The Polis Project

Mass Displacement Looms In Indian Hill State Due To Expressway In India’s Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, thousands in working-class riverbank neighborhoods risk losing their homes to a proposed expressway.

Beyond displacement, critics warn of irreversible environmental damage. Covering the Rispana and Bindal with concrete pillars would choke the rivers, harm marine life, and permanently alter the ecologically sensitive Doon Valley.

Prashant Rahi writes: www.thepolisproject.com/read/mass-di...

The poor residents on the riverbanks feel betrayed by the BJP-led state government. Just before elections, the chief minister assured residents that “not a single house will be demolished”. But soon after the polls, demolition markings appeared on walls and lanes across settlements.

“The very thought of that massive expressway coming up right above our demolished neighborhood terrifies me,” says Deepak, a 10th-grade student whose father is a daily-wage labourer. The residents are organising to resist the demolitions.

Two elevated corridors—15 km and 11 km—are planned over the Rispana and Bindal rivers. The project promises to ease traffic for the car-owning population headed to Mussoorie, but threatens to erase entire riverbank settlements that have existed for decades.

In Uttarakhand’s Himalayan foothills, thousands of working-class families face an unsettling reality: their homes may soon disappear beneath soaring concrete pillars of a 62-billion-rupee elevated expressway.

Anas’ final broadcasts captured the thunder of “fire belt” bombings over Gaza City.

In his final message, he wrote: “Do not let chains silence you or borders hold you back… Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people.”

As of today, 217 journalists have been killed in Israel’s war — the deadliest conflict for reporters ever recorded. Many died in targeted strikes on their homes or marked press sites. Others were starved, maimed, or detained. This is a systematic campaign to destroy the people documenting war.

The strike that killed Anas also took the lives of reporters Mohammed Qreiqeh, Moamen Aliwa, Ibrahim Zaher, and Mohammed Noufal. The location leaves no room for doubt: this was an attack designed to extinguish the last independent witnesses to Israel’s military campaign.

For 673 days of genocide, Anas documented the bombardment, starvation, and mass displacement of his people. He campaigned for medical care, shared his footage freely with colleagues, and continued reporting despite repeated targeting. His work formed part of the evidentiary record of the atrocities.

On 10 August 2025, Anas al-Sharif — Gaza’s most recognisable frontline reporter — was killed alongside four Al Jazeera colleagues in an Israeli strike on a journalist tent outside al-Shifa Hospital. Under the Geneva Conventions, journalists are protected. Their deliberate killing is a war crime.

The Indian State’s War On Books, Memory, And Kashmir

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What is unfolding in Kashmir is a systematic campaign of epistemic violence—the deliberate dismantling of how a people remember, know, and imagine. Artists, researchers, and public intellectuals are imprisoned. This is a project of disappearance, not only of individuals but of entire histories.

The list of banned books functions as a public blacklist. It sends a message: these are the texts that will get you in trouble. Publishers, libraries, scholars, and bookstores take note. This is both censorship and deterrence, a warning shot aimed at knowledge itself.

What the Indian State seeks to forfeit in Kashmir is the very capacity to imagine otherwise. This is censorship, but it is also subpoenaing memory, disciplining imagination, and erasing lived experience. It's about extinguishing the possibility that other worlds existed or could be dreamed again.

The Indian State has long obsessed over controlling how Kashmir is spoken of. After the revocation of Article 370, two kinds of people were immediately targeted. First, journalists from Sajad Gul to Fahad Shah, and, second, human rights defenders like Khurram Parvez, imprisoned for recording.

In a move raising serious concerns about freedom of speech, the Indian State in Kashmir has banned 25 books under its new criminal codes. The order, issued on August 5 without due process, declares these books “propagate false narratives and secessionism” and must be forfeited to the government.

Trump’s Lawless, Spectacle-Driven Crackdown on Venezuelans The U.S. Just Deported 200+ Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Notorious Mega-Prison—Defying a Court Order

open.substack.com/pub/mediapod...

Why The Media Won't Call It Genocide Podcast by Suchitra Vijayan, Bhakti Shringarpure, Madhuri Sastry unpacks how the media manipulates narratives and makes you feel gaslighted.

mediapodcast.substack.com/p/why-the-me...

The Constitution, in Name Only: Mahmoud Khalil and the Architecture of Lawless Power "Who has the right to have rights?

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What happened to Karim Khan is not new. Western powers have long used international law to punish some while shielding themselves for their own wars. That farce is over. What remains is impunity, laid bare — threatening prosecutors and erasing whatever credibility these institutions once claimed.

Khan’s removal has effectively stalled the ICC’s Palestine investigation. “This is about whether international law can be applied to powerful states. If this campaign succeeds, it will destroy the ICC and with it, the fragile hope for accountability,” says one source in The Hague.

In February 2025, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Khan, revoked his visa, froze his bank accounts. In June, the U.S. also sanctioned four ICC judges, escalating its pressure on the court. The ICC’s internal investigation into Khan was described by one former judge as a “coup d’état.”

Khan refused. Within weeks, sexual misconduct allegations were leaked to the press, despite earlier internal investigations having been closed due to non-cooperation. In text messages reviewed by MEE, the complainant, tells Khan that she felt like a “pawn” and wanted “nothing to do with this".

In May 2024, Khan met with British-Israeli lawyer Nicholas Kaufman. According to a note from the meeting, Kaufman warned Khan: “They will destroy you, and they will destroy the court,” if the warrants were not withdrawn. Kaufman proposed that Khan reclassify the warrants as confidential.

In December 2023, while Khan was en route to New York, Lynch shared and substantially rewrote a press statement with Israeli officials without Khan’s approval. The final version, published in Khan’s name, adopted notably pro-Israel language.

Lynch’s role is particularly significant. He had been appointed by Khan to liaise directly with Israeli officials on the Palestine investigation. Lynch privately opposed pursuing warrants for Israeli leaders and is reported to have said that the office should not be investigating it.

Thomas Lynch, a senior legal adviser at the ICC and a long-time friend of Khan’s, played a central role in initiating an internal investigation into Khan. Though he privately expressed doubts about the misconduct allegations, Lynch pushed for Khan’s suspension when the case became public.

This was followed by threats from senior U.S. officials. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, in a call with Khan, allegedly said the ICC was “made for Africa and thugs like Putin, not democracies like Israel,” and warned that pursuing the warrants would invite personal sanctions.

In April 2024, then–British Foreign Secretary David Cameron personally threatened Khan, stating that the United Kingdom would defund and withdraw from the ICC if the warrants against Israeli officials were issued. Cameron reportedly described the move as “dropping a hydrogen bomb.”

Karim Khan has been under immense pressure since pursuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The pressure has included political threats, internal sabotage, media leaks, and even warnings of Mossad activity in The Hague.