New Delhi, Jan 25 : The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) in a
communication sent to Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal demanded
immediate action against e-commerce entities including Amazon, Flipkart,
Zomato, Swiggy and others."It is a case of daylight robbery of
e-commerce entities in India and therefore demand immediate action
against the erring e-commerce portals and online mechanism providers,"
CAIT said.
CAIT has accused Amazon, Flipkart, Zomato, Swiggy and various other
e-commerce entities for violation of mandatory display of Country of
Origin and Manufacturer, seller Details on products sold through their
respective E-Commerce Portals as required under the Consumers Protection
(E Commerce) Rules,2020, Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Act,
2011 and guidelines of Food Safety & Standards Authority of India.
CAIT has asked Goyal to take action against E-commerce entities including Amazon, Flipkart, Zomato, Swiggy and others.
"It is a case of daylight robbery of e-commerce entities in India
and, therefore demands immediate action against the erring e-commerce
portals and online mechanism providers," CAIT said.
CAIT National President B.C. Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen
Khandelwal in a communication to Goyal said that e-commerce entities
conducting business in India including Amazon, Flipkart and others are
highly violating the mandatory conditions spelled out in above Acts.
"It
is a pity that particularly in e-commerce every guidelines, Rules &
Regulations, Laws and policies are being flouted openly and no
department has so far taken any cognizance of compliance issues
resulting in a highly vitiated and mess like e-commerce trade of India,"
CAIT said.
Bhartia and Khandelwal said that Rule 10 of Legal Metrology
(Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011 provide that e-commerce entities
should have to display name and address of the manufacturer, name of the
country of origin, common/generic name of the product, net quantity,
best before/use by date (if applicable), maximum retail price,
dimensions of the commodity, etc.
This rule was introduced in June 2017 and provided a transition
period of six months thereby its implementation from January 1,2018 but
even after a lapse of three years, the above rules are not being
complied by e-commerce companies prominently by Amazon, Flipkart, etc.
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Failure
to make declarations as above will amount to selling non-standard
packages and will invite penalty under the above said Act, including
fine or imprisonment or both, CAIT said.
Both trade leaders further said that similar obligations were
imposed on e-commerce food business operators vide guidelines issued by
the Food Safety & Standards Authority (FSSAI) on February 2,2017.
"But such FBOs like Zomato, Swiggy, etc. are not complying with the above rules," CAIT said.
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Bhartia
and Khandelwal said that under Rule 4(2) of the Consumer Protection (E
Commerce) Rules, 2020, it is provided that every e-commerce entity shall
provide the following information in a clear and accessible manner on
its platform, displayed prominently to its users, namely, legal name of
the e-commerce entity, principal geographic address of its headquarters
and all branches, name and details of its website, and contact details
like email address, fax, landline and mobile numbers of customer care as
well as of grievance office. Similar provisions are also spelled out in
Press Note 2 of the FDI Policy, 2016.
CAIT said no e-commerce entity has appointed a Nodal Officer as also
complying with above provisions. Important rights of the consumers are
being violated as they are not aware of the seller or description of the
product at the time of purchase of products from e-commerce portals.
A 3,600-page supplementary
chargesheet, filed by Mumbai Police on January 11 in the TRP scam case,
includes a BARC forensic audit report, WhatsApp chats purportedly
between Partho Dasgupta and Arnab Goswami, and statements of 59 persons,
including former council employees and cable operators.
By Mohamed Thaver
, Krishn Kaushik Partha Dasgupta and Arnab Goswami. (File Photo)
Mumbai, New Delhi, Jan 25, 21: The
former CEO of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, Partho
Dasgupta, has claimed in a handwritten statement to Mumbai Police that
he received US$12,000 from Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami for
two separate holidays and a total of Rs 40 lakh over three years, in
return for manipulating ratings in favour of the news channel, according
to the supplementary chargesheet filed in the TRP scam case.
The 3,600-page supplementary chargesheet, filed by Mumbai Police on January 11, also includes a BARC forensic audit report, WhatsApp chats purportedly between Dasgupta and Goswami, and statements of 59 persons, including former council employees and cable operators.
The
audit report names several news channels, including Republic, Times Now
and Aaj Tak, and lists instances of alleged manipulation as well as
“pre-fixing” of ratings for the channels by BARC’s top executives.
The
supplementary chargesheet was filed against Dasgupta, former BARC COO
Romil Ramgarhia and Republic Media Network CEO Vikas Khanchandani. A
first chargesheet was filed against 12 persons in November 2020.
According
to the second chargesheet, Dasgupta’s statement was recorded in the
office of the Crime Intelligence Unit on December 27, 2020, at 5.15 pm,
in the presence of two witnesses.
Dasgupta’s
statement reads: “I have known Arnab Goswami since 2004. We used to
work together in Times Now. I joined BARC as CEO in 2013. Arnab Goswami
launched Republic in 2017. Even before launching Republic TV he would
talk to me about plans for the launch and indirectly hint at helping him
to get good ratings to his channel. Goswami knew very well that I know
how the TRP system works. He also alluded to helping me out in the
future.”
It
states: “I worked with my team to ensure manipulation of TRP ratings
that made Republic TV get number 1 rating. This would have continued
from 2017 to 2019. Towards this, in 2017 Arnab Goswami had personally
met me at St Regis hotel, Lower Parel and given me 6000 dollars cash for
my France and Switzerland family trip…also in 2019 Arnab Goswami had
personally met me at St Regis and given me 6000 dollars for my Sweden
and Denmark family trip. Also in 2017, Goswami had personally met me at
ITC Parel hotel and given me Rs 20 lakh cash… also in 2018 and 2019…
Goswami met me at ITC hotel Parel and gave me Rs 10 lakhs each time…”
Dasgupta’s
lawyer Arjun Singh said: “We totally deny this allegation as the
statement would have been recorded under duress. It does not have any
evidentiary value in the court of law.” When contacted, a member of
Goswami’s legal team declined to comment. Goswami has repeatedly denied
any wrongdoing and alleged he was being targeted.
The
chargesheet also includes BARC’s audit report, dated July 24, 2020,
which states that evidence “indicated favouritism shown to few channels”
and “in some cases, we suspect that the ratings were pre-decided”.
For
instance, the report mentions alleged suppression of viewership for
Times Now to boost Republic’s weekly rankings, and highlights a
purported conversation between BARC’s top executives and a senior
marketing executive of India Today Group on “pre-fixing” Aaj Tak’s
ratings.
With multiple emails and messages between BARC officials
attached as annexures, the report states that one of the reasons given
by the council for changing Times Now’s viewership data is to cater for
“outlier” data, which is meant to identify spikes in viewership due to
the channel being the “landing page” on some distributors.
The
practice of placing a channel on the “landing page” was prohibited by
the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. But that direction was set
aside by the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal, and the
matter is now in Supreme Court.
The audit was conducted by
Acquisory Risk Consulting. The executive summary of the audit report
states that “manipulation was evidenced in 2017, 18 and 19 across
English News Genre and Telugu News Genre”.
The report states that
six top executives of BARC at the time were involved in “manipulation of
ratings and violation of the code of ethics” between 2018 and 2019,
including Dasgupta, Ramgarhia, Head of Products (South) Venkat Sujit
Samrat, Head of West Rushab Mehta, Vice President of Strategy Pekham
Basu, and Chief People Officer and Strategy Manashi Kumar.
In
October 2019, Dasgupta was replaced by Sunil Lulla as CEO. The
supplementary chargesheet includes a statement by a BARC official
claiming that in “February 2020, Sunil Lulla told me that there were
allegations of TRP rating manipulation from the media industry” against
Dasgupta, Ramgarhia, Mehta, Samrat, Kumar and AVP Pekham Basu. The
official states that in “the first week of June 2020, from the server I
took the backup of the emails of the suspected persons on a hard drive
and gave Ramgarhia’s laptop in the last week of June” to the auditing
agency.
Mehta, Samrat, Kumar and Basu have not been charged by
police. The audit report was provided to Mumbai Police in December, two
months after it registered an FIR in the TRP case.
Some of the
instances cited in the report point to changed ratings that resulted in
Republic being the top channel in English news from 2017. It cites
emails and messages as evidence for weeks in which Times Now’s data and
ratings were decreased, giving Republic the edge.
On June 18,
2017, the report states, Mehta wrote to Ramgarhia: “As required, Times
Now numbers are changed, while Republic is kept the same”. According to
the report, “this is pointing that the senior management wanted Republic
TV to be number 1, and the team was working to achieve this objective”.
According
to the audit report, conversations between BARC’s executives and a top
marketing executive of India Today Group, in 2016, pointed towards
“pre-fixing” the ratings for Aaj Tak. The report cites “chat message
conversations between Romil, Partho, and external officials of channels,
hinting about pre-fixing the channel ratings during our analysis”.
When
contacted, BARC said in an email: “As the matter is a subject of an
ongoing investigation by the various law enforcement agencies, we are
constrained to respond to your enquiries.”
Republic said in a
statement that “there has been a collusion of corporate and political
interests to target” Goswami. “This collusion, which is a result of
commercial, political and personal interests, is aimed, quite obviously,
at illegally trying to create prejudice against the Republic Media
Network,” it said.
Times Now defended the use of landing pages,
stating that they are “not ruled as illegal” and “are simply the most
preferred frequency which is sold and bought at a Premium by perfectly
legal means”. It said the outlier policy was “abused by corrupt BARC
officials to manually intervene and wilfully and deliberately improve
channel ranks for favoured channels” and that it is “contemplating legal
action”.
India Today Group did not respond to queries from The Indian Express.
While
Dasgupta is in jail, The Indian Express reached out to Mehta, Samrat,
Ramgarhia, Kumar and Basu. Only Kumar responded. “I had remotely nothing
to do with research or ratings as it was a different team which handled
market analytics and data,” he said, adding that everything else was
“slander”.
The chargesheet also includes statements by cable
operators that they were asked to show Republic on two channels to
increase its TRP in exchange for money — two operators said they were
asked to raise vouchers of Rs 11,800 each.
FULL STATEMENT FROM TIMES NOW
“Times
Network uses only bonafide and legally valid means to do its business.
We do not indulge in Panel-Tampering or bribing BARC officials which are
common cheating practises followed by unscrupulous actors. TRP numbers
are a function of 2 factors: Reach of channel and Time Spent by Viewer
on the Channel (TSV). TSV depends upon the Content plan, style and
quality of story-telling. Reach depends upon Distribution efficiency and
Opportunity To See (OTS). There are laws of the land that govern
distribution, and as per them Landing Pages are not ruled as illegal.
Landing Pages are simply the most preferred frequency which is sold and
bought at a Premium by perfectly legal means. It is the same as FMCG
Companies strategy of acquiring best Shelf Space in supermarkets for
higher visibility. Or advertisers placing ads on the front page of
newspapers for highest visibility. This is available to all and is not
done by any underhand deals. Times Network has optimised its Product,
Brand and Distribution with the best in class inputs including Landing
Pages at high cost to deliver its channels to maximum viewers. It is
also worthy to note that such viewers are real and genuine as far as
advertising reach is concerned and the Advertiser gets the viewership
that he has paid for.
“The Outlier Policy of BARC to filter
Landing Pages is a contentious issue as this is not Spurious reach. It
is pertinent to note that the Landing Page Filtration Algorithm has been
officially announced by BARC only on Sept 03, 2020 after which Times
Network has challenged this in the Bombay High Court and the matter is
sub judice as on date. The 44 week Forensic audit is for the period May
2017 to March 2018 when no such Outlier Policy was in place and BARC had
no mandate to remove bonafide reach from landing pages. The outlier
policy or moderation policy is a mechanism provided by BARC Technical
Committee to remove statistically significant anomalies, mainly abnormal
TSV from unlikely homes or spikes in data that don’t represent the
logical true picture. The Outlier Policy is the key provision that has
been abused by corrupt BARC officials to manually intervene and wilfully
and deliberately improve channel ranks for favoured channels.
“Times
Network views this as the gravest breach of trust by BARC and is
contemplating legal action. The timing of misrepresentation of numbers
makes it even more damaging as it was done at a critical juncture in our
Brand history when Times NOW was engaged in a marketing battle,
energetically defending and retaining its position. The resultant
financial and brand impacts are being ascertained at the moment.”
Source: Indian Express
NEW
DELHI: Remote voting, or allowing a voter to cast her franchise from
any polling station in the country and not just the polling station or
constituency where she is registered, is among the key future
initiatives that the Election Commission is working on, chief election
commissioner Sunil Arora said on Sunday and added that mock trials of
the project would begin soon.
Sharing an “important dimension of the vision of Election Commission of India for future electoral processes”, Aro ..
Different
views have been delivered on this subject. It is the younger generation
that is buying bitcoin compared to who buys gold. On the other hand,
since the second half of 2020, more institutions have become buyers of
bitcoin. As JPM points out;
"...private gold wealth is mostly
stored via gold bars and coins the stock of which, excluding those held
by central banks, amounts to 42,600 tonnes or $2.7tr including gold
ETFs. Mechanically, the market cap of bitcoin at $600bn currently would
have to rise by almost x4.5 from here, implying a theoretical bitcoin
price of $146k, to match the total private sector investment in gold via
ETFs or bars and coins."
Source; JPM
This
is just a theoretical exercise. Before serious investments in bitcoin
could occur, volatility would need to converge and trade at similar
levels to gold volatility. Fund managers need to allocate money
according to volatility of each asset. Bitcoin vol converging to gold
volatility seems rather distant as of writing.
On the other hand,
average of bitcoin 1-2 mth bitcoin vol is around 85%. GLD 1-2 mth
average vol stands around 18%. That is aprox 4.7x higher vol for bitcoin
than gold. Apply the 4.7x to bitcoin's $600bn market and we have a "vol
adjusted" market cap of bitcoin matching gold. This is why we at TME
have been coming back to the argument explaining that most people have
no clue of how to manage downside volatility, and we see this as the
biggest "risk" for "non dynamic bitcoin fans".
So while many are arguing bitcoin is the new gold going forward, you could argue it is already here.
Source; Refinitiv
It
is easy to get carried away by a narrative that has worked, you made
money and lately your p/l diminishes, but you still trade the old
narrative. This has partly become the case with bitcoin lately. Same
arguments are made, but the price has been all but rosy.
Institutional
buying sure, but let's not forget, institutions also have to manage
risk, so the new hot buys at 42k by some "smart" guys will need to be
sold when bitcoin falls. Grayscale bitcoin trust flow has been declining
lately...
Source; JPM
With
regards to momentum strategies that were pressing momentum higher,
especially during the illiquid Xmas and New Year weekends we outlined
weeks ago, they have no directional preference or bias.
Momentum
traders do not care about no blockchain nor fundamentals. They chase
momentum and have no emotions. Lately these momentum models are all but
pointing higher...
Source; JPM
What
about the short term px action? TME has been pointing out "why not try
the 50 day moving average" over past weeks (note Fibonacci 38.2% level
trades around that level as well). It would would be a first real
support to see how well new smart bulls have managed downside
exposure...
Is gold money? Many would say so, and a web search
returns tens of thousands of additional affirmative responses. If you
want to start a fight with a gold bug, take the opposite view.
But is it so?
To answer the question of whether gold is money requires a definition. This one, from Wikipedia, is typical:
Money
is anything that is generally accepted in payment for goods and
services and in repayment of debts. The main uses of money are as a
medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value.
Wikipedia
refers to three properties of money. However, according to the Austrian
economist Carl Menger, its acceptability in trade is the defining
property. While money undoubtedly does serve as a store of value and a
unit of account, these properties are derivative, not definitional
properties. The reason that a medium of exchange necessarily is also a
store of value is the anticipation of its exchange value in the future.
[I]t
appears to me to be just as certain that the functions of being a
"measure of value" and a "store of value" must not be attributed to
money as such, since these functions are of a merely accidental nature
and are not an essential part of the concept of money.
Using the above definition, the question of whether any particular good is or is not money, can be posed in this way: is the good in question accepted as the final means of payment for transactions?
At present, in the developed world, nearly every nation has its own money or belongs to a currency union, such as the EU. Some nations in the developing world use the US dollar.
In highly inflationary environments, the local currency is often
spontaneously rejected in favor of the dollar or another foreign
currency. Hardly anywhere do we find gold generally accepted as a means
of payment. So gold must fail the definitional test of moneyness.
Is
this the end of the argument (and so the end of a very short article)?
Not quite. Gold is not money, but it has most of the desirable
properties of money, and the process by which it became money in the
past gives some clues about how it may become money once again.
A store of value is not necessarily a medium of exchange. As Menger says, a nonmonetary commodity can serve as a store of value:
But
the notion that attributes to money as such the function of also
transferring "values" from the present into the future must be
designated as erroneous. Although metallic money, because of its
durability and low cost of preservation, is doubtless suitable for this
purpose also, it is nevertheless clear that other commodities are still
better suited for it.
Analyst Paul van Eeden has
shown that gold has maintained its purchasing power relative to the time
that the gold standard ended. In "Is Gold an Inflation Hedge?" I
have provided links to Van Eeden's articles and a more detailed
discussion. I will summarize his analysis here. A theoretical gold price
equivalent which would give gold the same purchasing power as it had at
the end of the gold standard is calculated by taking the convertibility
ratio of $35 in 1933, and then multiplying by a factor representing the
growth in the quantity of fiat money from that time. Under the
classical gold standard, gold was the entire world's money. By counting
worldwide growth in currency (not only US dollars) and comparing it to a
worldwide price currency index of the gold price, van Eeden avoids the
pitfalls of looking only at gold's dollar price, which can experience
significant volatility due to the dollar's exchange rate against other
national currencies.
Van Eeden's research shows that,
since the end of the gold standard, the price of gold in units of fiat
currency has tracked its purchasing-power-equivalent price fairly well,
oscillating in a band around its theoretical value. In essence,
the purchasing power of gold has been reasonably stable in the time
since the end of the gold standard, which is only another way of saying
that gold has served as a store of value.
Even today most of the demand for gold is not for direct use, but demand to hold.
In the developed world, people purchase coins and bars for storage in
vaults. In other areas, people save by accumulating bullion jewelry.
Distinct from ornamental jewelry, bullion jewelry has low workmanship
value added. Its price is not much greater than the melt value of its
metal content.
The World Gold Council estimates that 52% of gold is held as jewelry.
James Turk subdivides jewelry holdings into low carat and high carat.
The former is purchased mainly for the gold value, as an alternative to
buying bars and coins. The latter is purchased mostly for fashion.
According to Turk's estimate (which
was published in 1996), monetary jewelry at that time accounted for
about 60% of jewelry with fashion jewelry accounting for the remaining
40%. However, even when made into jewelry, the gold is not destroyed and
can come back into the market as scrap. The WGC figures show
significant recovery from scrap.
That gold continued to be a store of value post–gold standard was unexpected by many economists. In the early 1970s, when the dollar's link to gold was cut, economist Milton Friedman predicted that the price of gold would collapse.4 The
Nobel laureate believed that the gold derived its value from its
relationship with the dollar; without gold backing, there would be far
less demand for gold. There would, of course, continue to be industrial
demand for the metal, but without monetary demand provided by the
dollar, the vast supply that had been accumulated during the preceding
centuries would overhand the market, depressing the gold price for the
foreseeable future. Friedman could not have been more wrong. It was the
dollar that collapsed in the 1970s, while the gold price in dollars
began a bull run that was not eclipsed in nominal terms until late last
year.
A similar and still widely held view in the world of mainstream financial analysts is that gold has been "demonetized." The
argument goes like this: central banks decide what money is; central
banks have determined that gold is not money; therefore gold is not
money. Only the stupid gold investors haven't figured this out. This
view of the gold market sees the price of gold as determined primarily
by central banks (who own an estimated 10–17% of aboveground supply).
The critical variable is how they will time the sales of their gold
hoards without causing a selling panic as market participants
realize that their gold coins and bars have no monetary value.
But why is gold a better store of value than most any of a vast number other nonmonetary goods? Why were Milton Friedman and
the other economists wrong? Their error was the assumption that
political institutions have the final say over what is and is not money.
But this is not so: the market has final say. Looking at the process by
which money originated from barter helps to understand why. According
to Menger, money came into being through the efforts of individuals to
expand the range of goods they could acquire through exchange beyond the
possibilities available. Some individuals in a barter economy begin by
bartering their goods for a commodity that they do not need but is
generally in demand throughout the market, with the intention of later exchanging that commodity for other goods. This strategy is called indirect exchange.
These astute traders realize that "the acquisition by trade of the
consumption goods that he needs…can proceed…much more quickly, more
economically, and with a greatly enhanced probability of success."
As
societies moved from barter to monetary economies, different goods were
in competition with each other for use as money. Over time, as monetary
exchange expanded in proportion to barter, some commodities were found
to work better as money than others, until only a handful of them became
"acceptable to everyone in trade." Those were gold and silver.
What qualities have made gold (and silver) the winners of the monetary competition in centuries past?
The qualities most often cited by monetary historians are durability,
divisibility, recognizability, portability, scarcity (the difficulty of
producing more of it), and a value-to-weight ratio that is neither too
high nor too low. Too low a ratio would make it hard to carry enough for
spending, while too high a ratio would make small transactions
difficult and prevent the commodity from being sufficiently widely owned
in the prior barter economy. Gold still has these qualities today.
While fiat money has some of them, it fails the scarcity test: it is too
easy to create more of it.
The result of market competition is
not necessarily permanent. Market competition is an ongoing process.
Even when one commodity emerged as money, there continued to be
competition from other nonmonetary commodities. Once the world's money,
even gold could have lost its place had a superior alternative emerged.
But that is not the reason we no longer use it. Political money did not prove its
superiority through a market process. What happened instead was a
politically imposed change from a better system to a worse system.
Although
the central bankers have used political means to replace gold with
paper, they do not have the power to end the competition between their
money and commodity money. The "demonetization" of gold by central banks has rigged the competition—but not ended it.
Gold
as money may not be over for all time. As the monetary system melts
down, gold functions as "shadow money," an alternative that competes
with the political money. It remains a store of value because
of its potential to become money again. There is continuing demand for
gold as a hedge against the breakdown of the fiat system.
Governments
cannot force people to use their money beyond a point. The market will
only continue to accept fiat money as long as it works well enough (or
even, not too badly). If governments debase their currency beyond a
point where it maintains some value over time, people will stop using
government currency and switch to something else.
In countries
suffering hyperinflation (or even just excessive inflation), people
typically start quoting prices and accepting in trade in the more stable
currencies of other countries. Earlier this year, VietNamNet reported that land prices are being quoted in gold rather than the local currency, the dong.
The world is lurching through a serious monetary disorder. The proximate cause is the collapse of the housing bubble and the subprime-credit crisis, but the ultimate cause is the inherently unstable monetary system foisted upon us by a banking cartel. Central bankers are called upon to act as lenders of last resort, but in their efforts to inflate their way out of the credit collapse,
they risk igniting a hyperinflationary bonfire that will destroy the
world's major fiat currencies. Gold was money once, and could become so
again.
Coins that power decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols are soaring recently as bitcoin treads water.
While
bitcoin grabbed all the headlines early on in the year, it is the rest
of the crypto space that is stealing its thunder most recently as
Ethereum, the backbone of the smart contracts that define much of the
DeFi space, has drastically outperformed...
Source: Bloomberg
That is the highest for ETH relative to BTC since
Source: Bloomberg
In fact, as Bitcoin drifts, Ethereum is up over 17% since Friday...
Source: Bloomberg
Back above the recent highs....
Source: Bloomberg
Making new all-time highs...
Source: Bloomberg
The
incredible surge in the price of AAVE (driven as surge in the growth of
flash loans) most recently is a good example of what is driving this
push into DeFi tokens. As CoinTelegraph notes,
Flash loans allow cryptocurrency holders to collatoralize their portfolio to fund other purchases or new crypto purchases.
The loans also help investors utilize the value in their tokens without the need to sell see them and create a taxable event.
Since
launching flash loans less than 12 months ago, more than $1.7 billion
have been issued and it’s expected that this figure will increse as the
crypto bull market progresses.
Simply put, the crypto market is becoming its own bank.
Despite decrying censorship when it was happening to them last year, when Donald Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook earlier this month, the left praised the move by big tech. “Facebook is a private company and can do what they want,”
the pro-censorship hypocritical crowd chanted ad nauseum through the
digital ether after bad orange man was silenced. But as we have said
time and again, Facebook being private is simply not true.
Now, however, Facebook
has made an unscrupulous Faustian bargain with the federal government
which should eliminate all doubt once and for all. They are now
willfully handing over private messages of Trump supporters who talked
about the events at the capitol on January 6.
Google, Apple, and Amazon all moved to wipe the pro-Trump social media network Parler from
the internet earlier this month because of what users on the platform
discussed. It was alleged that the handful of dolts who stormed the
capitol on January 6 had solely used Parler to plan their laughable,
unarmed, silly, unsuccessful, and pitiful attempt to keep Trump in the
White House.
Despite the ragtag group of Trumpians posing for selfies, photo-ops, and hanging from banisters, the only thing they accomplished was having D.C. turned into a scene akin to North Korea for Biden’s inauguration.
Most honest experts in the media have acknowledged that though a few
members of the mob thought they were part of some historic coup to keep
their leader in power, the idea that they had any real chance at an
insurrection was misleading at best and sheer propaganda used to further
the domestic police and surveillance state at worst.
Oh
gosh, I hope this doesn't mean the magnitude of the threat has been
wildly exaggerated for political gain, media excitement and ratings,
censorship orgies, and laying the foundation for a new fear-driven
Domestic War on Terror to control politics and information. https://t.co/oHhUPojpSO
Deferring all responsibility for the planning of the raid on the capitol, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg had stated shortly after the incident that the protests were largely organized off Facebook. However,
she was not telling the truth, and likely knew that large portions of
the pro-Trump protests were talked about and organized on Facebook. But
was Facebook wiped off the internet like Parler? No, no it was not.
Here’s why.
This week, Facebook began furnishing the
Federal Bureau of Investigation with data on Trump supporters who
discussed the events at the capitol on their platform - up to and including their private messages.Through this action the social media giant is acting as a de facto intelligence collecting arm of the US government.
In contrast, when Syed Farook, otherwise known as the San Bernardino mass shooter, wouldn’t unlock his iPhone for the feds, Apple
refused to create a backdoor for them to access it acting as an actual
private company supporting the privacy rights of its customers.
But Facebook is more than willing to open up its data mining services
for their friends in the federal government — because, as we have stated
numerous times, Facebook is not private.
As TFTP reported in 2018, Facebook announced that
it partnered with the arm of the government-funded Atlantic Council,
known as the Digital Forensic Research Lab that was brought on to help
the social media behemoth with “real-time insights and updates on
emerging threats and disinformation campaigns from around the world.”
The
Atlantic Council is the group that NATO uses to whitewash wars and
foster hatred toward Russia, which in turn allows them to continue to
justify themselves. It’s funded by arms manufacturers like Raytheon,
Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. It is also funded by billionaire oligarchs
like the Ukraine’s Victor Pinchuk and Saudi billionaire Bahaa Hariri.
The list goes on. The highly unethical HSBC group — who has been caught numerous times laundering money for cartels and terrorists —
is listed as one of their top donors. They are also funded by the
pharmaceutical industry, Google, Goldman Sachs and others. However, the
funding that comes from the United States, the US Army, and the Airforce
directly negates the “private” aspect of the partnership.
The
“think tank” Facebook partnered with to make decisions on who they
censor is directly funded by multiple state actors — including the
United States — which voids any and all claims that Facebook is a wholly
“private actor.”
The Atlantic Council wields massive
influence over mainstream media too, which is why when this partnership
was announced, no one in the mainstream press pointed it out as the
Orwellian idea that it is. Instead, headlines such as “US think tank’s tiny lab helps Facebook battle fake social media(Reuters)” and “Facebook partners with Atlantic Council to improve election security (The Hill)” were put out to spin the fact that a NATO propaganda arm is now censoring the information Americans see on Facebook.
But this partnership with the state-funded “think tank” is not the only reason Facebook is not private.
From government funded censorship arms to
the revolving door of high level bureaucrats who fill the ranks of the
oligopolies, the “private company” Facebook concept comes crashing down
when taking a closer look. Private-sector firms do not need to be
explicitly nationalized to further the establishment’s interests; it’s
enough to install their alumni in top regulatory positions. Through
these methods, Facebook can put on the façade of privatization while
actually acting as deputies for the state but alleviating any
constitutional checks in the process.
All the while,
whenever the censorship acts in their benefit, half of the masses cheer
it on and defend it, keeping resistance at a minimum.
What’s
more, as the government hangs the threat of antitrust litigation over
their heads, it can force these companies to act in their benefit even
without explicit partnerships like that of the Atlantic Council. In
fact, prior to the state getting involved in the talks of regulation
into big tech, information flowed relatively freely with Facebook only
removing racist and violent content. Now, however, as they bend to the
will of their partners in the federal government, people like myself
find ourselves on 30 day bans for saying “censorship leads to tyranny.”
This is why the answer to the government big tech censorship leviathan lies not in regulation but in boycott.
The time is now to get off these platforms who spy on you, ban you,
sell you to the highest bidder, and who are tearing society apart.
Censorship free platforms exist and are far more user friendly and treat
you as the actual customer instead of the sheep they are leading to
slaughter. You can check them out here.
Despite
the mandate of an education-loan policy to benefit poor students that
has been in place since 2001, India's public-sector banks continue to
deny student loans citing poor credit ratings.
INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images
Nearly
twenty years after the National Democratic Alliance government
introduced an education loan scheme to benefit students from poor
families, India’s public banks continue to deny loans to students whose
parents have poor credit ratings. The Indian Banks’ Association, a
representative body of all banks with offices in the country, had
prepared this proposal as a model education loan scheme in 2000. The
next year, the NDA government announced the scheme in the union budget,
promising concessions to students wishing to pursue higher education,
and the Reserve Bank of India notified
it in April that year. But the experience of students and the
continuing need for judicial intervention indicates that the scheme’s
implementation is not steered by the benefit to aspiring students, but
by the caution of banks.
The RBI’s circular stated that the loan
scheme “aims at providing financial support from the banking system to
deserving/meritorious students for pursuing higher education in India
and abroad.” To be eligible under the scheme, students should have
scored 60 percent in the qualifying examinations for graduation courses;
for Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe applicants, the requirement was
50 percent. The scheme permitted all commercial banks to provide loans
“subject to repaying capacity of parents/students,” with a ceiling of Rs
7.50 lakh for courses in India and Rs 15 lakh for courses abroad.
Further, it offered a moratorium on the repayment of the loan for the
period of the course and one year afterwards, or six months of getting a
job, whichever came earlier.
“The main emphasis is that every
meritorious student though poor is provided with an opportunity to
pursue education with the financial support from the banking system with
affordable terms and conditions,” the RBI’s circular stated. “No
deserving student is denied an opportunity to pursue higher education
for want of financial support.” Yet, students from economically
disadvantaged backgrounds who apply for an education loan are commonly
rejected by public-sector banks, citing their parents’ low CIBIL score. A
CIBIL score refers to a three-digit number issued by the Mumbai-based
credit-information company TransUnion CIBIL, which was formerly known as
the Credit Information Bureau India Limited.
Banks refer to this
score while assessing the creditworthiness of a potential borrower.
However, the RBI’s circular does indicate that the students, and not
their parents, are considered the principal borrowers. In fact, in
August 2015, the Indian Banks’ Association released “Revised Guidance
Notes” on the education loan scheme. “The student borrower has no credit
history and as such he is assumed to be creditworthy as this is a
futuristic loan,” the Guidance Notes state. It even addresses
circumstances where an applicant-student’s parents have a poor credit
rating. “It is likely that the joint borrower for the loan has a credit
history and any adverse features could have a bearing on the assessment
of credit risk … To overcome this, the bank may, as a prudent measure
insists on a joint borrower acceptable to the bank, in case of adverse
credit history of the parent/guardian of the student.”
But none of
these appear to be implemented in practice. Vani Rajeev, a student
pursuing her bachelor of science in radiology, was one such student
whose education-loan application was declined by the State Bank of India
citing her single mother’s poor credit history. “We had applied for the
loan in February,” Anju Jayan, Vani’s mother, told me on the phone. “My
daughter does not have her father. She only has me. I had a CIBIL
record since I had applied for a housing loan before. The loan was
rejected because of my CIBIL record.” In February 2020, Jayan applied
for a loan of Rs 4 lakh for her daughter’s education, but SBI’s
Kulasekharamangalam branch, in Kottayam, rejected the application soon
after.
In
July 2020, the Kerala High Court ruled in a similar case against a
decision by a branch of the same bank in Kerala’s Kollam district, where
a student’s loan application was rejected by the bank because of his
parents’ low CIBIL score. “I am of the opinion that unsatisfactory
credit scores of the parents of the petitioner cannot be a ground to
reject an educational loan in view of the fact that the repayment
capacity of the petitioner after his education should be the deciding
factor as per clause 10 of Ext R1 (a) scheme,” the verdict stated. The
exhibit cited by the court referred to a 2016 circular issued by the
IBA, which revised the original model education loan scheme to “enlarge
the coverage” and “address some of the weaknesses noticed.” The clause
10 mentioned in the judgment stated, “In the normal course, while
appraising the loan, the future income prospect of the student only will
be looked into.”
The petitioner in the case was a 20-year-old
student, Pranav SR, who had applied for an education loan of Rs 5,70,000
in order to pursue a bachelor of technology course in Tamil Nadu. The
loan application was rejected on the grounds that Shaji R, Pranav’s
father, had defaulted on a commercial vehicle loan, according to his
CIBIL report. “I paid the money that was due this month in the following
month,” Shaji explained to me. “I paid the dues this way for two
months. They informed me that my CIBIL score is low because I had a
month’s arrears pending.” Shaji then closed the vehicle loan so that
Pranav could apply again, but the bank rejected his application again
stating that his parents had poor credit histories.
Shaji said he
felt dismayed by the treatment of bank officials towards borrowers,
noting that his wife and Pranav had approached SBI’s Kadakkal branch to
apply for the loan. “The manager there told my wife that if you have
children, you should educate them only if you have money,” Shaji said.
“It really upset me to hear that. What is even more upsetting is that
they never bother to even accept the application by hand. They just ask
you to drop the application on the table and leave.” The application was
declined again, in May 2020.
The family
then moved the high court and received a favourable order in two months.
But even after the order, Shaji said, the bank tried to delay the
sanction of the loan “as much as possible,” before eventually processing
it. Their advocate, B Mohan Lal, said the bank officials were
“reluctant to comply” with the order. “We had to intimidate them with
the prospect of a contempt notice,” he said.
The
previous year, Lal had appeared for another student, Noorjahan NS, who
had filed a writ petition in the high court against SBI’s Kottarakara
branch in Kollam after her application for an education loan had been
rejected on similar grounds. Noorjahan had applied for a loan of Rs
7,40,000 to cover the expenses of her course at a dental college. As in
Pranav’s case, her loan was also rejected because of arrears on a
vehicle loan availed by her father. “I had bought a four-wheeler in 2010
on a long-term loan that could be repaid until 2017,” Najeeb Khan,
Noorjahan’s father, said. “I missed paying three instalments of the loan
on time. It affected my CIBIL score.”
The SBI’s counsel argued in
the case that the court cannot interfere “in a commercial decision of
the present nature.” However, the court observed that the loan scheme
was introduced as a “socially and economically relevant scheme” to
support the pursuit of higher education of students who may be in want
of financial assistance. The court finally ruled in Noorjahan’s favour,
noting that SBI’s rejection of the loan application based on her
parent’s credit score was arbitrary. The court stated that repayments
under this scheme “were contemplated to be made not on the financial
position of the parents but solely on the projected future earnings of
the students on employment after education.”
Lal pointed to the
similarities in the two cases. “In both the cases, the parties had paid
off their dues through a one-time settlement or otherwise,” he said.
“But when you apply for a loan and you have to deposit a particular
amount by say, 15th every month and you pay the amount on 16th, you are
treated as a defaulter. Even if you pay dues of two or five months in a
single instalment, you will still be a defaulting person. Then they will
always perceive you as a thief.”
The advocate also pointed out
that both students belong to Other Backward Classes, a fact mentioned in
both court orders. “In the case of Noorjahan, she had obtained
admission in the management quota in a self-financing college,” Lal told
me. A management quota refers to seats for admission that are filled by
a university based on its discretion, and not strictly by the general
eligibility criteria. “So they argued that she is not a meritorious
candidate. They raised the same point in the second case as well.” But
the IBA’s guidelines, as revised in 2015, stated that “a student getting
admission offer under merit quota may choose to take up a course under
management quota as a personal preference. Such students may be
sanctioned loans under this Model Scheme.”
Despite the recent
court orders, Lal said that rejection of education loans based on
parents’ CIBIL records continues to be commonplace, as reflected by the
case of Vani Rajeev. In July, soon after Pranav’s case was reported in
the papers, Rajeev approached SBI’s Kulasekharamangalam branch again,
and tried to argue her case using the high court’s ruling. “But they
said that they have received no such directive,” her mother Jayan told
me. She was working as an accountant in UAE until 2014, when she lost
her job and returned to Kerala. In desperation, Rajeev even wrote to the
prime minister Narendra Modi and the union finance minister Nirmala
Sitharaman, informing them of her situation, in October last year. “I am
requesting you with great agony and advice me to continue my studies to
support my family,” she wrote. “My only hope of survival is the
education loan.”
On
30 December, Rajeev received a letter from SBI referring to her letter
to the prime minister. It simply repeated that Jayan was denied the loan
because of her CIBIL score. The family was unsure about challenging the
bank’s decision in court because the legal fees would be expensive. “I
am educating her by borrowing money,” Jayan told me. “Denying her an
education is not an option.”
As early as 2011, the Madras High
Court had ruled that students are the principal borrowers of education
loans, and not their parents. In its judgment that year in the case of Hannah DotrisversusAssistant General Manager, State Bank of Mysore,
the court held, “The bank should adopt a more reasonable and pragmatic
approach to the entire issue bearing in mind that the repayment shall be
made by the student concerned, who avails loan and such repayment
commences after completion of her course of study.” Yet, public-sector
banks have continually denied the loans, leading the Madurai bench of
the Madras High Court to take note of it in 2018. Citing the 2011
judgment, the bench observed, “It is rather unfortunate that the
aforesaid order came to be passed in the year 2011 and various
subsequent orders of this court had also passed, even then the financial
institutions have been continuing to reject applications of this nature
on similar grounds.”
K Srinivasan, the convener of Education Loan
Task Force—a Chennai-based voluntary body that offers guidance to
students in the application process—said that housing and vehicle loans,
unlike education loans, are sanctioned after assessing the present
financial status of the borrower. “IBA has clarified that educational
loans have to be dealt with in an independent manner and not to be
linked to the CIBIL rating of your parents,” he said. In case a bank is
concerned about the credibility of a borrower because of their parent’s
poor CIBIL rating, Srinivasan suggested that a family member or anyone
who does not have a low CIBIL score can stand in as a third-party
guarantor on the repayment of the loan.
In 2015, the union
ministry of finance collaborated with the department of higher
education—under the ministry of human resources development—and the IBA
to launch Vidya Lakshmi, a web portal to ease the process of securing
education loans. According to Srinivasan, while the portal created a
single window for students to apply to multiple leading banks across the
country, its implementation has been poor. “You apply to three banks
but none of the banks will take it seriously and the students don’t know
where to complain. Nobody takes a decision because they think the other
person will,” he told me. He suggested that instead of a simultaneous
submission of loan requests to three banks, there should be a
hierarchical process where the student has to consult a second or a
third bank only after her first choice of bank declines her application.
Emailed
queries to the concerned SBI branches, the IBA and the MHRD went
unanswered. This piece will be updated if and when a response is
received.
Srinivasan pointed to one recurring factor that led to
mistrust between banks and borrowers in Tamil Nadu—during election
seasons in the state, political parties promise a waiver
on education loans. “It unnecessarily misguides the students,” he told
me, noting that he receives hundreds of queries from students who ask
him when the loan waiver would be implemented. “Later, when a statement
is given that it is not possible, no media will take it up. If DMK or
AIADMK declare that education loans will be written off, that will come
as a prominent news item. Then all students who borrowed will get
misled. With the hope that the government will write it off, they will
stop repayment.”
The data suggests a steady decline in education loans to less privileged students. In January 2020, the Business Standardreported
that according to RBI data, there has been a steady drop in the growth
of education loans since 2016, with outstanding loans contracting by 3.4
percent as of November 2019. The report further stated that high-value
loans—of above Rs 10 lakh—were rising, and only smaller loans, which
benefit the lesser privileged, were shrinking. According to RBI data,
the report stated, the sum of outstanding education loans smaller than
Rs 10 lakh declined from Rs 60,000 crore in March 2016 to Rs 53,000
crore by the end of November 2019. In December 2019, Sitharaman had said
that there is no proposal under consideration for waiver of education
loans, adding that banks have been instructed to adopt a “non-coercive
strategy” to recover the loans.
Srinivasan said education loans
were not a priority for the banks or for the government. “There are
serious attempts at every level—at the banks’ level, at the government
level—to discourage educational loans,” he said. “Nobody takes it
seriously. Interest subsidy also is not properly disbursed.” Srinivasan
added, “Education loan is an investment, it is not a loan at all. It is a
national investment, investment on the future knowledge of society.”
The IMA on Thursday announced a pan-India relay hunger strike of doctors starting
February 1, in protest against a notification issued by the Central
Council of Indian Medicine (CCIM) that authorises post-graduate
practitioners in specified streams of Ayurveda to perform general
surgical procedures, stating that it will lead to "mixopathy".
The Indian Medical Association (IMA)
is giving immediate directives to all members across the country to
launch the "Save Healthcare India Movement", the doctors' body said in a
statement.
Under the campaign, the IMA will launch a massive awareness drive
across the country as this is a clear threat to the safety of healthcare
of people.
Doctors will take turns to sit on the hunger strike 24x7
from February 1 and the IMA will release posters and banners to raise
awareness on the issue across the country, the statement said.
"All IMA members shall update their Members of Parliament and MLAs
regarding the true picture of the notification and the integration
policy. The IMA will also give its representations to all state
governments. Under this movement, all NGOs will be updated about the
core issues," it added.
Besides, all IMA members will write and convey their feelings to the prime minister, the association said.
Representatives of the IMA shall visit various places across the
country to raise awareness among the public and apprise various
associations from different countries of this "unscientific"
notification, it said, adding that the global voice of modern medicine
shall echo the feelings of the Indian Medical Association and its members.
The IMA has condemned the notification issued by the CCIM, a statutory
body under the AYUSH Ministry, authorising post-graduate practitioners
in specified streams of Ayurveda to be trained to perform surgical
procedures such as excisions of benign tumours, amputation of gangrene,
nasal and cataract operations.
The doctors' body further said the recent policy tilt, as evidenced in the medical pluralism advocated by the National Education
Policy 2020 and the four committees of NITI AAYOG for officially
integrating the systems of medicine in medical education, practice,
public health and administration as well as research ostensibly for a
"One Nation, One System" policy, will "ring the death knell of all
systems of medicine as a whole".
"The IMA respects all streams of healthcare. We object mixing of the
streams as it is unsafe and unscientific...one doctor cannot give all
systems of medicine to one patient. Mixing the Pathies and providing
substandard healthcare is definitely wrong.
"The IMA demands withdrawal of the CCIM order and dissolution of the
NITI AAYOG committees for integration. The IMA appeals to the government
to consider the sensitivity of the medical fraternity and take
appropriate steps. The IMA will be constrained to intensify the
agitation until the steps towards implementing mixopathy are abandoned,"
it said.
