S U n A k ’ S r E f U S A l t o d E f E n d t h E B B C A g A I n S t M o d I I S A t h r E At t o f r E E S P E E C h

ernment report found Modi “directly responsible” although it was aired only in Britain, and featured interviews with members of India’s ruling BJp party who defended Modi, the Indian government’s response was ferocious

In recent weeks uK Labour party leader Keir Starmer has opened up a cruel new attack line against prime Minister rishi Sunak That line says that Sunak is hopelessly weak, that he s not big enough for the job, and that he’s too slow to deal with bullies Time after time, Starmer drives these attacks home at prime Minister s Questions over the past few weeks, a new bully has appeared on Sunak’s horizon - Indian prime Minister narendra Modi and Sunak isn t standing up to him either

Modi’s government in India is renowned for brutal attacks on the country’s media So much so that in 2022 an international media watchdog ranked India 150th out of 180 countries in its index of press freedom now the Modi government has turned its fire on the BBC, Britain s national broadcaster and one of the most respected news organisations in the world Shockingly neither Sunak nor his government has lifted a finger to defend it from the Indian prime minister s assault o d i i s f u r i o u s w i t h the BBC because in late January it released a two-part documentary on his relationship with India’s 200 million Muslims

The first episode focused on the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in the western state of Gujarat The violence which happened when Modi was Gujarat’s chief minister, saw more than 1,000 people killed

The BBC documentary revealed that a British gov-

It banned the documentary and called it “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage It ordered YouTube and Twitter in India to block it on their platforms - and they seem to have complied When students at the prestigious Jawaharlal nehru university tried to screen the documentary, the administration turned off the electricity and internet access at Delhi university, 24 students were detained by the police for trying to screen it Throughout all this, neither Sunak nor his ministers said anything

In parliament a Labour politician asked Sunak about the documentary The prime minister made no attempt to defend the BBC Instead, he replied that he did not agree at all with the BBC s characterisation of Modi

Just weeks later, the Indian government launched a brazen attack on the BBC on 14 February, over a dozen officials from the Indian government s income tax department arrived at BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai to carry out a three-day tax raid, or a “survey” as the government calls it The Ministry of Finance then accused the BBC of tax evasion

Incredibly, though, there has been no statement of concern or condemnation from Sunak at this blatant harassment, no public defence of the BBC from the uK government astonishingly, the British High Commission in India which is reportedly monitoring the situation, has not issued a statement

‘HARASS AND INTIMIDATE’ Within India, many individuals and organisations have spoken up for the BBC “The Indian authorities are clearly trying to harass and intimidate the BBC over its critical coverage of the rul-

E U s l a p s f i f t h w a v e

o f s a n c t i o n s o n I r a n entities to 33 a ban on exports to Iran of equipment that could be used for internal repression and to monitor telecommunications is also in place Monday s sanctions will go into effect the moment they are published in the official eu journal

Al-Monitor R n a B a s s i s t

Eu r o p e a n union foreign ministers imposed on Monday sanctions that include a travel ban and asset freezes on 32 Iranian individuals and two entities over human rights violations The decision was made during the ministers’ monthly meeting in Brussels among others, the new eu sanctions list includes two Iranian ministers Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Mehdi esmaili, accused of persecuting artists and filmmakers who did not support the Tehran regime, and Minister of education Yousef noori, who was responsible for the targeting and detention of students engaged in the protests also on the list are the deputy commander and spokesperson of the Islamic revolutionary Guard Corps (IrGC), members of the Iranian parliament who supported crackdowns on demonstrators, police officials, judges and prison wardens and directors The two entities sanctioned are the Law enforcement Forces Cooperation Foundation and the police Science and Social Studies Institute

The new list brings the total number of Iranian individuals under sanctions to 196 and the tally of sanctioned Iranian

The european ministers also reiterated past calls on Tehran to stop the violent crackdown against peaceful protests, cease the use of arbitrary detentions as a means of silencing critical voices and release all those unjustly detained They once again urged the Iranian leadership to end the use of death sentences to punish protesters Iran has been hit by a wave of nationwide protests after the death in September 2022 of Mahsa amini, 22, in police custody, for “improperly” wearing her hijab Iran has arrested at least 14,000 people during the protests, the united nations said The eu did not blacklist the IrGC despite past calls to do so by the european parliament and senior officials in Germany and the netherlands european diplomats told al-Monitor there was wide agreement among eu members that the time has not come for such a move which would sever all communication channels between Brussels and Tehran Brussels is expected to adopt a 10th package of sanctions against Moscow later this week, which will mark one year since the russian invasion of ukraine on Friday In the framework of these sanctions, Brussels is expected to also sanction Iranian companies that manufacture or sell components used for the production of drones operated by the russian army against the ukrainian population The adoption of these new measures would not require a formal ministerial meeting, only the consent of eu members These measures against Iranian companies were announced by european Commission president ursula von der Leyen in her address to the european parliament last week ing Bharatiya Janata party,” said aakar patel, chair of amnesty International India s board The overbroad powers of the income tax department are repeatedly being weaponised to silence dissent ” Media watchdog reporters Without Borders took the same view “These raids have all the appearance of a reprisal against the BBC for releasing a documentary critical of prime Minister narendra Modi three weeks ago,” it said in an official statement narasimhan ram, former editor-in-chief of the Hindu, called it an attempt at “censorship” and suggested it could be a little bit of revenge a spokesperson from India’s ruling party responded to the tax raid by calling the BBC the “most corrupt organisation in the world and accused it of venomous shallow and agenda-driven reporting”

Yet the Sunak government won’t lift a finger to stand up for one of Britain s most cherished and admired international organisations - and the principle of free speech and this matters a great deal to Indian journalists brave enough - and it can take great bravery - to criticise Modi

They are intensely concerned because they think that the attack on the BBC could set a precedent for further assaults on press freedom after all if an internationally respected organisation like the BBC can face intimidation, which Indian media outlet is safe?

RISK OF EMBOLDENING MODI: The silence is deafening It is also deeply unusual after China banned the BBC in 2021 then-Foreign Secretary Dominic raab declared the move to be “an unacceptable curtailing of media freedom” and when concerned about increased propaganda from the russian state” in 2022, the uK government gave the BBC £4 1m (over $5m) to “fight russian disinformation Yet on India, there is no sign that the government cares It is not just Sunak who has been inert Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is a self-styled champion of free speech and expression But he doesn’t speak out about this brutal attack on a great British national institution in India ram called Sunak’s silence “disgraceful” “If something like that happened to an Indian institution in the uK, would not the Ministry of Foreign affairs or the prime minister ’s office come out with a statement of concern? I think they would he said after the tax raid began

“So the uK government - I think this is a pathetic response, or a non-response, to something which is very serious that s happened that all these allegations are suddenly being hurled against a highly respected national institution, which is really an international institution today ”

The Sunak government risks emboldening Modi in his authoritarianism at a pivotal moment in India’s history, with experts warning that Indian Muslims potentially face genocide

Indian journalist Karan Thapar, speaking about the attack on the BBC, said that the “damage that has been done is to our country to our country s reputation to our country’s standing as a democracy, and that means that the damage has been done to something that matters to all of us as Indian people

It’s hard to think of a previous British prime minister who would allow a foreign power to trash free speech and attack a British institution in this way It s tempting to reflect that Starmer is right and Sunak isn’t up to the job

Imran Mulla has written for The Critic Conservative Home Athwart Panoramic the Magazine and Traversing Tradition among others Peter Oborne won best commentary/blogging in both 2022 and 2017 and was also named freelancer of the year in 2016 at the Drum Online Media Awards for articles he wrote for Middle East Eye

M y t h s o f t h e P e n t a g o n

temporary home, with plans on eventually transforming the space into either a hospital, an office or a warehouse But as World War II arrived and then the Cold War, the building was named the permanent home of the office of the Secretary of Defense and the chiefs of staff of the army, navy, Marine Corps, and air Force

Among the strangest stories about the pentagon comes one from the chilly early days of the Cold War, when the Soviet union and the united States had just begun to spy relentlessly on each other with satellites according to the legend, in the pentagon s center courtyard crowds of military and civilian officials would gather at the same time every day around a small building Watching from space russian intelligence believed the building was an entrance to an underground bunker or a secret briefing room In reality, the crowds came and went on lunch breaks because the building was a popular hot dog stand rumor has it that during the Cold War, the russians never had any less than two missiles aimed at this hot dog stand,” said Brett eaton, a pentagon information and communications officer They thought this was the pentagon s most top secret meeting room, and the entire pentagon was a large fortress built around this hot dog stand under the assumption that Soviet missiles bristling with nuclear warheads were aimed at the stand, it earned the nickname Cafe Ground Zero

But the pentagon, which has served as the headquarters for the Department of Defense since it was opened in 1943 has more secrets and history behind it than just a popular lunch spot Here’s everything you need to know about the pentagon

In 1941, army Brig Gen Brehon B Somervell, head of the Construction Division of the Quartermaster Corps began formulating plans to create a new headquarters for what was then the War Department The attacks on pearl Harbor had not yet occurred but assisting the allies in europe had become a real possibility

Initially, the pentagon was supposed to be a

It’s not as complicated as one would think arlington Farms in Virginia was designated as the initial site for construction The plot of land connected to five roadways, so the building was designed with five sides one for each approach However, president Franklin D roosevelt feared the massive structure would obscure the view of Washington DC from arlington national Cemetery and decided it should instead be built farther south at the former site of Washington-Hoover airport

THE PENTAGON IS THE LARGEST OFFICE BUILDING IN THE WORLD: Construction took only 16 months The enormous undertaking included about 1,000 architects and 14,000 tradesmen The team worked around the clock in three shifts To conserve precious war materials like steel, construction crews devised creative ways to reinforce the concrete structure For example, workers used approximately 689,000 tons of sand and gravel from the nearby potomac river

The final budget tallied $63 million or more than $900 million in today’s dollars on an expedited schedule, the building was finished in January 1943 at the height of World War II, more than 33,000 civilians and military personnel worked there

The structure is famously five ringed corridors, each five stories tall with two basement levels remarkably, there was originally just one elevator Those who couldn’t take stairs accessed special ramps from floor to floor When World War II ended, plans to scrap the pentagon were canceled Many innovations have since been added; a 17-year project to install 70 elevators began in 1994 and finished in 2011

The pentagon claims recognition as the largest office building in the world by floor area It s so big that the building has six ZIp codes 6 5 million square feet of office space (three times the floor space of the empire State Building), and even a mini shopping mall at the heart of the construction was Col

Leslie Groves, an officer from the army Corps of engineers Groves drove the project hard and required one of his deputies, Maj robert Furman to be at the pentagon all hours of the day every day With nearly no opportunities to go home, Furman pulled some construction contractors aside and had them build him a secret apartment between the walls of what became the army’s ordnance Division It didn’t take long until employees started referring to him as a ghost, disappearing without a trace and reemerging the next day, never leaving the building Furman later served as an intelligence officer on the Manhattan project, the top-secret program to develop nuclear weapons When he traveled back to Washington for that work he continued to use the windowless apartment, slipping in and out around employees eventually, curious ordnance officers discovered his crash pad, and he was forced out The Ghost of the pentagon, it seems, really was only looking for a place to rest on the morning of Sept 11, 2001, american airlines Flight 77 was hijacked by terrorists who crashed the plane into the west side of the pentagon The impact penetrated three of the pentagon’s five corridor rings, killing 189 people in the plane and building, including the five hijackers But there was a stroke of luck: The attack’s impact zone hit an area undergoing construction new sprinkler systems, increased structural support and blast-resistant windows helped limit the amount of destruction More importantly, only 800 of about 4,500 people typically occupying the section were present

Three days after the attacks, the pentagon awarded contracts to rebuild the damaged areas of the building This repair and renovation endeavor became known as the phoenix project and ultimately cost more than $5 billion The Cold War-era hot dog stand long since replaced by a food court, was wrecked by jet fuel, smoke, and water a modern replacement court opened just six months later followed by two more and a supermarket The phoenix project was completed in February 2003 as the pentagon shifted focus from hunting al Qaeda in afghanistan to war in Iraq

Matt Fratus is a history staff writer for Coffee or Die He prides himself on uncovering the most fascinating tales of history by sharing them through any means of engaging storytelling