The context is that there's a Canadian Sikh who has been calling for parts of India to secede from India. In response, India had him assassinated.
India has laws on the books that allow them to remove content globally for things that violate Indian law. They enforce this on social media companies by requiring them to have employees on the country's soil in order to take them hostage.
C-18 just says you can't post links on Facebook without news companies getting a cut of ad revenue. India wants all discussion of their assassination of a Canadian citizen to be censored, and they're currently getting that censorship.
Why do people keep saying this like it's a fact? Often it's the same people claiming that the murdered victim in Canada should be presumed innocent of the accusations levelled at him.
In both cases, we should approach the accusations with skepticism.
Even that article you cite stops short of saying that RAW was definitely the perpetrator.
There are occasionally people who opportunistically claim credit for crimes they didn't commit, when it suits their politics. And even if it was someone in RAW, being "close to the government", does not necessarily mean it was ordered by that government.
None of us have enough information to say for sure at this point. Yet people carry on like we know the truth without equivocation.
The Prime Minister of Canada just did a state visit to India, where he was not warmly received, and made to look foolish on the world stage. So, he has his own political calculations in this affair, and is far from an objective arbiter of truth.
> The Prime Minister of Canada just did a state visit to India, where he was not warmly received, and made to look foolish on the world stage. So, he has his own political calculations in this affair, and is far from an objective arbiter of truth.
He is also deeply unpopular, sinking in the polls, and facing major public pressure over Canada's housing and cost of living crisis. He also has taken significant criticism for his handling of Chinese foreign interference campaigns.
A cynic might point out that starting a fight with an unpopular foreign government is a great way to distract attention from the government's domestic policy failures.
> none of us have enough information to say for sure at this point
Well, I agree; in these matters there is rarely definitive proof until the archives are opened. Given the implicit epistemic standards governing such assertions, I think this particular assertion is fine; there is a pretty good argument for it. Those standards vary by context, and sentences of the form 'intelligence agencies did blah' have relatively low standards.
> The Prime Minister of Canada just did a state visit to India, where he was not warmly received, and made to look foolish on the world stage. So, he has his own political calculations in this affair, and is far from an objective arbiter of truth.
I can equally make an argument that the relatively muted reaction of the Indophile UK government suggests that there is something to these reports:
> The British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said his government backed a Canadian investigation, adding that he expected India’s “full cooperation” in the inquiry. “Obviously, we have a very strong relationship with Canada, a very strong relationship with India,” he said.
or that the States would have denied this if they could, given the importance of the Quad; and so on.
> I can equally make an argument that the relatively muted reaction of the Indophile UK government suggests that there is something to these reports:
We can try to read the tea-leaves, but we don't know for sure.
I'm not saying it's wrong, i'm saying people should stop being so emphatically absolute in their belief that they know the truth. It's a corrosive sickness that permeates much public discourse these days.
This just seems to be a misreading of varying implicit epistemic standards. When I'm in a logic seminar I'm obviously going to mean something different in using unqualified indicatives from when I'm in the pub. I don't thereby commit the sin of having unwarranted certainty when I'm in the pub.
> The Prime Minister of Canada just did a state visit to India, where he was not warmly received, and made to look foolish on the world stage.
Have you considered the possibility that the reason he got a cold reception was he brought the accusation he just made publicly? Would put the issue with the plane in a whole new light too...
> The Prime Minister of Canada just did a state visit to India, where he was not warmly received, and made to look foolish on the world stage. So, he has his own political calculations in this affair, and is far from an objective arbiter of truth
This 100%. It is the only reason why this mudslinging is happening now.
> The Prime Minister of Canada just did a state visit to India, where he was not warmly received, and made to look foolish on the world stage. So, he has his own political calculations in this affair, and is far from an objective arbiter of truth.
The state visit, and the bad PR it brought to the Canadian PM is well-reported publically. And the idea that a PM makes political calculations, which don't hold truth as more important than all other factors, wouldn't be controversial to most political observers.
So is blaming this killing on India. No evidence has been presented.
This was probably nothing but gang rivalry.
Indo-Canadian organized crime or Punjabi-Canadian organized crime is made up predominantly of young adults and teenagers of Punjabi ethnic, cultural and linguistic background, typically ethnic Jatt’s. [0]
Blaming it on criminal ties simply because the ethnicity of the victim? Are you serious? When is that okay?
And for your information, I live in Vancouver. I'm aware of the organized crime issue here. But not every Sikh is a terrorist or criminal (I can't believe I have to say that).
Suggesting they are criminally involved just because of their race is textbook racism.
> Blaming it on criminal ties simply because the ethnicity of the victim?
…
> But not every Sikh is a terrorist or criminal
Now you’re just making things up. Where in my comment did I say that every Sikh is a terrorist or criminal or I’m blaming criminal ties due to his ethnicity? Please point me to that.
I was referring to him being a Khalistani and I did point you to the fact that Khalistanis have ties with organized crime. There’s shit ton of evidence related to that.
For the record, I’m sure I know more Sikhs than you, have since childhood and none of them is a Khalistani nor a criminal.
>>Indo-Canadian organized crime or Punjabi-Canadian organized crime is made up predominantly of young adults and teenagers of Punjabi ethnic, cultural and linguistic background, typically ethnic Jatt’s. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Canadian_organized_crim...
Since you purposefully pulled a quotation from the wiki article about ethnicity, it seems pretty obvious to me you are linking his ethnicity to organized crime. Right? Am I crazy? You brought up his ethnicity. You did that.
If you meant to say Khalistanis have ties to organized crime then you should have said that. But, you didn't.
Anyways, now that you've corrected (or backtracked) to say Khalistanis have ties with organized crime, I acknowledge your correction. Though, I still don't follow the logic of "Khalistanis have ties with organized crime" therefore, this is "probably" organized crime but this has gone on long enough.
While PM Trudeau has offered no evidence, he's also unable to offer evidence when it's international intelligence data.
Trudeau's poor relationship with India has been a constant scandal for his government. Similarly his junior coalition partner Jagmeet Singh, whos relationship with the international Sikh community has resulted in constant accusations of sympathy for Khalistani terrorists.
Canada has a massive Indian diaspora, and they're Liberal voters. Pissing them off without merit would be very dangerous for the already-embattled PM
So what I mean to say is: while he cannot provide justification, he would not have made this accusation lightly. Unfortunately this is not a court case so we will not get to know the details. It is what it is.
You make some interesting, and good points; and that's perhaps reason to give some credence to the accusation. There are also some reasons to believe that the murdered victim, was not innocent of the charges levelled against him. But in both cases, we should stop short of saying we can say so for sure.
The Indian response was more or less an admission.
"India’s ministry of external affairs said in a statement it “rejected” statements by Trudeau and his foreign minister, adding that allegations of India’s involvement in any act of violence in Canada are “absurd and motivated ” ...
... “ growing concern at the interference of Canadian diplomats in our internal matters and their involvement in anti-India activities” [0]
TLDR: "We didn't do it and he was a bad guy anyway!"
> They enforce this on social media companies by requiring them to have employees on the country's soil in order to take them hostage
Are you suggesting that India requires Facebook to employ people who reside in India in order to operate in India, and that they use those employees as hostages in order to coerce Facebook to succumb to their demands even when when those demands concern communication between non-Indian nationals residing outside of India?
If so, I'd love to hear more about this; do you have any resources?
For reference from those outside of Canada/India, when a region of Canada had a problem with a terrorist separatist group... well on the one hand we temporarily suspended civil liberties with the "war measures act".
But on the other hand we also ran a referendum and asked if the public really wanted to leave.
The separatists lost the referendum. Repeatedly.
Particularly relevant since PM Trudeau's father was involved in handling that situation.
Facebook is not playing a smart game either. The government is already and understandably furious at India for this encroachment to sovereignty (the murder of a Canadian in Canada by a foreign state), it was also already not happy at Facebook for their previous encroachment to sovereignty (the blocking of Canadian news), and now it has more reason to be mad at Facebook for this latest encroachment to sovereignty of applying Indian law on Canadian citizens. I imagine the pushback could be very strong.
Canada has less than 40 million total people. If Facebook completely exited Canada and banned all Canadians from Facebook, it wouldn’t be all that big of a deal.
India on the other hand has over a billion people.
If you have to choose to piss off a government, Canada is a much better choice than India.
Number of potential users isn't the only issue though. Canada's GDP is ~66% of India's, despite the massive population difference. The potential revenue per user from Canada is far higher than from India.
Facebook is in the advertising industry. One pair of eyeballs is not worth the same as every other pair, they're worth what they can spend. Canadians are, in global terms, fabulously wealthy.
I realize that and secretly hope Canada will just flat out ban Facebook as it would have become an obvious liability to our sovereignty. It is unacceptable that other countries, India, US or others, have such a large control over the news and culture we see. This has way too much power to influence and it is a threat to democracy and local cultures.
"Canadian Sikh Facebook users posting about the assassination of a Sikh community leader are seeing posts disappear and accounts suspended in response to legal demands by the Indian government."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_News_Act