHO approved of China’s first vaccine for emergency use, long before it had undergone proper clinical trials and much earlier than Moderna’s and Pfizer’s mRNA vaccines’ approval. Orchestration of Pandemic Panics Before the current COVID-19 pandemic, there was the H1N1 swine flu scare in 2009. However, at the very start the WHO's fear mongering of a global contagion that could exceed the death counts of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was solely based on false rhetoric rather than empirical evidence.  The fabrications are believed to have originated from the WHO's senior consultant on viral outbreaks who happens to carry the reputation of being one of the world's leading pandemic alarmists: Dr. Albert Osterhaus, nicknamed "Dr. Flu." At the time, Osterhaus was head of the Department of Virology at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. When the swine flu scare appeared, he was also the president of the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza (ESWI), an organization funded by the major vaccine manufacturers including Baxter, MedImmune, Glaxo, Sanofi Pasteur and others. It was also Osterhaus who transformed an otherwise potentially bad flu season into a global pandemic. The WHO has been criticized harshly in the media for changing the definition of a "pandemic" and in doing so has been charged with benefitting the pharmaceutical industry. The British Medical Journal reported that the WHO failed to report conflicts of interest in its H1N1 advisory group. The journal's Editor-in-Chief Fiona Godlee wrote, "WHO must act now to restore its credibility, and Europe should legislate." The former head of the prestigious Cochrane Database Collaboration’s vaccine studies, Dr. Tom Jefferson, told a Der Spiegel interviewer, “the WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies... built this machine around the impending [H1N1] pandemic. And there’s a lot of money involved, and influence and careers, and entire institutions.” When the 2009 H1N1 influenza strain appeared, the WHO rushed forward to mangle its earlier criteria that would realistically define a pandemic. The organization intentionally removed reference to a pathogen’s “severity” as a necessary requirement. “Don’t you think there’s something noteworthy,” Dr. Jefferson continues, “about the fact that the WHO has changed its definition of a pandemic?.... that’s how swine flu has been categorized as a pandemic.” Moreover, the WHO’s decision to label the outbreak as a pandemic was not based upon its own permanent vaccine experts but on the recommendations of a non-disclosed group of outside consultants.  According to a financial forecast published by JP Morgan, the collaboration between the WHO and Osterhaus's ESWI to orchestrate the pandemic would have profited the pharmaceutical industry up to $10 billion. Der Spiegel reported: “The WHO and those in charge of public health, the virologists and the pharmaceutical laboratories....  created a whole system around the imminence of a pandemic. There is a lot of money at stake, as well as networks of influence, careers and whole institutions! And the minute one of the flu viruses mutates we’d see the whole machine roll into action.” In 2010, the EU’s Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe launched an investigation into the evidence that the WHO had created “a fake pandemic” in order to financially benefit the pharmaceutical giants’ vaccine market and to strengthen the influence private drug interests have over the health organization. The Assembly’s chairperson Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg charged the WHO’s fake pandemic as “one of the greatest medical scandals of the century that resulted in “millions being needlessly vaccinated.” Epidemic of Conflict of Interests According to former World Bank geopolitical analyst Peter Koenig, about half of the WHO's budget is derived from private sources -- primarily pharmaceutical companies but also other corporate sectors including the telecommunication and agro-chemical industries. It also receives large donations from large philanthropic organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and GAVI. Eleven years ago, Gates had committed $10 billion to the WHO; after the US, his Foundation is its second largest donor providing 10 percent of its funding.  His financial commitment aligned with his global ambition to “make this the decade of vaccines.” Koenig also believes that Tedros’s appointment was due to Gates' influence. This may carry some truth because Tedros is a former Chair of GAVI’s Vaccine Alliance. Barbara Loe Fisher at the National Vaccine Information Center estimates that "only about 10 percent of total funding provided by GAVI ($862M) was used to strengthen health systems in developing countries, such as improving sanitation and nutrition, while nearly 80 percent was used to purchase, deliver and promote vaccines."  There is also the deep personal and financial relationship between Gates and the Chinese Communist government that demands further investigation. Gates is a member of the Chinese Academy of Science. For the moment, the WHO has been advising against Covid-19 vaccine passports as a mandate to travel. Nevertheless, China has already launched encrypted digital certificates as proof of vaccination. Given Gates’ close relationship with Chinese officials, perhaps he is awaiting on China to establish a precedent for other nations to agree on a global mandate that will eventually be propagated by the Gate’s network and the World Economic Forum and its Great Reset.  During a 2020 TED talk, Gates had already revealed that digital vaccine passports may be necessary; that part of his speech was edited from the original video, however, Robert Kennedy Jr. tracked down the original footage.  Gates has also 1) commissioned MIT to develop injectable a quantum dot dye system for children, 2) funded MicroChips, a company developing implantable chip-based devices, and 3) purchased 3.7 million shares in Serco who is developing tracing technology to track pandemic infections and vaccine compliance. Finally, Gates shares the Chinese Communist Party’s interests in collecting and ‘mining” citizens’ DNA. A 60 Minutes expose presented the covert activities of BGI Genomics, a CCP-linked firm that has exported Covid-19 tests to “collect, store and exploit biometric information” on American citizens. Independent investigations reveal that the Gates Foundation has collaborated with BGI and it was through Gates’ influence over Obama that the Chinese company entered the US market.  BGI’s RT-PCR kit was promoted by the WHO back in May 2020 for first line emergency diagnostic use. The rationale was that the test was highly sensitive, specific and user-friendly. Subsequently the EU, FDA, and the Australian, Canadian and Japanese health ministries rapidly purchased and deployed it. On its website, the Gates Foundation acknowledges its role in having the PCR tests supplied to the WHO. “Nine Chinese PCR tests were approved by WHO during 2020 under its Emergency Use Listing (EUL) mechanism, with one of the foundation’s partners supplying tests to WHO” Three months later, Sweden filed complaints after reports of a high percentage of false positives from the Chinese tests.  There is in our opinion little doubt that the WHO is another one of Gates' bought off entities for furthering his personal agenda to promote vaccines, genetically modified seeds and chemical agriculture in the developing world.  Vaccine Adverse Effects Monitoring System Needs Overhaul The WHO's Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety is the group responsible for administering vaccine programs in poorer, developing countries. It is also responsible for gathering data on incidents of vaccine injuries. Any deaths following vaccination campaigns are ignored and ruled as coincidental. This policy is based on the erroneous assumption that if no one died during a vaccine's clinical trials, then the vaccine should be regarded as automatically safe and unrelated to any deaths that might occur later. Consequently, the WHO's monitoring system is seriously flawed and requires a major overhaul.  One of the more controversial incidences was the WHO's collaboration with the Bill Gates’ GAVI campaign to launch the Pentavalent vaccine (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, HIP and Hepatitis B) in Africa and later in South and Southeast Asia. In India, health officials recorded upwards to 8,190 additional infant deaths annually following Pentavalent campaign.  The WHO’s response was to reclassify its adverse event reporting system to disregard "infant" deaths altogether. Dr. Jacob Puliyel, a member of the Indian government's National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization concluded,  “deaths and other serious adverse events following vaccination in the third world, that use WHO-AEFI classification are not recorded in any database for pharmaco-vigilance. It is as if the deaths of children in low (and middle) income countries are of no consequence.” WHO's Double Standards of Vaccine Safety A more recent scandal erupted during the WHO's Global Vaccine Safety Summit convened in December 2019.  Days before the summit, one of the WHO's medical directors for vaccination, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, appeared in a public advertisement touting the unquestionable safety of vaccines and ridiculing parents who speak out against vaccination. She assured viewers that the WHO was in control of matters and monitored any potential adverse risks carefully. However, during the Summit, the same Dr. Swaminathan acknowledged vaccine health risks and stated, "We really don't have very good safety monitoring systems." Another Summit participant, Dr. Heidi Larson stated, "We have a very wobbly ‘health professional frontline’ that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. When the frontline professionals are starting to question or they don’t feel like they have enough confidence about the safety to stand up to the person asking the questions. I mean most medical school curriculums, even nursing curriculums, I mean in medical school you are lucky if you have half a day on vaccines.” And more noteworthy were the statements by Dr. Martin Howell Friede, Coordinator of the WHO's Initiative for Vaccine Research,  "... I give courses every year on how do you develop vaccines, how do you make vaccines. And the first lesson is while you’re making your vaccine if you can avoid using an adjuvant please do so. Lesson two is if you’re going to use an adjuvant use one that has a history of safety. And lesson three is if you’re not going to do that, think very carefully." In other words, what the WHO presents to the public contradicts what is discussed behind closed doors, another example of the veil of secrecy the organization operates within.  Now we are witnessing more countries halting further administration of AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine, a vaccine Trump had committed $1.2 billion towards its development. Subsequently the CDC paused Johnson & Johnson’s similar engineered adenovirus vaccine in order to investigate its association with an otherwise rare condition of fatal blood clotting. The WHO on the other hand has ignored these nations’ ethical responsibility to adhere to the precautionary principle. Its own review claimed there were no blood clot links to AstraZeneca’s vaccine; later the WHO changed its tune to “plausible” after EU regulators found a causal link and the New England Journal of Medicine published two studies providing specific details confirming these adverse reactions.  Although acknowledging these risks, the WHO has continued to recommend that mass vaccination proceed as if there were no red alarms.   WHO's Depopulation Efforts with Vaccines Without doubt, the most nefarious activity conducted by the WHO is its alleged support and distribution of vaccines to poorer developing countries that may have been intentionally designed to decrease population rates.  Back in 1989, the WHO sponsored a symposium at its Geneva headquarters on "Antifertility Vaccines and Contraceptive Vaccines." The symposium presented proposals for vaccines that were later discovered to have been laced with the sterilizing hormones HCG and estradiol; the former prevents pregnancy and triggers spontaneous abortions and miscarriages, and the latter can turn men infertile.   In 2015, the Kenyan Conference of Catholic Bishops reported its discovery of a polio vaccine laced with estradiol that was manufactured in India and distributed by the WHO. A year earlier, Dr. Wahome Ngare from the Kenyan Catholic Doctors Association uncovered a tetanus vaccine specifically being administered to women, also distributed by the WHO, that contained the HCG hormone. All of the polio vaccine samples tested contained HCG, estrogen-related compounds, follicle stimulating and luteinizing hormones, which will damage sperm formation in the testes. Even more disturbing, this vaccine was going to be administered to children under five years of age.  However, this is not the first time the WHO appears to have made efforts to use vaccination campaigns for depopulation.  A decade earlier, in 2004, the WHO, UNICIF and CDC launched a vaccination campaign to immunize 74 million African children during a polio outbreak. The initiative encountered a serious obstacle. In Nigeria, laboratory tests on the WHO's vaccine samples resulted in the presence of estrogen and other female hormones. And in the mid-1990s, a tetanus vaccine being administered to Nicaraguan and Filipino girls and women in their child-bearing years was discovered to contain HCG, which accounted for a large number of spontaneous abortions that were reported by Catholic health workers.  Illegal Vaccine Experiments In 2014, The Economic Times of India published a report that provided details of a joint venture between the WHO and the Gates Foundation to test an experimental HPV vaccine on approximately 16,000 tribal girls between the ages of 9 and 15 unwittingly. The experiment was conducted in 2008, and the vaccine is now what we commonly know as Gardasil. Many of the girls, the report states, became ill and some died.  The following year the WHO and Gates Foundation conducted a similar experiment on 14,000 girls with the HPV vaccine Cervarix. Again "scores of teenage girls were hospitalized."  Investigations led by Indian health officials uncovered gross violations in India's laws regarding medical safety. In numerous cases there was no consent and the children had no idea what they were being vaccinated for. The Indian Supreme Court has taken up a case against the duo for criminal charges.  There are many other questionable activities that the WHO has been involved with over the years. However, the above provide sufficient evidence to argue the case that, at least within the upper echelons of the WHO, global health does not stand in high priority.  The organization employs over 7,000 people around the world and most of these have deep concern for improving the lives of populations in poor and developing nations. On the other hand, the WHO's leaders are there largely because the powers of Washington, London and the pharmaceutical industry benefit by the organization advancing its agendas.  Of course, the WHO is not the only health entity with a legacy of corruption.  Corruption appears to be systemic throughout global health and national health agencies.  This topic was featured last year in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. Author Dr. Patricia Garcia writes,  "Corruption is embedded in health systems. Throughout my life—as a researcher, public health worker, and a Minister of Health—I have been able to see entrenched dishonesty and fraud. But despite being one of the most important barriers to implementing universal health coverage around the world, corruption is rarely openly discussed." Bear in mind, the WHO, along with Bill Gates and his Foundation, and Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Disease, are leading the efforts to get the COVID-19 vaccine administered as quickly as possible. Already the Gates Foundation has given $1.75 billion for developing and distributing these vaccines. Do you believe we can trust their judgment and the intense public relations effort that will immediately follow after such a vaccine reaches the market? 

This episode is the first of a two-part series on political webcomics in India. In the context of protests, arrests and judicial intimidation of citizens including artists, we take a look at how the graphic strip format is being deployed to respond to political events in India. I speak to Meher Manda and Mayukh Goswami, co-creators of Jamun Ka Ped, an Instagram-based webcomic that since the NRC-CAA protests of 2019, has been chronicling and commenting on the political and social crises raging in India under the Modi administration, including the Indian Supreme Court's verdict regarding the ownership of the mob-demolished Babri Mosque site, the abrogation of the Indian Constitution's Article 370 which ended Kashmir' autonomy, the February 2020 Delhi pogroms and most recently the farmers' protests against the three agriculture laws [which we discussed in Artalaap's third episode]. Today, we discuss the webcomic as a self-consciously political form, how the internet has affected traditional graphic or strip design and the hostility that Indian artists are facing from the state. Click here to access the Image Guide+ & view the images and material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-4 Credits: Producer: Tunak Teas Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Musical arrangement: Jayant Parashar Images: Instagram @jamun_ka_ped Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]

Two lawyers who represent alleged victims of sexual assault and harassment join Kim Chakanetsa to discuss how #MeToo and other public movements have impacted their work. Debra Katz is an American civil rights and employment lawyer, best known for representing alleged victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment, and the whistleblowers who bring these stories to light. Her clients have included Christine Blasey-Ford, Vanessa Tyson and Chloe Caras. Karuna Nundy is an Indian Supreme Court lawyer who focusses on constitutional law, media law and legal policy. Her work includes helping draft an anti-rape bill in India, after the 2012 Delhi bus gang rape created outrage around the treatment of women. IMAGE DETAILS L: Karuna Nundy (credit - Ankita Chandra) R: Debra Katz

Today on The Leaders' Brief - After declining Vodafone Idea's request for a 20-year window to pay statutory dues, the Indian Supreme Court stated that the National Company Law Tribunal would decide whether spectrum can be sold during insolvency proceedings. In some respite for telecom operators, the Supreme Court has asked carriers to pay 10% of pending dues by March 31, 2021. American Chemistry Council suggests that Africa's largest economy, Kenya, "could serve in the future as a hub for supplying US-made chemicals and plastics to other markets in Africa through this trade agreement." The Africa Regional Certification Commission certified the WHO African Region as wild polio-free on August 25th after four years without a case. Nigeria, which accounted for over 50% of global polio cases a few years ago, was the last African nation to declare that the virus has been completely eradicated. About egomonk: Website | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedInegomonk is a global intelligence platform delivering asymmetric outcomes by bringing organizations closer to the communities they want to serve and the leaders they wish to influence. If you wish to collaborate with us then email us at contact@egomonk.com.

In this episode, Arpitha Kodiveri, a graduate student at the European University Institute, discusses her article "Wildlife First, People Later?: Forest Rights and Conservation - Towards an Experimentalist Governance Approach," which is published in the Journal of Indian Law and Society. Kodiveri begins by describing Indian environmental law and why it has created tensions with indigenous communities. She discusses a case currently before the Indian Supreme Court, and she explains how she thinks the problems it presents should be resolved. Kodiveri is on Twitter at @arpithakodiveri.This episode was hosted by Brian L. Frye, Spears-Gilbert Associate Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky College of Law. Frye is on Twitter at @brianlfrye. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Why the World Health Organization Deserves Our Distrust Richard Gale & Gary Null PhD Progressive Radio Network, May 8, 2020   Many more questions are being raised than there are answers being discovered concerning the recent strains of coronavirus. Where and how did it originate? Was it the result of human engineering and manipulation or is it a strain that mutated naturally?  What are the best tests to determine exposure and infection? Why are so many infected individuals asymptomatic? Are all elderly people equally susceptible to infection and how much do co-morbidities determine outcomes? These are just several of the important questions that still require definitive answers. The ultimate international authority for infectious diseases is the World Health Organization (WHO). Because of its acceptance by the world's national governments, it has been extremely successful in its mission. The WHO is the final word in determining whether the spread of a serious pathogen is ruled as a pandemic or not. For the majority of the medical community, the media and the average person, the WHO is the front line command post for medical prevention (i.e., vaccination) and treatment.  Consequently it's rulings are often regarded as the gold standard by which many nations design their health policies and intervening protocols to protect their citizens.  On matters of global health, the WHO holds dominance. We are currently being told by the Director General of the WHO that the solutions for curtailing the COVID-19 pandemic are self-isolation, distancing, masks, and, for those in acute stages of infection, ventilation. To date there is no drug that has been found to be universally safe and effective. Therefore, all efforts, with massive funding, are being devoted to rapidly get a coronavirus vaccine on the market.  And in this effort, the WHO is a close ally and advocate in the US's federal health system, notably the CDC and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Most people assume the WHO acts independently from private commercial and national government interests for the welfare of the world's population. However, at best this is an assumption. Moreover, the very legitimacy of the WHO as a gold standard of health is questionable. The organization has been accused of conflicts of interests with private pharmaceutical companies and mega-philanthropic organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as being riddled with political alliances, ideologies, and profiteering motives.  An article in the National Review called the WHO "scandal plagued" with "wasteful spending, utter disregard for transparency, pervasive incompetence, and failure to adhere to even basic democratic standards." We would also add that its level of incompetence has resulted in serious misinformation about the medical risks of vaccines and other health-threatening chemicals.  For example, during the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, the organization reported it could not find any evidence of human transmission. Now we know it is perhaps the most transmittable respiratory viral infection encountered in modern medical history. Given the halls of power within the WHO, we are outlining some of the more salient reasons why the organization's declarations about infectious diseases, pandemics and vaccination should not entirely be trusted. Vaccine Promotional Misconduct Very few will know that for a long time, the WHO's recommendations for certain vaccines were kept secret. Writing in a 2006 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Marc Girard uncovered "scientific incompetence, misconduct or even criminal malfeasance" over the intentional inflation of vaccines' benefits while undermining toxicity and adverse effects. Dr. Girard was called upon as a medical expert by the French courts in a criminal trial against the WHO after French health officials obliged the organization to launch its universal Hepatitis B vaccine campaign. The campaign resulted in the deaths of French children.  Consequently, Girard gained access to confidential WHO documents. He notes that the WHO's "French figures about chronic liver diseases were simply extrapolated from the U.S. reports." He further accused the WHO serving "merely as a screen for commercial promotion, in particular via the Viral Hepatitis Prevention Board (VHPB), which was created, sponsored, and infiltrated by the manufacturers." Orchestration of Pandemic Panics Before the current COVID-19 pandemic, there was the H1N1 swine flu scare in 2009 that came and went as a church mouse. However, at the very start the WHO's fear mongering of a global contagion that could exceed the death counts of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was based on false assumptions.  The fabrications are believed to have originated from the WHO's senior consultant on viral outbreaks who happens to be one of the world's leading pandemic alarmists: Dr. Albert Osterhaus who carries the nickname "Dr. Flu." Osterhaus is head of the Department of Virology at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. At the time of the H1N1 pandemic, he was the president of the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza (ESWI), an organization funded by the major vaccine manufacturers including Baxter, MedImmune, Glaxo, Sanofi Pasteur and others. It is ESWI's agenda to vaccinate the entire world against the swine flu. It was also Osterhaus who transformed an otherwise potentially bad flu season into a global pandemic. The WHO has been criticized harshly in the media for changing the definition of a "pandemic" and in doing so has been charged with benefitting the pharmaceutical industry. Moreover, the British Medical Journal reported that the WHO failed to report conflicts of interest in its H1N1 advisory group. The journal's Editor-in-Chief Fiona Godlee wrote, "WHO must act now to restore its credibility, and Europe should legislate." According to a financial forecast published by JP Morgan, the collaboration between the WHO and Osterhaus's ESWI to orchestrate the pandemic would have profited the pharmaceutical industry up to $10 billion. The popular German magazine Der Spiegel reported: “The WHO and those in charge of public health, the virologists and the pharmaceutical laboratories....  created a whole system around the imminence of a pandemic. There is a lot of money at stake, as well as networks of influence, careers and whole institutions! And the minute one of the flu viruses mutates we'd see the whole machine roll into action.” Epidemic of Conflict of Interests According to former World Bank geopolitical analyst Peter Koenig, about half of the WHO's budget is derived from private sources -- primarily pharmaceutical companies but also other corporate sectors including the telecommunication and agro-chemical industries. It also receives large donations from large philanthropic organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It is believed, according to Koenig, that the appointment of the WHO's current Director General, Dr. Tedro Adhanom, was due to Gates' influence. Tedros is the former Chairman of Gates funded GAVI Vaccine Alliance. GAVI's sole mission is to vaccinate every child in the world. The WHO and the US and British governments are the primary partners and the largest funder is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. There is in our opinion little doubt that the WHO is another one of Gates' bought off entities for furthering his personal agenda to promote vaccines, genetically modified seeds and chemical agriculture in the developing world. Barbara Loe Fisher at the National Vaccine Information Center estimates that "only about 10 percent of total funding provided by Gavi ($862M) was used to strengthen health systems in developing countries, such as improving sanitation and nutrition, while nearly 80 percent was used to purchase, deliver and promote vaccines." The WHO as America's Poodle According to the Kaiser Family Foundation's fact sheet for the US government and WHO, the US is the largest contributor to the global organization. The CDC also provides its technical support and has liaisons at the WHO's Geneva headquarters and regional offices. In summary, there is a strong rationale to suggest that the WHO, aside from its global health programs in other countries, is largely doing the bidding of the US government to advance corporate interests and American neoliberal hegemony. Vaccine Adverse Effects Monitoring System Needs Overhaul The WHO's Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety is the group responsible for administering vaccine programs in poorer, developing countries. It is also responsible for gathering data on incidents of vaccine injuries. Any deaths following vaccination campaigns are ignored and ruled as coincidental. This policy is based on the erroneous assumption that if no one died during a vaccine's clinical trials, then the vaccine should be regarded as automatically safe and unrelated to any deaths that might occur. Consequently, the WHO's monitoring system is seriously flawed and requires a major overhaul. One of the more controversial incidences is the WHO's collaboration with the Bill Gates funded GAVI Vaccine Alliance campaign to launch the pentavalent vaccine (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, HIP and Hepatitis B)  in Africa and later in South and Southeast Asia. In India, health officials recorded upwards to 8,190 additional infant deaths annually following pentavalent vaccination.  The WHO response was to reclassify its adverse event reporting system to disregard "infant" deaths altogether. Dr. Jacob Puliyel, a member of the Indian government's National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization concluded, “deaths and other serious adverse events following vaccination in the third world, that use WHO-AEFI classification are not recorded in any database for pharmacovigilance. It is as if the deaths of children in low (and middle) income countries are of no consequence.” The WHO's Director General's Troubled Past Given the enormous number of experts in infectious disease and control, it is astounding that the WHO's current Director General is Dr. Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus. He was a leading politician in the militant communist Tigray People's Liberation Front that ruled Ethiopia between 1991 to 2018.  Tedros served dual roles as the country's Health and Foreign Minister. According to the British journalist Thomas Mountain, who has lived in neighboring Eritrea for many years and has reported on the corrupt Tigray regime, Tedros had a direct role in the atrocities alleged to have been committed by the government.  It was Tedros who has been reported to have been responsible for the removal of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders following Ethiopia's brutal massacre of Ogaden citizens in Somalia, which was immediately followed by a cholera outbreak. As noted above, his approval to head of the organization may likely have been vetted by Bill Gates. Looking back at his past three years at the WHO, Mountain remarks, "For almost three years he remained quiet about the almost total lack of preparation at the WHO for what numerous panels had warned was inevitable, a highly contagious and deadly virus quickly spreading across the world." WHO's Depopulation Efforts with Vaccines Without doubt, the most nefarious activity conducted by the WHO is its alleged support and distribution of vaccines to poorer developing countries that may have been intentionally designed to decrease population rates.  Back in 1989, the WHO sponsored a symposium at its Geneva headquarters on "Antifertility Vaccines and Contraceptive Vaccines." The symposium presented proposals for vaccines that were later discovered to have been laced with the sterilizing hormones HCG and estradiol; the former prevents pregnancy and triggers spontaneous abortions and miscarriages, and the latter can turn men infertile.  In 2015, the Kenyan Conference of Catholic Bishops reported its discovery of a polio vaccine laced with estradiol that was manufactured in India and distributed by the WHO. A year earlier, Dr. Wahome Ngare from the Kenyan Catholic Doctors Association uncovered a tetanus vaccine specifically being administered to women, also distributed by the WHO, that contained the HCG hormone. All of the polio vaccine samples tested contained HCG, estrogen-related compounds, follicle stimulating and luteinizing hormones, which will damage sperm formation in the testes. Even more disturbing, this vaccine was going to be administered to children under five years of age. However, this is not the first time the WHO appears to have made efforts to use vaccination campaigns for depopulation.  A decade earlier, in 2004, the WHO, UNICIF and CDC launched a vaccination campaign to immunize 74 million African children during a polio outbreak. The initiative encountered a serious obstacle. In Nigeria, laboratory tests on the WHO's vaccine samples resulted in the presence of estrogen and other female hormones. And in the mid-1990s, a tetanus vaccine being administered to Nicaraguan and Filipino girls and women in their child-bearing years was discovered to contain HCG, which accounted for a large number of spontaneous abortions that were reported by Catholic health workers. Illegal Vaccine Experiments In 2014, The Economic Times of India published a report that provided details of a joint venture between the WHO and the Gates Foundation to test an experimental HPV vaccine on approximately 16,000 tribal girls between the ages of 9 and 15 unwittingly. The experiment was conducted in 2008, and the vaccine is now what we commonly know as Gardasil. Many of the girls, the report states, became ill and some died. The following year the WHO and Gates Foundation conducted a similar experiment on 14,000 girls with the HPV vaccine Cervarix. Again "scores of teenage girls were hospitalized."  Investigations led by Indian health officials uncovered gross violations in India's laws regarding medical safety. In numerous cases there was no consent and the children had no idea what they were being vaccinated for. The Indian Supreme Court has taken up a case against the duo for criminal charges. WHO's Double Standards of Vaccine Safety A more recent scandal erupted during the WHO's Global Vaccine Safety Summit convened in December 2019.  Days before the summit, one of the WHO's medical directors for vaccination, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, appeared in a public advertisement touting the unquestionable safety of vaccines and ridiculing parents who speak out against vaccination. She assured viewers that the WHO was in control of matters and monitored any potential adverse risks carefully. However, during the Summit, the same Dr. Swaminathan acknowledged vaccine health risks and stated, "We really don't have very good safety monitoring systems." Another Summit participant, Dr. Heidi Larson stated, "We have a very wobbly ‘health professional frontline' that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. When the frontline professionals are starting to question or they don't feel like they have enough confidence about the safety to stand up to the person asking the questions. I mean most medical school curriculums, even nursing curriculums, I mean in medical school you are lucky if you have half a day on vaccines.” And more noteworthy were the statements by Dr. Martin Howell Friede, Coordinator of the WHO's Initiative for Vaccine Research, "... I give courses every year on how do you develop vaccines, how do you make vaccines. And the first lesson is while you're making your vaccine if you can avoid using an adjuvant please do so. Lesson two is if you're going to use an adjuvant use one that has a history of safety. And lesson three is if you're not going to do that, think very carefully." In other words, what the WHO presents to the public contradicts what is discussed behind closed doors, another example of the veil of secrecy the organization operates within. Suppression of the Dangers of Depleted Uranium The use of depleted uranium pervades military missiles and bombs. Tons of depleted uranium were deployed during the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.  It is estimated that the US fired over 300,000 rounds of depleted uranium, or 1,000 tons, during the 2003 Iraq war. In both countries, the WHO has been very active in providing health needs to the populations affected.  However, in regions where bombing was most intense, such as in Fallujah Iraq, there has been a high prevalence of congenital birth defects. This was uncovered by an on-the-ground investigation conducted by the Brussels Tribunal.  According to a BBC documentary, there is no longer any doubt about depleted uranium's association with genetic damage and birth defects.  According to an article published in the British Medical Journal in 2013, the WHO intentionally suppressed the scientific evidence .  The question remains why?  Hans von Sponeck, a former Assistant Secretary General for the United Nations has suggested that "the US government sought to prevent WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where DU has been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers."  Here we find a likely case of the WHO doing the bidding of the US government and its military adventures in regime change. There are many other questionable activities that the WHO has been involved with over the years. However, the above provide sufficient evidence to argue the case that, at least within the upper echelons of the WHO, global health does not stand in high priority.  The organization employs over 7,000 people around the world and most of these have deep concern for improving the lives of populations in poor and developing nations. On the other hand, the WHO's leaders are there largely because the powers of Washington, London and the pharmaceutical industry benefit by the organization advancing its agendas. Of course, the WHO is not the only health entity with a legacy of corruption.  Corruption appears to be systemic throughout global health and national health agencies.  This topic was featured last year in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. Author Dr. Patricia Garcia writes, "Corruption is embedded in health systems. Throughout my life—as a researcher, public health worker, and a Minister of Health—I have been able to see entrenched dishonesty and fraud. But despite being one of the most important barriers to implementing universal health coverage around the world, corruption is rarely openly discussed." Bear in mind, the WHO, along with Bill Gates and his Foundation, and Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Disease, are leading the efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Do you believe we can trust their judgment and the intense public relations effort that will immediately follow after such a vaccine reaches the market?  

Tucked away in the City of London is one of the UK’s most successful invisible exports. But is the Commercial Court threatened by international developments? Joshua Rozenberg investigates. Italy has extended its emergency coronavirus measures and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has ordered people to stay at home. Lawyer Mariella Melandri tells Law In Action how this is affecting her legal practice and clients. The government is planning emergency legislation allowing people who are forced to self-isolate to appear in court by video link or telephone. Is this an adequate substitute for a face-to-face hearing? Joshua speaks to immigration barrister Colin Yeo. Also, is India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) unconstitutional? Dr Rahul Rao, Senior Lecturer in Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, explains why this controversial law is being challenged in the Indian Supreme Court. Producer: Neil Koenig Researcher: Di Richardson

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Nischal Shetty is the founder & CEO of WazirX, the largest Indian cryptocurrency exchange that was acquired by Binance. In this episode, Nischal and Wei discuss the early stage of Nischal's entrepreneurial journey, the current state of crypto in India, and the story behind the acquisition and the successful launch of the WRX token on Binance. The Episode is also updated with the historical ruling by the Indian Supreme Court, overturning the RBI's ban on banks offering services to cryptocurrency companies.

Hindu extremists demolished a 16th century mosque in the Indian city of Ayodhya in December 1992 prompting months of communal violence across India. Photojournalist Praveen Jain witnessed rehearsals for the demolition the day before the activists stormed the mosque. He has been talking to Iknoor Kaur about what he saw. On November 9th this year the Indian Supreme Court ruled that a Hindu temple can be built on the disputed site. Photo: Hindu extremists rehearsing the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Copyright:Praveen Jain.

We discuss what the Indian Supreme Court judgement on the Babri Masjid dispute means

This conference, organised by Cambridge Family Law together with the International Academy of Family Lawyers (IAFL) and the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Family Law, explored a range of issues and challenges surrounding the law and practice of national and international surrogacy from a practical perspective. Practitioners, lawmakers, academics and other participants will discuss the legal consequences of the rise in surrogacy arrangements and, in particular, reproductive tourism. For more information about the conference see: https://www.family.law.cam.ac.uk/international-surrogacy-forum-2019 This recording is from Part VII - The Way Forward - General discussion, with Sital Kalantry (Cornell Law School). Sital Kalantry is a Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the International Human Rights Policy Advocacy Clinic, and Co-Director of the Migration and Human Rights Program at Cornell Law School. She is an expert in international human rights and her scholarship focuses on gender and education rights, particularly within the context of India and the United States. In her book, Women’s Human Rights and Migration, she uses empirical, comparative, and critical race studies approaches to critique the legislative process and mainstream discourse regarding sex-selective abortion bans in the United States. Her writings have been published in top peer-reviewed and American and international journals, including the Human Rights Quarterly, the National Law Journal, and the Stanford Journal of International Law, and the Nordic Journal of Human Rights. Kalantry has been invited to deliver numerous talks and presentations around the world. She has received many awards and grants for her work, including a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Scholar grant to conduct research in India on the Indian Supreme Court and helping to secure a $1.5 million dollar grant to establish a center focused on women and justice. She serves as a peer-reviewer for several human rights journals and is on the editorial board of the Jindal Global Law Review and the Maharashtra National University Law Review. Kalantry is a member of the lawyers advisory committee of Peace Brigades International and served on the International Human Rights Committee of the New York City Bar Association. She is fluent in Hindi and conversant in Spanish.

This conference, organised by Cambridge Family Law together with the International Academy of Family Lawyers (IAFL) and the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Family Law, explored a range of issues and challenges surrounding the law and practice of national and international surrogacy from a practical perspective. Practitioners, lawmakers, academics and other participants will discuss the legal consequences of the rise in surrogacy arrangements and, in particular, reproductive tourism. For more information about the conference see: https://www.family.law.cam.ac.uk/international-surrogacy-forum-2019 This recording is from Part VII - The Way Forward - General discussion, with Sital Kalantry (Cornell Law School). Sital Kalantry is a Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the International Human Rights Policy Advocacy Clinic, and Co-Director of the Migration and Human Rights Program at Cornell Law School. She is an expert in international human rights and her scholarship focuses on gender and education rights, particularly within the context of India and the United States. In her book, Women’s Human Rights and Migration, she uses empirical, comparative, and critical race studies approaches to critique the legislative process and mainstream discourse regarding sex-selective abortion bans in the United States. Her writings have been published in top peer-reviewed and American and international journals, including the Human Rights Quarterly, the National Law Journal, and the Stanford Journal of International Law, and the Nordic Journal of Human Rights. Kalantry has been invited to deliver numerous talks and presentations around the world. She has received many awards and grants for her work, including a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Scholar grant to conduct research in India on the Indian Supreme Court and helping to secure a $1.5 million dollar grant to establish a center focused on women and justice. She serves as a peer-reviewer for several human rights journals and is on the editorial board of the Jindal Global Law Review and the Maharashtra National University Law Review. Kalantry is a member of the lawyers advisory committee of Peace Brigades International and served on the International Human Rights Committee of the New York City Bar Association. She is fluent in Hindi and conversant in Spanish.

This conference, organised by Cambridge Family Law together with the International Academy of Family Lawyers (IAFL) and the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Family Law, explored a range of issues and challenges surrounding the law and practice of national and international surrogacy from a practical perspective. Practitioners, lawmakers, academics and other participants will discuss the legal consequences of the rise in surrogacy arrangements and, in particular, reproductive tourism. For more information about the conference see: https://www.family.law.cam.ac.uk/international-surrogacy-forum-2019 This recording is from Part VII - The Way Forward - General discussion, with Sital Kalantry (Cornell Law School). Sital Kalantry is a Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the International Human Rights Policy Advocacy Clinic, and Co-Director of the Migration and Human Rights Program at Cornell Law School. She is an expert in international human rights and her scholarship focuses on gender and education rights, particularly within the context of India and the United States. In her book, Women’s Human Rights and Migration, she uses empirical, comparative, and critical race studies approaches to critique the legislative process and mainstream discourse regarding sex-selective abortion bans in the United States. Her writings have been published in top peer-reviewed and American and international journals, including the Human Rights Quarterly, the National Law Journal, and the Stanford Journal of International Law, and the Nordic Journal of Human Rights. Kalantry has been invited to deliver numerous talks and presentations around the world. She has received many awards and grants for her work, including a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Scholar grant to conduct research in India on the Indian Supreme Court and helping to secure a $1.5 million dollar grant to establish a center focused on women and justice. She serves as a peer-reviewer for several human rights journals and is on the editorial board of the Jindal Global Law Review and the Maharashtra National University Law Review. Kalantry is a member of the lawyers advisory committee of Peace Brigades International and served on the International Human Rights Committee of the New York City Bar Association. She is fluent in Hindi and conversant in Spanish.

India’s Supreme Court has freed on bail a Christian falsely accused of murder and imprisoned for over a decade—an important victory for religious freedom in a country that’s becoming increasingly radicalized. Listen as host Taylor Berglund reports on this story and offers suggestions for prayer for the persecuted in India.

This week we have 2 guests in the studio to talk about Queering the Internet, LGBTQ Representation Online. Following the repealing of section 377 in India. A law which gives hope for LGBT communities by making homophobia illegal. In this episode we explore the realities and how queer identity can exist online. Mayur Suresh is a Lecturer in Law at SOAS. In 2016, he was awarded a PhD from Birkbeck for this thesis titled ‘Terrorist' lives in Delhi's courts: An ethnography of the legal worlds of terrorism trials. Before his doctoral studies, Mayur practiced law in Delhi, where he and his colleagues represented a wide variety of clients. Mayur was part of the legal team in the Naz Foundation case – that successfully challenged India's anti-homosexuality law in the Delhi High Court, and defended the judgment in the Supreme Court. Mayur has co-edited a volume on the politics of the Indian Supreme Court titled The shifting scales of justice: The Supreme Court in Neoliberal India (2014). He is currently completing a book manuscript based on his doctoral research. Tabitha Millet researches in the areas of Queer Theory and Art Education at UCL. Tabitha's PhD research focuses on developing and troubling the curriculum at GCSE by exploring gender and sexuality in the art classroom. Tabitha has taught Art and Design in a number of London schools and continues to develop her own artistic practice working with the themes of gender and sexuality. Tabitha has held exhibitions in London, Oxford and Cambridge. In addition, Tabitha was recently awarded the Spirit of Soho award for her artwork and the Charles Fox prize at Cambridge for her research.Discover more about this interview on our website here.Twitter: @global_futuresInstagram: @global_futuresSubstack Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we have 2 guests in the studio to talk about Queering the Internet, LGBTQ Representation Online. Following the repealing of section 377 in India. A law which gives hope for LGBT communities by making homophobia illegal. In this episode we explore the realities and how queer identity can exist online. Mayur Suresh is a Lecturer in Law at SOAS. In 2016, he was awarded a PhD from Birkbeck for this thesis titled ‘Terrorist’ lives in Delhi’s courts: An ethnography of the legal worlds of terrorism trials. Before his doctoral studies, Mayur practiced law in Delhi, where he and his colleagues represented a wide variety of clients. Mayur was part of the legal team in the Naz Foundation case – that successfully challenged India’s anti-homosexuality law in the Delhi High Court, and defended the judgment in the Supreme Court. Mayur has co-edited a volume on the politics of the Indian Supreme Court titled The shifting scales of justice: The Supreme Court in Neoliberal India (2014). He is currently completing a book manuscript based on his doctoral research. Tabitha Millet researches in the areas of Queer Theory and Art Education at UCL. Tabitha’s PhD research focuses on developing and troubling the curriculum at GCSE by exploring gender and sexuality in the art classroom. Tabitha has taught Art and Design in a number of London schools and continues to develop her own artistic practice working with the themes of gender and sexuality. Tabitha has held exhibitions in London, Oxford and Cambridge. In addition, Tabitha was recently awarded the Spirit of Soho award for her artwork and the Charles Fox prize at Cambridge for her research. Discover more on our website: https://www.soascodingclub.com/soas-radio-episode-5-queer

Pawan Singh (Deakin University, Melbourne): Biometrics, identity and privacy in India In 2018, the Indian Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of mandatory Aadhaar, the Indian government's biometric programme that was launched in 2009 and challenged in the Supreme Court 2010 onwards. Civil society groups, lawyers and pro-privacy activists challenged Aadhaar's mandatory linkage to various state-sponsored benefit databases for the Aadhaar scheme's potential to bring about a surveillance state. This presentation provides an overview of the Indian data privacy debate in the context of Aadhaar and identifies some key policy issues. It also reflects on the place of privacy as a legal right, technological affordance and social and cultural practice in India. Pawan Singh is a media studies researcher and a New Generation Network Scholar in Contemporary Histories at Deakin University. His research concerns issues of privacy, social justice and mediation of identity in India within a transnational framework. History & Policy exists to put historians in touch with policy makers, encourage historically informed comment in public policy debate and put excellent history at the heart of policy making. Although we are the only project of our kind in the UK we are far from being the only one in the world. For this conference, which will be open to policy makers and the public, we are partnering with the American Historical Association and Australian Policy & History for a day of panels and discussion to explore how history informs public policy debate in different countries. What are the success stories, how do policy makers vary in their receptiveness, what can historians learn from each other and from the policy makers they talk to, and have particular topics got more traction in some places than others?

Dyscalculia Headlines Weekly Podcast for week 37 in 2018 Music by www.freesfx.co.uk Math Dyscalculia learning disabilities

On 6 September, the Indian Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality when it ruled on Section 377 of its penal code. The historic ruling on this colonial-era law gave a boost to Singapore’s LGBT movement, prompting a renewed push to repeal Section 377A of Singapore’s Penal Code. New Naratif sits down with Ready4Repeal co-author Johannes Hadi, Clement Tan of Pink Dot and PhD candidate Pamela Devan to talk about the anti-gay law and other LGBT issues in Singapore.  From our speakers: Ready4Repeal: http://ready4repeal.com  Pink Dot: http://pinkdot.sg Check out Pamela Devan’s work: http://www.bu.edu/sociology/graduate-programs/current-students/pamela-devan/  If you are in need of support or resources, check out these LGBT or LGBT-friendly organisations in Singapore: Brave Spaces runs a hotline for LBTQI women: http://bravespace.org/programmes-services/brave-helpline/brave-helpline-faq/ Oogachaga is an LGBT-friendly counselling organisation: https://oogachaga.com/  The T Project is a homeless shelter for the transgender community: http://www.thetprojectsg.org/  The Kopitiam Brothers is a group by transmen for transmen: https://www.facebook.com/thekopibros/  Pelangi Pride Centre is an LGBT community space and resource centre: https://www.pelangipridecentre.org/  Same But Different is a legal guidebook for LGBT couples and families in Singapore: https://www.singaporelgbtlaw.com/  The Bi+ Collective is a space for people who are bisexual: https://thebipluscollective.wixsite.com/tbcsg/about  Prout is an app to connect you with others in the LGBT community: http://proutapp.strikingly.com/ The Healing Circle aims to provide a safe space for LGBTQ+ Malay Muslims to embrace both their spirituality and sexual orientation: http://www.thehealingcircle.sg/

Home to over 15 per cent of the world’s population, India’s recent decriminalisation of homosexuality will affect millions of LGBT citizens. But social attitudes can be more important than the law. Questions of sexuality notoriously stir up strong religious, cultural, and moral beliefs – and inspire passionate resistance. On this episode of The Brief, Wayne Morgan breaks down the interplay of culture, colonialism, politics and law in the wake of India's landmark decision. Professor Wayne Morgan is Associate Professor at the ANU College of Law. He is recognised internationally as a pioneer in the field of queer legal theory. His research focuses on social justice and law reform, primarily in the areas of human sexuality, gender identity and legal regulation Edwina Landale is the presenter of The Brief. She is a student of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at the ANU. Show notes | The following were referred to in this episode: Navtej Singh Johar & Ors. versus Union of India thr. Secretary Ministry of Law and Justice – the Indian Supreme Court’s landmark decision Epistemology of the Closet by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Policy Forum Pod is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and wherever you get your podcasts. We’d love to hear your feedback for this podcast series! Send in your questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes to podcast@policyforum.net. You can also Tweet us @APPSPolicyForum or find us on Facebook. This episode of Policy Forum Pod was written and produced by Edwina Landale. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this week's Spotlight on Asia, RFI's Rosslyn Hyams looks at the potential knock-on effects in South Asia and in the Indian diaspora, of the Indian Supreme Court ruling to decriminalise homosexual consensual sexual relations. The ink was only just dry on the Indian Supreme Court's decision to scrap the Section 377 which made sex between homosexual consenting adults a crime, and already more ink was being poured into comments about how this move will help the Indian economy. According to one of the petitioners in the case and cited by the French news agency AFP. "It can bring billions of dollars to the Indian economy if they can activate the spending of gay people in India," Keshav Suri, a hotelier said, adding that 'there is business to be done, real estate to be bought and sold, holidays and all the services that go with that." The so-called pink economy is evaluated cent by cent, and in India's case rupee by rupee by a marketing agency in Australia. Out Now has counted more than 55 million Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual and Intersexual adults in India.  

On this week's episode of the pod, Hilary Young, Oliver Pulleyblank and Robert Danay discuss the recent six decisions of the Ontario Court of Appeal interpreting that province's Anti-SLAPP legislation, the decision of the Indian Supreme Court to strike down s. 377 of the Penal Code, which criminalized sodomy and the recent decision of the Federal Court of Appeal to invalidate the approval of the TransMountain Pipeline. In obiter dicta, Hilary discussed "I Object: Ian Hislop's Search for Dissent" at the British Museum, Oliver discussed the Flying U Ranch, which allows people to ride horses without supervision and Rob discussed the use of forensic linguistics to uncover the anonymous Trump official that posted a recent op-ed in the New York Times. We are on Twitter: @stereodecisis And Facebook. Don't forget to rate and review us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Children in Denmark who live in officially designated ‘ghettos' could soon be separated from their parents for 25 hours a week to undergo mandatory classes on the Danish language and culture. We debate what's behind the proposed legislation. Also, could Kashmir soon see an influx of ‘Indian settlements'? We examine the Indian Supreme Court's case for repealing Article 35A. Plus, we look at the latest US sanctions against Iran and ask if such measures are fair or effective.

Li Xiaolai called creators of Binance, NEO, TRON and Qtum scammers Taiwan  set up a Cross-straits Blockchain Alliance (CBA)   Indian Supreme Court is not lifting cryptocurrency ban Israel's crypto regulations Ripple`s third  lawsuit European Parliament’s findings and recommendations Uzbekistan and its advances towards legalizing cryptocurrencies and implementing blockchain technology Coinbase Custody is now officially open for business The mainstream media (MSM)  believes Satoshi Nakamoto is Back Syscoin hacked Expedia has stopped accepting bitcoin (BTC)

In this episode: - EU release positive report on virtual currencies - VeChain forced to revise roadmap because of token swap concerns - Indian Supreme Court refuse to end ban on crypto-exchanges - Bitcoin remain above $6,500 as top 20 cryptocurrencies lose 2% in the past day

Following the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate alleged links between Russians and Donald Trump's election campaign, Joshua Rozenberg finds out what the role of the special counsel involves, how he will go about his work and how the White House will be affected by the probe. Also in the programme: the BBC's Delhi Correspondent, Sanjoy Majumder, reports on the reaction to a recent Indian Supreme Court decision which has upset drinkers and liquor store owners - but pleased those affected by drink-driving accidents. And, as the African Union prepares to meet later this month, Joshua talks to a leading South African-based lawyer about the fierce debate taking place on whether African countries should continue to be part of the International Criminal Court.

This is a podcast of the “Behind the Pages” series, which includes exciting and timely conversations with authors and researchers from the Journal on Education in Emergencies. Resilience of LGBTQIA Students on Delhi Campuses by Anjali Krishan, Apurva Rastogi, and Suneeta Singh On December 11, 2013, the Indian Supreme Court recriminalized homosexuality increasing the adversity facing lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, and asexual/ally individuals within higher education in New Delhi, India. Join Anjali Krishan and Suneeta Singh as they examine how the legal, political, and social environment of New Delhi impacted LGBTQIA students and their identities. This interview is conducted by Sarah Sualehi.

In which we discuss the unseemly fight between the Indian Supreme Court bench and a High Court judge and the implications for free speech

Story 1 of Episode 4 on the new Indian Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the sale of liquor 500 meters from a state or national highway, and the creative ways in which Indians are working around this.

Interactive commentary on current affairs for the weekend of 20 / 10 / 15 from D.Garud in Bengaluru   - ಬೆಂಗಳೂರಿನಿಂದ ಡಿ. ಗರುಡ್ ನೀಡಿರುವ ೨೦ / ೧೦ / ೨೦೧೫ ರ ವಾರಾಂತ್ಯದ ಭಾರತದ ಆಗು ಹೋಗುಗಳ ಸಂವಾದೀಯ ವಿವರಣೆ  

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Our consensus on what constitutes a human right dates back only to the 1940s, when the global human rights imagination first began to take shape. In this lecture, Mark Philip Bradley chronicles the complex histories that have formed our contemporary understanding of human rights and illustrates how that understanding has become a force behind international and local politics. In particular, he addresses the Indian Supreme Court’s decision last December to uphold Section 377, the colonial-era law that criminalizes sexual activities “against the order of nature,” most notably, gay sex. Mark Philip Bradley is the Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor of International History in the Department of History and the College, chair of the Committee on International Relations, and faculty director of the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights at the University of Chicago. He is the author and coeditor of several books, including the forthcoming “The United States and the Global Human Rights Imagination” and “Familiar Made Strange: American Icons and Artifacts after the Transnational Turn.”

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Our consensus on what constitutes a human right dates back only to the 1940s, when the global human rights imagination first began to take shape. In this lecture, Mark Philip Bradley chronicles the complex histories that have formed our contemporary understanding of human rights and illustrates how that understanding has become a force behind international and local politics. In particular, he addresses the Indian Supreme Court’s decision last December to uphold Section 377, the colonial-era law that criminalizes sexual activities “against the order of nature,” most notably, gay sex. Mark Philip Bradley is the Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor of International History in the Department of History and the College, chair of the Committee on International Relations, and faculty director of the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights at the University of Chicago. He is the author and coeditor of several books, including the forthcoming “The United States and the Global Human Rights Imagination” and “Familiar Made Strange: American Icons and Artifacts after the Transnational Turn.”

EXPLOSIVE STUFF! Anupam Mukerji (twitter @_fakeIPLPlayer) joins Dennis Freedman (twitter @FreedmanDennis) for another Emergency Podcast on the unfolding drama involving corruption and the BCCI. Following on from the revelations we discussed in Episode 16, today we have learned that Srinivasan has snubbed his nose at the Supreme Court of India. Listen as we dissect what it all means.

Indian Supreme Court rules in long-awaited Vodafone case -- New Japan-Netherlands tax treaty effective -- Japan-Swiss tax protocol effective -- Korea revises tax laws -- Irish Budget reaffirms 12.5% corporate tax rate -- Israel raises tax rates, other changes -- Italy enacts austerity measures, positive tax changes -- Italy clarifies unlimited carryforward; applies to losses from 2006 -- New tax regime applies for Portugal's Madeira International Business Center -- Spain increases tax rates for 2012 and 2013 -- Brazil adopts adjustment mechanism on transfer prices of export transactions

At the end of 2001, the Indian Supreme Court issued a directive ordering states to institute school lunches – known locally as "midday meals" – in government primary schools. This paper provides a large-scale assessment of the enrollment effects of India's midday meal scheme, which offers warm lunches, free of cost, to 120 million primary school children across India and is the largest school feeding program in the world. To isolate the causal effect of the policy, we make use of staggered implementation across Indian states in government but not private schools. Using a panel data set of almost 500,000 schools observed annually from 2002 to 2004, we find that midday meals result in substantial increases in primary school enrollment, driven by early primary school responses to the program. Our results are robust to a wide range of specification tests.