Category Archives: Viva!

Trump needles Japan over trade imbalance during visit

No mention of millions killed by Japan 1938-1945.

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The US President tells a gathering of Japanese and American business leaders in Tokyo that Japan had long had a “substantial edge” in trade with the US, joking that might be the reason why he is so liked in the country.

Modernity Triumphs over Feudalism in India

Fascism with new clothing.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is shown here being showered with rose petals after his nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was declared winner in the country’s national elections. Source: Narendra Modi Facebook Page

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, May 25 2019 (IPS)

“We worked for the poor and they voted us back to power,” was the explanation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made to newly-elected legislators on Saturday, May 25, on the spectacular win scored by his nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India’s just concluded general elections.

Modi’s statement appeared refreshingly simple when seen against the plethora of theories and analyses on the second electoral defeat in a row that the BJP delivered to the venerable Indian National Congress party that led India to independence from British colonial rule in 1947 and had become almost synonymous with governance in the years since.

“More than anything else the election was the victory of Modi’s political leadership,” Ajay Mehra, professor of politics and currently senior fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi, tells IPS. “Since the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 the leadership quotient has been missing in Indian politics.”

“Modi was astute enough to understand this vacuum while the Congress party singularly failed to restore the leadership quotient when it had the chance while in power during 2004—2014 under Manmohan Singh, who was more manager than political leader,” Mehra says.

Modi’s main opponent, Rahul Gandhi, the son, grandson and great-grandson of former Congress prime ministers did make a bid to fill the leadership vacuum in the run up to the elections but “it was all too little too late,” says Mehra.

According Mehra, Modi never lost an opportunity to project himself as a strong and powerful leader. And the greatest opportunity came in the form of a deadly suicide-bombing attack on an armed forces convoy in Kashmir on Feb. 14, that left 40 troops dead.

Modi, who could never be faulted for his sense of timing, waited until Feb 26, a date close to the general elections, to order Indian air force jets to carry out retaliatory bombing on a militant camp in Balakot, deep inside Pakistani territory.

The Balakot bombing added hugely to Modi’s image as a great nationalist leader ready to defend the country against internal and external threats without hesitation, says Mehra.

Throughout the long and arduous election campaign across the country that followed, Modi repeatedly harped on the Balakot bombing to audience tuned to the idea of Pakistan as a long-standing enemy country which armed and financed terrorist groups tasked with the objective of wresting Muslim-majority Kashmir from Indian control.

It appears that the Gandhi and Congress party leaders learned no lessons from the defeat in 2014 when Modi’s one-time occupation of being a tea-stall vendor in a railway station was made fun of and used as proof that he was incapable of running a large and complex country like India.

This time around Modi’s description of himself as a ‘chowkidar’ (or watchman) taking care of the country’s interests was converted by the Congress party into the slogan ‘Chowkidar chor hai’ (the watchman is a thief) in reference to accusation that a deal to buy Rafael fighter jets from France was tainted and rigged to favour crony capitalist interests.

But, like the tea vendor jibes, the chowkidar slogans backfired with the mass of desperately poor Indian voters identifying all the more with Modi than with the half-Italian Gandhi and his sister Priyanka, who lent a hand in the election campaigning and addressed political rallies.

The campaign focused on the Rafael deal also had the effect of turning the electoral battle into one that was not over issues like rising unemployment, deep agrarian distress and declining manufacture into a personality clash between Gandhi and Modi—one in which the callow Congress leader could only lose to his politically astute and seasoned opponent.

A former spokesperson for the BJP during his long political career, Modi understood the value of building a positive image for himself through carefully arranged political interviews to friendly journalists while scrupulously avoiding the glare of India’s unruly media.

In fact, the only press conference Modi ever gave as prime minister came at the end of his present tenure and that too after elections were safely over. And then he sat through it without uttering a single word but deflecting questions towards his trusted lieutenant and party boss, Amit Shah.

However, Modi was visible everywhere on social media, bear-hugging world leaders one day and sitting in a cave in the snow-clad Himalayas meditating in the saffron robes of Hindu monk the next.

While such images drew derision and mockery from India’s English-speaking elite, the aspirational crowds identified even more with one of them who had made good but was yet rooted in traditional, devoutly Hindu roots.

On Saturday, Modi was elected as leader of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition of right-leaning political parties that includes the BJP. Though the BJP won a majority of seats on its own, gaining 303 out of 542 sets while the Congress party secured just 52 seats. 

In his address to newly-elected parliamentarians of the NDA, Modi said the ‘pro-incumbency vote’ was the result of the faith that people reposed in him. He vowed to take the whole country along into the future, even his enemies. He’s revised his slogan from 2014 to include the latter part on faith: ‘Sab ka saath, sab ka vikas, sab ka vishwas’ or ‘With everyone, for everyone’s development, with everyone’s faith‘. It was regarded as his assurance that everyone, even his political opponents, could trust him.

Modi also warned the new legislators: “Do not resort to a VIP culture–the people don’t like it.”

According to Rajiv Lochan, political commentator and professor of history at Panjab University, Chandigarh, the Congress party lost mainly because it came to be associated with the worst side of traditional India.

“The Congress believes in castes, it believes in religious groups, it believes that Muslims are one single entity as are Hindus and Sikhs,” says Lochan, referring to the parties ‘vote bank’ calculations to take advantage of horizontal and vertical divisions in Indian society.

“The Congress party also represents the feudal aspect in which people are seen as supplicants. All the Congress policies in this election were designed with the presumption that people are supplicants while the scion who has no energy, no intelligence and no abilities is still the boss directing everyone.

“Think of the stories of tiger hunts by Indian princes in colonial times when a servitor would kill the tiger and insist that it was the prince who had done it,” Lochan tells IPS.

“In contrast,” he adds, “the BJP had a Narendra Modi who was full of infectious energy. He had the ability to energise his audience.”

According to Lochan the BJP also ran a “very modernist campaign that was predicated on promising to empower everyone irrespective of caste, religion and family even increasing its support among Muslims from 9 percent to 12 percent, according to the poll surveys.”

“On the whole, I would say, people voted out the bad of traditional India and voted in the good,” says Lochan.

The post Modernity Triumphs over Feudalism in India appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Trump arrives in Tokyo and digs Japan for ‘substantial edge’ on trade

In Japan for Memorial Day? Does Trump even care or know how many Americans Japan killed from 1941-1945?

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  • President says negotiators trying to even out trade imbalance
  • CNN says staffers dread long trips with Trump on Air Force One

Donald Trump kicked off his state visit to Japan on Saturday by urging Japanese business leaders to increase investment in the US – but he also complained about his own central bank and knocked his hosts for having a “substantial edge” on trade, which he said negotiators were trying to even out.

Related: ‘Queen of shade’: five times Nancy Pelosi got the better of Trump

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The true deep-state conspiracy just benefits the old

Reviving Nazi beliefs, tactics and goals.

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The ‘alt-right’ would have us believe that the EU is a leftist cabal. It’s actually working for a much more sinister group

Whatever the outcome of the European Union elections, it is only a matter of months before Theresa May’s successor is handed the task of scuttling over to Brussels in a desperate attempt to secure a fresh Brexit deal.

When they return empty-handed – which is certain when the project aims to secure access to the customs union, minus any treaty obligations or the Irish backstop – failure will be blamed on forces inside Europe’s “deep state”. A no-deal Brexit can only be the fault of Brussels – and that will be the public relations spin.

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Sudan, Algeria, Libya: new Arab spring stalls as Trump looks away

He does not care or understand unless there is a profit for him or if it makes him look good.

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The US once led western states’ support of democracy around the world, but under this president that feels like a long time ago

There was a time, not so very long ago, when the US was held up as a model for other nations to emulate. That time has passed. Last week witnessed more gratuitous international hooliganism by the Trump administration. Its latest depredations include extra-territorial bullying of trade and business rivals, violent threats against Iran, an absurdly biased “peace plan” for Palestine, resumed arms sales to fuel the Saudis’ war in Yemen, and an assault on global press freedom.

Anger and dismay over Donald Trump’s wildly swinging wrecking ball obscure they ways in which the US could be using its unmatched power to benefit others – but refuses to do so. Its current policy is defined by its absences. Once again, Syrian civilians are dying in a horrific war Trump has done nothing to halt. Alarm bells are ringing over the climate crisis and mass extinction – yet Trump’s people prefer to focus on economic opportunities afforded by a melting Arctic ice cap.

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quakerjoe: What It’s Like at an Alabama Clinic Still…

quakerjoe:

What It’s Like at an Alabama Clinic Still Performing Abortions (HBO)

The day after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, signed a bill that put her state on the path to banning almost all abortions, a 20-year-old woman from Tennessee walked into an abortion clinic with an ex-boyfriend and underwent the procedure.

“I’m a single mom of three kids,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, after having an abortion. “I have nothing to offer this child. You know, like, I’m already spread thin. I have my other three to take care of.”

She was one of about 20 women who had the procedure that day at the Alabama Women’s Center. Because there, it was business as usual. The ban — which is certain to be challenged in court — won’t go into effect for several months. Meanwhile, abortion is still legal in the state.

Dalton Johnson co-founded the Alabama Women’s Center in 2001, and since then, the center has had to adapt and sue over multiple new laws and ordinances designed to shut its doors.

“It’s been one thing after another. You know, I kind of feel almost at home in the federal courthouse,” Johnson said. “It’s been admitting privileges. It’s been the zoning.“

“The anti-choice group sued the City of Huntsville for issuing my business license, and so that was a whole battle that we had to fight and pay for out of pocket. And, of course, we prevailed in that one. The building codes,” she added. “And probably some more I just can’t even think of.”

So for Johnson, the latest law isn’t much of a surprise. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t emotionally affecting the staff at the clinic, as they answered phones and cared for patients.

“As I was leaving the house this morning, I started to feel like these butterflies in my stomach. The fear was coming over me,” said Makeda Harris, the center’s receptionist. Most days, she’s the first face a patient would see at the clinic.

Outside the clinic, protesters line up every day holding signs and imploring the women who walk inside to choose life. Many of them are regulars, and the staff knows them by name. A mother and daughter prayed outside Thursday after one woman, shielded by the bright umbrellas of the escorts who volunteer in the parking lot, walked in.

Cartoon: How Banning the Abortion Pill Works

If court cases are lost, cops will be investigating any and all miscarriages – do you want or will you stand for this invasion of personal rights?


Support my patreon and help me keep drawing these cartoons!


I can’t always say what inspires any particular cartoon. But in this case, I know exactly. Jessica Valenti tweeted this:

Not one anti-choice legislator has answered this question: If a woman  shows up at a hospital, losing her pregnancy – how will you determine  who is having a miscarriage and who deliberately ended it? Pregnancy  loss from taking an abortion pill is indistinguishable from miscarriage.

Building off of Jessica’s point, Lindsay Beyerstein wrote a thread on Twitter, beginning with this tweet:

If history is any guide, they’ll put cops in hospital rooms to quiz  bleeding, drugged-up women; they’ll subpoena phone and internet records;  they’ll grill and threaten friends and coworkers to turn on her; you know, the usual criminal justice stuff.

I checked with Jessica and Lindsay, both of whom very nicely told me to go ahead, and then I wrote this strip.

It’s easy to ignore the kind of police state methods that will be necessary to enforce laws about something as personal as how people reproduce. This is especially the case with banning “the abortion pill,” a drug that should ideally be taken under a doctor’s supervision, but can be taken in private.

Not every cop is abusive, and not every D.A. is abusive. But enough of them are, and the justice system has evolved to accommodate the abuse and protect the abusers. Laws banning mifepristone are inevitably going to target patients who are at their most vulnerable. For something that should never be illegal in the first place.

* * *

Scripting this one took a while. My first drafts, following on Lindsey’s tweets, also talked about how forensic “science” will be used to prosecute, regardless of if it’s reliable. We think of forensics as a very reliable science – just look at what they do with it on CSI! But in practice, it’s a field that’s bursting with pseudoscience, corruption, and guesswork disguised as certainty. To give just one example, identifying people based on bite-marks is completely unreliable – but one that’s been used to prosecute people. There are horrifying stories of dubious convictions based on unscientific nonsense about burn patterns – including at least one execution. Bloodstain analysis, which seems so certain on Dexter, is anything but. Even fingerprints are less reliable than Sherlock Holmes believed.

But trying to explain how unreliable forensic evidence actually is ended up being too much to fit into one cartoon. The script was overloaded and clunky, and so I streamlined by getting rid of the forensic angle. Maybe I’ll return to that in a future strip.

Then, what should the situation be? I knew I wanted the gag to be a ban proponent telling the horrifying truth about what a  mifepristone ban would look like, and then correcting himself in the final panel. My first thought was a Senator at a press conference, telling the truth in thought balloons but then saying the sanitized version aloud; then I tried a Senator being briefed by a pro-life lobbyist.

In the end, seeking to simplify and streamline, I went with the “ask me anything” forum. I liked the device of having him type in an answer, and then deleting and rewording – because it just felt so relatable. Who among us hasn’t done that?

* * *

Folks supporting my patreon got to see this strip a week ago! I’m just saying.

* * *

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has nine panels, arranged in a three by three grid. Every panel shows the same subject: A man wearing glasses and a polo shirt, sitting at a small table, with a laptop computer open in front of him.

PANEL 1

The man sits typing on his laptop. There’s a “tap tap tap” sound effect for his typing. Above him, in Ariel font (a font commonly used for computer text), we can see what he’s typing. He is smiling and looks relaxed.

MAN (typing): Hello, “ask me anything” forum. I wrote proposed legislation to make using Mifepristone, also known as “the abortion pill,” a felony. Ask me anything!

PANEL 2

The man speaks aloud (in the usual faux-handwritten comic book font I use), looking pleasantly surprised.

MAN: I wonder how long it takes for… Oh, someone’s asked me a question already!

PANEL 3

The man reads aloud from his laptop screen. (Again, regular comic book font.)

MAN: “Pregnancy loss from taking an abortion pill is indistinguishable from miscarriage. How will you know who to arrest?”

PANEL 4

The man, still smiling and looking relaxed, types on his laptop.

MAN (types): Great question! First, we’ll tell doctors and nurses to immediately call the police if they think a miscarriage is suspicious.

PANEL 5

The same scene, but closer up. His smile looks creepier, however.

MAN (types): Cops will show up and grill women while they’re still bleeding and drugged. The perfect time to get a confession!

PANEL 6

Even closer up. His smile looks downright malicious now.

MAN (types): Experience suggests that certain classes of women- like poor women and black women -will more often be seen as “suspicious.” That shouldn’t bother you becau

PANEL 7

The man leans back from the laptop and puts a hand on the side of his face as he thinks. He’s no longer smiling.

PANEL 8

Leaning forward again, frowning, the man hits the “delete” key a few times. We know this because of the sound effect, which says: “Delete! Delete! Delete!”

PANEL 9

The man types again, once more looking relaxed.

MAN (types): Great question! We’ll know who to arrest through good old-fashioned police work.

The right’s plan to get rid of Israel’s High Court

The far right wants to defang Israel’s highest court to fulfill its annexationist dreams. Netanyahu wants to overpower it to ensure he remains on the throne. For Palestinians, annexation has long been a fact on the ground. 

By Meron Rapoport

Supreme Court President Esther Hayut (C) and Judges of the Supreme Court arrive for a court hearing at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, March 14, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Supreme Court President Esther Hayut (C) and Judges of the Supreme Court arrive for a court hearing at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, March 14, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The attacks on Israel’s High Court by the right would not have gained traction without Prime Minister Netanyahu’s personal support. These include an attempt to pass a bill that would not only allow the Knesset to re-legislate laws struck down by the judiciary, but also prevent the High Court from intervening in administrative decisions by the government, the ministers, and the Knesset. Netanyahu is hoping to prevent judicial review over any number of laws that would seek to shield him from prosecution over the various corruption scandals in which he is embroiled.

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The right speaks openly about the need to broadly “govern,” as well as the need to dismantle the “dictatorship of the High Court” in order to “give power back to the people.” But nowhere is this so-called “governance” more relevant than the area over which Israel has been trying to hide its rule for 52 years: the occupied territories.

The great paradox

Two of the laws Netanyahu singled out as reasons for passing a “court override bill” are directly related to the occupied territories: a bill calling for the death penalty for convicted Palestinian killers of Israeli civilians and soldiers, and another bill that would allow Israel to deport the families of those Palestinians. It is clear why Bezalel Smotrich of the United Right party made the override bill a central condition of the current coalition negotiations with the prime minister. The Regularization Law, which retroactively legalizes West Bank outposts deemed illegal by Israeli law and will likely be struck down by the High Court, is a prime example of the kind of laws Smotrich wants to enshrine without the threat of judicial oversight.

Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din has recorded a few dozen “annexation laws” that are already on the docket for the upcoming Knesset, some of which legislate the annexation parts or the entirety of the West Bank, legalize the theft of Palestinian land, or simply blur the Green Line. The moment the threat of the High Court’s oversight disappears, the sky is the limit for Smotrich and the rest of the Israeli far right.

Nearly every single article in Smotrich’s so-called “Decisive Plan” — which includes annexing the West Bank without granting Palestinians equal civil rights, while incentivizing them to leave the country — would be struck down by the High Court. From his point of view, the override bill becomes a necessity without which the settler right sees no point in joining the government.

Bezalel Smotrich speaks to supporters of the United Right party, April 09, 2019. (Flash90)

Bezalel Smotrich speaks to supporters of the United Right party, April 09, 2019. (Flash90)

Herein lies the great paradox. The Israeli right needs the override bill in order to entrench annexation and blur the Green Line, and it wants to do so in order to break the status quo — to defeat the Palestinians once and for all. Interestingly, until now, Netanyahu has preferred to support the status quo and prevent annexation, and had previously opposed the override bill. Now, because of his need for immunity, he has changed positions. This is what binds Netanyahu to someone like Smotrich.

Annexation is a fact on the ground

Palestinians aren’t afraid of these annexation policies, particularly because annexation has already been happening. The settlements in Area C bifurcate the West Bank, and the High Court, which was supposed to protect the Palestinians as an occupied people according to international law, never did its job. Thus, annexation isn’t widely viewed as a threat. In the worst case, the Palestinians’ situation in the West Bank will remain as it is: residents of the territory living alongside growing settlements. In the best case scenario, it will bolster the PLO’s case against Israel and grant a few hundred thousand Palestinians citizenship.

But it goes even further: annexation may bring Palestinians closer to a single state between the river and the sea, which has always remained a dream for many of them. In other words, the annexation sword being dangled in front of the Palestinians is seen by many of them as double-edged, and will eventually undo the “Jewish state.”

Palestinians climb over the separation wall on the first Friday of Ramadan at Qalandiya checkpoint, West Bank, May 10, 2019. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Palestinians climb over the separation wall on the first Friday of Ramadan at Qalandiya checkpoint, West Bank, May 10, 2019. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Still, the override bill and immunity for Netanyahu are viewed as an attack on democracy inside Israel. Aside from the usual suspects among civil society organizations — women and LGBTQ groups, civil rights organizations, Palestinian NGOs, and more — who view this as a direct attack, we are now witnessing an awakening by groups of the Israeli elite, which have been cautious about speaking out against Netanyahu.

Dozens of Israeli attorneys, including leading, non-leftist candidates vying to head the Israel Bar Association, organized a conference in which they warned that “the rule of law is on the precipice,” threatening to shut down the legal system. One-hundred and thirty law lecturers from across the country signed a petition according to which the government’s attempts to defang the judiciary will cause “irreparable damage to democracy.”

On Thursday, Israeli business newspaper Calcalist published that a group of 100 entrepreneurs, most of them from the tech sector, signed a similar petition. Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party, which did its best not to step on anyone’s toes during the election cycle, is now threatening to “set fire to the country” in order to save democracy.

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It is easy to become cynical in the face of these calls to “save Israeli democracy” — a democracy that hardly exists in the first place when it comes to Palestinians. Neither does Israeli democracy do much to protect human rights groups, which have come under constant attack in the past years. It is hard to question the sense of urgency that prevails among parts of the Israeli elite, and its importance should not be underestimated.

The elite is energized by the combination of two moves: immunity for Netanyahu, and a bolder override bill. Both are viewed as a violation of the rules of the game, and a concentration of power in the hands of politicians — especially one politician. The elite doesn’t like this kind of situation. It prefers certainty, provided by a strong judicial system. It is much harder to trust politicians, especially the kind that rule today.

That is how an attempt to defeat the Palestinians, or at the very least threaten them, comes to be seen by many in the Israeli elite as a threat to the democratic game. It is still too early to know what the result will be. Will the right-wing coalition be forced to forgo part of its revolution? Will the elite go to war against the government?

Either way, Netanyahu’s government has created a much bigger opposition than what it was previously used to: not only Palestinians in the occupied territories or inside Israel, not only the Jewish radical left, but also large segments of the elite. In the current darkness, this is, at the very least, a small ray of light.

This article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.

The post The right’s plan to get rid of Israel’s High Court appeared first on +972 Magazine.