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International

Nepal Tried To Censor The Internet. Young People Set Parliament on Fire.

Published

2 months ago

9 minute read

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By Christina Maas

The government found itself answering to the voices it tried to erase.

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, join Reclaim The Net.

If you were looking for a tutorial in how not to govern, Nepal’s ruling class has generously offered a new lesson plan.

Step one: shut down social media because it makes you feel insecure. Step two: pretend the resulting nationwide meltdown is a fluke. Step three: watch your approval rating turn into a riot and your parliament building go up in flames.

What began as a bureaucratic tantrum over unregistered apps spiraled, almost immediately, into a full-blown generational uprising.

The uprising kicked off when Nepal’s Ministry of Communication had the bright idea to demand that social media companies register under new regulations, rules so vague they could have been written by someone trying to criminalize sarcasm.

When the platforms didn’t register, the state did what all cornered bureaucrats do: they pulled the plug.

The geniuses in Kathmandu decided that banning Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and WeChat, because they would not censor, would somehow bring digital order to the country.

Instead, they triggered the kind of public explosion normally reserved for collapsing currencies or rigged elections.

It’s important to make clear that the social media blackout may have lit the match, but the country was already soaked in gasoline. For most of the people in the streets, the platform bans weren’t the whole problem. They were the final insult.

The real list of grievances reads like a greatest hits album of government failure. Start with corruption, a national tradition at this point. The 2017 Airbus deal, where Nepal Airlines managed to misplace $10.4 million in public funds without even delivering entertaining excuses, became a case study in how to lose money in government without really trying. No one went to jail. No one even got demoted. But the public remembered. They always do.

Then there is the economy, or what’s left of it. Officially, youth unemployment hit 20 percent in 2024. Unofficially, it’s worse, depending on how you define “employment” and whether you count selling SIM cards on a sidewalk as a career. One in every thirteen Nepalis works abroad just to keep their families from sinking, sending back enough remittances to prop up a government that thanks them with platitudes and zero policies.

For young people still stuck in Nepal, the message has been clear: there is no future here unless your dad is on a party committee. The government hasn’t so much failed to create jobs as it has outsourced hope entirely.

Add to that the political circus. Since 2008, when the monarchy was finally shelved, Nepal has cycled through 14 different governments. Not one of them finished a full term. The entire concept of political continuity in the country has been reduced to a punchline. Voters aren’t even surprised anymore. They just check the news to see who’s getting fired this week.

And when the people want to speak out and air their grievances, the government tries to censor the social media platforms. That was a big mistake.

Crowd of protesters pressing against a blue metal barricade as helmeted riot police stand in the foreground on a city street with trees and buildings behind them.
Police are struggling to contain the protesters.

By Tuesday morning, the government caved. Access to all 26 banned platforms has been restored. Officials framed it as a thoughtful policy revision. Everyone else recognized it for what it was: a full-speed backpedal from a policy that went up in smoke the moment it hit the street.

Nobody outside the ruling class was surprised when the blackout turned ugly. What was surprising was the speed and scale of the blowback. By Monday, Kathmandu looked like a city prepping for regime change. Crowds breached a security post near Parliament.

Aerial view of thousands of people marching down a wide city avenue, crowding both lanes and sidewalks between multistory buildings with a tree-lined median.
Protesters have taken to the streets in major cities.

Witnesses described scenes of live ammunition mixed with rubber bullets and water cannons. At least 19 people are confirmed dead. Hundreds are injured. Emergency rooms are stacked. The situation is still active.

Eventually, someone in the cabinet remembered what year it was and realized cutting off Instagram might not be the win they thought it was.

And what exactly are these “demands”? According to the kids holding the line in the streets, it’s not just about the apps anymore.

They want resignations. Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli was at the top of the list, trailed closely by a conga line of officials accused of corruption and a fondness for authoritarian stunts.

The Prime Minister did resign, with no clear successor in place, shortly after his home was torched by protesters.

The outrage didn’t stay bottled up in Kathmandu, either. It spilled out across the country: Pokhara, Chitwan, Janakpur.

Nepali Congress MP Rajendra Bajgain finally emerged to deliver a soundbite: “If the Congress government cannot protect democracy, it must immediately step down.”

But among younger Nepalis, this wasn’t about party politics. This was about basic survival. Social media platforms aren’t luxuries; they’re oxygen. That’s how people earn, learn, and stay connected to relatives wiring home money from Qatar or Malaysia or wherever else Nepali labor is exported to keep the country’s GDP from flatlining.

So when the apps disappeared, so did a lifeline. WhatsApp storefronts went dark. Online tutors were suddenly out of business. Whole families lost touch. And the kids took it personally, because it was personal.

It’s economic sabotage. But it’s also something else: a class marker. Because the people making these decisions, funnily enough, aren’t the ones relying on WhatsApp to get paid or Messenger to call their mom abroad.

Dense crowd of protesters on a city street holding up placards—many with Nepali script—and waving red-and-blue Nepal flags, with a man in a blue surgical mask visible in the foreground and apartment buildings and utility poles lining the background.
A dense crowd of protesters on a city street holding up placards.

A solid chunk of those who charged the barricades on Monday were students who were still in class earlier that morning. Some probably still had homework due.

That’s the level of disillusionment the Nepali state has managed to achieve in an instant: students walking out of chemistry class to take on a censorship system their teachers are too scared to criticize.

Embassies from the US, France, and five other countries released a tidy joint statement reminding Nepal that free expression is still, technically, a thing.

And that brings us back to the big picture. Nepal, which once got a gold star for being the region’s plucky democratic experiment, was trying to join the regional authoritarian club, just without the efficiency.

Since abolishing its monarchy in 2008, the country has bounced between dysfunction and disillusionment like a pinball machine nobody wants to unplug.

This time, though, the government’s attempt to control the conversation detonated. The apps are back, sure. But trust? That’s still offline.

What started as censorship has ballooned into something larger: a hard look at who gets to decide how people live, speak, and survive.

The kids aren’t logging off. And the state, despite reconnecting the internet, may have finally disconnected from its last thread of legitimacy.

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International

BBC uses ‘neutrality’ excuse to rebuke newscaster who objected to gender ideology

Published on November 8, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

Rebuking a female presenter for correcting an ideological script that says men can get pregnant isn’t ‘neutrality,’ by any stretch.

Imagine a society in which the state broadcaster demanded that the female hosts eliminate the word “women” in favor of “people” and rebuked them if their facial expressions betrayed any hit of protest on air.

Welcome to the United Kingdom in 2025. According to the BBC: “Martine Croxall broke rules over ‘pregnant people’ facial expression, BBC says.”

Martine Croxall, a BBC presenter, was introducing an interview about “research on groups most at risk during UK heatwaves,” and the teleprompter script she was reading live on BBC News Channel contained the phrase “pregnant people.”

Croxall visibly raised her eyebrows, and corrected in real-time: “Malcolm Mistry, who was involved in the research, says that the aged, pregnant people … women … and those with pre-existing health conditions need to take precautions.”

When Dr. Mistry, a professor, came on for the interview, she too referred to “pregnant women” rather than “pregnant people.”

Because a female presenter clearly objected to “women” being erased in favor of “people” for the ideological purpose of buttressing gender ideology, the BBC has now upheld “20 impartiality complaints” against Croxall. According to the BBC: “BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) said it considered her facial expression as she said this gave the ‘strong impression of expressing a personal view on a controversial matter.’”

READ: BBC rebukes newscaster for correcting ‘pregnant people’ with ‘women’ on air

In other words, as a woman, Croxall obviously objected to the implication that men can get pregnant. Croxall has a son and has thus been pregnant herself. But in our current clown world, the Executive Complaints Unit “said it considered Croxall’s facial expression laid it open to the interpretation that it ‘indicated a particular viewpoint in the controversies currently surrounding trans identity.’”

The totalitarian trans activists desperately trying to force society to play along with their delusions with force or coercion were behind the complaints, with the ECU reporting that Croxall’s facial expressions were “variously interpreted by complainants as showing disgust, ridicule, contempt, or exasperation.” In other words: Say your lines the way we gave them to you and look like you believe them, bigot.

The ECU was also concerned that those who, you know, disagree with the idea that men can get pregnant were also pleased by Croxall’s act of defiance, and that she received “congratulatory messages” on social media (including one from J.K. Rowling), which “together with the critical views expressed in the complaints to the BBC and elsewhere, tended to confirm the impression of her having expressed a personal view was widely shared across the spectrum of opinion on the issue.”

Clearly the BBC—which is desperately been trying to regain its reputation—is attempting to wave the fig leaf of “neutrality” in order to reestablish its previous bona fides. But rebuking a female presenter for correcting an ideological script and making a facial expression that appeared to indicate opposition to the idea that men can get pregnant isn’t “neutrality,” by any stretch.

Just a decade ago, no media outlet would have considered implementing gender ideology into their coverage as fact. Now presenters are expected to use fundamentally propagandistic language that frontloads the premises of activists while keeping a straight face as if both transgender ideology and observable biological reality are two perspectives deserving of equal respect and consideration.

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National Post, National Review, First Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton Spectator, Reformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

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International

Large US naval presence in Caribbean reveals increased interest in western security

Published on November 8, 2025

By

From The Center Square

By 

As the number of suspected narcotic transport boats destroyed by the U.S. military grows, so does the number of naval vessels in the Caribbean.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on social media Thursday evening that U.S. forces carried out their 17th strike on alleged drug boats, killing three “male narco-terrorists” in the targeted operation.

President Donald Trump has made it clear that his administration’s intent to target narco-terrorists in the region to help curb the flow of drugs into the country.

Last month, it was announced that the newest and largest U.S. Navy Aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, and its strike group would be transiting to the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility in the Caribbean.

Ahead of the Ford’s arrival, several naval ships are already in the region, including the USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, according to the U.S. Naval Institute—the Iwo Jima, a Wasp-class amphibious ship, among the larger classes of ships in the Navy.

The Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group deployed in August, carrying over 4,500 sailors and Marines, according to the Department of War. The group includes the Iwo Jima, USS Fort Lauderdale, USS San Antonio, and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit.

As of early this week, the USNI reported that, in addition to the group, three Navy guided-missile destroyers are operating in the Caribbean, including the USS Jason Dunham, USS Gravely, and USS Stockdale. In addition, USNI reported the USS Lake Erie (CG-70) and the USS Wichita (LCS-13) are operating in the Caribbean.

The buildup of navy ships in the region points to the administration’s commitment to prioritizing targeting narco-terrorists. Still, it could also signal the U.S. focusing on potential adversarial threats in Latin America.

Hegseth told The Center Square last month at an event in the White House that the Department of War is keeping its eyes on adversaries in the region after TCS asked the secretary and the president if they had plans to expand U.S. Naval operations in Puerto Rico, specifically Roosevelt Roads, a Navy base closed in 2004.

“We’re familiar with the location that you’re referring to, and we will make sure that we’re properly placed in order to deal with the contingency we’re dealing with there, and also any ways in which other countries would attempt to be involved also, so we can walk and chew gum. We’re definitely keeping our eyes on near peer adversaries at the same time,” Hegseth told TCS.

The secretary’s response cemented the administration’s “America first” policy, which is beginning to shift focus to its “own backyard.”

“But we think sending a message on these cartels, these narco-terrorists, is an important, important inside our hemisphere, which for far too long other presidents, as the president pointed out, they’ve ignored our own backyard and allowed other countries to increase their influence here, which only threatens the American people. We’re changing that,” Hegseth concluded.

The naval buildup in the region could highlight concerns in recent years that Venezuela, under the dictatorship of socialist Nicolas Maduro, has aligned the country with American adversaries, such as Russia, China and Iran.

In 2022, Venezuela hosted military drills with countries including Russia, China and Iran.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies warns that Latin America is ripe for U.S. adversarial influences.

“While Western observers have focused their attention on joint connivances of Russia and Iran in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East, where Russo-Iranian military-security operations directly affect U.S. and European interests, the Western Hemisphere is not isolated from the two countries’ quests for global influence. In fact, in many ways it is an essential piece of the puzzle. First, both Iran and Russia perceive Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) as a fertile ground for exploiting popular resentment vis-à-vis the United States and the ‘collective West,’ which they – rather successfully – harness to advance their view of a multipolar world,” according to CSIS.

The group cites sanctions from the West, which are growing in large part due to Russia’s ongoing offensive in Ukraine.

“Second, LAC partners could prove instrumental in offsetting the impacts of Western sanctions against Moscow and Tehran by mitigating their diplomatic and economic isolation. Finally, certain LAC countries could also serve as less scrutinized partners for further developing Russo-Iranian warfare capabilities or cooperation, sheltering mercenaries or militias – such as Hezbollah – and acting as vectors for ‘horizontal escalation’ of conflicts in which Russia and Iran are currently involved,” the group added.

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