Daily Archives: December 3, 2021

The Associated Students of the University of Oregon, the university's student government, is proposing that every student be required to take a course on critical race theory in order to graduate.

During the University of Oregon Board of Trustees meeting on Wednesday, Associated Students of the University of Oregon President Isaiah Boyd said that the goal of the "Critical Race Theory" project is to "implement the primary teachings of CRT into the curriculum track for all undergraduates."

Boyd said that the Associated Students of the University of Oregon will be working with university administration members to incorporate the critical race theory course requirement into the bachelor's degree track.

"Racism and the social power structures that have enabled and continue to manifest the inequalities that many marginalized identities groups face must be continuously addressed and studied," Boyd said.

An even mix of proponents and opponents to teaching Critical Race Theory are in attendance as the Placentia Yorba Linda School Board in Orange County, California, discusses a proposed resolution to ban it from being taught in schools. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

WHAT IS CRITICAL RACE THEORY?

Boyd defines critical race theory as a "framework used to examine power and oppression dynamics between racialized groups."

"Increasing awareness of systemic racial inequities creates opportunity for people in power to engage in socially conscious action and decision-making within higher education," Boyd added.

Boyd said that the "Critical Race Theory" project is among student leaders' "highest priority" within the Associated Students of the University of Oregon.

The University of Oregon Office of the Provost indicated to Fox News in a statement that they are open to discussing the proposal.

CRITICAL RACE THEORY TAUGHT AT MANY OF AMERICAS 50 MOST ELITE PRIVATE K-12 SCHOOLS, ACCORDING TO NEW STUDY

"Recently, the university went through an extensive process to update its undergraduate Core Educationrequirement focused onissues of race and inequality. The Office of the Provost is happy to continue the dialogue with student leadership around core curriculum requirementsin conjunction with the University Senate and its curriculum committees, which now have student representation for the first time in several years, thanks to the ASUO," the statement read.

University of Oregon students walk across campus in Eugene, Ore. (Andy Nelson/The Register-Guard via AP)

The office added that "diversity of background, thought, and perspective is an absolute necessity for building academic excellence."

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Currently, students are required to take one course which covers US: Difference, Inequality and Agency, and one course relating to Global Perspectives.

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Oregon university student government wants critical race theory graduation 'requirement' - Fox News

Accusing the BJP of using coercive tactics to put pressure on former DSGMC Manjinder Singh Sirsa to join the party, Sukhbir Singh Badal Thursday said the Shiromani Akali Dal chief was ready to face any challenge thrown by the saffron party.

This is BJPs revenge against us for standing by our principles, breaking the alliance with them and quitting the cabinet to stand by farmers. But we have no regrets whatsoever. In fact, we are very proud of what we did then. We are ready for repression, oppression and conspiracies and will defeat them, said Sukhbir. Sirsa, a prominent face of the Akali Dal in Delhi and a strong supporter of the farmers protests against the three contentious farm laws, joined the BJP Wednesday. Sukhbir said that the BJP-led government at the Centre was stooping to a new low in abusing power to deal with democratic opposition. The SAD president also showed some WhatsApp message that he had reportedly received from Sirsa. Sirsa on WhatsApp told me that they will put him in jail and harass his family if he (Sirsa) did not join the BJP, said Sukhbir.

You suppress the DSGMC president, slap cases and then point a gun on his head telling either you leave (SAD) or you will be sent behind the barsBut I am disappointed and sad that instead of being true to the traditions of his religion against repression, Sirsa chose to bow down. This was disgraceful, especially coming from someone on whom the Sikh qaum (community) and the SAD have bestowed so much honour, Badal said. He said Punjab is a border state and his party is an example of mutual brotherhood. If the Centre thinks it will weaken the SAD, they will not succeed, he said. Sukhbir said this new attack is a continuation of the old tactics of mixing repression, oppression and conspiracy to break the spirit of the Sikh qaum.

Let them try everything. Repression cannot break us. The Mughals tried it. The British tried it. The Congress rulers including Indira Gandhi tried it. The whole world knows what the outcome was then. It will be no different this time, he said. Sukhbir said that Sirsa leaving SAD will not impact them as he has no following in the state. Everybody in Punjab knows that he has no roots here, he added,

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Ready for BJPs repression, oppression, conspiracies, says Sukhbir - The Indian Express

Last Sunday, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Sri Lanka held a successful online public meeting attended by almost 100 people, including students and workers from across Sri Lanka, as well as India and the Middle East. Entitled, How to fight the Rajapakse governments austerity budget? the video has so far been viewed by over 1,000 people and shared more than 300 times.

Chairing the meeting, SEP Assistant National Secretary Deepal Jayasekara pointed out that the main challenge for workers fighting the governments brutal social measures was to arm themselves with a socialist political perspective.

SEP Political Committee member Saman Gunadasa delivered the main report. He said that while the principal concern of all Sri Lankan capitalist parties was how to impose the burden of the economic crisis on the masses, the SEP meeting was called to discuss how working people could fight for their own interests.

The speaker referred to Finance Minister Basil Rajapakses budget speech declaration that the government faced historys most challenging period but was equipped with all the necessary strengths to manage the economy and overcome such challenges.

This statement, Gunadasa said, meant that Colombo was unleashing a ruthless attack on the jobs and living conditions of working class and the oppressed in order to secure the profit interests of big business. This involved tax holidays for capitalists but a wage freeze for workers, along with cuts in allocations for public healthcare, samurdhi (limited welfare allowances for the poor), water supply, women and child development, and rural housing.

Similar class war attacks, he said, were being imposed by ruling elites all over the world in response to the worsening economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gunadasa noted that Sri Lankas debt-ridden economy now ranked alongside Ethiopia, Iraq and Tunisia.

The budget proposes to impose this crisis on working people. It will certainly involve a massive attack on the working class for the government to reduce the budget deficit, which exceeded 14.7 percent of GDP in 2020, to 8.8 percent of GDP in the next year, he said.

The governments main target was the public sector, Gunadasa continued, citing the finance ministers declaration that the sector was an unbearable burden. Colombos response was for large state sector budget cuts and a sweeping privatisation program.

To boost dollar reserves, export-manufacturing plants continued to operate, even though thousands of factory workers were being infected with COVID-19. Sri Lankans working abroad also had been neglected by Colombo in order to maintain the inflow of remittances, the speaker said.

Gunadasa posed a question: What has happened to the bourgeoisie, including the corporations and big business [during the pandemic], while the working class faced such vicious attacks?

He answered by detailing how President Rajapakse had directed the Central Bank to provide massive concessionary funds to big businesses, as well as more tax cuts and other concessions. The capitalist companies were granted the social wealth extracted from the workers, he said.

Gunadasa said the international working class was not willing to accept these austerity attacks. He referenced the eruption of strikes and protests in Sri Lanka and around the world. Rajapakse, in line with his global counterparts, was responding to the rising social opposition by turning to dictatorial forms of rule.

Gunadasa analysed the role of Sri Lankas opposition parties. At first glance, these parties seem to be criticising the government, but if you look closely at what is being said, they are advising the government on better ways to carry out the governments program.

The main opposition parties, the Samagi Jana Balawewaya and the United National Party, were calling on the government to seek more loans from the International Monetary Fund.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna covered up the fact that the root of the problem is the capitalist system by falsely claiming the crisis was a result of government corruption and fraud.

The pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party was setting a political trap for the working class by calling for a broad left front, which included the bourgeois parties.

All these groups are based on a reactionary nationalist program, the speaker said. Workers could only defend their rights and win their demands by fighting for the unification of the international working class.

To initiate such a struggle, Gunadasa said, workers in every workplace, regardless of their employment categories or other artificial divisions, had to organise rank-and-file committees independent of the trade union bureaucracies and fight for a workers and peasants government based on socialist policies.

Such a government will put an end to capitalist exploitation. Working people should use the achievements of their labour directly for social necessity, not private profit, he stressed. The resources of society should belong to the working people.

Concluding his speech, Gunadasa invited audience members to join the struggle led by the International Committee of the Fourth international (ICFI) and support the Global Workers Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic initiated by the World Socialist Web Site .

The meeting concluded with a question-and-answer session. Answering a question about the unification of farmers struggles in India and Sri Lanka, Gunadasa explained the need for a unified independent movement of Indian and Sri Lankan workers based on socialist and internationalist policies to rally poor farmers in both countries.

Nationalist trade unions in India and Sri Lanka, including those led by Indian Stalinist parties, he said, were hostile to the development of such a unified movement. The Trotskyist SEP was the only party in the South Asian region fighting for this perspective.

Jayasekera, the meeting chair, responded to a question from a listener in South India about the role of caste-based parties. The main role of these parties, Jayasekara explained, was to divide workers while securing the privileges for a tiny elite in the relevant castes, at the expense of the vast majority of workers and oppressed masses.

The pro-imperialist bourgeoisie in the backward capitalist countries, including India, he continued, are incapable in overcoming the unresolved problems of democratic revolution, such as the agrarian questions and caste oppression. These problems could be solved only by the working class, rallying all other oppressed masses and fighting for socialist policies.

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SEP meeting discusses the socialist policies needed to fight Sri Lankan government's budget - WSWS

Some American leaders are using sharper, more belligerent language about China.

From Sen. Ted Cruz:

"China is the single greatest geopolitical threat facing the United States over the next century," the senator tweeted in 2020.

To Mike Pompeo:

Now, I've spoken about this at some length, the People's Republic of China represent an absolute existential threat to our country, the former secretary of state said.

We often hear from Washington that the United States is locked in another great powers conflict with China. But is the "great powers" Cold War era analogy the right one for modern China?

Today, On Point: The fear and folly of invoking Cold War rhetoric when grappling with U.S.-China tensions.

Melvyn Leffler, professor of history emeritus at the University of Virginia. Author of several books on the Cold War, including "For the Soul of Mankind" and "A Preponderance of Power." Co-editor of the three volume "Cambridge History of the Cold War."

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst. (@JackBeattyNPR)

Yangyang Cheng, postdoctoral fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center. Frequent columnist on Chinese politics and U.S.-China relations. (@yangyang_cheng)

On echoes between Cold War era language and U.S.-China relations in 2021

Yangyang Cheng: China is used as a subject. But China is a country. It cannot think and do. So who in China is bent on dominating Asia or other parts of the world? There may be certain people in different levels of Chinese government, or punditry in society, who may have these views. But are these the dominant views? Are these the only views? Can these views be changed? And can power relations be changed? I feel that this kind of rhetoric really reflects a profound lack of intellectual curiosity. As well as a lack of moral imagination. That these fears and insecurities are all projected onto a faceless other. And the world is being collapsed into this kind of false binary. And so oneself can pretend to be both morally superior, as well as innocent.

But isnt that one of the hallmarks of how world powers talk about other nations in moments of tension?

Yangyang Cheng:Absolutely. And I would like to also point out that similar rhetorics are also used by the Chinese government. In terms of talking about U.S. or Western imperialism bent on subverting the Chinese system, bent on keeping China backwards. And these are the language that are directed at a domestic audience in order to legitimize the Chinese government's way of governing, in order to enhance its own control within China, and potentially also overseas.

China doesn't necessarily have to forcibly project its power. The fear is that the biggest difference today is that China actually has its economic tentacles, by our own invitation, in the United States already.

If you look at the economic power of China, the United States can be almost seen as a vassal state to China. And that's the existential threat that not just Ted Cruz, but occasionally Joe Biden and people on both sides of the aisle, talk about. What do you make of that?

Yangyang Cheng: It is interesting, right, because, for example, earlier in the clips, you've shown certain senators on the floor saying, 'commie China' and this and that. But of course, the Chinese ruling party is nominally communist, China is now an integral part of the global capitalist system. And the Chinese government itself is a major player in the global capitalist system.

"And if we think about this integration, a lot of the overseas influence, and political pressures the Chinese government exerts through its economic leverage really is not so much as China is weakening the democratic system, but behaviors from certain Chinese entities are exposing the pre-existing weaknesses in a lot of societies. Where there are companies that prioritize access to the Chinese market, instead of standing up for principles of freedom and human rights.

"And how these global supply chains, including the forced labor issue among the Uyghur people in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. And so it's really systems of oppression, including state oppression, are all connected. And simply projecting them as all in one single country contained by a border, it's a profound misunderstanding.

On lessons from the Cold War, and how we might apply those lessons regarding America and China today

Melvyn Leffler:Even President Reagan came to realize that the Soviet Union and the United States had mutual interests. Mutual interests in curbing the strategic arms race, in negotiating arms limitation agreements. And most of all, in seeking to abolish nuclear weapons. Once again, Republican officials from Ford to Reagan, from Nixon, Ford and Reagan, while waging the Cold War, also understood that they needed to seek out mutual interests. And that's what we need to do today.

Yangyang Cheng: "The Cold War really was a hot war in many parts of the world. And it's like the people who exist on the edges of empires, on the margins of nationhood, who are bearing the ... cost of it. And we are seeing these being played out again. And so I think one really important thing is to listen to the voices in the margins who are bearing the brunt of the cost in terms of xenophobic rhetoric, in terms of state oppression, in terms of climate change. And to be able to see the edge not as an end, but as a new beginning. And to imagine a world where humanity as a species can come together and imagine the future where no one is in exile.

Highlights have been condensed and edited for clarity.

The Atlantic: "China Isnt the Soviet Union. Confusing the Two Is Dangerous." "Anyone looking for evidence of a growing economic and ideological conflict between China and the United States will have no trouble finding somethingthe trade war now roiling both countries economies, the standoff between police and pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, Beijings swift retaliation against the NBA over a single Houston Rockets executives tweet in support of those same protesters."

The Guardian: "The west sees China as a threat, not as a real place, with real people" "I was at dinner with a friend, and she asked about my work. 'Name one thing you wish Americans knew about China,' she said."

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A rekindled Cold War? A reality check on the narrative around U.S.-China tensions - WBUR

The Department of the Interior recently ordered that the derogatory term squaw be removed from lakes, mountains, trails and other features on federal land and the largest share of the cleanup will be taking place in the West.

In California, the sexual slur for Native American women appears on 87 places, according to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which has a search tool to look up place names in every state. Idaho is a distant second with 69 places identified by the now-banned term followed by Arizona with 68 places.

When variants of the name are included in a search (such as historical or local references that are not formally recognized) the frequency of the term squaw as a place name can almost triple in some states.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a Native American from New Mexico, issued the order on Nov. 19, along with another directive establishing a process to review and replace other offensive names identifying the nations geographic features.

The orders, which continue an ongoing movement that goes back decades of eliminating derogatory names from landmarks, is expected to streamline and speed up what has usually been a lengthy, painstaking process to change the offensive name of a geographic site.

Racist terms have no place in our vernacular or on our federal lands. Our nations lands and waters should be places to celebrate the outdoors and our shared cultural heritage not to perpetuate the legacies of oppression, Haaland, the first Indigenous woman to head the department, said in a press release. Todays actions will accelerate an important process to reconcile derogatory place names and mark a significant step in honoring the ancestors who have stewarded our lands since time immemorial.

Heres why the term squaw became a lightning rod for removing offensive names from places and how past efforts to clean up the language of landmarks have fared.

Many landmarks are named after historical events in a location, early settlers of an area or can reflect the whims of land surveyors who created early maps of the American frontier, researchers and historians said.

The movement to remove the term squaw from geographical places in the country goes back nearly 30 years, when Minnesota became the first state to require counties to rename 19 lakes, streams and points that have the word squaw in them.

An Associated Press story at the time reported that opponents of the new law facetiously complied. In Minnesotas Lake County, near the Canadian border, they tried to change the names of Squaw Creek and Squaw Bay to Politically Correct Creek and Politically Correct Bay.

Despite the law, a lake and a town both still carry the name Squaw Lake in Minnesota, according the U.S. Board on Geographic Names database.

While there is some debate over when the term squaw evolved from an Algonquian word for female to a sexual slur used by European fur traders and white settlers, Native Americans generally associate the word with todays derogatory definition and have led efforts over the years to eliminate it from place names around the country.

Following in the footsteps of Minnesota, Maine, Montana and Oregon, Utah passed a law earlier this year that sets up the states own process to remove offensive place names. The bill singled out the term squaw.

It was used to describe women who were offered as prostitutes during mountain man rendezvous and later just to describe women who worked in prostitution outside of military forts, Shaina Snyder, a Din Navajo and Southern Ute told the Deseret News. The word, she said, has no relation to the languages, cultures or dialects of Utah tribes but came with westward expansion.

And the word is associated with 53 places in the Beehive State, most notably a jagged peak overlooking Provo and the BYU campus.

Researchers at the U.S. Board on Geographic Names said Utah Countys Squaw Peak is first identified on United States Geological Survey maps of the area in 1948, but may have been used locally for years before.

The most common story about its origins is that it was named for the spot where a Timpanogos Ute tribe member fell to her death while being pursued by white settlers, BYU history professor Jay Buckley told The Associated Press, noting the tale may be more anecdotal than fact.

Efforts to rename the prominent landmark have ebbed and flowed over the past two decades.

And navigating a time-consuming, confusing government process to petition for the change has proven as much an obstacle as public opposition.

In Utah County, the opposition appears to be mostly motivated by nostalgia, although Dustin Jansen, now-director of the Utahs Division of Indian Affairs, recalls opinions got so mean-spirited that a local news website stopped posting comments on a news story about efforts to change the peaks name.

He added that the campaign for change would also get conflated with eliminating Native American-related school mascots, which it is not. Jansen and others said tribal leaders are not in agreement on school mascots, but they are unanimous in eliminating the term squaw from local landmarks.

The latest sustained campaign for a name change was around 2017, when then-Provo Mayor John Curtis, now a congressman, heard feedback that the term perpetuated and mocked domestic violence against Native American women and encouraged those seeking the change to gauge if theres public support to warrant pursuing a formal request.

But the effort stalled when city officials and supporters learned the peak is on federal land. And when proponents began researching the federal name-changing process they called Jansens office for help.

We had community members contacting us, saying, This is really confusing, Jansen said. Instead of a form or application to fill out, the government asks for vague paperwork explaining why the name should be changed.

That started a yearslong search for a solution that resulted in a bill sponsored by state Sen. Jani Iwamoto, D-Holladay. Signed into law earlier this year, the legislation enlists the Utah Division of Indian Affairs to help groups submit a name change request for geographic areas that use American Indian-related terms.

The new law, which singles out places that use the word squaw, can apply to other offensive terms. But most importantly, Iwamoto and Jansen said, it provides a clear process that encourages community input to petitioning government for a name change.

Iwamoto said former GOP Congressman Rob Bishop testified in favor of her bill, stressing that establishing a public process that supports a change would compel federal authorities to honor the request.

While painstaking, changing the name of a geographical feature in Utah has succeeded in the past.

In 2006, a proposal to change Chinamans Arch to Chinese Arch near Brigham City sailed through the process without opposition. But a 2017, the renaming of Negro Bill Canyon to Grandstaff Canyon in Grand County ran up against some unexpected opposition.

The Grand County Historical Preservation Commission and the NAACP Tri-State Conference opposed the name change to preserve the history of racial attitudes of the past and noted the word Negro is still used in official group names such as the National Council of Negro Women. The Utah Martin Luther King Jr. Human Rights Commission believed removing the offensive term would give the misperception Utah has progressed to a place where such flagrant insensitivity is no longer tolerated or acceptable in our community, according to the Moab Times.

The state Committee on Geographic Names recommended Negro Bill Canyon not be changed, but the U.S. Board on Geographic Names disagreed and four years ago this month ordered it be changed, acknowledging local sentiment in Moab.

People dont realize the anger it created. I was treated horribly and to me that shows the name symbolized more than just a name that there was some racism behind it, Mary McGann, a Grand County Council member who fought for the change, told the Deseret News at the time. We change the name of things all the time, but this created some vile reaction. In many ways, it made me think it was more important than not to change it.

While the U.S. Board on Geographic Names gave a nod to local sentiment in 2017, the orders issued last month are clearly top-down directives to scrub offensive terms from the nations geographical features and give priority to local requests to eliminate the term squaw.

But the departments announcement noted such a move has precedent. It cited former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, of Arizona, identified the N-word as derogatory, and directed in 1962 that the (Board on Geographic Names) develop a policy to eliminate its use. In 1974, the board declared a pejorative term for Japanese as derogatory and eliminated its use.

Arie Leeflang, secretary of the Utah Committee on Geographic Names, said in an email that the panel is awaiting any guidance on if the Interior Department directives change its process.

He described the state committees role in name changes as passive.

We do not proactively seek to change geographic names and are only involved when an official geographic name proposal is received by the (U.S. Board on Geographic Names) and the BGN asks for our review.

Jansen said supporters of renaming Squaw Peak in Utah County are still gathering information, including input from the Ute Indian Tribe for alternative names, to submit for a name change request.

I was contacted by someone (after the Interior Department order was announced) who asked, Are the feds going to do it now? What say does the local community have in what the name should be? Jansen said. Thats a question we are going to have to find out.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that then-Provo Mayor John Curtis endorsed changing the name of Squaw Peak. Curtis encouraged those seeking the change to gauge if there was enough public support to warrant pursuing a formal request.

Continued here:

The Interior Department wants the word squaw removed from federal lands - Deseret News

Twitter has shut down thousands of state-linked accounts in China that seek to counter evidence of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, as part of what experts called an embarrassingly produced propaganda operation.

The operations used photos and images, shell and potentially automated accounts, and fake Uyghur profiles, to disseminate state propaganda and fake testimonials about their happy lives in the region, seeking to dispel evidence of a years-long campaign of oppression, with mass internments, re-education programs, and allegations of forced labour and sterilisation.

The networks were found to share themes and content, but often used repurposed accounts dedicated to pornography or Korean soap operas with little engagement except when they were amplified by Chinese diplomats and officials. Twitter is banned inside China but officials frequently operate accounts overseas.

According to analysts at thinktank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), the content from the 2,160 accounts that Twitter closed down was often embarrassingly produced but provided a level of implausible deniability which muddied the waters around the issue.

The accounts linked to Chinese operations were in two sets, the largest being a network of 2,048 accounts amplifying the Chinese Communist partys narratives related to Xinjiang, and the second set of 112 accounts connected to Changyu Culture, a private company that ASPI said appeared to be contracted by the Xinjiang regional authority to create videos of Uyghurs supporting the government.

More than 30,000 tweets from each network were identified, frequently responding to other tweets labelling evidence of abuses as lies under the hashtag #StopXinjiangRumours or sharing videos they claimed were the truth of Xinjiang, or targeting foreign politicians while claiming to be a Uyghur person.

When the data were analysed by ASPI, it found much of it linked to pornography, Korean soap opera fans, and spam accounts and content. Thats most likely because theyve taken over these existing accounts and repurposed them, said ASPI senior analyst Fergus Ryan.

They take them over and pump out this content thats generally quite reactive Its so ham-handed, and really not done very well. One of the really weird things about one data set was that for some unknown reason they include hundreds of tweets with this handle for an account @fuck_next.

The tweets also repeatedly mis-tagged the account of former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and many videos linked to the now-suspended Changyu Culture YouTube channel, which is known to be a marketing outfit backed by the Xinjiang provincial authorities.

The result was a torrent of highly implausible propaganda, obvious to most eyes but still a cause for concern, said ASPI.

ASPI found 97% of the identified accounts had fewer than five followers, and 73% of accounts had zero. While 98% of tweets had no likes or retweets, the remainder were often boosted by Chinese diplomats and officials, spreading the content and giving it legitimacy.

The target is not actually people who are sceptical of the Chinese government, but is giving content to people who trust Chinese state media and are sceptical of western mainstream media, said ASPI researcher Albert Zhang. Its propaganda appealing to the base.

ASPIs report said the propaganda campaign reflected the likely direction of future information operations by the Chinese Communist party (CCP). However, Zhang and Ryan also said it also showed there might be a lack of understanding by Chinese propaganda and media purveyors about what is believable or legitimate as was showcased last month with attempts to rebut concerns about tennis star Peng Shuai.

Ryan said a portmanteau term originally ascribed to Chinas surveillance system Chabudwellian also applied here, combining Orwellian with the Chinese term cha bu duo, which means almost but is often used to describe something done with poor or minimal effort.

Outside of China, foreigners think their surveillance system is highly sophisticated but in reality a lot of the time this infrastructure is gerry-rigged and not super effective, said Ryan. That can apply to the information campaigns as well.

Read more from the original source:

Xinjiang: Twitter closes thousands of China state-linked accounts spreading propaganda - The Guardian

Maharashtra Congress leaders on Wednesday took exception to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjees remarks on the UPA and Rahul Gandhi, and stated that the Congress was the only viable alternative to take on the BJP. They also said that statements deriding the Congress were akin to playing into the hands of the BJP.

The country is well aware of the fight the Congress has put up against the oppression of the BJP and the central government. No individual party can fight against the BJP if that party continues to think about its own political gain and personal ambition. The Congress is the only viable option for the country and the democracy, said Balasaheb Thorat, Revenue Minister and Congress legislative party leader.

The Congress is part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government along with the Shiv Sena and NCP in Maharashtra.

The Congress under the leadership of Congress president Soniaji Gandhi and Rahulji Gandhi is constantly fighting against the dictatorial attitude of the BJP. Rahulji fought against the Modi government by standing firmly behind farmers on the issue of land acquisition law and three farm laws, said Nana Patole, state Congress president.

He said the country is more important than personal ambitions and the fight against the BJP needs to be fought unitedly, keeping egos aside. A political party restricted to one state cannot be an alternative to the BJP. The Congress is the only viable political alternative for the BJP, Patole added.

Senior Congress leader and PWD Minister Ashok Chavan said the Congress party its leadership need no certification for their commitment towards democracy and Constitution as well as the tireless struggle against the present central governments policies.

For the last seven years, the central government has been using the divide and rule policy on the Opposition parties. In such a scenario, it becomes the responsibility of all non-BJP parties to not indulge in politics that supports this policy of the Centre, Chavan added.

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Maharashtra Cong leaders object to Mamata remarks: Cong only viable political alternative in the country - The Indian Express