India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses an election campaign rally ahead of the Karnataka state assembly elections in Bengaluru, India, May 8, 2018. REUTERS/Abhishek N. Chinnappa
MAY 31, 2018
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India’s opposition Congress party and some regional allies made a surprisingly good showing in slew of by-elections for seats in parliament and state assemblies on Thursday, raising the prospect of a challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In four by-elections for the parliament and 10 for state assemblies, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) only retained one of each, thanks in large to united front put up by opposition parties.
After a series of humiliating defeats, the Congress party, led by Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, and some regional leaders have joined forces to take on Modi.
In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with 220 million people, the BJP lost both its parliament and assembly seats, in a blow to Modi, who campaigned extensively in the state.
A BJP spokesman, G.V.L. Narasimha Rao, played down any threat to Modi, telling Reuters the opposition had tried to divide voters on caste lines.
“In the next general election, however, positive governance will play a dominant role and help Prime Minister Narendra Modi win a big mandate as the BJP is the nation’s choice for positive politics and governance,” Rao said.
Modi came to office in 2014 with the biggest election mandate in three decades, and has gone on to win a series of state elections since then
FILE PHOTO: Rahul Gandhi, President of India's main opposition Congress party, addresses his supporters during a rally described as Jan Aakrosh or public anger at Ramlila ground in New Delhi, India, April 29, 2018. REUTERS/Altaf Hussain/File Photo
Stung by Modi’s electoral juggernaut, opposition parties have recently banded together in the hopes of mounting a serious challenge to the BJP in the next general election, due by May next year.
Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj and Suhail Hassan Bhat; Editing by Robert Birsel
White Americans are increasingly critical of the country’s social safety net, a new study suggests, thanks in part to a rising tide of racial resentment.
The study, conducted by researchers at two California universities and published Wednesday in the journal Social Forces, finds that opposition to welfare programs has grown among white Americans since 2008, even when controlling for political views and socioeconomic status.
White Americans are more likely to favor welfare cuts when they believe that their status is threatened and that minorities are the main beneficiaries of safety net programs, the study says.
The findings suggest that political efforts to cut welfare programs are driven less by conservative principles than by racial anxiety, the authors conclude. T hat also hurts white Americans who make up the largest share of Medicaid and food-stamp recipients. President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans have proposed deep cuts to both programs.
“I think our research is very relevant to politics,” said Rachel Wetts, a doctoral candidate in sociology at UC Berkeley and the lead author of the new research. “My main hope here is that people take a step back, look at what these sorts of programs do for the poor, and think about what’s driving opposition to them.”
The demographics of welfare recipients in three federal programs. (Sources: Department of Agriculture, Department of Health and Human Services, Kaiser Family Foundation)
Wetts and her co-author, Stanford University sociologist Robb Willer, conducted three separate experiments designed to gauge white Americans’ attitudes toward welfare and the factors that influenced them.
In the first, the researchers analyzed 10 years of nationally representative survey data on attitudes toward race and welfare programs. Between 2008 and 2012 in particular, they found, opposition to welfare rose among all Americans -- but far more sharply among whites, who also began scoring higher on racial resentment scales during that period.
These trends weren’t necessarily linked, however. So to determine if there was a connection, Wetts and Willer designed two more experiments: one in which they quizzed respondents on their feelings about welfare after seeing a graph about U.S. demographic change, and another in which respondents took a similar quiz after viewing information on average income by race and the demographics of welfare beneficiaries.
The Trump administration is calling Medicaid work requirements a positive "incentive" for beneficiaries, but critics say they're a harmful double standard.(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
White Americans called for deeper cuts to welfare programs after viewing charts that showed they would become a racial minority within 50 years. They also opposed welfare programs more when they were told that people of color benefit most from them.
Those results show that the push to cut welfare programs is not driven by pure political motives, such as decreasing government spending or shrinking government bureaucracy, Wetts said.
“We find evidence that these shifts [in sentiment against welfare programs] are specifically directed at programs people see as benefiting minorities instead of whites,” she added.
Wetts isn’t ruling out the possibility that alternate factors could also be at play, of course. Some researchers have found that people embrace more conservative politics during periods of rapid social change -- not necessarily because they fear their racial status is threatened, but because they fear change is happening too fast. Others have argued the connection between white Americans’ racial resentment and their politics has been exaggerated.
But there's a growing body of evidence to suggest that white Americans who fear a loss of racial status are driving major shifts in policy and politics. A major study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in April concluded that President Donald Trump was voted into office by people anxious about rising racial diversity and globalization.
Researchers have also shown that white Americans' racial prejudice affects their views on everything from healthcare policy to the death penalty to dogs. On the same day Wetts' paper published, a separate study in the journal Environmental Politics found that people with high levels of "racial resentment" are more likely to believe that the scientific consensus on climate change is false.
"[White] racial resentment has become much more highly correlated with particular political attitudes, behaviors and orientations," political scientists Adam M. Enders and Jamil S. Scott wrote in a January analysis for the Post's Monkey Cage blog. "More and more, white Americans use their racial attitudes to help them decide their positions on political questions such as whom to vote for or what stance to take on important issues including welfare and health care."
When it comes to welfare, those stances will become important in coming months, Wetts noted.
Budget Director Mick Mulvaney described Trump's replacement for the food stamp program as a "Blue Apron-type program." What will the boxes actually look like?(Jhaan Elker, Patrick Martin/The Washington Post)
The Trump administration has begun allowing states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, and has proposed tripling the rentsfor the poorest households receiving federal housing assistance. The House is also scheduled to vote again next month on a plan to cut $9 billion from food-stamp benefits over 10 years and require most adults to hold a job to receive payments.
A minority of Democrats and Republicans say they support cuts to poverty spending, according to a 2017 poll by the Pew Research Center. Figures from the federal government and the Kaiser Family Foundation show that white Americans make up 36 percent of food-stamp recipients, 43 percent of Medicaid recipients and 28 percent of recipients for cash welfare.
When I present Channel 4 News, in-depth analysis and great journalism come together to explain the events of the day. But this new podcast wants to help you go much deeper and discuss answers, not just problems.
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If we are in the process of annihilating Earth’s biosphere, which will precipitate human extinction in the near term, why aren’t we paying much more attention to the origin of this fundamental conflict? And then developing a precisely focused strategy for transcending it?
by Robert J. Burrowes-
( May 30, 2018, Victoria, Sri Lanka Guardian) In a recent article titled ‘Challenges for Resolving Complex Conflicts’, I pointed out that existing conflict theory pays little attention to the extinction-causing conflict being ongoingly generated by human over-consumption in the finite planetary biosphere (and, among other outcomes, currently resulting in 200 species extinctions daily). I also mentioned that this conflict is sometimes inadequately identified as a conflict caused by capitalism’s drive for unending economic growth in a finite environment.
I would like to explain the psychological origin of this biosphere-annihilating conflict and how this origin has nurtured the incredibly destructive aspects of capitalism (and socialism, for that matter) from the beginning. I would also like to explain what we can do about it.
Before I do, however, let me briefly illustrate why this particular conflict configuration is so important by offering you a taste of the most recent research evidence in relation to the climate catastrophe and biosphere annihilation and why the time to resolve this conflict is rapidly running out (assuming, problematically, that we can avert nuclear war in the meantime).
In an article reporting a recent speech by Professor James G. Anderson of Harvard University, whose research led to the Montreal Protocol in 1987 to mitigate CFC damage to the Ozone Layer, environmental journalist Robert Hunizker summarizes Anderson’s position as follows: ‘the chance of permanent ice remaining in the Arctic after 2022 is zero. Already, 80% is gone. The problem: Without an ice shield to protect frozen methane hydrates in place for millennia, the Arctic turns into a methane nightmare.’ See ‘There Is No Time Left’.
But if you think that sounds drastic, other recent research has drawn attention to the fact that the ‘alarming loss of insects will likely take down humanity before global warming hits maximum velocity…. The worldwide loss of insects is simply staggering with some reports of 75% up to 90%, happening much faster than the paleoclimate record rate of the past five major extinction events’. Without insects ‘burrowing, forming new soil, aerating soil, pollinating food crops…’ and providing food for many bird species, the biosphere simply collapses. See ‘Insect Decimation Upstages Global Warming’.
So, if we are in the process of annihilating Earth’s biosphere, which will precipitate human extinction in the near term, why aren’t we paying much more attention to the origin of this fundamental conflict? And then developing a precisely focused strategy for transcending it?
The answer to these two questions is simply this: the origin of this conflict is particularly unpalatable and, from my careful observation, most people, including conflict theorists, aren’t anxious to focus on it.
So why are human beings over-consuming in the finite planetary biosphere? Or more accurately, why are human beings who have the opportunity to do so (which doesn’t include those impoverished people living in Africa, Asia, Central/South America or anywhere else) over-consuming in the finite planetary biosphere?
They are doing so because they were terrorized into unconsciously equating consumption with a meaningful life by parents and other adults who had already internalized this same ‘learning’.
Let me explain how this happens.
At the moment of birth, a baby is genetically programmed to feel and express their feelings in response to the stimuli, both internal and external, that the baby registers. For example, as soon after birth as a baby feels hungry, they will signal that need, usually by crying or screaming. An attentive parent (or other suitable adult) will usually respond to this need by feeding the baby and the baby will express their satisfaction with this outcome, perhaps with a facial expression, in a way that most aware parents and adults will have no difficulty identifying. Similarly, if the baby is cold, in pain or experiencing any other stimulus, the baby will express their need, probably by making a loud noise. Given that babies cannot immediately use a cultural language, they use the language that was given to them by evolution: particularly audibly expressed noise of various types that an aware adult will quickly learn to interpret.
Of course, from the initial moments after birth and throughout the next few months, a baby will experience an increasing range of stimuli – including internal stimuli such as the needs for listening, understanding and love, as well as external stimuli ranging from a wet nappy to a diverse set of parental, social, climate and environmental stimuli – and will develop a diverse and expanding range of ways, now including a wider range of emotional expression but eventually starting to include spoken language, of expressing their responses, including satisfaction and enjoyment if appropriate, to these stimuli.
At some vital point, however, and certainly within the child’s first eighteen months, the child’s parents and the other significant adults in the child’s life, will start to routinely and actively interfere with the child’s emotional expression (and thus deny them satisfaction of the unique needs being expressed in each case) in order to compel the child to do as the parent/adult wishes. Of course, this is essential if you want the child to be obedient – a socially compliant slave – rather than to follow their own Self-will.
One of the critically important ways in which this denial of emotional expression occurs seems benign enough: Children who are crying, angry or frightened are scared into not expressing their feelings and offered material items – such as food or a toy – to distract them instead. Unfortunately, the distractive items become addictive drugs. Unable to have their emotional needs met, the child learns to seek relief by acquiring the material substitutes offered by the parent. But as this emotional deprivation endlessly expands because the child has been denied the listening, understanding and love to develop the capacity to listen to, love and understand themself, so too does the ‘need’ for material acquisition endlessly expand.
As an aside, this explains why most violence is overtly directed at gaining control of material, rather than emotional, resources. The material resource becomes a dysfunctional and quite inadequate replacement for satisfaction of the emotional need. And, because the material resource cannot ‘work’ to meet an emotional need, the individual is most likely to keep using direct and/or structural violence to gain control of more material resources in an unconscious and utterly futile attempt to meet unidentified emotional needs. In essence, no amount of money and other assets can replace the love denied a child that would allow them to feel and act on their feelings.
Of course, the individual who consumes more than they need and uses direct violence, or simply takes advantage of structural violence, to do so is never aware of their deeply suppressed emotional needs and of the functional ways of having these needs met. Although, I admit, this is not easy to do given that listening, understanding and love are not readily available from others who have themselves been denied these needs. Consequently, with their emotional needs now unconsciously ‘hidden’ from the individual, they will endlessly project that the needs they want met are, in fact, material.
This is the reason why members of the Rothschild family, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Amancio Ortega, Mark Zuckerberg, Carlos Slim, the Walton family and the Koch brothers, as well as the world’s other billionaires and millionaires, seek material wealth and are willing to do so by taking advantage of structures of exploitation held in place by the US military. They are certainly wealthy in the material sense; unfortunately, they are emotional voids who were never loved and do not know how to love themself or others now.
Tragically, however, this fate is not exclusive to the world’s wealthy even if they illustrate the point most graphically. As indicated above, virtually all people who live in material cultures have suffered this fate and this is readily illustrated by their ongoing excessive consumption – especially their meat-eating, fossil-fueled travel and acquisition of an endless stream of assets – in a planetary biosphere that has long been signaling ‘Enough!’
As an aside, governments that use military violence to gain control of material resources are simply governments composed of many individuals with this dysfunctionality, which is very common in industrialized countries that promote materialism. Thus, cultures that unconsciously allow and encourage this dysfunctional projection (that an emotional need is met by material acquisition) are the most violent both domestically and internationally. This also explains why industrialized (material) countries use military violence to maintain political and economic structures that allow ongoing exploitation of non-industrialized countries in Africa, Asia and Central/South America.
In summary, the individual who has all of their emotional needs met requires only the intellectual and few material resources necessary to maintain this fulfilling life: anything beyond this is not only useless, it is a burden.
For those adults who feel incapable of nisteling or living out such a promise, I encourage you to consider doing the emotional healing necessary by ‘Putting Feelings First’.
If you already feel capable of responding powerfully to this extinction-threatening conflict between human consumption and the Earth’s biosphere, you are welcome to consider joining those who are participating in the fifteen-year strategy to reduce consumption and achieve self-reliance explained in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ and/or to consider using sound nonviolent strategy to conduct your climate or environment campaign. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.
As the material simplicity of Mohandas K. Gandhi demonstrated: Consumption is not life.
If you are not able to emulate Gandhi (at least ‘in spirit’) by living modestly, it is your own emotional dysfunctionality – particularly unconscious fear – that is the problem that needs to be addressed.
Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is flametree@riseup.netand his website is here. http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com
THESE days we can get from most remote villages anywhere to home in 36 hours. And migrating humans can certainly carry microbial “passengers”. This means the increasing globalisation of our world can give infectious diseases a good opportunity to spread.
In the age of exploration, introduced infections played a major role in shaping human history. Although the origins of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic are hotly debated, the timing of its onset in Europe coincided with mass troop movements towards the end of the first world war. It probably came with American troops from Camp Funston in Kansas.
More recently, it’s thought HIV/AIDS emerged early in the 20th century, but only in the 1960s did it spread along transport routes in Africa.
Developed countries, particularly those like Australia that are geographically isolated, often feel relatively protected from epidemics. But travellers have introduced cases of Ebola to the US and Europe, brought SARS from Asia to Canada, and MERS coronavirus from Saudi Arabia to South Korea. Recent studies have highlighted the risk of importation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria from countries where resistance is more common.
The impact of globalisation is much more complex than simply travel, however. A World Health Organisation report nominated several factors that can worsen the spread of infectious diseases. These include changes to the environment, demography, economy and technology.
Environmental impacts on infectious diseases
The impact of humans on the environment can change the risks of infectious diseases in several ways. Climate change can affect the prevalence of disease-transmitting insect vectors (such as mosquitoes, which often thrive in warmer temperatures) and sea surface temperatures, which have been associated with disease outbreaks such as cholera as warmer oceans allow germs to thrive.
The encroachment of humans into animal habitats can result in the exposure of humans to new diseases, known as “zoonoses”. This is thought to be how HIV crossed over from being a disease of primates to infect humans.
Other diseases that have originated from contact with animals and their environments include SARS (from bats via civet cats in southern China), Hendra virus (via bats to humans and horses) and Nipah virus (again bats to humans and pigs).
A municipal worker fumigates a manhole in a street to prevent the spread of dengue fever and other mosquito-borne diseases in Mumbai, India, May 24, 2018. Source: Reuters /Francis Mascarenhas
Population change and infectious diseases
In addition to the increase in population mobility, other diseases can spread as a result of demographic changes. This includes increasing urbanisation. It has resulted in an increase in dengue (as the mosquito vector is most common in cities), but a possible decrease in malaria (partly because of the lack of freshwater breeding sites for the malaria-transmitting mosquito).
And conflict can disrupt public health infrastructure, including clean water, sanitation and immununisation programs. This can result in disease outbreaks among refugees and internally displaced persons. Crowded conditions are also associated with more intense transmission of infections such as tuberculosis.
The economy and infectious diseases
Economic changes have mixed effects on infectious diseases. Increasing national wealth is generally associated with a shift from infectious diseases to non-communicable diseases (such as diabetes and heart disease). This complex phenomenon is known as the “epidemiological transition” where better sanitation and medical care lead to longer life and thus more diseases of ageing and injuries.
Lengthening supply chains of food products can result in international outbreaks, such as hepatitis A related to frozen berries from China.
Some antibiotic resistance is related to antibiotic use in animals. This is often required because of the industrialisation of food production.
“Medical tourists” – travellers from developed countries who take advantage of cheap, high-standard medical care in middle-income countries – may be at risk of antibiotic-resistant infections. This concept was unheard of even 30-40 years ago.
Global supply chains in pharmaceuticals have enabled cheaper access to many drugs, including antibiotics. But this has led to global shortages of some antibiotics. Recent damage to manufacturing facilities in Puerto Rico resulted in drug shortages in the United States.
Poor-quality drugs and poor prescribing practices where drug regulation standards are lax can mean bacteria are exposed to low concentrations of antibiotics. This means some bacteria don’t die and thus learn how to evade the drugs. Additionally, counterfeit pharmaceuticals are sometimes spiked with just sufficient amounts of antibiotics to pass detection assays.
Face masks are a common sight in east Asia during flu season, but some health experts doubt they do much more than provide reassurance to the wearer. Source: Ed Jones/ AFP
Technological change and infectious diseases
Technological change has also had mixed impacts on the prevalence of diseases and how they spread. Although the speed of air travel poses many risks, we now have many better tools for disease surveillance and analysis.
Examples include the monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks by independent organisations such as the International Society for Infectious Diseases, which operates the “rumour desk” website Promed-Mail. And organisations such as the ECDC regularly publish risk assessments of emerging infections.
Improvements in gene analysis and computer hardware allow us to pinpoint the origins of many pathogens, including Ebola, influenza, measles, food-borne infections and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. More importantly, genomic analyses can enable rapid recognition and control of outbreaks.
The potential now exists to augment traditional disease surveillance with new sources. In theory, compliance with quarantine could be verified on social media, or the source of legionella outbreaks could be narrowed using mobile phone geo-locations.
But similar to the debate over surveillance technologies for national security, we need to explore the ethical implications of these new technologies first.
By Allen Cheng, Professor in Infectious Diseases Epidemiology, Monash University. Originally appeared on The Conversation.
Excavation continued at a construction site in Mannar yesterday after human bones were discovered earlier this month.
Bones and teeth were recovered as police, military personnel and a Mannar judge observed.
Excavation work is set to continue this week.
Human bones were discovered at an excavation site on May 17 after work began to erect a new entrance way in the town.
The bones were first discovered within sand that had been excavated from the site and sold on to local residents earlier this year.
One resident who discovered bones he suspected of being human in origin, informed the police on March 26 of the finding. Officers visited his home and excavation work at the site was suspended pending further investigation.
On Tuesday this week, a Mannar judge, police officers and forensic specialists visited the site and embarked on preliminary excavations of the site, revealing many more bones believed to be of human in origin.
Image: TNA leader Sampanthan meeting the visiting US delegation. ( TNA photo)
30/05/2018
In a meeting with the visiting United States House of Representatives Armed Services Committee Delegation , TNA leader R.Sampanthan has “urged the delegation that the role of the International community with regard to Sri Lanka must be defined in relation to the UNHRC recommendations.” He has further said that “the International community must ensure that the promises and the commitments given by the Sri Lankan Government are adhered to and implemented. The International community cannot be a spectator anymore with regard to Sri Lanka, if the government of Sri Lanka continues to fail in their commitments the international community must clearly state their position on their follow up mechanisms to safeguard the victims and ensure the non-recurrence of the past”
Full statement issued by the TNA fellows:
(30.05.2018 /Press Statement)
The visiting United States House of Representatives Armed Services Committee Delegation led by Hon. McClellen Thornberry met with the Leader of the Opposition and the Tamil National Alliance Mr. Sampanthan today in Colombo.
Mr. Sampanthan briefed the delegation on the current political situation in the country and emphasized the importance of both President and Prime Minister Working together in order to find solutions to fundamental issues and taking this country forward. “We are unhappy about the way the country is progressing,” Mr. Sampanthan told the delegation.
Answering a question Mr. Sampanthan said, that “the majority of the people in this country are willing to address the national issue once and for all. What is lacking is that the courage from the Sinhala leaders to go out to the people and explicitly tell them on the need for a new Constitution and the benefits of framing a new Constitution he said. Some Sinhala political leaders are trying to satisfy the hardliners than being just and equal to all people in this country, they cannot go on this path forever, it will only end up in history being repeated Mr. Sampanthan said.
Further Speaking Mr. Sampanthan said, “Especially the President and the Prime Minister must go to the Sinhala people and genuinely explain the need for a new Constitution. Since 1988 every successive government and President have made several attempts to change the present Constitution, therefore, this should not be a difficult task for the majority of Sinhala people to understand” he said.
We want a solution within a united undivided and indivisible country Mr. Sampanthan said. The power-sharing arrangements should be in accordance with the international covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Mr. Sampanthan told the delegation.
Expressing his concerns on the stalled process of drafting a new Constitution Mr. Sampanthan said that a New Constitution would pave the way to solve many issues that this country has faced including the heavy debt and economic prosperity, and therefore this effort cannot be abandoned he said”.
Explaining further Mr. Sampanthan said that the legitimate demands of the Tamil people in finding a lasting solution to the national question could only be addressed through adopting a new Constitution. Mr. Sampanthan highlighted that his party is confident that if the Constitution is passed in Parliament with a two-thirds majority it will be approved by the people at a referendum, which is necessary for a new Constitution he said.
We may have to rethink and our people will be forced to rethink our position if things do not go well and if things are not achieved within a certain timeframe Mr. Sampanthan cautioned.
Mr. Sampanthan reminded the delegation that the Government of Sri Lanka has given a Commitment to fully implement the UNHRC resolution adopted in 2015 before March 2019. They must fast-track their process to achieve those commitments.
Mr. Sampanthan urged the delegation that the role of the International community with regard to Sri Lanka must be defined in relation to the UNHRC recommendations. The International community must ensure that the promises and the commitments given by the Sri Lankan Government are adhered to and implemented. The International community cannot be a spectator anymore with regard to Sri Lanka, if the government of Sri Lanka continues to fail in their commitments the international community must clearly state their position on their follow up mechanisms to safeguard the victims and ensure the non-recurrence of the past Mr. Sampanthan said.
Along with Hon. McClellen Thornberry the congress members, Mr. Enrigue Cullar, Ms. Vicky Hartzler, Ms. Carol Shea – Porter and the United States Ambassador to Sri Lanka His Excellency Atul Keshap was also present at the meeting which lasted for 45 minutes.
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Mr. Sampanthan reminded the delegation that the Government of Sri Lanka has given a Commitment to fully implement the UNHRC resolution adopted in 2015 before March 2019. They must fast-track their process to achieve those commitments.