Peace for the World

Peace for the World
First democratic leader of Justice the Godfather of the Sri Lankan Tamil Struggle: Honourable Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Palestinian teenager shot dead by Israeli soldiers in West Bank


Laith Abu Naim was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers in village of Al-Mugheer

Laith Abu Naim was killed in the village of Al-Mugheer, north of Ramallah (Screengrab)


Tuesday 30 January 2018 -
Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian teenager on Tuesday in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health ministry said. 
Laith Abu Naim, 16, was shot in the head as soldiers stormed the village of Al-Mugheer, north of Ramallah, according to a ministry statement. 
Hundreds of residents marched through Al-Mugheer condemning Abu Naim's death and chanting, "We want to live in freedom."
A spokeswoman for the Israeli military said, "Violent riots are taking place in this area and burning tyres and stones were thrown at the soldiers."
She said she was unable to confirm that any Palestinians had been hit by gunfire.
Abu Naim's death comes amid growing tensions after US President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of  Israel.
Nineteen Palestinians had been killed since Trump's announcement, with the majority of the deaths taking place during demonstrations by Palestinians.
US Vice President Mike Pence confirmed earlier in January that the United States will move its embassy to Jerusalem before the end of 2019. 
The announcement came during an address to the Israeli parliament, which saw Palestinian-Israeli MPs escorted out of the Knesset, after protesting Pence's visit to Jerusale

✔@qudsn
مسيرة في بلدة المغير شرق رام الله قبل قليل عقب استشهاد الفتى ليث أبو نعيم.
1:18 PM - Jan 30, 2018
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"In the weeks ahead, our administration will advance its plan to open the United States embassy in Jerusalem – and that United States embassy will open before the end of next year," Pence said.
"Jerusalem is Israel’s capital – and, as such, President Trump has directed the State Department to immediately begin preparations to move the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem."
Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, denounced Pence's speech as "messianic" and a "gift to extremists".
Jordan's King Abdullah also renewed concerns over the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, during high-level talks with Pence on Sunday.
Abdullah emphasised to Pence that East Jerusalem had to be the capital of a future Palestinian state and that the two-state solution was the only path to peace between Israel and Palestine.
"The US decision on Jerusalem ... does not come as a result of a comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict," the monarch told Pence at the start of the talks in the royal palace in Amman.
Israel occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, during the 1967 war. Pence was in Amman on the second leg of a three-country tour that concluded in Israel.
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Tamara Nassar-29 January 2018

Israel has sentenced two of the youngest Palestinian children in military custody to months in prison.
Abdel Raouf al-Bilawi, 13, from Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, was sentenced to four months for throwing stones at occupation forces, the most common charge leveled against Palestinian children in Israeli military courts, according to prisoners rights group Samidoun.
Al-Bilawi was detained by occupation forces in December and his trial was postponed seven times, until he was sentenced on 22 January. He was also fined $100.
Israeli occupation forces have a policy of deliberately maiming and disabling Palestinian youths who resist their frequent invasions of Dheisheh refugee camp. Many others are arrested.
Al-Bilawi is currently thought to be the youngest Palestinian prisoner held by Israel, according to Shehab News Agency.



وكالة شهاب
✔@ShehabAgency

الاحتلال يؤجل محاكمة الأسير الطفل عبد الرؤوف نور البلعاوي من مخيم الدهيشة قضاء بيت لحم، حتى الـ 22 من الشهر الجاري.
يذكر أن الطفل علقم يعتبر أصغر أسير فلسطيني يقبع داخل سجون .
2:28 PM - Jan 8, 2018
In this video, his mother says that Israel does not see her son as a child and treats him like a grown man.

Pal.Info.Center
✔@PalinfoAr
.. الطفل عبدالرؤوف البلعاوي من مخيم الدهيشة في بيت لحم، أصغر أسير في معتقلات الاحتلال .. ماذا قالت عائلته؟
2:13 AM - Jan 9, 2018
“They are not at all taking into consideration that he’s a child.”
Al-Bilawi was interrogated for hours, shackled and verbally abused until he confessed under pressure, his family told local media.
His older brother Ala al-Bilawi has been jailed by Israel for the last six months.

Kangaroo courts

“Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes an estimated 500 to 700 children each year in military courts lacking fundamental fair trial rights,” according to Defense for Children International-Palestine.
Israel’s military kangaroo courts have a near-100 percent conviction rate for Palestinians.
There are currently about 350 Palestinian children in Israeli jails.

Youngest female prisoner

Razan Abu Sal, 13, was also sentenced on 16 January to four months in prison and a fine of approximately $700, also allegedly for throwing stones.
Razan, from al-Arroub refugee camp in Hebron, is the youngest Palestinian female prisoner held by Israel.
She was arrested with her sister Roa on 13 January in Hebron. Her sister’s case was delayed by the military court.
Palestinian teenager Muhammad Bilal Tamimi was brought before the Israeli military court on 28 January, but no decision was made to release him from detention, which is in its third week.
His mother, Manal Tamimi, wrote about Muhammad’s condition in a Facebook post. This was the first time his parents were able to see him since he was arrested.
“[He] looks very tired, his face turned to yellow and he lost around seven kilos or more,” she wrote. “He didn’t have enough food or sleep during the past 17 days and he went through so many interrogation sessions days and nights.”
Muhammad, 19, was taken prisoner during a night raid on the village of Nabi Saleh on 11 January.
He is a relative of Palestinian child prisoner Ahed Tamimi.

Seized while getting pizza

Abdul Khalik Burnat, 17, from the Palestinian village of Bilin, was also brought before the Ofer military court on 28 January after some 50 days in prison.
His father Iyad Burnat called it “a long day of deliberate humiliations and insults.”
Writing on Facebook, Iyad described: “A court filled with soldiers wearing military uniforms and a child in a cage, his feet in chains, wearing a brown uniform and a broad smile. A smile that says, I am strong!”
Like with so many other children, occupation forces accuse Abdul Khalik of throwing stones at the army or its fortifications.
His father Iyad is a prominent advocate of unarmed resistance in Bilin, who featured in the award-winning documentary 5 Broken Cameras.
Abdul Khalik was “kidnapped, beaten and detained on the night of 10 December while getting pizza along with his friends Hamzah Al-Khatib and Malik Rahdi,” according to Samidoun.
A year ago, Abdul Khalik was shot in the head with a rubber-coated bullet. Israeli forces also previously detained him in a night raid in March 2017, while he was under treatment for his injuries, Samidoun added.
Abdul Khalik’s next hearing was scheduled for 11 February.

Medical neglect

On 25 January, Israel’s high court denied the appeal of a woman with severe burns.
Israa Jaabis, 32, appealed her 11-year sentence citing her “inability to perform essential functions behind bars and the lack of adequate medical treatment provided to her,” according to Samidoun.
Sixty percent of her body is covered in burns and she has lost eight fingers. Jaabis needs multiple surgeries, suffers intense pain and cannot care for herself.
Jaabis, from occupied East Jerusalem, sustained severe burns and other injuries after a cooking gas canister she was transporting caused a fire in her car in October 2015. She was then accused of attempting to detonate the car when she was hundreds of meters from an Israeli checkpoint.
“The situation was treated as a ‘terror attack’ rather than a medical emergency by the occupation forces on the scene,” Samidoun said.
Her family says Jaabis was moving to a new apartment in East Jerusalem and had been transferring furniture for days, including the gas canister when it exploded.
Jaabis had reportedly been told that she would lose her Jerusalem residency if she did not move back to the city.
She is one of 34 Palestinian women, including eight girls, currently being held in HaSharon prison, and one of almost 60 Palestinian women held by Israel.

Death from cancer

Palestinian prisoner Hussein Husni Atallah, 57, died of cancer on 20 January, after spending more than 20 years behind Israeli bars.
Atallah’s son, Muhammad, told the Ma’an News Agency that the family learned of his death from the Red Cross after a severe deterioration in his health.
An Israel court denied repeated requests from his lawyers to release him, despite medical reports from the Red Cross and the prison doctor attesting to the severity of his illness.
After losing consciousness, Atallah was reportedly transferred from Ramle prison to Israel’s Asaf Harofeh hospital.
The Palestinian Authority’s prisoners commission and the Palestinian Prisoners Club condemned Israel’s refusal to allow Atallah to spend his final days with his family.
Meanwhile, Ayoub al-Asa, 33, from the West Bank city of Bethlehem, has been on hunger strike for approximately 20 days.
Israel transferred him from solitary confinement in Ofer prison to solitary confinement in the Naqab prison on 27 January in retaliation for his fast.
Al-Asa is protesting the extension of his detention without charge or trial since he was arrested in June 2017.
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Rocky Syria talks end in Russia, ignore key opposition demands



Kinda Makieh, Maria Tsvetkova-JANUARY 30, 2018

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - A Syrian peace conference in Russia ended on Tuesday with a statement calling for democratic elections but ignoring key opposition demands after a day marred by squabbles and heckling of the Russian foreign minister.

The participants also agreed to set up a committee to rewrite the Syrian constitution at the conference, which much of the opposition said aimed to serve the interests of President Bashar al-Assad and his close ally, Moscow.

A final statement said Syrians must decide their future through elections, but did not say whether Syrian refugees would be allowed to take part, something sought by Assad’s opponents and Western states. Syrians had the “exclusive right” to pick their political system free of foreign intervention, it added.

It also urged the preservation of security forces without calling for their reform, something the opposition has demanded.

“This conference is tailor-made for Assad and his terrorist regime,” said Mustafa Sejari, a senior official in a Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel group that operates in northern Syria.

“The Sochi statement does not concern us and is not even a subject of discussion.”

Russia hosted what it called a Syrian Congress of National Dialogue in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

 After helping turn the tide of the war in Syria in Assad’s favour, Moscow has cast itself as a Middle East peace broker.
 
However, the event was boycotted by the leadership of the Syrian opposition, while powers such as the United States, Britain and France stayed away because of what they said was the Syrian government’s refusal to properly engage.

Western countries support a separate U.N.-mediated peace process, which has so far failed to yield progress towards ending a war that is entering its eighth year. The latest round of those talks took place in Vienna last week.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov helped open the conference on Tuesday by reading out a statement from President Vladimir Putin saying the conditions were ripe for Syria to turn “a tragic page” in its history.

But some delegates stood up and began heckling him, accusing Moscow of killing civilians in Syria with its air strikes.

Participants attend a session of the Syrian Congress of National Dialogue in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia January 30, 2018. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

The incident was broadcast on Russian state TV where two security guards were shown approaching one man in the audience indicating that he should sit down.

Other delegates shouted out their support for Russia.

FLAG ROW

In a further setback, one group of delegates, which included members of the armed opposition who had flown in from Turkey, refused to leave Sochi airport until Syrian government flags and emblems - which they said were offensive - had been removed.



Ahmed Tomah, the head of the delegation, said his group had boycotted the congress and would fly back to Turkey because of the flag row and what he called broken promises to end the bombardment of civilians.

Slideshow (3 Images

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is seen on an electronic screen during a session of the Syrian Congress of National Dialogue in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Tuesday, a gathering that had a few setbacks.“We were surprised that none of the promises that were given had been kept, the ferocious bombing of civilians had not stopped. Nor were the flags and banners of the regime removed,” he said in a video recorded at the airport.

Artyom Kozhin, a senior diplomat at the Russian Foreign Ministry, acknowledged there had been some complications.

“Some problems have arisen with a group of the armed opposition that has come from Turkey which has made its participation dependent on additional demands,” Kozhin wrote on social media.

Lavrov had spoken by phone twice to his Turkish counterpart and been told that the problem would be resolved, said Kozhin.

Turkish and Iranian government delegations attended the congress, as did U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura who said the talks had been difficult.

Vitaly Naumkin, a Russian expert on the Middle East who serves as an adviser to de Mistura, told reporters the problems encountered by organisers had not tarnished the event.

“Nothing awful happened,” said Naumkin. “Nobody is fighting anyone else. Nobody is killing anyone. These were standard working moments.”

Additional reporting by Tom Perry and Dahlia Nehme in Beirut, Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Tom Miles in Geneva, and Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Peter Graff and Gareth Jones
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Germany’s Left Is Committing Suicide by Identity Politics

Social democrats have committed to a partnership with Angela Merkel that exposes their greatest vulnerability.

Martin Schulz, head of the German Social Democrats (SPD), at the SPD federal congress on January 21, 2018 in Bonn, Germany. (Lukas Schulze/Getty Images) 

No automatic alt text available.
BY -
JANUARY 23, 2018, 1:41 PM On Sunday, the delegates of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) completed a massive U-turn by voting in favor of officially opening negotiations with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc to form a government. The deal isn’t set in stone; SPD members would still have to approve the final terms of the coalition contract in a referendum likely to be held in late February. But if they do agree to form another grand coalition — astoundingly, the country’s third partnership among its major parties since 2005 — it could mark another step toward the SPD becoming less popular than the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD). The SPD is already under 20 percentin the polls — a historic low — with trends moving in the wrong direction.

Matthew Karnitschnig of Politico Europe drew a fitting analogy to U.S. politics: The next grand coalition will be like Germany’s Hillary Clinton — an encapsulation of mainstream politics whose grasp on power is both inevitable and brittle. German elites are already facing familiar criticisms — above all, that they’re insulated from criticism and have lost touch with voters’ concerns. But it’s clear by now the SPD suffers significantly more from its association with the conservatives than the other way around. And that’s because of German politics’ recent emphasis on issues that structurally disadvantage the German left — immigration and identity politics.

The SPD’s political hopes have always hinged on two conditions, both of which are hindered by a coalition with Merkel. First, the party needs to persuade voters that it is a real alternative to the conservatives; the reasons why a grand coalition undermines this goal should be obvious. But the SPD also needs its economic bread-and-butter themes — social justice and welfare — to be foremost in voters’ minds.

The latter condition has not been fulfilled in part because Germany is in the midst of a decade-long economic boom, with corresponding tax revenues: The SPD can’t get electoral traction for its calls for public investments because all its competitors agree that some portion of government surpluses should be spent. But Merkel’s decision to keep borders open for refugees in the fall of 2015 has also made life difficult for the SPD. As her coalition partner, the center-left party was obliged to defend that decision — and proved keen to do so — even as it exposed the party’s greatest vulnerabilities.
The refugee decision alienated not just conservative voters who comprised Merkel’s base but also the blue-collar workers who made up a significant portion of the SPD’s.
The refugee decision alienated not just conservative voters who comprised Merkel’s base but also the blue-collar workers who made up a significant portion of the SPD’s.
 But in the resulting political climate, which has been dominated by identity politics, the conservatives had two structural advantages: First, their traditional values and policies on cultural issues (law and order, restrictive immigration) are both firmly anchored and significantly more popular with the average German than any alternatives (save the far-right AfD); and second, even as the CDU/CSU lost more voters last year compared with the previous election than the Social Democrats — the CDU/CSU lost a quarter of its parliamentary seats in the 2017 election — its baseline party support was much higher than the SPD’s to start with.

The SPD, in contrast, was already polling well behind the CDU/CSU when the refugee issue surfaced in 2015. And then these questions about immigration exposed a deep fissure in the party’s base, which is divided almost evenly between blue-collar workers and leftist progressives — proponents of conservative and liberal identity politics, respectively. It’s impossible for the party to signal fidelity to either without risking the loyalty of the other. And in either case the SPD has political competition to whom it can lose its voters: Progressives have the Greens and the far-left Die Linke, and the working class could vote for Merkel’s conservatives (whose economic policies were scarcely distinguishable from the SPD’s in recent years) or even the AfD, which explicitly targeted blue-collar workers.

An elegant solution for this dilemma would be to find a way of decreasing the salience of identity politics and focus on economics and welfare state reforms instead. This is exactly what defined the political climate the last two times social democracy ran Germany: during the first postwar recession and the first oil shock under Helmut Schmidt from 1974 to 1982; and during the early 2000s, when Germany was considered the sick man of Europe and Gerhard Schröder pushed through highly contentious reforms of the German welfare state.

However, the current successes of the German economy render this strategy rather difficult. This might explain why, after the election, former SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel published an article in Der Spiegel with the seeming intention of confronting, rather than avoiding, the party’s identity politics dilemma. He recommended that it focus more on conservative voters’ cultural concerns, placing a greater emphasis on “German identity” and the idea of “homeland” when talking about immigration and the European Union. Using the terms coined by British author David Goodhart, Gabriel argued on behalf of ensuring that “Somewheres” (voters bound to local traditions and economic structures) stay with the party, rather than attending to “Anywheres” (the highly mobile class whose life and work are not bound to one place), who are avowedly multiculturalist and in favor of deeper European integration.

Gabriel succeeded in triggering a vivid debate. Prominent SPD politicians at the federal level, who affiliate with the political values of the Anywheres, opposed his recommendations to focus more staunchly on the Somewheres. What’s less clear is whether the SPD’s voters and their politicians on the local level share this clear positioning in favor of the Anywheres. Either way, the fierce reaction to Gabriel’s article has mostly served to embody the problem of the party’s cleavages rather than resolve it.

But the broader point is that it should come as no surprise that this cleavage flared up with the talks over the immigration policies of a renewed grand coalition: Most SPD mayors and politicians with responsibility in government were fine with restricting family reunification for asylum-seekers as demanded by the CDU/CSU. The draft for a renewed grand coalition agreement was thus written in this vein. But at Sunday’s conference, the party’s functionaries were calling for a more hospitable refugee policy and passionately demanded renegotiations with the conservatives.
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Trump upstages his State of the Union address with a meltdown over the Justice Department


Opinion | What if the American public, not President Trump, defined the State of the Union address?(Adriana Usero, Danielle Kunitz/The Washington Post)

 

We’re not much further along than we were Monday in piecing together the explanation for former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe’s abrupt departure. Reports are disturbing insofar as they paint a picture of a vengeful president who is out of control and of a chief of staff, John F. Kelly, helping President Trump to muscle McCabe out of his post. Bloomberg reports:
Trump erupted in anger while traveling to Davos after learning that Associate Attorney General Stephen Boyd warned that it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to release a classified memo written by House Republican staffers. The memo outlines alleged misdeeds at the FBI and Justice Department related to the Russia investigation. 
For Trump, the letter was yet another example of the Justice Department undermining him and stymieing Republican efforts to expose what the president sees as the politically motivated agenda behind Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
Trump’s outburst capped a week where Trump and senior White House officials personally reproached Attorney General Jeff Sessions and asked White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to speak to others — episodes that illustrate Trump’s preoccupation with the Justice Department, according to two of the people.
Once again, we see evidence that Trump believes the Justice Department should be working for him and allowing House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes’s spurious memo to be released (because Trump thinks it helps him). Trump sees nothing wrong with strong-arming those involved in an investigation of him out the door. He blows up when the DOJ acts on national security grounds and when it complicates a campaign to smear the FBI.
Opinion | If President Trump fires the bane of his legal troubles, he could spark a legal and constitutional crisis. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

Former Justice spokesman Matt Miller observes that “even beyond the criminal question, which we spend a lot of time on for good reason. . . .the idea of the White House trying to intervene in matters involving an investigation into the president is beyond unacceptable.” The White House spokeswoman’s denial that Trump had any role to play in McCabe’s departure is laughable, and once again raises the question as to why the White House continues to mislead and coverup its actions if it believes the president is behaving properly.

What is also apparent is that far from a moderating influence, Kelly is a foot soldier in Trump’s effort to intimidate the FBI. “After Trump’s strong reaction on Air Force One over the Boyd letter, White House officials, including Kelly, sprang into action again, lashing Justice Department officials Thursday over the decision to send the letter,” Bloomberg reports.

There are vivid, telling details providing insight into Trump’s small-minded, vindictive approach to “governing” — if you can call it that. NBC News reportsTrump called McCabe the day after the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey to grouse that Comey was allowed to take a government plane home from Los Angeles:
McCabe told the president he hadn’t been asked to authorize Comey’s flight, but if anyone had asked, he would have approved it, three people familiar with the call recounted to NBC News.
The president was silent for a moment and then turned on McCabe, suggesting he ask his wife how it feels to be a loser — an apparent reference to a failed campaign for state office in Virginia that McCabe’s wife made in 2015. 
McCabe replied, “OK, sir.” Trump then hung up the phone.
The White House denies the report, evidencing some awareness that it portrays Trump as a raving lunatic and petty tyrant. But why after all the lies (Never considered firing Robert S. Mueller? No contacts with Russians by the campaign?) would we believe anything the White House has to say at this point?

As weird as this all is, one wonders if it is per se illegal. Some legal experts think it is not but is evidence of intent to obstruct. Former federal prosecutor and Democratic candidate for Illinois’s attorney general Renato Mariotti contends that “it’s another piece of evidence Mueller can use to prove corrupt intent. It’s not obstruction in and of itself.”

However, if this was all part of an attempt by Trump to intimidate witnesses, discredit his own Justice Department and bring the FBI to heel, then it most certainly is another piece of the obstruction puzzle.

Before the latest news, one legal analyst pointed out that if it is true, as a Foreign Policy report alleged, that Trump launched an organized smear campaign against McCabe; chief of staff and senior counselor to the director of the FBI Jim Rybicki; and former FBI general counsel James A. Baker, then the federal witness tampering statute (18 USC Section 1512) might come into play. That statute makes it illegal to use intimidation, threaten, or corruptly persuade another person, or attempts to do so with intent, among other things, to induce someone to change or withhold testimony or to “hinder, delay, or prevent the communication to a law enforcement officer or judge of the United States of information relating to the commission or possible commission of a Federal offense.”

It will be tough to prove the character assassination plan “rose to the level of a knowing attempt to intimidate, threaten or corruptly persuade the men not to testify in front of Mueller or whether the campaign against them was intended to somehow delay or alter their testimony in a way that would not have occurred but for the campaign itself.” Nevertheless, Section 1512 (c) separately gives Mueller some more running room. That subsection makes it illegal to “corruptly” take action that “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” That generic catch-all could well, if the press accounts prove true, pose one more legal problem for Trump.

In any event, one does get the sense the wheels are coming off the bus at the White House. Trump’s level of panic is rising and his subordinates’ ability to contain him and prevent him from acting on his impulses seems to be diminishing. If not committing new crimes, he’s giving Mueller plenty of evidence of his “corrupt” intent.
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Is Trump’s Tirade Against Media Appropriate ?

People always expected that media by it’s structure and approach should be keeping the national interest in view under any circumstances and it’s observations must be fair , logical and should be in the form that would stand fair scrutiny.

by N.S.Venkataraman-
( January 29, 2018, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Ever since Trump entered politics, he has been critical of media. During the U S Presidential election, his tirade against media almost reached peak level. Now, even after becoming the U S President after his controversial election campaign, he has not tapered down the intensity of his attack on media. The latest tirade against media by Trump has been at Davos, where he was supposed to have gone to speak about America’s economic interests. Obviously, the hatred against media occupies the uppermost level in his mindset.
It is not clear as to who started this “war” between Trump and media, whether it was Trump or media.
While Trump loses no opportunity to express his disapproval of the media in USA, which now almost appears to have become an obsession for him, the US media has behaved no better. Why US media ? Most sections of the media around the world seem to dislike Trump and want him to exit the political scene.
In most cases, the media’s writings and discussions about Trump has been in harsh terms and totally impolite, discourteous and sometimes seem to be an extreme view point.
Even many of those, who are critical of Trump for continuing his campaign against media, do think that media too has severely erred in viewing President Trump and his actions with prejudiced and blurred vision. Media seems to have forgotten that it has to be neutral and unbiased in commenting and interpreting the scenario under any circumstances.
In India too,another democratic country providing almost limitless freedom to the media, section of media appears to be carrying on a motivated campaign against the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and does not see anything good in whatever he has done so far. The media invariably gives prominence to the utterances of critics of Modi and tries to make it look as if it represents the national view ,though some of these critics belong to fringe groups known for their extreme and narrow views. While any government will have some flaws , the fairness requires that good and bad should be highlighted instead of focusing largely on negatives only. In this respect, U S and Indian media seem to have something in common.
In earlier days, it was well known that politicians around the world had generally self centred views and would not hesitate to chalk out schemes to advance their personal interests, sometimes even over the national interests. Politicians never had the best of image as honest crusaders. But, in the past, this has not been the image of the journalists and media personnel.
People always expected that media by it’s structure and approach should be keeping the national interest in view under any circumstances and it’s observations must be fair , logical and should be in the form that would stand fair scrutiny. In other words, the media was considered as the conscience keeper of the nation and voice of the people. One has to now ask whether the media these days meet such expectations. Many people around the world think today that it is no more the media that we know of.
Today, most of the print and visual media are managed by the business houses, who have profit as the priority motive and sometimes are owned by political parties that have set views on any matter. With profit theme becoming the central focus of media houses, it is inevitable that principles as per the journalistic ethos become the first casualty and go for a toss.
It is high time now that both US President Trump and US media should introspect ,keeping the long term view of the nation and stop this mutual bickering immediately. The present tussle between President Trump and US media is not doing credit to either of them.
Particularly, US media should realize that President Trump will cease to be US President after his term and the next incumbent may be more cautious in his utterances. However, media’s reputation ,once it is lost, cannot be retrieved in such quick time and it would be a very long haul for the media to retrieve its credibility and glory.
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