The Intercept: Hard Times in Trump Country

Stewart voted for Obama in 2008 and thinks he “wasn’t a horrible president.” She didn’t like Obamacare, but she loved Obama’s relationship with first lady Michelle. “They love each other and you don’t see that much.” She doesn’t remember whether she voted in 2012. [...]

Today, she doesn’t regret her decision, nor does she try to justify it or apologize for it. “It just seemed like the best choice,” she says. “Better than Hillary, that’s what everybody was saying, so that’s what we went with. A lot of my family was just like, put anybody in that office other than that bitch.” [...]

Stewart feels much more strongly about the media than she does about the president. “Every little decision, every little thing that’s done in politics that’s released to the public — it’s made a big deal of,” she says. “Even if he does something good, they portray it in a way to make it seem negative against him. Everybody’s against Trump, it seems like.” [...]

There are few immigrants in Mason County, which is 97 percent white, and Stewart doesn’t know any. She doesn’t care much for Trump’s immigration crackdown. The wall, she says, “reminds me of something I’d do in kindergarten with my blocks. … I’ll just build a wall and you can’t come over here.” [...]

Trump is “not racist,” Stewart says — just a typical “dirtbag dude.” There are few racists in Stewart’s world, but plenty of assholes — and definitely too many “butthurt” politically correct people who whine too much. She wishes the media would stop making everything about race. “They’re what’s dividing people.”  [...]

Stewart mostly blames the poverty rampant around her on people’s “laziness,” even as she’s keenly aware that the odds are stacked against her neighbors. “I think there’s just a lot of lazy ass kids in this generation that they don’t want to work,” she said. “I think they should be made to get a job. If you don’t get a job, you’ll be fined. If there is nothing wrong with you physically from getting a job, I think that there should be some kind of consequences to it.” She seems more willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt.

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Haaretz: A State Is Not a Terror Organization

The fact that the terror organization Israel is fighting is holding the bodies of Israeli soldiers does not allow it to act in a similar manner. Israel – which agonizes over the price it should pay for the return of kidnapped or deceased soldiers and civilians – states that not everything is acceptable or worth it in such exchanges. But just as there is a price Israel is not willing to pay, it must also recognize the moral red lines it must not cross, including the denial of a person’s right to be buried.  [...]

What message are the High Court justices conveying to the government in their ruling? If such a law is enacted, will the court then back it? Would the justices be willing to support this moral wrongdoing as long as it is enshrined in law? The High Court knows full well that the current government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not hesitate when it comes to legislating immoral laws – some of them based on real or ostensible security risks facing the country. This government has championed restricting the scope of the High Court’s decision-making in order to broaden the scope of its own freedoms of action. It doesn’t need court backing to legislate a law that allows it to trade bodies whenever it wishes to do so. Thus, the High Court ruling, which lacks any reference to the morality of future legislation in this matter, grants the government and Knesset the power to circumvent the court on any topic through legislation. 

In any normal country, the constitutional right of the state to confiscate bodies for bargaining purposes would never have reached the courts. A state that is not a terror organization – especially a state that declares it will not negotiate with terrorists – cannot behave like a highwayman. This should be the policy adopted by Israel’s government. It should not rush into legislating wrongful laws, but should strive to find other ways of bringing back kidnapped civilians and the bodies of dead soldiers. On the contrary, Israel must return the bodies in its possession, thus distinguishing itself from the terrorist organizations it is fighting against, and their despicable methods.

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The New York Review of Books: God’s Oppressed Children

India, the world’s largest democracy, also happens to be the world’s most hierarchical society; its most powerful and wealthy citizens, who are overwhelmingly upper-caste, are very far from checking their privilege or understanding the cruel disadvantages of birth among the low castes. Dalits remain largely invisible in popular cinema, sitcoms, television commercials, and soap operas. No major museums commemorate their long suffering. Unlike racism in the United States, which provokes general condemnation, there are no social taboos—as distinct from legal provisions—against hatred or loathing of low-caste Hindus. Many Dalits are still treated as “untouchables,” despite the equal rights granted to them by India’s democratic constitution.

This constitution was drafted in the late 1940s with the help of B.R. Ambedkar, a Dalit leader, whose reputation as a bold and iconoclastic thinker has been eclipsed by the cults of his upper-caste rivals Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohandas Gandhi. The founding principles of India’s democracy that Ambedkar helped enshrine are even more far-reaching than America’s in their guarantee of equal rights and absolute prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth. But high-minded legislation in India is rarely accompanied by a necessary change in hearts and minds. The institution of caste, the social group to which Indians belong by birth, remains the most formidable obstacle to an egalitarian ethos. [...]

This terrible destiny has been justified over time by all kinds of religious and philosophical rationalizations. India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi claims that manual scavengers realized ages ago that it is their “duty to work for the happiness of the entire society and the Gods” and “that this job of cleaning up should continue as an internal spiritual activity for centuries.” Such opinions are encouraged by the fact that the values, beliefs, prejudices, phobias, and taboos of the caste system were deeply internalized by its victims, including Indian Christians and Muslims, whose ancestors tried to escape the stigma of untouchability by renouncing Hinduism: the family of Sujatha Gidla converted to Christianity. [...]

While revealing Nehru, a hero to middle-class and upper-caste Indians, as another tormentor of Indian’s most wretched, Gidla’s book also clarifies why Dalits were not much attracted by the upper-caste paternalism of Gandhi, who narrowed the manifold cruelties of India’s social system to the issue of manual scavenging, claiming that the institution of caste needed to be reformed rather than abolished. Gidla may disconcert more of her readers when she writes that “everything exciting and progressive” in the 1950s and 1960s was “associated with communism.” But this is true not only for India or Dalits, but also for many other postcolonial peoples in Asia and Africa. Much seemingly disparate activity—writing plays and novels, making films, reciting poetry, organizing reading clubs, libraries, labor, and protest movements—was indissolubly linked to the promise of a more extensive liberation than the first generation of anticolonial leaders had achieved.

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Al Jazeera: After a year of elections, Nepal moves closer to China

Presumptive prime minister and UML chieftain Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli began his political career as a Maoist in the early 1970s in Jhapa across the border with India's West Bengal state. Those were the days of slogans like "China's Chairman is Our Chairman and China's Path is Our Path" rending the air in West Bengal. But Oli embraced revisionism early on and by 1990s he had begun to reclaim hyper-nationalist rhetoric. He is known better for his demagoguery than democratic convictions. [...]

Along with Pakistan and Sri Lanka, Nepal rushed to join One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, which aims to invest in infrastructural projects as a part of President Xi's peripheral diplomacy doctrine with China at its centre. The lapsed Maoist duo of Oli and Prachand expects to attract enough Chinese money to build trans-Himalayan railways, hydroelectric projects modelled after the Three Gorges dam and make the entire economy of Nepal look northwards for sustenance. [...]

Over one-third of the Nepalese economy is based on remittances from unskilled and low-skilled labourers sweating out in volatile countries. Sovereign guarantees of an externally dependent economy may not have anything more than geopolitical significance. That is likely to put a spanner in the grandiose plans of the Left Alliance if India decides to protect its traditional sphere of influence. [...]

Unless the Chinese decide to do to Nepal what the Soviets did for Cuba or the Americans for West Germany during the Cold War, Indian ports will continue to be the lifeline of the Nepalese economy. Religious, cultural, linguistic and social affinities between India and Nepal mean that a large number of poor Nepalese look towards India for permanent or seasonal employment. New Delhi is unlikely to loosen its grip in its backyard without some resistance. [...]

The much-vaunted Peace Process that brought Maoists into mainstream politics in 2006 is also far from complete. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission hasn't yet completed its task of bringing perpetrators and victims of the decade-long armed conflict together. The Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons has not been able to ascertain the whereabouts of victims or identify the guilty. Without a sense of closure, wounds of the armed conflict would continue to fester.

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Al Jazeera: Europe far right hails Trump, slams EU, Islam, migrants

Far right leaders promised to build a new Europe without the EU, as they rallied against Islam and praised US President Donald Trump's hardline immigration policy at a meeting in Prague over the weekend. [...]

"We do like diversity but I like the Dutch to be Dutch, the Czechs to be Czech, I like the French to be French and I like the Italians to be Italians."

Wilders, meanwhile, rejected Islam as "totalitarian ideology" and warned that the continent would be overrun by Muslims. [...]

"In the regional sense, the post-communist countries are particularly fragile and have always been, with the arrival with the now perceived danger from foreigners and Muslims," Jan Culik, a lecturer in Czech studies at the University of Glasgow, told Al Jazeera. "They have very little immunity to xenophobia and now the Czech Republic and Poland are among the worst in this regard.

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Politico: The Pentagon’s secret search for UFOs

The “unidentified aerial phenomena” claimed to have been seen by pilots and other military personnel appeared vastly more advanced than those in American or foreign arsenals. In some cases they maneuvered so unusually and so fast that they seemed to defy the laws of physics, according to multiple sources directly involved in or briefed on the effort and a review of unclassified Defense Department and congressional documents. [...]

One possible theory behind the unexplained incidents, according to a former congressional staffer who described the motivations behind the program, was that a foreign power—perhaps the Chinese or the Russians — had developed next-generation technologies that could threaten the United States.  [...]

Reid initiated the program, which ultimately spent more than $20 million, through an earmark after he was persuaded in part by aerospace titan and hotel chain founder Bob Bigelow, a friend and fellow Nevadan who owns Bigelow Aerospace, a space technology company and government contractor. Bigelow, whose company received some of the research contracts, was also a regular contributor to Reid’s re-election campaigns, campaign finance records show, at least $10,000 between 1998 and 2008. Bigelow has spoken openly in recent years about his views that extraterrestrial visitors frequently travel to Earth. He also purchased the Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, the subject of intense interest among believers in UFOs. Reid and Bigelow did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

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Politico: Vestager to investigate IKEA’s taxes

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition boss, is poised to open a formal probe into the tax affairs of IKEA, the world’s largest furniture retailer, according to people familiar with the investigation. [...]

Commission investigators have been looking at royalties paid by a Dutch entity to a Luxembourg subsidiary holding intellectual property during the period between 2006 and 2010. They have also been examining the acquisition of that intellectual property by a Dutch IKEA entity, financed by an internal group loan from Lichtenstein, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiry.

In February 2016, Green MEPs published a report that found IKEA companies had avoided €1 billion in taxes across Europe over the prior six years. IKEA did so, the report claimed, through an aggressive franchising structure, the payment of business charges to Lichtenstein and a sweetheart tax ruling in the Netherlands. [...]

IKEA, which turned over some €35 billion in 2016, would be a prominent European scalp for Vestager, who has been dogged by accusations she is “disproportionately” targeting U.S. companies.

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Haaretz: How Mike Pence's Mideast Trip to Help Embattled Christians Evolved Into a Visit Devoid of Christians

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to the Middle East this week was envisioned as a show of solidarity with Christian communities in the region suffering from persecution. Yet now, the vice president will not be meeting any Christians during his three-day visit to Egypt and Israel.  [...]

Pence, a proud evangelical Christian, will pay a private visit to one of Judaism’s holiest sites, Jerusalem’s Western Wall, as soon as he lands in Israel on Wednesday. But he has no plans to visit any churches in the country or any other sites of significance for Christianity. Nor will he be meeting with leaders of the various Christian communities in Israel. [...]

The turning point was obviously U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and announcement that the U.S. Embassy would move there. Pence, who is closely aligned with the religious right, is regarded as a driving force behind the move, though Secretary of State Rex Tillerson later said such a move is unlikely to take place during Trump’s current term in office. [...]

Asked to expound on the trip’s purpose, Pence begins by speaking about America’s great love for Israel, followed by its determination to bring peace to the region. Only at the end of his remarks does he mention a desire to help embattled Christians. 

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Quartz: The world has a brand-new language, and it’s a win for nationalists

Since Serbia and Montenegro split into two countries in 2007, Montenegro has been pushing for recognition of Montenegrin as its own language. In 2011, Montenegro tried to differentiate itself by adding two extra letters to the Serbian alphabet. The National Library of Montenegro lobbied for nine years to be included in the list of ISO codes, which are used to identify languages in computing, archiving, databases, and more, before being accepted last week.

Yet according to the latest census, more people in Montenegro speak Serbian than Montenegrin. And anyway, the two language are barely different. They are mutually intelligible. And the overwhelming consensus among linguists is that Montenegrin and Serbian, as well as Bosnian and Croatian, are basically the same language. [...]

“Nationalism is increasing by introducing a purist approach towards language in schools and in media, because people, in relation to the choice of words, are trained to associate the term ‘good’ with their own nation, and the term ‘bad’ with other nations,” said Croatian linguist Snjezana Kordic, who has argued that the languages are one and the same.

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