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If you are a Muslim immigrant seeking US citizenship, the FBI is the Stasi.

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This is just one example.

A software programmer who went to college in the US happens to be a Muslim Immigrant from Pakistan. He applies for a green card. The FBI gets hold of the application and holds it hostage, asking him to provide names of people he thinks are terrorists, without any evidence of his knowledge of suspicious/terrorist activity. With his green card application on hold for 5 years and his work visa about to expire, he sues the DHS, USCIS & FBI. Soon after, his work visa is revoked.

A.M. got in touch with [Charles] Swift, the lawyer who had fought against military tribunals [and won], who arranged a meeting at the Department of Homeland Security offices in Dallas.

It was there, tucked away in a room in a long, low-slung office building, that the officers pushed A.M. to become a secret informant. “They would want me to wear a wire,” he recalled, “go to my friends in the masjid, the mosque, talk about jihad, encourage them to fight or something, and then ask me to witness against them for provoking them. I can’t do that.”

He said he pleaded with the agents. “Is there something that you know about me? Then tell me. If there is something you think I have done wrong then tell me.” They didn’t answer. Instead, they told him that if he did not agree to their offer, he and his family would no longer be welcome in America.

Swift ended the meeting. Within hours, one of the agents called him and asked which flight his client would be on.

A.M. and his family sold what possessions they could, and two weeks later, they left the country that for 17 years he had called home.

If you are a Muslim immigrant seeking US citizenship, the FBI is the Stasi.

Universities as Modern Agraharas*

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… even though the marginalised groups can access education as it is constitutionally mandated, exclusion manifests in dubious ways. The principle of merit is largely undefined. However, the social and economic worth of individuals and institutions is valued on the basis of this amorphous principle. Any standard definition of merit will again feed the myth of the “family farm” comprising parental background, alma mater, economic occupations, physicality and geographical location. Needless to say, these privileges are available only to a chosen few who are then considered as “meritorious”, “worthy” and the “best”.

In an ongoing study sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) on ‘Discrimination and Exclusion in Institutions of Higher Learning in India’, SC/ST students of four universities — Delhi, Mumbai, Madras and Hyderabad — were mapped. A total of 72 respondents were interviewed on various parameters. More than 70 percent of them felt stigmatised by their caste identity within the classrooms, peer group and the academic environment. Unsurprisingly, Rohith wrote in his suicide note, “My birth is my fatal accident.”

Universities as Modern Agraharas*

What the FBI’s Surveillance of Martin Luther King Tells Us About the Modern Spy Era

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There is a myth in this country that in a world where everyone is watched, everyone is watched equally. It’s as if an old and racist J. Edgar Hoover has been replaced by the race-blind magic of computers, mathematicians, and Big Data. The truth is more uncomfortable. Across our history and to this day, people of color have been the disproportionate victims of unjust surveillance; Hoover was no aberration. And while racism has played its ugly part, the justification for this monitoring was the same we hear today: national security.

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… wiretaps were only the beginning of the government’s violations against King—or the broader civil rights movement. The FBI used information gleaned from taps and secret listening devices to smear King to the press and potential funders, and to engage in repugnant, sexual blackmail. And government surveillance went far beyond King. It extended to Chavez, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Whitney Young of the National Urban League. It extended to their forefathers, DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and countless others who knew that the government was watching—and listening—waiting for them to make a mistake.

What the FBI’s Surveillance of Martin Luther King Tells Us About the Modern Spy Era

Narendra Modi’s visit to the UK is overshadowed by nationalist violence in India | Mirza Waheed

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During his trip to Silicon Valley in September, Modi was seen hugging a fawning Mark Zuckerberg. Yet, at the same time he was promoting Digital India to Silicon Valley tech-plutocrats, his government turned off the internet in disputed Kashmir for nearly four days.

Narendra Modi’s visit to the UK is overshadowed by nationalist violence in India | Mirza Waheed

Popehat

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…the Southern District of New York, after hitting Reason with a federal grand jury subpoena to unmask anonymous hyperbolic commenters, secured a gag order that prevented them from writing about it.

Popehat

Call Me Daddy: Playing Son to My Fatherless Boyfriend | VICE | United States

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He picks me up from the train station and we go to an Indian restaurant
near his apartment. We sit next to a large Indian family. I imagine that
they’re all judging me, and it stings. They probably came here from
India to make better lives for their children. And look what they ended
up sitting next to: some nightmare vision of what America can do to your
kids, no matter how hard they study. When your boys come to America,
they’ll turn into dimpled twinks who will escape their ivory towers to
go on dates with sugar daddies twice their age.

Call Me Daddy: Playing Son to My Fatherless Boyfriend | VICE | United States