I finally trained Midjourney AI to draw a proper Buddha. pic.twitter.com/L8SKgjgGde

— Syd Steyerhart (@SydSteyerhart) December 3, 2022

What do you guys think of these videos? Do you find them entertaining or do you think they're exploiting your people for our amusement?

SRINAGAR, India  --- For five years, Alt News has fought India's rise in disinformation tied to Hindu nationalism, with Twitter as one of the main battlefields.

The fact-checking website's work debunking fake news and calling out hate speech by powerful people against India's ethnic and religious minorities has made it one of the country's leading independent news outlets, earning its founders a mention on an unofficial shortlist for this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

"We are able to make certain topics the center of conversation" on Twitter, said Pratik Sinha, who founded Alt News with a fellow software engineer, Mohammed Zubair.

In addition to using Twitter to defuse tensions both online and offline, the nonprofit Alt News relies on the platform as an important source of crowdfunding.

All that is now in jeopardy amid the chaos at Twitter since its takeover last month by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. With 24 million users, India is Twitter's third-largest market after the U.S. and Japan, as well as one of its greatest challenges. But more than 90% of Twitter's 200-odd employees in India were reportedly among the thousands worldwide who have lost their jobs under Musk's ownership.

As in the U.S., the layoffs in India cut deeply into some of Twitter's most critical teams, including those dealing with government information requests and content moderation.

In an open letter last month, U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk urged Musk to make human rights central to his management, noting the pressure that Twitter and other social media platforms have come under from governments around the world over freedom of expression.

"Like all companies, Twitter needs to understand the harms associated with its platform and take steps to address them," he wrote.

Musk, who calls himself a "free speech absolutist," has argued the platform should be as unrestrained as possible. Since he took the helm, he has reinstated the accounts of people like former President Donald Trump, whose account was suspended last year over posts inciting violence.

But Big Tech like Twitter is used --- and perceived --- differently outside the U.S., where the majority of its users live. From the genocide of ethnic Rohingya in Myanmar to attacks on Muslims in India, social media platforms have been criticized for allocating inadequate resources in the Global South to tackle hate speech, misinformation, the targeting of political dissidents and the real-life violence that often results.

"For the longest time, South Asian countries have been ignored in terms of policy, content moderation strength and language support," Sinha said.

Although Twitter has always been moderated through "the prism of the developed world," he said, the danger now is that "Musk is dictating policies from his own prism: the prism of a U.S. billionaire."

Twitter's U.S. media team did not respond to an emailed request for comment. A WhatsApp message to a Twitter communications employee in India also went unanswered.

'Complex political realities'

While Twitter has fewer users than Facebook, civil society groups and journ*lists say it is a crucial tool for holding the powerful to account. It has been used in multiple countries to organize anti-government protests and rally support for dissidents.

But it is also flooded with misinformation and hate speech, said Melissa Ingle, a former senior data scientist at Twitter who worked there for more than a year writing algorithms to label and flag misinformation about elections, Covid and other issues in countries like India and Brazil. She recalled feeling like she was working at an important place and that her efforts to make Twitter a safer and less toxic platform were important, too.

Ingle, a contract worker based in San Francisco, was among the thousands of Twitter employees who discovered they had been laid off last month when they were unceremoniously locked out of their email and Slack accounts.

In the absence of sufficient staffing and resources, Ingle fears the most for Twitter’s content moderation in countries outside the U.S.

“The workforce has been gutted, and no algorithm can keep up the pace with this,” she said. “It will lead to an increase in misinformation and attacks.”

With his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Musk has also inherited a legal case that is considered a deciding moment for the freedom of online speech in India. The company sued the Indian government in July over sweeping regulatory changes that give officials greater power to demand that tech platforms remove content or block accounts that are critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Company employees can be held criminally liable if they do not comply.

Even before the new rules came into effect last year, police raided Twitter's offices in Delhi and Gurgaon after the company tagged a BJP spokesperson's tweet as "manipulated media."

Twitter users have also been arrested over their posts, including a state lawmaker who was critical of Modi. Zubair, the Alt News co-founder, was arrested in June over a 2018 tweet that police said hurt religious harmony. His arrest came days after he flagged a video in which a BJP spokesperson made derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad. Both Zubair and the state lawmaker have since been released on bail.

From July to December 2021, India made more requests than any other country for the removal of tweets by journ*lists and news outlets, according to a Twitter report. The country also ranked second after the U.S. for the highest number of government information requests.

"Law of land is supreme, Twitter must follow rules," India's electronics and information technology minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said last year. "Whoever is a citizen of India and those who stay in India will have to abide by the laws of the country."

The layoffs Musk has carried out at Twitter will have a deeper impact in India, said Prateek Waghre, a policy director at the Internet Freedom Foundation, a New Delhi-based group that promotes digital rights and freedoms.

"There isn't a full consideration of how complex it is to run a social media platform. The complex political realities have not been accounted for here," he said, referring to India.

Back at Alt News' office in Kolkata, the team continues to call out hate speech. In one recent incident, it flagged an Islamophobic tweet by a Hindu extremist with almost 600,000 followers that featured a screenshot of an invitation to an upcoming wedding reception for an interfaith couple. The tweet remains on the platform, while the couple called off their wedding out of concern for their safety.

"Who is going to explain this context to Elon Musk?" Sinha asked. Musk "has done nothing to address the concerns of South Asian countries that are far more volatile."

While Sinha said he hopes that Twitter doesn't self-destruct under Musk's leadership, he feels disheartened by the recent changes on the platform.

"It is difficult to say what Twitter will have in store because the policies do not have any logic," he said. "This is not how you do policy; it is entirely arbitrary. You just don't know what he is thinking. And it is scary."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-twitter-elon-musk-hate-speech-extremism-alt-news-rcna59043

https://x.com/AnandPanna1/status/1597136262103961602

25 Nov 2022 : A 23-year-old girl (Josna Cotha) fainted and died suddenly (Heart Attack 💉) at a wedding reception : Tragedy happened while dancing!

https://x.com/DrManjeet05/status/1599394829133565953

#Cardiacarrest #heartattack #MedTwitter There are many reasons behind increasing sudden cardiac arrest. We all are experiencing it commonly post Covid . Without proper research & investigations we can’t comment directly on Covid Vaccines . Covid Vaccines might be a reason (1/2) But we can’t stop thinking or neglecting other risk factors like Alcohol & drinking , lifestyle & diet modifications, Environmental changes , dependency on Junk food , Stress , Lack of Sleep and Social media ( main reason of sleep problems & stress ) these days etc.

https://x.com/akhileshanandd/status/1599469278662922240

Four friends went out for a walk in Meerut. A 25 yr man sneezed and died on the spot. #heartattack

I can't sneeze.

https://x.com/odradesh/status/1599465012426219520

News from India. Yesterday or day before. Omnibus driver had a #heartattack on a busy road. See the consequence.

https://x.com/ZeeNews/status/1597590532666056706

A middle-aged man died of a heart attack while dancing in Varanasi.

Kek we're going to get more vaxx deaths than covid deaths at this rate.

Saurabh, an openly gay advocate, is the son of former Chief Justice of India B.N. Kirpal. Sources in both the government and Supreme Court told ThePrint that the Centre’s main objection has been his 50-year-old partner, who is a Swiss national. According to the sources, a report by the Intelligence Bureau has stated that his European partner can become a security risk.

Isn't it amazing how meritoriously all these judge's children become judges too? I love meritocracy.

Prior to that, the collegium, headed by then CJI SA Bobde, had in March 2021 wrote to the Centre, seeking more inputs on Saurabh. In a letter, CJI Bobde gave four weeks to clear the air on whether the government’s objection, mentioned in the Intelligence Bureau inputs, was because Saurabh is a gay man.

During an earlier interview with ThePrint, Kirpal had said that his sexual orientation was probably the reason why his name was not being cleared. He had expressed similar views in an interview to NDTV too.

Yes, I know this isn't India.

I don't care.

Edit: also, that music's pretty rad.

Crazy too watch this 2012 video knowing that India would end up going from such a sorry state too a world superpower in only 8 years

Trans lives matter

In 2018 I met @SchoepJeff, who was then the head of one of the largest white supremacist groups in the US. In a dialogue held by @NobelPeaceOslo, Jeff and I were given the opportunity to share the story of what resulted; a truly unexpected friendship. pic.twitter.com/eBURVJnWkw

— Deeyah Khan (@Deeyah_Khan) November 29, 2022

She fixed him

Oh great the grocery store has gone woke with gender ideology... pic.twitter.com/lmP0IQVGeA

— jung yo biden (@bambooney) November 30, 2022

After his arrest on Friday, 38-year-old Rajwinder told Delhi police that he went to Queensland's Wangetti Beach after a fight with his wife. During the investigation, he told Delhi police that he was carrying some fruits and a kitchen knife.

As always the devious foid's hand guides the moid to his downfall.

Cordingley, a pharmacy worker, was walking her dog at the beach. When Cordingley's dog started barking at Rajwinder, the two argued. This resulted in the Indian attacking and allegedly killing Cordingley, police said.

He then buried the body in the sand and tied the dog to a tree.

Rajwinder Singh fled Australia two days later, leaving behind his job, wife and three children.

Rajwinder Singh belongs to Buttar Kalan, Punjab, absconding ever since the day of the killing in 2018 was arrested by Delhi Police on Friday.

So the simp squad finally caught up with him

The government and the TTP had agreed to a truce earlier this year after Afghanistan's new Taliban rulers took a prominent role in brokering peace talks, but negotiations made little progress and there were frequent breaches. The Express Tribune had reported that the talks reached a deadlock as the terror group refused to budge from its demand for the reversal of the merger of erstwhile Fata with the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

"We... have shown our continued patience so that the negotiation process is not sabotaged," the TTP said in the statement. "But the army and intelligence agencies do not stop and continue the attacks, so now our retaliatory attacks will also start across the country." The TTP claimed that there have been constant operations on its militants by the security forces and they have not been stopped despite the "patience" shown by it. "Wherever you find an opportunity to attack, do proceed," the statement urged its terrorists.

How polite,

Islamabad fears that if the TTP or its splinter groups join Da’ish, it would multiply Pakistan’s security challenges. Pakistan is also concerned that this scenario will be exploited by external players including India.

Oh no wouldn't that be terrible

Yes hello Doval ji

Analyst Saad Khan, a Peshawar-based retired brigadier, played down the significance of the TTP statement saying the ceasefire was barely observed anyway. "The Afghan Taliban have assured the whole world that they will not allow their territory to be used against any other country," he told AFP. "It is important to initiate serious negotiations with the Afghan Taliban on this issue and make them aware of the seriousness of the matter."

Pakis when Kabul fell:

Pakis now: P..please tal.talichads can you pl..please not bomb us?

Sheetal Deo was shocked when she got a letter from her Queens apartment building’s co-op board calling her Diwali decoration “offensive” and demanding she take it down.

“My decoration said ‘Happy Diwali’ and had a swastika on it,” said Deo, a physician, who was celebrating the Hindu festival of lights.

The equilateral cross with its legs bent at right angles is a millennia-old sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism that represents peace and good fortune, and was also used widely by Indigenous people worldwide in a similar vein.

But in the West, this symbol is often equated to Adolf Hitler’s hakenkreuz or the hooked cross – a symbol of hate that evokes the trauma of the Holocaust and the horrors of Nazi Germany. White supremacists, neo-Nazi groups and vandals have continued to use Hitler’s symbol to stoke fear and hate.

Over the past decade, as the Asian diaspora has grown in North America, the call to reclaim the swastika as a sacred symbol has become louder. These minority faith communities are being joined by Native American elders whose ancestors have long used the symbol as part of healing rituals.

Deo believes she and people of other faiths should not have to sacrifice or apologize for a sacred symbol simply because it is often conflated with its tainted version.

“To me, that’s intolerable,” she said.

Yet to others, the idea that the swastika could be redeemed is unthinkable.

Holocaust survivors in particular could be re-traumatized when they see the symbol, said Shelley Rood Wernick, managing director of the Jewish Federations of North America’s Center on Holocaust Survivor Care.

“One of the hallmarks of trauma is that it shatters a person’s sense of safety,” said Wernick, whose grandparents met at a displaced persons’ camp in Austria after World War II. “The swastika was a representation of the concept that stood for the annihilation of an entire people.”

For her grandparents and the elderly survivors she serves, Wernick said, the symbol is the physical representation of the horrors they experienced.

“I recognize the swastika as a symbol of hate.”

New York-based Steven Heller, a design historian and author of “Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption?”, said the swastika is “a charged symbol for so many whose loved ones were criminally and brutally murdered.” Heller’s great-grandfather perished during the Holocaust.

“A rose by any other name is a rose,” he said. “In the end it’s how a symbol affects you visually and emotionally. For many, it creates a visceral impact and that’s a fact.”

The symbol itself dates back to prehistoric times. The word “swastika” has Sanskrit roots and means “the mark of well being.” It has been used in prayers of the Rig Veda, the oldest of Hindu scriptures. In Buddhism, the symbol is known as “manji” and signifies the Buddha’s footsteps. It is used to mark the location of Buddhist temples. In China it’s called Wàn, and denotes the universe or the manifestation and creativity of God. The swastika is carved into the Jains’ emblem representing the four types of birth an embodied soul might attain until it is eventually liberated from the cycle of birth and death. In the Zoroastrian faith, it represents the four elements – water, fire, air and earth.

In India, the ubiquitous symbol can be seen on thresholds, drawn with vermillion and turmeric, and displayed on shop doors, vehicles, food packaging and at festivals or special occasions. Elsewhere, it has been found in the Roman catacombs, ruins in Greece and Iran, and in Ethiopian and Spanish churches.

The swastika also was a Native American symbol used by many southwestern tribes, particularly the Navajo and Hopi. To the Navajo, it represented a whirling log, a sacred image used in healing rituals and sand paintings. Swastika motifs can be found in items carbon-dated to 15,000 years ago on display at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine as well as on artifacts recovered from the ruins of the ancient Indus Valley civilizations that flourished between 2600 and 1900 BC.

The symbol was revived during the 19th century excavations in the ancient city of Troy by German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who connected it to a shared Aryan culture across Europe and Asia. Historians believe it is this notion that made the symbol appealing to nationalist groups in Germany including the Nazi Party, which adopted it in 1920.

In North America, in the early 20th century, swastikas made their way into ceramic tiles, architectural features, military insignia, team logos, government buildings and marketing campaigns. Coca-Cola issued a swastika pendant. Carlsberg beer bottles came etched with swastikas. The Boy Scouts handed out badges with the symbol until 1940.

The Rev. T.K. Nakagaki said he was shocked when he first heard the swastika referred to as a “universal symbol of evil” at an interfaith conference. The New York-based Buddhist priest, who was ordained in the 750-year-old Jodoshinshu tradition of Japanese Buddhism, says when he hears the word “swastika” or “manji,” he thinks of a Buddhist temple because that is what it represents in Japan where he grew up.

“You cannot call it a symbol of evil or (deny) other facts that have existed for hundreds of years, just because of Hitler,” he said.

In his 2018 book titled “The Buddhist Swastika and Hitler’s Cross: Rescuing a Symbol of Peace from the Forces of Hate,” Nakagaki posits that Hitler referred to the symbol as the hooked cross or hakenkreuz. Nakagaki’s research also shows the symbol was called the hakenkreuz in U.S. newspapers until the early 1930s, when the word swastika replaced it.

Nakagaki believes more dialogue is needed even though it will be uncomfortable.

“This is peace work, too,” he said.

The Coalition of Hindus of North America is one of several faith groups leading the effort to differentiate the swastika from the hakenkreuz. They supported a new California law that criminalizes the public display of the hakenkreuz — making an exception for the sacred swastika.

Pushpita Prasad, a spokesperson for the Hindu group, called it a victory, but said the legislation unfortunately labels both Hitler’s symbol and the sacred one as swastikas.

This is “not just an esoteric battle,” Prasad said, but an issue with real-life consequences for immigrant communities, whose members have resorted to self-censoring.

Vikas Jain, a Cleveland physician, said he and his wife hid images containing the symbol when their children’s friends visited because “they wouldn’t know the difference.” Jain says he stands in solidarity with the Jewish community, but is sad that he cannot freely practice his Jain faith “because of this lack of understanding.”

He noted that the global Jain emblem has a swastika in it, but the U.S. Jain community deliberately removed it from its seal. Jain wishes people would differentiate between their symbol of peace and Hitler’s swastika just as they do with the hateful burning cross symbol and Christianity’s sacred crucifix.

Before World War II, the name “Swastika” was so popular in North America it was used to mark numerous locations. Swastika Park, a housing subdivision in Miami, was created in 1917, and still has that name. In 2020, the hamlet of Swastika, nestled in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, decided to keep its name after town councilors determined that it predated WWII and referred to the prosperity symbol.

Swastika Acres, the name of a Denver housing subdivision, can be traced to the Denver Swastika Land Company. It was founded in 1908, and changed its name to Old Cherry Hills in 2019 after a unanimous city council vote. In September, the town council in Puslinch, Ontario, voted to change the name of the street Swastika Trail to Holly Trail.

Next month, the Oregon Geographic Names Board, which supervises the naming of geographic features within the state, is set to vote to rename Swastika Mountain, a 4,197-foot butte in the Umpqua National Forest. Kerry Tymchuk, executive director of the Oregon Historical Society, said although its name can only be found on a map, it made news in January when two stranded hikers were rescued from the mountain.

“A Eugene resident saw that news report and asked why on earth was this mountain called that in this day and age,” said Tymchuk. He said the mountain got its name in the 1900s from a neighboring ranch whose owner branded his cattle with the swastika.

Tymchuk said the names board is set to rename Mount Swastika as Mount Halo after Chief Halito, who led the Yoncalla Kalapuya tribe in the 1800s.

“Most people we’ve heard from associate it with Nazism,” Tymchuk said.

For the Navajo people, the symbol, shaped like a swirl, represents the universe and life, said Patricia Anne Davis, an elder of the Choctaw and Dineh nations.

“It was a spiritual, esoteric symbol that was woven into the Navajo rugs, until Hitler took something good and beautiful and made it twisted,” she said.

In the early 20th century, traders encouraged Native artists to use it on their crafts; it appeared often on silver work, textiles and pottery. But after it became a Nazi symbol, representatives from the Hopi, Navajo, Apache and Tohono O’odham tribes signed a proclamation in 1940 banning its use.

Davis views the original symbol that was used by many Indigenous people as one of peace, healing and goodness.

“I understand the wounds and trauma that Jewish people experience when they see that symbol,” she said. “All I can do is affirm its true meaning — the one that never changed across cultures, languages and history. It’s time to restore the authentic meaning of that symbol.”

Like Nakagaki, Jeff Kelman, a New Hampshire-based Holocaust historian, believes the hakenkreuz and swastika were distinct. Kelman who takes this message to Jewish communities, is optimistic about the symbol’s redemption because he sees his message resonating with many in his community, including Holocaust survivors.

“When they learn an Indian girl could be named Swastika and she could be harassed in school, they understand how they should see these as two separate symbols,” he said. “No one in the Jewish community wants to see Hitler’s legacy continue to harm people.”

Greta Elbogen, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor whose grandmother and cousins were killed at Auschwitz, says she was surprised to learn about the symbol’s sacred past. Elbogen was born in 1938 when the Nazis forcibly annexed Austria. She went into hiding with relatives in Hungary, immigrated to the U.S. in 1956 and became a social worker.

This new knowledge about the swastika, Elbogen said, feels liberating; she no longer fears a symbol that was used to terrorize.

“Hearing that the swastika is beautiful and sacred to so many people is a blessing,” she said. “It’s time to let go of the past and look to the future.”

For many, the swastika evokes a visceral reaction unlike any other, said Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism who for the past 22 years has maintained the group’s hate symbols database.

“The only symbol that would even come close to the swastika is the symbol of a hooded Klansman,” he said.

The ADL explains the sanctity of the swastika in many faiths and cultures, and there are other lesser-known religious symbols that must be similarly contextualized, Pitcavage said. One is the Celtic cross – a traditional Christian symbol used for religious purposes and to symbolize Irish pride – which is used by a number of white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.

Similarly, Thor’s hammer is an important symbol for those who follow neo-Norse religions such as Asatru. But white supremacists have adopted it as well, often creating racist versions of the hammer by incorporating hate symbols such as Hitler’s hakenkreuz.

“In the case of the swastika, Hitler polluted a symbol that was used innocuously in a variety of contexts,” Pitcavage said. “Because that meaning has become so entrenched in the West, while I believe it is possible to create some awareness, I don’t think that its association with the Nazis can be completely eliminated.”

Trans lives matter

Can we please get some recognition for our trans racial nipplestani dalitx kween?

Osman Ozturk- A Turkish youth who travelled thousands of kilometres to support Kashmiri’s facing oppression under illegal Indian occupation. He was martyred during an encounter with Indian forces in July 1997. (Shared by Head of a leading university.) pic.twitter.com/uDmHdp5P9P

— Masood Khan (@Masood__Khan) May 3, 2020

Trans lives matter a lot more than jihadi's