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📙✒📒🌏🦠 India - Duties of state: So, let us start in India. Something people fretting about how to read the US constitution in the backdrop of various seemingly conflicting guarentees might like the concluding paragraph in this article even if it is about the constitution of India and a court judgment referred to was made by court in India. This opinion piece that discusses duties of government that do not vanish just because lack of ability to provide or enforce is missing by Chittarvu Raghu in The Pioneer (05 May 2021) Breach of fundamental duties led to the spread of Corona
The top court has asserted that under Article 47, the State shall regard the improvement of public health as among its primary duties. Here, it seems to have failed us
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has stipulated certain public health and social measures to contain the spread of the Coronavirus after taking into account the levels of COVID-19 transmission. One of the major measures stipulated is to maintain social distancing and avoid congregations.
There is an obligation on the State to adhere to the measures stipulated by the health watchdog which has also played a vital role in eradicating small pox, polio and so on. As the world, particularly India, witnesses an unprecedented health emergency, it is vital to adhere to the COVID-protocols. Historically, the second wave of any pandemic has proven to be more intensive and dangerous than the first one and India is learning this bitter truth the hard way.
The State has an obligation to protect the health of the people. In this context, the State has to regulate all social and religious events which involve congregations so as to prevent the spread of the virus. Apart from the State, every individual has an obligation to regulate his/her conduct and see to it that their behaviour does not result in any adverse impact on society. We Indians have failed in both these aspects.
📙📒📱🌏Spain - Election (Regional Election, National Impact, European trends?) El Pais has a selective presentation of campaign The lady who helped get Marcelo to his Real Madrid game, and other anecdotes from the Madrid election
Feminist group Femen staged a topless protest when the far-right Vox party candidate, Rocío Monasterio, went to cast her ballot. There were doubts, meanwhile, about the color of the Popular Party’s voting slips
While you are there, you might as well check out election results where right wing party improved their share, Popular Party takes victory in bitterly fought Madrid regional election
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who until a few years ago was pretty much unknown on the Spanish political scene, today consolidated her position as a genuine political phenomenon. The conservative Popular Party’s candidate was the big winner at Tuesday’s Madrid election, having managed to secure more seats in the regional assembly than the three leftist parties combined. With 99% of votes counted, Ayuso had taken 65 seats, just four short of the absolute majority of 69. Combined with the 13 seats of far-right Vox, the two parties secured 77 deputies in total compared to the 59 of the leftist bloc: 25 for the Socialist Party (PSOE), 24 for Más Madrid and 10 for Unidas Podemos. At the last regional elections, in 2019, the difference between right and left was just four seats. Now that number is 18. Madrid has shifted even further to the right.
BBC has a simpler explainer for those looking from outside Madrid election: Isabel Díaz Ayuso defeats left in bitter Spanish vote
📙✒📒❓Myanmar - Coup / protest / progress: Taking a look at the current status in Myanmar, George McLeod has an opinion/analysis piece at The Diplomat (03 May 2021) Myanmar’s Generals Aren’t Going Anywhere
Even with swelling protests and mounting international pressure, Myanmar’s new military junta isn’t going anywhere. The generals that seized power on February 1 are from the same group that ruled Myanmar between 1962 and 2010 and as the screws tighten, they are re-visiting the system that kept them in power under their prior incarnation, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) junta.
Myanmar’s economy is expected to contract by over 20 percent because of the coup, but Myanmar has been here before. Under the SPDC, Myanmar appeared from the outside crippled by sanctions and wracked by ethnic civil war. Store shelves were often bare and the streets free from cars. For many observers, SPDC Myanmar was a failed state.
But for the generals and the crony business elite, the SPDC days are viewed with nostalgia, and the current regime is re-visiting many of the policies from that era. Under the SPDC, infrastructure development and consumer goods was left to a small elite of crony businessmen. Government contracts for highways, hotels, and the construction of the new capital Naypyidaw were allotted based on relationships and the cronies’ international connections. In conversations with the business elite after the 2011 reforms, many spoke to me nostalgically about the SPDC days when businesses did not have to worry about marketing, business development, and inventory management. Sanctions barred foreign companies from competing with inferior local products, which was fine as far as the cronies were concerned.
📚✒📙📒🌏💫❓ Israel - Palestine, is it apartheid or not?: A look at changing attitudes or at least slightly more open acknowledgement of apartheid in the land between the sea and the river. In Eurasia review (03 May 2021) Binoy Kampmark picks up at the recent HRW report and tracks who else is changes in who is now Quibbling Over Cruelties: Human Rights Watch, Israel And Apartheid – OpEd
Criticism of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians has always induced a defensive rage from its defenders and advocates. A Threshold Crossed, a report by Human Rights Watch, lit several fires of rage and disapproval. Israel, according to the authors, is responsible for apartheid policies.
The word, and the application of its meaning, is immemorially nasty. This deeply though through policy of Afrikaans origin speaks to a hatred not merely of Black Africans but British imperialism and its carefree mixing of multiracial labour. But apartheid has become an expression so singular it resists appropriation, adaptation and application. This is all good from a historian’s point of view, but, taken in its theoretical idea and its application, the Israeli policy towards Palestinians in certain areas (the Occupied Territories, for instance) suggests that the term varies in application.
HRW, however, is a touch loose on distinguishing the policy, highlighting that Israeli “authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity.” It remarks that the Israeli government aims “to ensure that Jewish Israelis maintain domination across Israel and the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories).”
📚✒📙📒🌏 US - China policy: Over at Foreign Policy journal (4 May 2021) Stephen M. Walt has a warning for American foreign policy shapers and US Administration The World Might Want China’s Rules
In his address to Congress last week, U.S. President Joe Biden pulled a page from former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower’s playbook and tied an ambitious set of domestic programs to the need to compete more effectively with China. Just as Eisenhower convinced the country to fund the interstate highway system by invoking national security, Biden portrayed a broadly defined infrastructure program as critical to preserving the United States’ global position. Though this approach is not without risks, it recognizes the United States is in a new era of great-power competition and needs to raise its game.
But what is this competition really about? Despite growing (and to my mind, somewhat exaggerated) concerns about a military clash over Taiwan, neither the United States nor China poses a genuine threat to the other’s sovereignty or independence. The two states are simply too large, too populous, and too far away for each other to contemplate an invasion or even to impose its will on the other decisively. Both China and the United States also have nuclear weapons, which places even stricter limits on either state’s ability to compel the other to do its bidding.
Furthermore, neither country is likely to convert the other to its preferred political ideology. China isn’t about to become a multiparty democracy, and the United States is not going to be a one-party state capitalist regime (though the Republican Party’s current drift toward authoritarianism does make one wonder). Like it or not, these two powerful nations are going to have to coexist with each other for a long, long time.
📚✒📙📒♀️ Venezuela - #YoTeCreoVZLA aka - #MeToo: Over at Global Voices - Written by Melissa Vida, Laura Vidal, Romina Navarro, Gabriela Mesones Rojo Translated by Anthony Sutterman a look at what is happenning in the current iteration, #YoTeCreoVZLA: The movement that breaks the long silence on sexual abuse in Venezuela
In Venezuela, the #MeToo movement is back in the spotlight with more intensity in 2021. A new wave of accusations has given rise to the “YoTeCreoVzla” (“IBelieveYouVenezuela”) movement. The voices of survivors of harassment, abuse, and rape have multiplied on social media in recent days through expressions of support with the hashtags #YoSiTeCreoVzla and #YoTeCreoVzla. Many Venezuelan women agree there had been previous complaints, but they were not given much importance until now, leading to an abrupt awakening.
The wave gained momentum on April 20, 2021, with the creation of the Instagram account @AlejandroSojoEstupro, which compiles allegations of sexual abuse perpetrated by musician Alejandro Sojo. Sojo had already been reported for harassment in 2018 through a Twitter thread from the account “Libertad.” Libertad deleted the thread months later, overwhelmed by the avalanche of messages of mockery, discredit, and hate.
According to Venezuelan news site Cinco8, Sojo published a statement and closed his Instagram account on April 24, and more allegations began to rain down on the Venezuelan art scene. Testimonies appeared against members of other bands, including Okills, Le Cinemá, and Tomates Fritos. Almost immediately, the claims against the Venezuelan rock scene expanded to the entire cultural sphere, involving writers, journalists, visual artists, and others.
📚⌨📙📒📱Argentina - Biden US Plan a Copy of CFK Argentine plan? Over at MercoPress (04 may 2021) news reporting, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) celebrates and touts the superiority of her economic policies for Argentina given that even Biden in US has duplicated it. CFK amazed at Biden plan's similarities with Argentina's economic policies
Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) Monday was full of praise for US President's Joseph Biden's message before Congress, citing resounding Keynesian resemblances to her economic policies both in the current term since 2019 and also when she was President between 2007 and 2015.
“Does it sound familiar?” Fernández de Kirchner posted on Twitter. “Life is full of surprises,” she added given Biden's announcements regarding taxation for the wealthiest and the creation of jobs.
“Why did Biden say all this?,” CFK wondered. “The worst pandemic in a century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War,” she went on, adding that unlike in her case against incumbent Mauricio Macri in 2019, “the IMF did not finance (former President Donald) Trump's campaign,” about Macri's free rein borrowing from that body in 2018.
📚📚⌨📙📒🌏China - Intellectual Property: Over at Hong Kong based SCMP(05 May 2021) Matt Ho has been working on a planned series of articles looking at changes to belated realization by China regarding importance of Intellectual Property aand subsequent attempts to rectify the situation by policy and priority changes. Second article of the series is now out. Intellectual property: China’s evolution from ‘norm taker’ to ‘norm setter’
Take civil lawsuits on patent disputes. In 2019, there were 22,722 new cases filed to Chinese courts, while US district courts had 3,280 new patent cases.
Nearly 90 per cent of the 3,176 new intellectual property (IP) lawsuits filed last year to the Supreme People’s Court’s IP court alone were between domestic Chinese parties, underscoring growing awareness of IP at home.
China’s improvements in IP protection – long a cause of complaint from its trade partners and foreign firms operating in the country – have been driven not only by trade negotiators but also by its growing interests in IP and its innovation strategy.
📙⌨✒📒🌏 Uganda - Governance and Journalists: Freshly re-elected for the umpteenth time President Musevini sent out an invite to 42 other heads of states to attend his inauguration that will take place on 12th of May. 21 heads of states have confirmed that they will be attending 21 presidents lined for Museveni inauguration.
Although this Op-Ed/Column in The Daily Monitor (3rd May 2021) by Muniini K. Mulera Mulera is set in context of Uganda and the president complaining that journalists are making the nation look bad, the article is valid globally. This could have been published anywhere. He looks at the relationship between image, rulers, and journalists in Bad rulers, not good journalists, undermine Uganda’s image
Dear Tingasiga;
I write this note on May 3. It is World Press Freedom Day 2021. This is a special one, for we celebrate 30years since the UNESCO Windhoek Declaration for the Development of a Free, Independent and Pluralistic Press.
Most countries, including Uganda, embraced and endorsed this declaration as part of a fundamental agenda for good governance and progress. Like many international declarations, to which Uganda is signatory, this one gathers dust in some forgotten file, its contents regularly mocked by the very rulers whose delegates appended signatures to the agreement.
Press freedom in Uganda continues its residence on the wish list of journalists and true patriots, even as the rulers hammer away at it with a vigour that surpasses that of the “buffoon regimes” they overthrew decades ago. We are told that the proliferation of broadcast, electronic and print media, complete with commentaries like mine, represents a “free press.” This is one of the great deceptions in the land. The blood of journalists and the shrinking bank accounts of media houses that have attempted to exercise true freedom tell a different story.
📚✒ 💻⌨📙📒💡🍷☕️🌏 Antarctica: With the race for more resources and whatever mine of exploitable wealth might be hiding under the ice cap, race is on for treasure. Over at Modern Diplomacy (05 May 2021) Giancarlo Elia Valori asks that all important question, Is Antarctica the new Eldorado? The sixth continent between claims and international law
December 1, 2019 marked the 60th anniversary of the signing in Washington of the Antarctic Treaty, the main legal instrument for managing practical activities and regulating interstate relations in the territory 60°parallel South.
On May 2, 1958, the U.S. State Department sent invitations to the governments of Australia, Argentina, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, Great Britain, New Zealand, Norway, the then South African Union and the USSR for the International Antarctic Conference. It was proposed to convene it in Washington in 1959. The group of participants at the Conference was limited to the countries that had carried out Antarctic projects as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) (July 1957-December 1958).
The Soviet Union supported the idea of convening a Conference. In a letter of reply, the Kremlin stressed that the outcome of the Conference should be the International Treaty on Antarctica with the following basic principles: peaceful use of Antarctica with a total ban on military activities in the region and freedom of scientific research and exchange of information between the Parties to the Treaty.
The Soviet government also proposed expanding the group of participants at the Conference to include all parties interested in the issue.
📚💻❓🌺🌏 China - A very different May the Fourth celebration: While many columns, blogs, snippets, comments, greetings of “may the fourth be with you” were shared, a very different may the fourth celebration was taking place in China. Over at China Daily (05 May 2021) a very bland sounding title with almost banal list of activities in this article hiding a treasure trove of what this day meant May Fourth spirit celebrated
Young people across the nation celebrated National Youth Day on Tuesday through activities to inherit the May Fourth spirit in the new era.
Tuesday marked the 102nd anniversary of the May Fourth Movement in China.
The movement started with huge student protests on May 4, 1919, opposing the government's response to the Treaty of Versailles, which treated China unfairly and undermined the country's sovereignty in the aftermath of World War I. The movement triggered a national campaign to overthrow the old society and promote new ideas, including science, democracy and Marxism.
The May Fourth spirit refers to patriotism, progress, democracy and science, with patriotism at the core. In the new era, Chinese youth are expected to carry on the May Fourth spirit and to strive for national rejuvenation.
In Shanghai, up to 1,000 teenagers gathered on Tuesday morning at the site where the first CPC National Congress was held in 1921 to commemorate the history of the Communist Party of China. After a short lecture on CPC history, a themed relay activity began using four routes, which represented the four phases the Party went through in 100 years.
For those curious over at Wiki May The Fourth Movement
The May Fourth Movement was a Chinese anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement which grew out of student protests in Beijing on 4 May 1919.
In retaliation to the Chinese government's weak response to the Treaty of Versailles, students protested against the government's decision to allow Japan to retain territories in Shandong that had been surrendered by Germany after the Siege of Tsingtao in 1914. The demonstrations sparked nation-wide protests and spurred an upsurge in Chinese nationalism, a shift towards political mobilization, a shift away from cultural activities, a move towards a populist base and a move away from traditional intellectual and political elites.
The May Fourth Movement was an anti-feudal movement in the form of an interweaving of new and old ideas, and was carried out step by step, not overnight. As Wesleyan University professor Vera Schwarcz, said: "At the beginning of the May Fourth Movement, self-styled 'new youths' still saw themselves in terms of a traditional modal".[1] Many radical, political, and social leaders of the next five decades emerged at this time. In a broader sense, the term "May Fourth Movement" is sometimes used to refer to the period during 1915–1921 more often called the "New Culture Movement".
Presentation from the DailyKos archives:
As we see from previous about “may the fourth” entry, dates and associated meanings are different for people. Events a day refers to in language, and media would be different. The heroes and villains might be different. When you hear a mention of 9/11 (or of September 11th) most likely you will immediately think of the the day twin towers in New York were hit by aeroplanes. Although in Chile it will be evoking memories and thoughts of The Day Democracy Was Murdered.
Here from DailyKos archives by Meteor Blades (10 September 2013) on the day before 40th anniversary The other September 11 is 40 years old. Joyce Horman thanks those who sought justice in Chile
Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator and murderer and thief that William F. Buckley and others at National Review considered—just as they did Spain's Francisco Franco—to be a savior of his people, went to his grave without being brought to account for his crimes. There was, for a time, hope that he might. But the Reaper allowed him to escape with hundreds of criminal charges pending against him—everything from scores of human rights violations for the tens of thousands tortured and thousands killed at his orders to embezzlement in the building of his huge personal fortune.
There is not even a grave to desecrate. His body was cremated and the ashes given to a family friend.
Pinochet wasn't the only engineer of the coup of 1973 that overthrew the elected government of socialist Salvador Allende. There was another, still alive, who has managed to escape justice, too, a fellow by the name of Henry Kissinger, who, at this late date, is still asked to provide foreign policy consultations for cash.
Democracy Now has been reviewing the coup and its aftermath this week. Included have been interviews with Peter Kornbluh, director of the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, who has recently updated the book The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. Among the many bits of fall-out, Dan Kennedy wrote a dozen years ago:
Read the whole diary to find out what Dan Kennedy wrote and more of what Meteor Blades wrote, (link again → The other September 11 is 40 years old. Joyce Horman thanks those who sought justice in Chile)
Writing a diary in DailyKos on (12 Sep 2019) Crashing Vor had this to share Terrorist Attack Anniversary Goes Unmarked
This is what passes as my anniversary diary. It’s mostly about other things.
Monday September 11, 2006· 6:44 PM BST
Despite the approaching anniversary of a gruesome attack on American and foreign citizens, local and federal authorities have announced no plans to commemorate the victims. George Bush will lay no wreath at the site of the attack. The great, 24,000-lb. bass note of Cathedral Church's peal will not toll.
One may forgive Mr. Bush. Commemorating a terrorist strike abetted by your own dad has got to be awkward.
Goodness, so many Septembers to remember. . .
First, let us recall September 11, a day of chaos and death in the capital when, for a while, no one knew who was in charge. The year was 1973 and the city was Santiago.
Enjoy The day
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