Shame, a Salute, and a Little Hope?

Swings in Trump’s policies make headlines and impact lives. The same is true for the unending sequence of his clashes with others who have influence. Trump’s bid to oust the chief of the Federal Reserve Bank is only a fresh example. So is the “warning” of Pritzker, the Illinois governor (a Democrat), that Trump should think carefully before taking on Chicago. 

One conspicuous policy reversal is Trump’s announcement, headlined on the 26th, that 600,000 Chinese students will be admitted into the U.S. Not that long ago, he had declared that visas for Chinese students would be “aggressively revoked.” If (should I say “when”?) another policy update again shuts the door to students from China, the plans, in fact the lives, of hundreds of thousands of families in that land would be disrupted, as also arrangements on U.S. campuses. But no one will be shocked. 

We should mark that the latest welcome to students from China was joined to a warning to Beijing to “ensure Washington’s access to rare earth magnets or face 200 per cent tariffs.” 

A president who speaks incessantly (but effortlessly and seemingly naturally) into the media’s cameras and contradicts himself every few hours without the slightest embarrassment should only be analyzed at long intervals. Digesting each installment of news is sufficient for now. Understanding the man can wait. 

Meanwhile the BBC informs us that in the UK the Reform Party of Trump’s friend Nigel Farage has announced plans “to run five migrant return flights per day as part of its ambition to deport people who arrive in the UK illegally.” Presumably these flights will commence after (and if) Reform captures power. The BBC also quotes Zia Yusuf, head of Reform’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” as saying that "The total number of illegal immigrants in [the UK] now stands at at least a million.” 

WIDELY VISIBLE IRONY 

The Reform’s unit that Yusuf heads seems to be an unabashed carbon copy of America’s DOGE, which was a synonym until the other day for the now distanced but not silenced Elon Musk. Yusuf himself is a young Glasgow-born millionaire whose parents migrated from Sri Lanka and served as doctors in the UK. He represents a widely visible phenomenon: successful migrants who oppose the migration of others. 

The Reform Party says that, along with related measures, deporting migrants who entered the UK illegally or have stayed beyond dates stamped on their visas would cost £10 billion over five years. The party however claims that money would be saved elsewhere, including by not housing asylum seekers in hotels. 

Although I led this column with Trump and Farage, what dominates my mind are the fresh killings from Israeli attacks of journalists in Gaza, this time in the Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis. At least 20 people were killed in the attack, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, with many more injured. Five of the killed were Palestinian journalists striving to send, if they could, the conflict’s news to the world. The first attack was followed by a few minutes of pregnant quiet and then came the second blast. “Medical staff had been planning their escape from the building when the second strike hit.” 

CRUELTY IN PLAIN SIGHT 

No one can look at CNN’s and BBC’s stories of this latest outrage without experiencing fresh horror at the cruelty CONTINUING TO OCCUR in the world’s plain sight. The stories did not contain the names and pictures of the more than fifteen non-journalists, many of them medical workers, killed in the attack, but can we doubt that each of them was nursing anxieties, wild hopes, pleas to the Almighty, and thoughts of little and elderly loved ones -- while knowing that the world has been permitting horrific slaughter of their soil’s sons and daughters?

What can this old columnist, who has been a journalist himself, say after looking at the pictures of some of the journalists blasted to their death while doing their duty? I merely reproduce what the BBC told us about them. We, luckier folk, should read the lines in fear and trembling, in shame at our helplessness, and offer an abashed salute.

Husam al-Masri worked as a cameraman for Reuters. The news agency reported he was killed in a first strike on the hospital while operating a live TV feed for Reuters. News organisations around the world including the BBC have used footage he has taken. 

Mariam Dagga, 33, was a freelance journalist working with the Associated Press (AP) who said she regularly reported from the hospital. One of AP's regional editors, Abby Sewell, said Dagga leaves behind a son who was evacuated from Gaza earlier in the war. 

Mohammad Salama worked for Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye. Salama was planning his wedding to another journalist, Hala Asfour, with the pair hoping to wed after a ceasefire, according to Al Jazeera. 

Ahmed Abu Aziz worked for Middle East Eye, according to its own reporting. The outlet says he worked on a freelance basis and was based in Khan Younis. 

Moaz Abu Taha worked with various outlets, including the Israeli newspaper Haaretz just a fortnight ago filming a video call with journalists that showed children suffering from malnutrition at Nasser. Reuters said they occasionally published work by him. 

Thank you, BBC. I speak for millions.

CNN tells us that Israel’s target was “a balcony on the hospital used by reporters for an elevated view of Khan Younis.”

XI JINPING’S FORUM 

This coming Sunday (Aug 31), Chinese President Xi Jinping will gather more than 20 world leaders for a two-day regional security forum in China’s port city of Tianjin. India’s NDTV terms the meeting “a powerful show of Global South solidarity in the age of Donald Trump” which would, in addition, “help sanctions-hit Russia pull off another diplomatic coup.”

Aside from Russian President Vladimir Putin, leaders from Central Asia, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia have been invited to this summit-level session of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. India’s Narendra Modi, reportedly upset by Trump’s tariffs and by his insistence that he, Trump, ended the India-Pakistan conflict last May, is slated to take part. Iran and Pakistan too, like India, are SCO members and likely to attend. 

Despite the lack of substantive policy announcements expected at the summit, the NDTV story cites unnamed experts saying that the bloc's appeal to “Global South countries should not be underestimated.” 

"This summit is about optics, really powerful optics," the story claims. 

But facts also make an irresistible display, including the fact that a pair of deals India has signed or is about to sign with US defense firms for jet fighters or their engines may cost India a total of nearly two billion dollars. 

HELPFUL WORD 

Floods and downpours have taken dozens of lives in northern India and a larger number in Pakistan. Although rhetoric against the neighbor remains the fashion, and although India has “suspended” its 1960 treaty with Pakistan on river waters, a nice little piece of news can be recorded. On Aug. 24, India informed Pakistan through diplomatic channels of “an overflowing flood situation” in India in the river Tawi, a tributary of the Chenab, which runs across much of Pakistan’s Punjab province. As a result, Islamabad was able to warn Pakistani Punjab’s farmers. 

Pakistan’s newspaper, The News, was the first to report this neighborly deed, the first of its kind after the war in May. Warmongers need not worry, however. This was strictly an isolated incident. A positive trend in India-Pakistan relations is not imminent. 

In another area, however, I will risk my neck and share a positive reading. It seems to me that despite obstacles, threats, and long odds, opposition to India’s slide into a Hindu Raj is growing. The trend I detect, to which a few YouTube channels in India are also courageously pointing, has much to do with the state of Bihar, where elections are due before the end of November. 

RESONATING DISSENT 

The trend is also connected to (a) the growing belief among the population that there has been cheating in recent elections and that India’s Election Commission is more partisan than independent, (b) the removal of a great many names from Bihar’s electoral rolls, and (c) spirited and popular marches across Bihar by Rahul Gandhi of the Indian National Congress, Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, and their allies from four or five local parties. 

A truly peculiar indicator of the apparent anxiety among Modi and his powerful network was a last-minute Bill presented on August 20, a day before the parliament’s “monsoon” session was to end. Proposing to amend the constitution in order to lay down that any central or state minister, including the prime minister or a chief minister, who has been behind bars under criminal charges for more than 30 days must resign or be deemed to have resigned, the Bill was referred to a select committee amidst unprecedented outcries by opposition MPs, who are not a small minority. 

Since it is standard practice in today’s India to arrest opposition politicians by charging them with crime and then to keep them behind bars without ever bringing them to trial, the proposed bill, if it becomes law, would enable New Delhi to terminate at will the political careers of opposition figures it dislikes or fears. Lacking the numbers to change the constitution, which requires a two-third majority on the floor of parliament as well as the approval of a majority of state legislatures, the government appears to have introduced the bill not to pass it but to divert the attention of the people of India, and especially the people of Bihar, from the apparently successful campaigning of Rahul Gandhi, Tejashwi Yadav, and their allies. 

Be it noted that this “130th Constitutional Amendment Bill” was introduced all of a sudden, without warning, notice, or prior consultation or discussion with anyone at any level. The bill’s laughable “provision” that Modi would stand dismissed as prime minister if he remained in jail for more than 30 days is like claiming that Putin, Xi, and Trump would stand dismissed from their offices if found behind bars in India for more than 30 days. All these “possibilities” are in that realm of probability.

When the BJP is driven to make the bogus claim, “See, we are so firmly against corruption that even Modi can go to jail,” it must feel itself to be in a corner. 

It’s not my reading that the BJP is on its way out. Nonetheless, working against impossible odds, India’s opposition seems to have found unsuspected strength and a voice that is resonating.