KASHMIR SENTIMENT

Probably the most important news item this week was India’s meddling with Kashmir, which is important because if you were going to pick the one thing on the planet most likely to trigger a nuclear war, this sort of thing would probably be it. Now for the time being there probably isn’t going to be a nuclear war and you don’t need to go buying shelters or anything right away - I’m putting that up front so you don’t have a panic attack because I’m nice - but it’s serious so you should probably know the short version, and luckily this newsletter is mostly The Short Version (But With Swears).

I wrote the short version of why Kashmir (technically “the state of Jammu and Kashmir,” but just “Kashmir” is quicker) is a thing back in March when there was a brief moment of tension between India and Pakistan over a shot-down fighter jet, but the shorter short version is: when India and Pakistan were partitioned by the British back in the 1940s in an attempt to create a mostly-Hindu country (India) and a mostly-Muslim one (Pakistan), India ended up with the region of Kashmir because {insert politics here} despite the fact that Kashmir is majority-Muslim. Pakistan and India immediately fought a war over this and Pakistan claimed a chunk of Kashmir and ever since then things have been tense, partially because of ethnic and religious tension and partially because the Indus River flows right through Kashmir and both Pakistan and India really, really need the water from it.

What happened to make everything more tense this week was Narendra Modi’s decision to revoke section 370 of the Indian Constitution, which is the section that expressly gives the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir some powers that other states in India do not get - they have their own legislative assembly, their own constitution, and essentially function as a semi-autonomous state within India. The section also prevented people living outside of Kashmir from buying property there, which was key for safeguarding the well-being of its Muslim people given that it ensured that Hindus could not move there in large numbers. This was always the compromise that kept Pakistan and India from going to war: Pakistan didn’t control Kashmir, but it had assurances that Kashmiri Muslims were safe, so… good enough. Narendra Modi just ended all of that. (It is not entirely clear that this was legally allowable, but Modi’s been very active in appointing judges who will be sympathetic to him so it will likely be found to be legal regardless of anything else.)

To make everybody more nervous, Modi also ordered internet and phone service in Kashmir completely shut down, ordered that all tourists and international visitors leave immediately, and sent in tens of thousands of soldiers, which would be bad optics in the best of times because - regardless of what the actual intent is here, and I stress that nobody is entirely sure - if you’re going to start committing war crimes and don’t want any witnesses, those would pretty much be the steps you would take. And while I am not saying that India is committing war crimes or doing a genocide - because nobody knows! - I will again note that Modi is an avowed Hindu nationalist and plenty of his BJP party members have made statements about Muslims that are pretty damn exterminationist.

The result of all this is that Pakistan has downgraded its diplomatic relations with India and suspended trade with India - which are serious things to do but which will not really change anything anybody’s doing - and have promised to refer the issue to the UN Security Council. Of course, with multiple Modi fans on the UNSC (certainly the USA and Russia are both sympathetic to Modi at present) that too might be questionable. So expect things to remain tense for the next little while.

DISNEY’S LATEST GAMBIT TO TAKE OVER ALL MEDIA

Disney announced its $12.99/month package deal for Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN+ this week, and the entire internet (including Canadians, griping as always that they can’t get the good US streaming stuff) was “oh my god, that’s a hell of a deal!”

And… well, yes. That’s the whole point.

In the USA, ESPN’s per-subscriber cost alone - the amount cable companies pay Disney in order to provide ESPN to their subscribers - is in between six and seven dollars. The per-subscriber costs of all the Disney-owned channels on cable (IE, the channels whose content will stream on Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN+) are in between seventeen and twenty-two dollars. (The reason for me typing in this estimate-y way is because I was able to find exact figures for just about everything in 2015, but only exact figures for a few things in 2018, so I am guesstimating the increase for the package deal based on the increase for a couple items and then fudging upwards a bit for inflation into 2019.) For non-Americans, this model mostly holds up for most international TV providers; the numbers vary but basically if you live in a country that has cable TV, this is the system that gets used.

Now, bear in mind that the per-subscriber cost for the cable company is what they pay Disney for those channels, not what you pay. You obviously pay a bit more than that. So that $17-22 figure would probably be a bit higher for you. Call it, oh, thirty bucks at least. And at this point, you might be saying to yourself “hm, thirteen is much less than thirty,” because you saw that Jennifer Garner movie from years and years ago and she was much happier as a pre-teen in the end.

The point of the Disney package deal is not that it’s a great deal for you, the consumer (although it is - at least for now). The point of the Disney package deal is that it’s intended as a loss leader, to get people to drop their cable subscriptions and instead give their money directly to Disney (which weakens cable companies) and to force other streaming services to try to match Disney’s price point, which hurts them tremendously because nobody really can. (Netflix, for example, is $20 billion in debt, mostly because it’s financing its own content creation. It cannot afford to keep accumulating debt forever.) Disney, for its part, is sitting on four billion dollars in cash reserves and has been accumulating treasury stock for years precisely to fund initiatives like these, so it can afford to play the long game here.

The long game, incidentally, is trying to force everybody else out of business or into Disney, and then jacking up your prices. Because that’s the end game for all of these services.

30 TO 50 FERAL HONG KONGS

I haven’t written about the Hong Kong protests in a couple of months and thought a quick update was in order if you haven’t been following it, so:

Initially it looked like the Hong Kong government was going to cave and not pass the new extradition law that Hongkongers largely do not want to pass, and the protests sort of slowed down for a week or two although they didn’t stop. But then, in response to further protests where the protesters were demanding the resignation of the current leadership of Hong Kong and, generally, that their special status as a city that is but isn’t quite Chinese be respected, the government began cracking down on the protesters hard. This was about the same time that, curiously, gangs of civilians clad in all-white started showing up and attacking protesters; it has since become evident that those gangs of civilians are in fact triad gang members (who, presumably, have been paid in cash or promises for their services by somebody in power somewhere). It is fair to say at this point that police/triads and protesters have been fighting each other like motherfuckers for the past few weeks and the fighting is only getting more intense as time goes on.

I don’t have anything more to add here. But I thought it was worth mentioning.

THE ENTERTAINMENT SECTION

Movies watched since last week:

The Great Hack (2019, Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, Netflix) - 3/5

The Secret of Kells (2009, Tomm Moore, Kanopy) - 3.5/5

We also saw a whole lot of wrestling this week because it was SummerSlam weekend here in Toronto, and when WWE runs a major show all of the indie wrestling companies make sure to run shows in that city in the week leading up to the major show because it’s guaranteed good gates from fans who love wrestling (as we do). The PROGRESS Wrestling show was immense fun in particular and if they come to your town (which, if you do not live in the UK, is relatively rare) I recommend checking them out in particular.

See you in seven.