Brown and black shirts on the march

As a slew of far-right parties anticipate strong gains in the EU’s parliamentary elections, Europe’s centrist parties have been left wondering where it all went wrong.
Brown and black shirts on the march

As a slew of far-right parties anticipate strong gains in the EU’s parliamentary elections, Europe’s centrist parties have been left wondering where it all went wrong.

US Marines rest in the field during the Guadalcanal campaign in November 1942.
Pacific War – US casualties and deaths 1941-1945
There were some 426,000 American casualties: 161,000 dead (including 111,914 in battle and 49,000 non-battle), 248,316 wounded, and 16,358 captured (not counting POWs who died).[162][163] Material losses were 188+ warships including 5 battleships, 11 aircraft carriers, 25 cruisers, 84 destroyers and destroyer escorts, and 63 submarines, plus 21,255 aircraft.
On 7 December 1941, 2,403 non-combatants (2,335 neutral military personnel and 68 civilians) were killed and 1,247 wounded during the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Because the attack happened without a declaration of war or explicit warning, it was judged by the Tokyo Trials to be a war crime.[195][196]
During the Pacific War, Japanese soldiers killed millions of non-combatants, including prisoners of war, from surrounding nations.[197] At least 20 million Chinese died during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).
Not long ago, nationalist movements were advocating a departure from the European Union. Now they are seeking seats in Parliament, promising an insurgency from within.
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.
In Japan for Memorial Day? Does Trump even care or know how many Americans Japan killed from 1941-1945?

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
Reviving Nazi beliefs, tactics and goals.

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

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.
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.

In a “strongly worded” injunction, a federal judge has blocked Mississippi’s “heartbeat bill,” which bans abortions after the six-week mark.
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