Mediaboss Marketing

The Week

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held huge rallies in West Bengal state this spring in a hard-fought race to unseat its chief minister, Mamata Banerjee. Banerjee won handily. After votes were counted Sunday, her All India Trinamool Congress party won 213 of the 292 seats up for grab in the state, according to the Election Commission of India. The BJP won 77 and two went to other parties. Modi congratulated his rival on her victory Sunday night. Modi's BJP won in northeastern Assam state and, in alliance with regional parties, in the federally controlled territory of Puducherry, but lost in two southern states, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The elections were held through March and April, as India's COVID-19 pandemic started spiraling out of control. India recorded a record 3,689 new deaths Sunday and 392,488 new infections, down from Saturday's pandemic-high 401,993 new infections. Both the death and infection numbers are believed to be much higher than the official tallies. In Kolkata, West Bengal's capital, half of all people tested for COVID-19 now test positive. Indian Medical Association national vice president Navjot Dahiya last week called Modi a "super-spreader" for holding the large election rallies in West Bengal and allowing a Hindu religious festival to take place with no restrictions. The Madras High Court in Tamil Nadu also excoriated the Election Commission last week for allowing packed campaign rallies in the middle of the pandemic. "Your institution is singularly responsible for the second wave of COVID-19," Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee wrote for the court. "Your officers should be booked on murder charges probably." Modi's government is "battling a public backlash on their mishandling of the COVID pandemic," political commentator Arati Jerath told The New York Times, but political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay cautioned that the loss in West Bengal will have to be studied to determine what role the BJP's coronavirus response played. "The BJP started running out of steam as the pandemic spread," he told The Associated Press. "The verdict in West Bengal state will definitely weaken Modi's position," but nobody's sure just how much. More stories from theweek.com5 brutally funny cartoons about Giuliani's legal woesWhat the Elon Musk backlash is really aboutA blue state-red state vaccine divide is emerging

Read the original:
Rep. Biggs: Migrant influx at southern border is 'beyond a crisis' - Yahoo News

The celebrated German philosopher Jrgen Habermaswill turn 92 next month, yet he remains firmly in the public eye after he accepted, then rejected, a controversial award from the United Arab Emirates(UAE)this week.

Having decided to accept the Sheikh Zayed Book Award whichmade himCultural Personality of the Year 2021and 225,000($271,000) richer Habermas turned it down on Sunday over concerns about human rights in the Gulf nation.

In the end, Habermas could not compromise his core philosophical principles established over more than sevendecades.

Having advocatedfor the right to asylum during the 2015 migrant crisis, and against right-wingpopulismand xenophobiain the 2019 European Parliament elections,Habermas remains activelycommitted to his cosmopolitan ideal ofan openand rigorousdemocracy.

After turning 90 in 2019,he also publisheda 1,700-pagework,This Too a History of Philosophy,a look at the evolution of human rationality and reasonthat the Boston Reviewcalled "a masterpiece of erudition and synthesis."

His acceptanceof an award from a UAE absolute monarchy accused of repressionhas, however, been seen to contradicthis avowed principles of freedom of opinionand open debate in a healthy "public sphere."

In a statement to the Spiegel Online news website, Habermasadmittedthat his initial embrace oftheSheikh Zayed Book Award"was a wrong decision," adding that "I didn't sufficiently make clear to myself the very close connection of the institution, which awards these prizes in Abu Dhabi, with the existing political system there."

The philosopher at his home in 1981

Born in Dusseldorf in 1929,Jrgen Habermas ismost closely associated with the city of Frankfurt more specifically, with a school of social and critical theory known as the Frankfurt School.

After earninga doctorate in philosophy in Bonn, in 1964 he took over the chair of philosophy and sociology atthe University of Frankfurt from Max Horkheimer, a position he held until 1971. His postdoctoral thesis from 1961, Strukturwandel der ffentlichkeit (published in English translation in 1989 as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere), establishes his concept ofthe "public sphere" as asthe domain through which reasoned"public opinion" can be employed to tame the excesses of capitalism.

His updating of Marxist theoryfor the times influenced the 1968 student insurrection; however, when theprotest movement became more radical, the philosopheropenly criticized it.

In his chief work from 1981, Theory of Communicative Action, he developeda theoretical action guide for modern society, which again lookedat how languageand rational argumentation can evolve so thatevery participant is free to take part in democratic discourse.

Habermas inspired the 1968 protests to call for more democracy

But such democratic discourse is routinely shut down inthe country that awardedHabermas his prize,according to Kenneth Roth, Executive Director at Human Rights Watch. Though the UAEis trying to present itself as "a bastion of liberalism,behind the glistening faade is an uglier reality where critics are jailed, the rights of migrant workers are limited, and the ruler of Dubai locks up his adult daughter for wanting to escape life under his thumb."

Latifais one daughter of the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed, who saysshe is being held against her will since attempting to leave the country in 2018. Meanwhile, her sister Shamsa has not been seen since 2000 when she was allegedly abducted from Cambridge, England.

A #FreeLatifa campaign gained momentum when video footage of the despairing princess was aired on BBC in February.

This follows a ruling by a UK judge in March 2020, which said the billionaire ruler of Dubai ordered the abduction of his daughters and subjected his estranged wife to a campaign of fear and intimidation.

The day before Habermas declined the UAE award, the #FreeLatifa campaign also fuelled calls to ban Sheikh Mohammed's horsefrom theKentucky Derby.

Habermas' decision to rescind the award comes as the UAE's authoritarian government attempts to contrast human rights concerns in the Gulf nation with a more liberal and tolerant outlook, especially concerningwomen.Dubai is well-known for its celebrity "influencers" who receive tax-free income to promote the UAE'ssun-soaked Persian Gulfcity. As theoil-rich UAE has also become a generous patron of arts and culture in recent times,theSheikh Zayed Book Award itself is typically pitched asembodying "the values of tolerance, knowledge and creativity while building bridges between cultures."

When Habermas initially accepted the award, Spiegel Onlinequestioned why the greatest German thinker of the last 50 years hadn'tsimply turned it down.

"With this world-class thinker who has stood for the Enlightenment project and critical distance from power for more than half a century, it should be possible to answer the question [of whether to accept the award] with a resounding 'no,'" wrote SpiegelOnline on Sunday.

Habermashad first said he hoped the award would provide a "tailwind" for the "dissemination of books" in the region that, like his, similarlypromotefreedom of opinionand democracy. He also statedthat he had sought advice from Jrgen Boos, the managing director of the Frankfurt Book Fair who also sits on the committee that adjudicates the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. He addedthat Boos had "dispelled concerns that are obvious."

Boos said in a statement to DW that he was disappointed that Habermas declined the award.

"Of course, I accept Mr. Habermas' decision,"he said. "However, awarding him this prize would have been an occasion to make his important work and his positions even better known in the Arab cultural area and thus to promote Arab society's engagement with his work. A significant number of the German philosopher and sociologist's works have been translated into Arabic."

Habermas declined a DW request forcomment.

Once Habermasrescinded the award, some on social media said thatthe philosopher had upheld the spirit of the "public sphere."

"It is good to see Jrgen Habermas, whose scholarship defines the concept of the public sphere, has rejected an award from the UAE on #WorldPressFreedomDay," wrote "independent activist" @LyndonPeters01on Twitter. "With no press freedom in the UAE there is no public sphere. So we should reiterate the calls to #FreeAhmedMansoor," he added, referring to thehuman rights activist who wasjailedfor criticizing the UAE government.

Having lived through the Nazi regime, Habermas was inspired to embolden democracy in Europe and the world through his writings.

The question of how a repetition of how the Holocaust could be prevented was fundamental tohis work. He was ultimatelyinspiredto create complex communication models through which members of a society could aim to balance their different interests.

"Consensual" was the name given to those social models, and the term had an exceptional impact on the Federal Republic of Germany's self-image. Citizens were no longer to receive orders from above; rather, they shouldbe encouraged to intervene in public, to formulate their views openly and include them into a large-scale discussion, one in which everyone would be working towards an acceptable compromise.

A philosopher, writer and professor of political theory: Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) became renowned in the US and worldwide for her works examining revolutions and totalitarian systems, as well as the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, in which she radically questioned traditions and ideologies.

The exhibition "Hannah Arendt and the 20th Century" at Berlin's Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM) also displays some of her personal belongings. Arendt wouldn't go anywhere without this silver cigarette case. "Like a briefcase, it was a work tool for her," explains exhibition curator Monika Boll. "Smoking was part of her process of getting her thoughts organized."

Hannah Arendt was born on October 14, 1906 in Hanover to politically progressive parents and it was clear that she would pursue university studies. She first studied philosophy, Greek and theology at the University of Marburg under philosopher Martin Heidegger. She had a brief affair with her much older professor. She obtained her PhD from the University of Heidelberg in 1929.

After Hitler came to power in 1933, Hannah Arendt had to leave the country as a Jew. Initially, she worked in Paris for an organization that brought Jewish orphans to Palestine. But in 1940, she fled to the United States when Germany invaded France. In New York, the first point of contact for many emigrants from Europe, she quickly found work as a journalist.

Hannah Arendt was 38 years old in this photo from 1944, taken by renowned photographer Fred Stein. A series of photos from the Fred Stein Archive in Stanfordville, New York were loaned to the Berlin museum for the exhibition. At the time, Arendt was leading a research project for the Conference on Jewish Relations.

Arendt lived as a stateless person in the United States for a long time until she was finally naturalized on December 10, 1951. Emigration from Nazi Germany, the insecurity of exile and her lack of rights as a Jewish migrant in the US were very formative experiences for her. All of this shaped her strong political views, which guided her throughout her life.

In 1961, the magazine "The New Yorker" commissioned Arendt to cover the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, held in Jerusalem. Eichmann was one of the main organizers of the deportation and extermination of the Jews during the Holocaust. Arendt's account on "the banality of evil" caused a storm of indignation.

She was a professor at different universities, including at the University of Chicago from 1963 to 1967, and at the New School for Social Research in New York, where she taught until her death in 1975. Universities were her intellectual home; she was even able to develop her political and philosophical theories in an empty cafeteria, as this photo from 1961-62 shows.

The controversial philosopher did not avoid intellectual disputes. As a thinker and reporter, Hannah Arendt's ideas often led to controversy in her adopted country and in Europe. "Taking a stand was very risky at the time, and she was well aware of that," says curator Monika Boll.

As a well-known reporter and university professor, Hannah Arendt was also part of the US establishment. She was reluctant to pursue social obligations, but she did have a mink cape at hand for official events such as gala dinners or receptions. The fur coat comes from the private collection of her great-niece, Edna Brocke, who donated different items from Arendt's estate to the DHM.

In addition to private photos, personal letters, manuscripts and books, her legendary Minox can also be seen in Berlin. She often used the tiny camera for her work as a reporter and to photograph her friends. The exhibition provides insight into the life and work of the German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt, who died in New York 45 years ago.

Author: Heike Mund (eg)

View post:
Jrgen Habermas, the philosopher who rejected a 225,000 prize - DW (English)

Some border county sheriffs say theres no crisis at the border

As politicians from both sides of the aisle claim there's a crisis at the border, sheriffs with two border counties in Arizona say they disagree with that assessment.

PHOENIX - Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, along with several Republican leaders, are calling the situation at the U.S.-Mexico Border a 'crisis.'

On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden has used the word 'crisis' recently, and both U.S. Senators from Arizona have asked for more National Guard along the border.

Related: Arizona Governor deploys National Guard to US-Mexico border

However, sheriffs with two border counties in Arizona have a very different take on current conditions.

"We have no migrant crisis at the border, but theres lots of fuzzy math going around," said Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway.

Santa Cruz County, a small county south of Tucson and north of Nogales, Mexico, has the biggest ports of entry into Arizona. Immigrant arrests in the county are up from the Trump and Obama years, but the people coming here to find work, and the overall numbers are nothing new.

"1.1 million if that continues at the exact same rate this summer, which is unlikely, but theres nothing out of the ordinary. Its practically every year since the 80s, 90s, and 2000s," said Sheriff Hathaway.

Sheriff Hathaway says it's not an immigration crisis, but an economic one on the American side of the border.

"We have an economic crisis here because the tourist visa holders still can't come in the United States, and that's costing millions of dollars every day in lost revenue," said Sheriff Hathaway.

"Whether it's a crisis in their neighborhoods, I cant speak to it, but its not a crisis right now for Pima County," said Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos.

Sheriff Nanos was born on the border, and has worked along it almost ever since. He says if the governor really wants to help, he should send more money for things like police reform, body cameras, and ankle monitors, rather than more National Guard troops.

"It might help those with mental illness or suffer from drug addiction rather than locking them all up in my jail. So yeah, if the governor really wants to help Pima county, send me some funding for one of those items," said Sheriff Nanos.

Read more from the original source:
Sheriffs with 2 Arizona border counties say there is no crisis at the US-Mexico Border - FOX 10 News Phoenix

Asylum-seeking migrant families disembark from an inflatable boat after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico in Roma, Texas, April 27, 2021.

GO NAKAMURA/Reuters

Its time to recognize that the crisis at the Mexico-United States border is Canadas problem.

Thats because, contrary to the way the U.S. media portrays it, its not really a case of thousands of people trying to enter America through Mexico as refugees, but of hundreds of thousands of people emigrating, most temporarily, out of a number of Latin American countries any way they can, during a difficult historical moment. Most arent primarily interested in being refugees, none really want to be making the trek through Mexico, and few are even aiming for the United States specifically.

Canada can have a key role here, one that also benefits us. Many of those crisis-stricken countries including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Honduras and El Salvador have important relationships with Canada.

Story continues below advertisement

Crises of political violence, the economic and civic collapse of Venezuela, severe natural and weather disasters, and disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have caused people to seek different livelihoods outside their countries borders.

Most just need help finding a place to settle in a nearby, more stable country, such as Colombia, Mexico or Costa Rica and hundreds of thousands already have. These countries could use our help handling these populations. Those who make the dangerous journey by train and foot across the length of Mexico to the U.S. border are doing so because they know of no other option and most would instead prefer a regular, legal pathway into a country that happens to be seeking their employment. Such as Canada after all, were already welcoming a good number of them.

Biden vows action on migrants, defends border policy

For example, Canada attracts five times more Guatemalan labour migrants every year than the United States does. Our 15,000 annual Guatemalans (versus 3,000 who go to the U.S.) are mostly farm workers on seasonal visas who fly back and forth. Theyre part of a labour pool thats vital to Canadas farms (it also includes many Hondurans) and could be considerably larger. And thats aside from our permanent immigration targets of 401,000 new Canadians every year, and our smaller but also significant refugee-resettlement programs.

But the labour migrants are key because theyre often the same people who would otherwise become refugees. By shifting an influential fraction of potential refugees into more secure and beneficial forms of migration, we could play a big role in bringing stability to a volatile region and preventing a deadly asylum emergency.

Canada is really already part of the solution here Canadians just dont know that, says Andrew Selee, head of the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. The question is, if the three countries of North America wanted to sit down and talk about a coordinated strategy to end the crisis, could Canada play a constructive role by expanding seasonal visas and resettlement? Its basically an expansion of what Canadas already doing with Guatemala and Honduras.

Mr. Selee recently coauthored a detailed proposal, with Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, that proposes a new regional migration system that would bring together the U.S., Mexico and Canada, along with successful regional partners such as Costa Rica and Colombia, to stabilize the situation and stop the deadly asylum journeys. It would involve a set of actions: agreeing on a combination of regional refugee-settlement programs in adjoining countries partly financed by the wealthier nations to the north; expanding work-visa programs and labour-migration agreements with countries such as Canada; bolstering and funding refugee-resettlement programs for Central Americans in the U.S. and Canada temporarily; creating new family-reunification programs designed to settle entire vulnerable families in new countries; and making an investment in on-the-ground programs within Latin America designed to identify people before they migrate and find them a safe destination before they flee (and maybe vaccinate them before they leave).

Many of these programs already exist in Canada theyre just lying dormant.

Story continues below advertisement

Two Toronto migration specialists, Craig Damian Smith of Ryerson University and Dana Wagner of the refugee-assistance agency TalentLift, last week published a policy brief looking at Canadian programs such as the federal Economic Mobility Pathways Project, created after the 2015-16 Mideast migrant crisis to direct potential refugees into more desirable economic-migration routes that take advantage of their skills, educations and entrepreneurial ambitions. The authors suggest that Canada redirect and expand these programs to the new crises in Latin America.

This is a clear-cut case where Canada could play a leading role in ending a major crisis afflicting Mexico and the United States, in bringing stability to a dangerously volatile part of the Americas while providing ourselves with people we happen to need. It may be their border crisis, but it could be our solution.

Keep your Opinions sharp and informed. Get the Opinion newsletter. Sign up today.

Read more:
Opinion: Those migrants at the U.S.-Mexican border are a Canadian problem, too - The Globe and Mail

This is the third report in a four-part series that explores the social determinants of living with and in proximity to lymphatic filariasis, a neglected tropical disease.

In the one year that Gyanchand has lived with lymphatic filariasis (filaria), hes traveled from Delhi to Rae Bareli, U.P., four times for treatment. I come here every three months for treatment because my family is here and they told me to get checked here when [I] first found swelling, he says.

A fruit and vegetable vendor in Delhi, Gyanchand lives alone and works in a crowded market teeming with stagnant puddles and mosquitoes. His only opportunity to receive medication, care, and comfort is at home in Rae Bareli, where his wife and children stay. He attempted to find help in Delhi but didnt know the city well enough to find it.

Travel back and forth between the locales has become an essential and expensive part of his life. A train ticket from Rae Bareli to Delhi costs up to Rs. 200 in the cheapest Second Seater Class Section, and a bus ticket costs half of that. A travel budget of Rs. 1000-2000 a year, needed to access medication, becomes a severe strain while also trying to pay for rent, food, and other living expenses with a daily-wage income. Travel is also tinged with discomfort, as the swollen legs and lesions that accompany filaria make walking difficult.

Gyanchands story intertwines two conditions that have become almost synonymous with neglect: tropical disease and migration. Migrants, new to a city and short of means, do not know the location to which they have shifted and do not have access to safe living conditions and urban healthcare systems that can aid the prevention and management of filaria. In contradiction to popular assumption, some migrants choose to travel back home to seek help from familiar, rural healthcare systems.

Related on The Swaddle:

When Climate Change Leads to Fear and Migration, Women Bear the Brunt

Here, it is key to understand what kind of migrants face this particular struggle. It is not the white-collar workers or the section of citizens who migrate for higher education, training and then move overseas for employment or high-end jobs, says Rinju Rasaily, Ph.D., an assistant professor of sociology at Ambedkar University, Delhi.It is the insignificant bulk of the population who, given the rising needs of a neo-liberal world, undoubtedly triggered by poverty and despair, seek to migrate out of their villages and small towns for jobs, jobs that are precarious and thus uncertain; taking the risks of living in a city space for a better future.

According to Indias 2011 Census, more than 139 million internal migrants move around India, within and between states. Large, urban cities like Delhi and Mumbai attract most migrants, sharing a combined migrant population of 9.9 million between them.

Working-class migrants in big cities live and travel in highly clustered conditions close to open gutters all of which lead to a higher risk of exposure to filarial worm-carrying mosquitoes. This clustering is not a new phenomenon. As Indian cities grew, they attracted large numbers of migrants, especially after the 1940s, when the population in cities, according to the census, grew exponentially. Often poorer migrants settled in already populated areas of the city, creating pressures on existing drainage systems, says Aditya Ramesh, Ph.D., who researches water, infrastructures, and ecologies at the University of Manchester. The colonial government, when they started creating drainage systems from the 1850s, paid little attention to regions where the urban poor lived. They created drainage systems largely to protect British cantonments and to try and keep sewage out of these areas. Naalas (open gutters) therefore were the only affordable way in which dense urban settlements could dispose of waste. Considering the pressures on them, it is no surprise that as infrastructural systems, they are stressed.

Bear in mind as well, that the regions around the naalas (gutters) were often government or common land, and the only spaces where migrants could find a space to build a shanty, Ramesh adds.

A significant number of migrants originate from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, coincidentally two states that share a significant burden of filaria cases in India, alongside Jharkhand, West Bengal,Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha.

Though working-class migrants face a higher risk of water-borne tropical diseases like filaria, they do not receive close healthcare attention. The vulnerability of migrants is unimaginable, given their working and living conditions. Data on health expenditure clearly state that the out-of-pocket [healthcare] expenditure is exorbitant in India. There is undoubtedly an enormous burden on government hospitals, dispensaries, health care centers, and mohalla clinics in Delhi, while the private health care services cater to the massive Indian middle class, Rasaily says. She adds that only a negligible percentage of urban migrants have health insurance, making it harder to access subsidized healthcare.

Work conditions may also force migrants to make choices under duress, choices that put their health at risk. Employment often involves long hours that lead to a deprioritization of seeking help. This means chronic conditions like filaria get further aggravated. There is also a large reliance of this section of our population on the un-registered medical practitioners who usually administer stronger dosage of medication for immediate relief, Rasaily says. Though immediate relief allows migrants to function, it eventually takes a serious toll on long-term health.

Related on The Swaddle:

SC Directs States To Look Into the Condition of Migrant Workers Children

This negotiation between work and health is not uncommon for individuals with filaria, as the disease is incurable and causes swollen limbs, flashes of pain, and reduced mobility. For working-class migrants, the drop in productivity is devastating, especially since most are paid by the day. Researchers have documented severe drops in filaria patients ability to perform domestic and economic labor in both Odisha and Tamil Nadu, with several cases leading to total disability.

The neglect of migrant workers with filariasis is as much a labor issue as it is a public health issue. Though trade unions have fought for decent working conditions for migrants in the past and helped create several equitable labor laws, there is no uniform health and safety law for working-class individuals yet; the laws that do exist are specific to certain industries (for instance, the Plantation Labour Act, 1951; the Mines Act, 1952).

As health care involves huge expenditure to the government, it has remained a central reason for the non-prioritization for the migrant population as well, Rasaily adds. In terms of intervention that could help migrant workers, I feel that a revisit of the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service), 1979, is important. It is also crucial that there should be a budgetary enhancement towards all the state departments of labor so that labor laws could be enforced, data banks could be created, and timely interventions could be made for example, at inter-state borders, bus stands, railway stations, et cetera. And importantly, there should be inter-departmental sync, such as [between] Regional Labour Institutes, DGFASLI [Directorate General Factory Advice Services and Labor Institutes] that operate under the same ministry, i.e Labour and Employment, GOI.

While rural areas are small and close-knit, urban areas are vast and lonely.Rural migrants like Gyanchand face a significant loss in the absence of community support. Village kinship ties are important means to find employment and support in cities. In rural areas, there is also more familiarity and comfort in relying on support systems, like borrowing from friends and relatives, which is often not an option in an alien urban environment. As Gyanchand said in the beginning, he didnt just return to Rae Bareli because he couldnt findhelp in the city, he also returned because that is where his home and community are.

Go here to see the original:
A Public Health Crisis Looms at the Intersection of Migration and Tropical Diseases - The Swaddle