An Indian venture capitalist is mounting an international legal campaign to pressure major media outlets to remove his name from articles or take down the stories altogether, Confider has learned.
In a move that has press freedom campaigners troubled, Rajat Khare, co-founder of Appin, an India-based tech company, has used a variety of law firms in a number of different jurisdictions to threaten these U.S., British, Swiss, Indian, and French-language media organizations.
On Nov. 16, Reuters published a special investigation under the headline “How an Indian startup hacked the world,” detailing how Appin allegedly became a “hack for hire powerhouse that stole secrets from executives, politicians, military officials and wealthy elites around the globe”—a claim that Khare strongly denies. Khare retained the powerhouse “media assassin” firm Clare Locke LLP, which boasts on its website about “killing stories,” to send Reuters several legal threats over the past year about the story, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Reuters was then forced to pull the article following a Dec. 4 order from a New Delhi, India, court ruling that the article was prima facie “indicative of defamation,” according to a copy of the order obtained and reviewed by Confider. In a brief editor’s note replacing the article, Reuters wrote that it is appealing the decision and stands by its reporting, which “was based on interviews with hundreds of people, thousands of documents, and research from several cybersecurity firms.”
<span style="color:#323232;">Times, NBC, CBS Stars Hired Media Assassins to Fight #MeToo
</span><span style="color:#323232;">FREE PRESS
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Lachlan Cartwright
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This is not the first time Khare has flexed his legal muscles and managed to threaten reporters into removing his name from stories about the hack-for-hire industry.
Across the pond, Khare had his name removed from a joint investigation between The Sunday Times and the nonprofit Bureau of Investigative Journalism, titled, “Caught on camera: confessions of the hackers for hire.” Three paragraphs that reported on Khare were removed from both publications following legal threats on his behalf, according to two people familiar with the situation. Luxembourg-based Paperjam, a French-language business news outlet, dramatically altered its story “after discussions with Mr. Khare’s advisors,” removing references to his alleged links to cyber-mercenary activity. Like what you’re reading? Subscribe to the Confider newsletter here and have The Daily Beast media team’s stellar reporting sent straight to your inbox every Monday night.
In Switzerland, meanwhile, lawyers acting for Khare managed to take out an injunction that forced the Swiss Radio and Television’s investigative team (SRF Investigativ) to scrub the tech entrepreneur’s name from a story alleging that Appin assisted the Qatari government in spying on FIFA officials ahead of the 2022 World Cup. An editor’s note now added to that story reads: “On November 6, 2022, this publication was amended due to an interim court order. The name of the entrepreneur concerned has been removed from the publication.”
Clare Locke also sent legal threats on behalf of Khare to The New Yorker as the magazine worked on a story about India’s hack-for-hire industry, Semafor reported. Khare’s efforts also appear to have gotten similar stories about him killed in India-based outlets including The Times of India and The Scroll.
“Mr. Khare does not comment on legal proceedings, but he defends himself judicially in all relevant jurisdictions against any attacks that target him and illegitimately damage his reputation,” Clare Locke partner Joseph Oliveri wrote in a statement to Confider. “Mr. Khare has dedicated much of his career to the field of information technology security—that is, cyber-defense and the prevention of illicit hacking—and it is truly unfortunate that he has found himself the subject of false accusations of involvement in a ‘hack-for hire’ industry or supporting or engaging in illicit hacking or cyber activities. Those accusations are categorically false. They have been rejected by courts and regulatory bodies and debunked by experts. And Mr. Khare will not hesitate to continue to take steps to enforce his rights and protect his reputation from such false attacks.”
While the metaphorical jury’s still out on the veracity of reports about Khare, the issue for press freedom activists is the sheer scale of his endeavor to kill stories across three continents.
“This is certainly a very concerning and very troubling series of lawsuits against the media outlets involved and we see as a global organization a growing trend of… lawsuits of this very nature to silence and censor the press including by wealthy business people,” Scott Griffen, deputy director of the International Press Institute, told Confider. “This is absolutely a huge concern worldwide and powerful business people need to be able to accept and withstand the public scrutiny that comes with that position.”
A rep for Reuters pointed Confider to their published editor’s note, while reps for The New Yorker and The Sunday Times declined to comment, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism did not respond to a request for one.
When Ronald Braunstein conducts an orchestra, there’s no sign of his bipolar disorder. He’s confident and happy.
Music isn’t his only medicine, but its healing power is potent. Scientific research has shown that music helps fight depression, lower blood pressure and reduce pain.
The National Institutes of Health has a partnership with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts called Sound Health: Music and the Mind, to expand on the links between music and mental health. It explores how listening to, performing or creating music involves brain circuitry that can be harnessed to improve health and well-being.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said: “We’re bringing neuroscientists together with musicians to speak each other’s language. Mental health conditions are among those areas we’d like to see studied.”
Mr. Braunstein, 63, has experienced the benefits of music for his own mental health and set out to bring them to others by founding orchestras in which the performers are all people affected by mental illness.
Upon graduating from the Juilliard School in his early 20s, he entered a summer program at the Salzburg Mozarteum in Austria, and in 1979 became the first American to win the prestigious Karajan International Conducting Competition in Berlin.
His career took off. He worked with orchestras in Europe, Israel, Australia and Tokyo. At the time, he didn’t have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
But looking back, he can see that his disorder contributed to his success, and his talent masked the condition.
“The unbelievable mania I experienced helped me win the Karajan,” he said. “I learned repertoire fast. I studied through the night and wouldn’t sleep. I didn’t eat because if I did, it would take away my edge.”
“My bipolar disorder was just under the line of being under control,” he said. “It wasn’t easily detected. Most people thought I was weird.”
He always sensed something was askew. When he was 15, his father took him to a doctor who diagnosed “bad nerves” and prescribed Valium.
As his career progressed, things started to unravel, and his behavior grew increasingly erratic. He was given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder at age 35. His manager dropped him as a client, and he was fired from a conducting job in Vermont.
It was there he met Caroline Whiddon, who had been the chairwoman of the Youth Orchestra Division of the League of American Orchestras. She had been given a diagnosis of depression and anxiety disorder more than 20 years earlier, and had played French horn professionally, which she described as “a notorious instrument that’s known for breaking people.”
Mr. Braunstein reached out to her about creating an orchestra that welcomed musicians with mental illnesses and family members and friends who support them.
“I never thought I’d go back to playing French horn again,” she said. “Ronald gave me back the gift of music.”
Mr. Braunstein called his new venture the Me2/Orchestra, because when he told other musicians about his mental health diagnosis, they’d often respond, “Me too.”
Since the term #MeToo is now associated with sexual assault cases, people sometimes ask if the orchestra is connected to that cause. “It gives us an opportunity to explain that we were founded in 2011,” in Burlington, Vt., “before the Me Too movement began,” Ms. Whiddon said.
In 2014, a second orchestra, Me2/Boston, was created. In between, in 2013, Mr. Braunstein and Ms. Whiddon got married.
Each orchestra performs between six and eight times a year. Each has about 50 musicians, both amateur and professional, ranging in age from 13 to over 80, and they rehearse once a week. New affiliate ensembles in Portland, Ore., and Atlanta follow similar schedules.
Mr. Braunstein gives free private lessons to those who want to polish their skills.
Me2/Orchestra is a nonprofit, and the musicians are all volunteers. Ms. Whiddon raises money through an annual letter-writing campaign to cover expenses, with support from more than 100 donors.
“When we perform at a hospital, center for the homeless or correctional facility,” Ms. Whiddon said, “the cost of that performance is covered by corporate sponsorships, grants or donations from individuals, so the performance is free to those who attend.”
Participating in Me2/Boston allowed Nancy-Lee Mauger, age 55, to pick up the French horn again. The note on the rehearsal door — “This is a stigma-free zone” — made her feel welcome.
Ms. Mauger had played French horn until her mental illness made it impossible to perform. She has diagnoses of dissociative identity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
“In 2009, I was playing a Christmas Eve gig,” she said. “It was at the same church, with the same quintet, choir and music that I had played every Christmas Eve for 15 years. This particular night felt different. I had trouble focusing my eyes. At one point, I could not read music or play my horn.”
It lasted about two minutes, and she thought she was having a stroke. In fact, it was her mental illness.
“I learned that little parts of me would come out and try to play my horn during gigs,” she said. “The problem was that they didn’t know how to play. This became such an obvious problem that I quit.”
Now, after four years of intensive therapy, she is able to play again.
At each performance, a few musicians briefly talk about their mental illnesses and take questions from the audience. “Instead of thinking people with mental illnesses are lazy or dangerous, they see what we’re capable of,” Mr. Braunstein said. “It has a positive effect on all of us.”
Jessica Stuart, now 34, stopped playing violin in her mid-20s when she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “Joining the Me2/Orchestra in Boston in 2014 was the first time I had played in years,” she said. “I cannot count the ways the orchestra helps me. It has allowed me to overcome the shame I felt about living with mental illness. I no longer feel I have to hide an important part of my life from the rest of the world.”
Jessie Bodell, a 26-year-old flute player who has borderline personality disorder, said he finds rehearsals fun, relaxed and democratic.
He noted that unlike most orchestras, Me2 doesn’t have first, second or third positions. “There isn’t an underlying, tense, competitive feeling here,” he said.
“We’ve seen when you sing or play an instrument, it doesn’t just activate one part of your brain,” said Dr. Collins of the National Institutes of Health. “A whole constellation of brain areas becomes active. Our response to music is separate from other interventions such as asking people to recall memories or listen to another language.”
Partnering with Dr. Collins on Sound Health is Renée Fleming, the renowned soprano and artistic adviser to the Kennedy Center. “The first goal is to move music therapy forward as a discipline,” she said. “The second is to educate the public and enlighten people about the power of music to heal.”
So far the initiative is investigating how music could help Parkinson’s patients walk with a steady gait, help stroke survivors regain the ability to speak, and give cancer patients relief from chronic pain.
“The payoff,” Dr. Collins said, is to “improve mental health. We know music shares brain areas with movement, memory, motivation and reward. These things are hugely important to mental health, and researchers are trying to use this same concept of an alternate pathway to address new categories of mental disorders.”
I worry folks are downvoting because they take the title as an endorsement of anti-feminism. This is an explicit statement that this sub is in no way anti-feminist. Read the sidebar.
Though others have pointed out alternative interpretations of the poll (such as merely disagreeing with the label, not the ideals, of feminism), I am going to voice the minority opinion here: the straightforward interpretation may be right. In fact, I unfortunately find it completely plausible. Millennials, after all, went through ten formative years of #MeToo and BLM, the biggest protests for equality in a century. The younger generation aren’t going through a cultural revolution anywhere near that scale. Things have quieted down, and sentiment may have regressed to the mean.
I also think people may be underestimating how powerful rightwing bro media has become, with radical figures becoming mainstream like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, etc. I don’t see many countervailing feminist voices with as much reach, especially those targeting impressionable boys. I’m not sure about any of this, and I know some may not like to hear the alarm, but I think we need to be realistic about the possibility.
Billionaire has never heard of the Streisand effect. (lemmy.ml)
Fighting the Stigma of Mental Illness Through Music (www.nytimes.com)
Poll finds that fewer Gen Z boys identify as Feminists than Millenials-- and the same % as Gen X. (www.mensjournal.com)
I worry folks are downvoting because they take the title as an endorsement of anti-feminism. This is an explicit statement that this sub is in no way anti-feminist. Read the sidebar.
Communist Filth/Capitalist Filth (lemmy.ml)