John Locke, the founding father of modern democracy based on principles of humanity, wrote that all individuals are born with “inalienable right of life, liberty, and property.” These sacred inalienable rights are universal which ought to be respected and protected by everyone. These rights and principles of humanity are backbone of our democracy and undermining them undermines the soul of democracy.

Democracy without principles of humanity is nothing more than a shell democracy carrying out charade of elections.

Biden is a willing accomplice of Netanyahu in crimes against humanity by continuing to supply mass civilian killing bombs to Israel despite 33,000 deaths of innocent Gazans, imminent danger of famine, and Israel facing Genocide charges at ICJ. Biden has not only undermined bedrock principles humanity and our modern democracy, but also our national core values.

Vote for Biden is not a vote for Democracy unless one happens to believe that the basic foundations of our modern democracy and humanity, such as human rights, liberty, and Justice, are no longer relevant. Or one believes that Palestinians have no such rights.

Biden is at least as much threat to our democracy as Trump. Fortunately, our democratic institutions, especially judiciary, are strong enough to withstand any dictatorial assault on our democracy as they did during Trump’s last term and will do so again if Trump is re-elected. But unfortunately, our democratic institutions are not equipped to foil assault by Biden on our principles of humanity, which are foundations of our modern democracy as envisioned by John Locke. It also undermines our credibility as well as our national interests in the world. Such a damage is hard to repair.

(Very insightful analysis what poor nations need to do in the technologic world to improve their economy as old recipe of developing manufacturing sector may not work.)

Some excerpts; “The recipe — customized in varying ways by Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and China — has produced the most potent engine the world has ever known for generating economic growth. It has helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, create jobs and raise standards of living.”

“But technology is advancing, supply chains are shifting, and political tensions are reshaping trade patterns. And with that, doubts are growing about whether industrialization can still deliver the miracle growth it once did. For developing countries, which contain 85 percent of the globe’s population — 6.8 billion people — the implications are profound. Today, manufacturing accounts for a smaller share of the world’s output, and China already does more than a third of it. At the same time, more emerging countries are selling inexpensive goods abroad, increasing competition. There are not as many gains to be squeezed out: Not everyone can be a net exporter or offer the world’s lowest wages and overhead.

There are doubts that industrialization can create the game-changing benefits it did in the past. Factories today tend to rely more on automated technology and less on cheapworkers who have little training.

“You cannot generate enough jobs for the vast majority of workers who are not very educated,” said Dani Rodrik, a leading development economist at Harvard.

The process can be seen in Bangladesh, which the World Bank’s managing director called “one of the world’s greatest development stories” last year. The country built its success on turning farmers into textile workers.

Last year, though, Rubana Huq, chair of Mohammadi Group, a family-owned conglomerate, replaced 3,000 employees with automated jacquard machines to do complex weaving patterns.

The women found similar jobs elsewhere in the company. “But what follows when this happens on a large scale?” asked Ms. Huq, who is also president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

These workers don’t have training, she said. “They’re not going to turn into coders overnight.”

Recent global developments have accelerated the transition.”

Full article

posted by f.sheikh

“American Jews, wrote Albert Vorspan, a leader of Reform Judaism, in 1988, “have made of Israel an icon — a surrogate faith, surrogate synagogue, surrogate God.” It’s no surprise that American Jews have long sought to fuse them by describing Zionism as a liberal cause. “

“It has always been a strange pairing. American liberals generally consider themselves advocates of equal citizenship irrespective of ethnicity, religion and race. Zionism — or at the least the political Zionism that has guided Israel since its founding — requires Jewish dominance. From 1948 until 1966, Israel held most of its Palestinian citizens under military law; since 1967 it has ruled millions of Palestinians who hold no citizenship at all. But despite this, American Jews could until recently assert their Zionism without having their liberal credentials challenged.”

“The primary reason was the absence from American public discourse of Palestinians, the people whose testimony would cast those credentials into greatest doubt. But in recent years, Palestinian voices, while still embattled and even censored, have begun to carry. Palestinians have turned to social media to combat their exclusion from the mainstream press.”

“And because opinion about Israel cleaves along generational lines, that pro-Palestinian skew is much greater among the young. According to a November Quinnipiac University poll, Democrats under the age of 35 sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis by 58 points.”

“But the American Jews who insist that Zionism and liberalism remain compatible should ask themselves why Israel now attracts the fervent support of Ms. Stefanik but repels the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the United Automobile Workers. Why it enjoys the admiration of Elon Musk and Viktor Orban but is labeled a perpetrator of apartheid by Human Rights Watch and compared to the Jim Crow South by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Why it is more likely to retain unconditional American support if Mr. Trump succeeds in turning the United States into a white Christian supremacist state than if he fails.”“For many decades, American Jews have built our political identity on a contradiction: Pursue equal citizenship here; defend group supremacy there. Now here and there are converging. In the years to come, we will have to choose.”

Full Article

posted by F.Sheikh

In the face of rising involvement of the evangelical Christians in the politics, there is discussion of Christian Nationalism. Below are worth reading articles in NYT.

Ross Douthat

Amid all the talk about the potential influence of Christian nationalism in a second Trump administration, and in the country as a whole, the phrase’s popularity has far outrun any coherent definition.

My colleague David French made an effort to remedy that issue in his column this week. I’m going to make my own attempt here, by suggesting four broad ways one could define a term like Christian nationalism:

Definition One: The belief that America should unite religion and politics in the same manner as the tribes of Israel in Leviticus and Deuteronomy (the more extreme case) or Puritan New England (the milder one) — with religious law enforced by the government, a theocratic or confessional state, an established form of Christianity, and non-Christian religions disfavored.

Definition Two: The belief that America is a chosen nation commissioned by God to bring about some form of radical transformation in the world — the spread of liberty, the triumph of democracy — and that both domestic and foreign policy should be shaped by this kind of providential aim.

Definition Three: The belief that American ideals make the most sense in the light of Christianity, that Christians should desire America to be more Christian rather than less and that American laws and policies should be informed by Christian principles to the extent possible given the realities of pluralism and the First Amendment.Definition Four: Any kind of Christian politics that liberals find disagreeable or distasteful.

Concluding paragraph; This doesn’t mean religious conservatism wouldn’t influence a second Trump administration; of course it would. But it would be the influence of an important but weakening faction in a de-Christianizing country, not a movement poised to overthrow a secular liberalism whose real problems lie within.

Full article;

Article by David French on Christian Nationalism

To understand what Christian nationalism is, it’s important to understand what it is not. It is not Christian nationalism if a person’s political values are shaped by the individual’s Christian faith. In fact, many of America’s most important social movements have been infused with Christian theology and Christian activism. Many of our nation’s abolitionists thundered their condemnations of slavery from Northern pulpits. The civil rights movement wasn’t exclusively Christian by any means, but it was pervasively Christian — Martin Luther King Jr. was, of course, a Baptist minister.

The problem with Christian nationalism isn’t with Christian participation in politics but rather the belief that there should be Christian primacy in politics and law. It can manifest itself through ideology, identity and emotion. And if it were to take hold, it would both upend our Constitution and fracture our society.

Full Article

posted by f.sheikh