THREAD on @nytimes “investigation” into India’s covid response
1 errors & selective obfuscation from para 1 itself - Note the PMs goal was the contain the spread even at the cost of the economy - the BJP wanted online campaigning, others opposed it
2 as for lockdown it was both the opposition & industry opposing it. Note what part time industrialist & fulltime social climbing yuppie Narayanmoothri said & also what Rahul Gandhi said “tughlakian lockdown”
3 the entire data point for the NYT article seems to be one Dr Agarwal. Everything is “he said”, no proof provided. Turns out Dr Agarwal is a 32 year old - a low level researcher - whose opinions would be lost in the hierarchy & wouldn’t have access to core data anyway
4 now let’s come to the allegation that @ICMRDELHI they were “pressurised” & threatened punitive action - yet the report directly contradicts itself - pressure to clear vaccine by Aug 2020, but cleared only in Jan 2021.
5 Apparently withdrawal of a publication - that was put out without a peer review is evidence of a “coverup” - notice the “authors withdrew it” - ICMR didn’t censor it
6 next up we have this gem - by end July everyone was openly talking about Mumbai & Delhi’s infection rates. Notice though how they article conveniently decontextualises alleged “withheld data” from the public discourse. A “scientist” with a suitable political slant brought in to
7 to obfuscate. Note here that the data was happily shared (though not published) and was free to be incorporated into decision making. Moreover as these press clippings show, this was being reported publicly with July being a particularly worrying month.
8 now 2 assertions are made - thar blood plasma & hydrochloroqine were “politically protected” treatments. Yet nowhere has the author provided even anecdotal evidence of said protected status.
9 then the argument is that all studies predicting a second wave were suppressed & wrong studies were put out. Yet there is ample evidence to show the government was warning against complacency - every single month
10 also the entire premise of this article is that the government suppressed warnings of a second wave - given the PM’s repeated call against complacency, the Government acknowledged there would be a second wave, just couldn’t gauge the vehemence
11 Finally it’s worth noting that much of the article is standard tropes about how “Muslims were targeted” despite clear evidence that the Tablighi Jamaat were super-spreaders & only one community were stoning, flashing & urinating on health care workers.
12 mins to it was this authors own colleague it’s “health correspondent” caught with her pants down on China trying to normalise & cover up, China’s cover up of the Wuhan origins of this virus. All up if it claims the Indian covid response was politicised, it has covered
13 only one side, ignoring how it’s own coverage was political & frequently wrong. How there was constant contradictory advice - (for example Dr Ted asking people NOT TO WEAR MASKS) - easy to retrospectively take the right call, but standard for NYT’s abysmal standards.
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Indian media claiming Mediaparte has “distanced itself” from the OCCRP report
Curiously the “distancing” statement isn’t on @Mediapart @MediapartEN or its editor @CarineFouteau’s X timeline or indeed on their French (mediapart.fr) or English (mediapart.fr/en/english) websites
None of the outlets publishing this “distancing” are hyperlinking the statement if it exists, nor are they providing screenshots.
Curiously @CarineFouteau never objected to the Opposition “instrumentalising” its reports. But worse claims BJP is spreading “fake news”. So my
Questions to @MediapartEN @Mediapart & @CarineFouteau are as follows 1) given your commitment to transparency - where is this “statement” on your X & websites? 2) Where exactly is @BJP4India misquoting/misattributing you? 3) what exactly has the BJP said that you’re claiming is
1) Government forces are fortifying and consolidating around Damascus and the Latakia-Tartous coast. As you can see both are ringed by mountains
2) The jihadist advance is just too fast and furious to sustain - especially given the lack of unified command
3) the situation as bad as it is, is still better than 2013-15 for the Government as of now
4) two possibilities - government falls after prolonged siege of the coast and Damascus OR government holds and then expands the inkblots as it did in 2016
6) problem with possibility 2 is Hizbollah is destroyed, Iran is preoccupied with homeland defence after the Israelis strikes. Russia is bogged down in Ukraine. Ergo no Syrian ally has the resources to expend on the costly and bloody offensives required to push back Jihadis
DELHI MEDIA GOSSIP 🧵: Gujarat Police sources telling me @LangaMahesh was paid the following:
• Reliance: ₹18 crores over 3 years
• Torrent: ₹ 10 crores over 4 years
• Adani: ₹ 20 lacs per month over several years
• Essar: use of the private jet on several occasions
He + wife stayed in 5 star hotels for a total of 99 days in 2023-24. Not one of these bills was paid by the couple. Instead several 3rd parties footed the stay. This is basically 1/3rd of the year spent in suites at 5 stars.
• The tacky “desi bridgerton” birthday party (of which videos have been doing rounds) of his wife was hosted at the highly exclusive Jade Ahmadabad. The owner of Jade has last week filed a police complaint claiming extortion and criminal intimidation by Langa over the party
DELHI MEDIA GOSSIP: Police sources say @LangaMahesh will be charged with Hawala and Extortion soon. they say he has named several extremely senior central bureaucrats as aiding him & profiting from his dealings. As of now the Police say that Mahesh was the glue of a cartel of
Babus, industrialist and journos all opposed to the Ambanis and Adanis (A&A). This rival group was headed funded and supplied documents by one major industrial rival (MIR) of A&A curiously he was also approaching A&A for favours and remuneration running into crores which the
Police say was basically extortion. Police also say that the Media Communications Chief (MCC) of a major opposition party was part of this cartel and Langa double/triple dipped on funding from all these sources. Moreover Langa drafted statements for MCC and acted as the liaison
DELHI MEDIA GOSSIP: Gujarat Police sources: @LangaMahesh was peddling sensitive documents on critical infrastructure which never made it to the @the_hindu. Instead they were shared with the media cell chief (MCC) of a major opposition party. WhatsApp convos reveal that Langa was
not only sharing these docs but also drafting the statements that the MCC was putting out + what MCC should or should not say at the presser. Police say these docs were also peddled for consideration to corporates & that they have the entire WhatsApp trail. Police also say two
Gujarat bureaucrats are now in deep soup. Police will be making the names public in the coming weeks, but the question worth asking is why MCC has been quieter than a mouse since Langa’s arrest? MCC has neither tweeted nor acknowledged the arrest and hasn’t even provided the
Every communist is a traitor. To betray their country is hard wired into them. Let’s start with Lenin. He considered his own countrymen a bigger threat than Germans. Despite being just 8 months away from victory, Lenin signed the catastrophic Brest-Litovsk treaty giving away huge
Chunks of Russia to the Germans. To note Lenin was sent by the kaiser in a sealed train to Russia precisely to undermine the Russian Government. Today’s Ukraine war traces its roots to this exact treaty. Lenin’s successor was Stalin who was worse
Stalin you see killed more Soviet citizens than the German army in WW1 & WW2 combined. Mind you for most of the 30s Stalin was happy to coochie coo the Germans. German tanks & aircraft were secretly tested in the USSR due to restrictions of the treaty of Versailles. These same