abraiz

“read not the times, read the eternities” Thoreau

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is an absolutely major story and almost no Western media covered it: India's water minister CR Patil said on Tuesday that "it is certain, not a single drop of water will go (to Pakistan) in the coming years."

Patil said that India is "actively working on it" after "directives" from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As a reminder, Pakistan's dependence on water from India is close to total: the country is essentially built around the Indus river system, all of whose rivers flow through India before entering Pakistan.

The Indus system irrigates 80% of Pakistan's farmland, generates a third of its electricity, supplies its major cities with drinking water, and sustains the livelihoods of some 240 million people.

So, essentially, no water from India = annihilation of Pakistan as a state.

Pretty damn consequential, all the more given we're talking about 2 nuclear powers here. And all the more because, understandably, Pakistan's formal position is that water diversion would constitute "an act of war" (https://t.co/WLoDpGzc2W).

Unfortunately, Patil's statement isn't just talk: India already set up the legal framework to make this possible. Last year, they unilaterally suspended the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, despite the treaty containing no withdrawal clause.

It used to be the one piece of India-Pakistan relations that worked, and had survived multiple wars and over six decades of hostility. Now India is saying officially that it will "never be restored" (https://t.co/2SnUNevFbX).

The one mitigating factor here is physics: you don't just "turn off" a major Himalayan river system. Diverting rivers of this magnitude means building massive storage and canal infrastructure in Himalayan terrain: projects measured in years.

But India IS ACTUALLY BUILDING that infrastructure: for instance it just approved in May the building of the so-called "Chenab–Beas Link Tunnel," an 8.7km ₹2,352 crore (~$280M) tunnel designed to divert water from the Chenab basin into India's Beas river system. The Chenab is one of the main tributaries of the Indus - and one of the three "western rivers" (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) allocated to Pakistan under the 1960 Indus Water Treaty.

Which means that, unfortunately, Patil's "not a single drop of water in the coming years" looks like a roadmap: the infrastructure to strangle Pakistan's water supply is being approved and tendered in plain sight.

This is also a story about selective media coverage and double standards: I'm willing to bet that 99% of people in the West have never heard of any of this.

Now make this thought experiment: imagine China announced it was building infrastructure to cut off every drop of water flowing to India and its ministers proclaimed on television that "not a single drop" would cross the border. It would be wall-to-wall coverage, sanctions packages, and a thousand op-eds about Beijing "weaponizing water."

Heck we don't need to imagine because the simple fact of China merely building a hydropower dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo (the upstream Brahmaputra) generated exactly the wall-to-wall alarm I'm describing, even though China threatened nothing and even though Indian officials said the threat is a "myth" given the fact that the river gathers most of its volume inside India from monsoon rains (https://t.co/GBgBybBPoE). Malign intent was still presumed from the act of construction, because it's China.

In India's case, the intent couldn't possibly be clearer: it's proclaimed by ministers on the record, and backed by India's actions. But because they're a courted Western partner, what they're doing - arguably the most extreme form of economic warfare imaginable, directed at a nuclear state - largely gets silence.

Src for screenshot: https://t.co/qav4muNkij

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

In what lexicon is ethnically cleansing one quarter of a neighbouring state "taking a much tougher stance". Shameful complicity in war crimes by @SkyNews @adamparsons

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

I can’t see you how you can possibly avoid using the term ethnic cleansing, without losing your last remaining shreds of integrity as a journalist, Adam.

Lebanon's internal displacement rate is now 22.6 percent — more than one in five of its people. Over 1.2 million people, including 350,000 children, have been forced from their homes, with the IDF launching more than 1,840 attacks on Lebanon since March 2, killing more than 1,497 people and injuring more than 4,639.

Moreover, the language used by Israel Katz to describe his aims in Southern Lebanon is extraordinarily explicit and self-incriminating. He has confirmed that Israel's military would establish a permanent "security zone" inside Lebanon up to the Litani River, that hundreds of thousands of displaced residents would be "completely prevented" from returning, and that "all the houses in the villages adjacent to the border in Lebanon will be demolished in accordance with the Rafah and Beit Hanoun model in Gaza."

The targeting of civilians for displacement specifically identified by their religion (Shia), combined with the destruction of their homes to prevent return, combined with the explicit statement that they will not be permitted to return — these are precisely the elements that international law identifies as forcible transfer and ethnic cleansing. Human Rights Watch has said that "the displacement of the Shia population looks less like a temporary military necessity and more like a move to permanently displace the civilian population based on their religion."

Its not complex, Adam. You just haven't got the balls to say it straight, and that failure makes your reportage worse than worthless. It makes it morally bankrupt.

[Daniel Mayakovski @DaniMayakovski]

"Me han bloqueado todas las tarjetas por emitir la orden de arresto contra Netanyahu, no puede comprar ni tomar un avión ni alquilar una habitación de hotel".

Nicolas Gouyou, juez francés de la Corte Penal Internacional, quien emitió una orden de arresto contra Netanyahu, afirma que "Israel" y EEUU han bloqueado todas sus cuentas y están hundiéndole la vida solo por intentar que el sionismo rinda cuenta.

Esta es su "justicia internacional" donde los pocos jueces que intenten hacer rendir cuentas a "Israel" son perseguidos y hundidos por el sionismo, todo esto de los tribunales internacionales es una farsa que solo sirve para perseguir a países enemigos de EEUU.

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Tibeto-Burmans from Mizoram in Northeast India who converted to Christianity in the 1940s then, inspired by a dream, began converting to Judaism in 1951, have more right to live in Israel than Palestinians whose DNA proves them actual descendants of Bronze Age Canaanites

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

LOL!

This woman is a genius! In the parody of democracy that Germany has become, you get arrested if you say "From the River to the Sea."

So this pro-Palestine protester asks if it is ok to say "From the River to the Beach" 😂😂😂😂

This is a scene straight out of Kafka...

[COMBATE |🇵🇷 @upholdreality]

Lula Da Silva:

"The world spends $2.7 trillion a year on weapons while people starve."

"With every war Israel starts, somehow the last shot always has to land in Lebanon."

"They talk about Cuba being socialist, while Haiti starves next door -- and nobody says a word."

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

France is on the eve of voting one of the most shameful laws in its history: it would effectively outlaw criticism of Israel and criminalize any speech seen as even remotely sympathetic to whoever the French government chooses to designate a "terrorist group."

In effect this law would turn France's foreign policy into unchallengeable dogma backed by prison time. You could literally be sent for 5 years in prison if you, for instance, call what France says are "terrorists" a "resistance group."

Think for instance Nelson Mandela during the apartheid (the ANC was on every Western terrorist list) or, heck, France's own Résistance against Nazi Germany - designated as "terrorists" by the Vichy regime and the Nazi occupation.

It's frankly absolutely insane.

The new law is called "loi Yadan" after its author Caroline Yadan, a MP who represents French expatriates living in Israel. The U.S. has congressmen paid by AIPAC: France has cut out the middleman entirely, we have MPs whose constituency is literally in Israel.

The law has already passed committee and heads to a full parliamentary vote on April 16th - 3 days from now - under a very unusual fast-track procedure. Seven of eleven parliamentary groups have said they'll vote yes and the law is expected to pass.

What does the law say? Let me quote from it directly (full text here: https://t.co/m03R4z0gX6):

1) Article 1 introduces the concept of "implicit" provocation to terrorism and punishes it with five years imprisonment and a fine of €75,000

That's the one I was speaking about. Under this provision, describing anyone France designates as terrorist as a "resistance movement" - the way France describes its own Résistance against Nazi occupation - could effectively become a crime.

The key concept is what does "implicit provocation to terrorism" mean? Nobody knows. And that's the point. It means whatever a prosecutor wants it to mean: a perfectly good case could be made that, for instance, quoting international law on the right of occupied peoples to resist with respect to Hamas is, in fact, "implicit provocation to terrorism."

France's most famous anti-terrorism judge, Marc Trévidic, says he has never seen anything like it in his entire career (https://t.co/CytQnuK3hS): "Implicit provocation to terrorism: do you realize what that means? Becoming a censor of other people's thoughts, trying to guess what a person really meant."

2) The same article also expands the terrorism apology offense to include "minimizing or trivializing acts of terrorism in an outrageous manner."

This is even crazier: until now, "apology of terrorism" meant actually expressing a favorable judgment of "terrorist acts" (which is already insane because, as we all know, one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter).

Well, under this new provision, a judge could decide that providing context, explaining root causes, or insufficiently condemning an act amounts to "trivializing" terrorism - and that would now be punishable with 5 years in prison.

So, for instance, a history teacher explaining the origins of Hamas or Hezbollah is providing context - but a prosecutor could argue that contextualization is trivialization. The same reasoning could apply to a journalist, a researcher, or anyone on social media who says "yes, it was terrible, but here's why it happened." The "but" becomes a crime, as it is trivialization.

3) Article 4 expands Holocaust denial law

Under current French law, denying the Holocaust is already a crime. This provision extends that crime by specifying that contestation of crimes against humanity now includes, "whatever its formulation, a negation, minimization, or outrageous trivialization" of those crimes.

Again with "outrageous trivialization"! In this instance the very authors of the text - Caroline Yadan and her colleagues - explain their reasoning explicitly in the law's preamble (https://t.co/rIiYQbbk23): "Comparing the State of Israel to the Nazi regime would thereby be punishable as an outrageous trivialization of the Shoah."

So while the provision is written in general terms, its architects are openly saying what it's for: making it a crime to draw any parallel between Israel's actions and those of the Nazis.

4) Article 2 creates a brand new crime: calling for the destruction of a state.

The law adds to an existing 1881 press law a provision punishing anyone who "publicly, in disregard of the right of peoples to self-determination and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, calls for the destruction of a state recognized by the French Republic." Five years imprisonment, €75,000 fine.

The qualifiers about self-determination and the UN Charter are meant to sound reassuring. But what does "destruction" mean? In practice, if you advocate for a one-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians live as equals, you are de-facto calling for the "destruction" of the state of Israel. Well, that would now be punishable by 5 years in prison 🤷

There you go. Absolutely insane: if this new law passes, and it unfortunately very much looks like it will, France - the country that gave the world the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the country whose national identity is built on the Résistance - will have made it illegal to use the word 'resistance' about anyone the government doesn't like. Jean Moulin would be prosecuted. De Gaulle would be prosecuted.

The only people who wouldn't be prosecuted are those who stay silent. Which, of course, is the whole point.

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Entirely misses the point that it's a death penalty that only applies to one ethnicity, the Palestinians, a people who are illegally occupied, living under military rule and subject to dispossession, constant violence and ethnic cleansing

[Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده @RamAbdu]

French judge Nicolas Gouyou, who issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu at the ICC:

• Visa and Mastercard have blocked all my cards
• I cannot make any purchases
• I am a judge, yet treated like a criminal
• Judges, lawyers, and politicians are being intimidated
• A colleague told me my name won’t be removed from the blacklist until Trump’s term ends
• Despite intervention by the French president, U.S. authorities have not responded

[Shanifa Nasser @shanifanasser]

The written court decision rejecting Ontario’s application for an injunction against the Al Quds Day rally is out now.

"The Attorney General's approach comes dangerously close to asking me to hold some people responsible for the conduct of others," it says in part.

More below:

[Ammar Khan @rogueonomist]

Almost 85% of electricity generated in Pakistan is now through indigenous sources -- shifting away from imported FO and RLNG, to Nuclear, Thar Coal & Behind The Meter solar. This enables PK to avoid a power crisis stemming from a geopolitical crisis

https://t.co/PPMdvXWdXE

1/

[Holly ⏸️ Elmore @ilex_ulmus]

It’s time to quit, @AnthropicAI employees. You are in over your head.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

If anyone saw this in their city or town, they would think:

"This is what liberation looks like. We are so grateful to the foreigners bombing our civilian and economic infrastructure and dropping bombs in our neighborhoods."

Iranian girls in particular are swooning with joy:

[Mohd أبوحمر @DrYounis2020]

@georgegalloway Marco Rubio on Tuesday: "Iran is run by lunatics, religious fanatic lunatics."

The White House Thursday: 😃☝🏻

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Yet more unfiltered Israeli & US propaganda 'briefings' cheerfully mainlined by the appallingly credulous @YolandeKnell via the BibiC
@BBCNews

[Joseph Lumbard, شاكر عبد الحق @JosephLumbard]

"To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions."

-- Soren Kierkegaard

[abraiz @abraiz1]

https://t.co/mfT9RlpvHQ

[KJ Dhaliwal @kjdhaliwal]

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[abraiz @abraiz1]

America https://t.co/lyHvsFwOaC via @YouTube