This week

There has been some interesting reading this week:

again, negative or absent "leadership" and negative conduct has been an issue: 

• Robert Reich - "Trump is the natural consequence of our anti-democracy decade";  
• the five signs of leadership failure from the time that the Great Plague tore through 14th Century Europe;
• "Vital Signs: Australia’s nation-building opportunity held hostage by the deficit daleks", by Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW;

and there have been some good responses to these problems: 

• George Monbiot wrote "There is an antidote to demagoguery – it’s called political rewilding"; 
• Léonie de Jonge, Assistant professor in European politics and society at the University of Groningen, wrote a letter to the media "Don’t mainstream the far right", listing three possible responses. 

Moving on:

• Robert Galbraith aka "Joanne Rowling" has shown themself to be a transphobic bigot, which leads into:
• the 20 reasons that "Scott Morrison is Unfit to be Prime Minister", by Alastair Lawrie, both of which lead into the Morrison "government" 's Mediaeval Theocracy Re-establishment (aka "Religious Discrimination") Bill and related matters: 
• "Anti-LGBT discrimination has a huge human toll. Research proves it", from the Washington Post (byline Nathaniel Frank and Kellan Baker); 
• "Here’s Proof That Trans People Are The New Target Of ‘The Australian’s War On Queer People", on Junkee, by Joshua Badge & Alex Garcia Marrugo; 
• "Amended Religious Discrimination Bill is worse and should be rejected", from the Human Rights Law Centre; 

and

• "Being a video vigilante can serve the greater good, but that doesn't mean it's always right", by Daniel Flitton, on the ABC.

I'm going to end my weekly summary with a consideration of what is happening in India.

Now, India before the British occupation was one of the most influential nations in the world - particularly economically. India also was if not the, one of the first places in the world to ban slavery, more than two millennia ago (under Emperor Ashoka), and India's Hansa Mehta "was responsible for changing the language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 'all men are created equal' (Eleanor Roosevelt’s preferred phrase) to 'all human beings' " (see here). India's largely ahimsa-based campaign for independence also set the standard for all such campaigns.

India at independence in 1947 became two nations: the secular and multilateral India, and Muslim-based Pakistan - which was a dominion for nine years, before becoming today's Islamic Republic (in the 1970s, East Pakistan fought a war to become independent Bangladesh - in which while "recognising Islam as the country's established religion, the constitution enshrines secularism and grants freedom of religion to non-Muslims"). Relations between India and Pakistan has been poor, with several wars fought. I've written about some of this here.

Since then, India has been more democratic, and better on human rights, than Pakistan:

• Freedom House's 2019 ratings for these two nations were 75 for India (free), and 39 for Pakistan (partly free).
• Articles on human rights in India here, and Pakistan here - and here, for my nation, which has ongoing problems around racist treatment of indigenous people and refugees, and has a neoliberal "government" which is seeking to introduce religious discrimination. (Australia was ranked 98 by Freedom House in 2019, but the neoliberal "government" 's religious discrimination bill will knock that rating down if it passes.)

On Pakistan, this, from today's news, is of particular concern.

There have been concerns about the state of democracy in India under the Modi government, which has implemented neoliberal policies, and has actively promoted Hindutva. (Incidentally, although the links I've used are from Wikipedia, most of my information for quite some years is from the online edition of "The Hindu". I have colleagues who are Indian - or are of Indian heritage, but we discuss work matters, not India. I discussed human rights with a past colleague, at a different company, but that was in the context of his family being forced to flee the anti-India Fiji coup.)

India is now experiencing considerable unrest over a new law which excludes Muslims from obtaining citizenship - The Hindu has packages of information on this here, here, here (in support of the Act), and see also here. Some of the outstanding imagery has been of Sikhs and Hindus standing together to protect Muslims.

Some of the criticism is from other nations - such as Malaysia. On relations between India and Malaysia, from the Wikipedia article:

"India has a high commission in Kuala Lumpur, ^[1] and Malaysia has a high commission in New Delhi ^[2] and a consulate general in Chennai and Mumbai. ^{[3] [4]} Both countries are full members of the Commonwealth of Nations ^[5] , Asian Union and G15.^[6] India and Malaysia are also connected by various cultural and historical ties that date back to antiquity.^[7] The two countries are on excellently friendly terms with each other seeing as Malaysia is home to a strong concentration of Indian immigrants. Mahathir Mohamad, the fourth and longest serving Prime Minister of Malaysia has Indian ancestry.^[8] On trade front their bilateral trade volume stands at $10.5 billion and is poised to reach $25 billion by 2020."

When even your friends - and Malaysia fits that definition diplomatically, and, given the problems with Muslim Pakistan, that is significant - criticise what you are doing, it is time to start take a moment to reflect on what you are doing. This Act does not only simplistically exclude Muslims from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan (who may have fled because they were trying to improve human rights in those nations and were being discriminated against for that), it also even excludes Hindus fleeing from Sri Lanka, Hindus and Buddhists fleeing Nepal and Bhutan, Buddhists fleeing the genocide China is committing in Tibet, and Rohingya fleeing the ongoing genocide in burma - which is currently  before the ICJ.

I hope India has the sense to listen, unlike my nation, which has failed to listen to the admonishments of its diplomatic friends and its citizens on climate change and discrimination, and the USA, whose leadership has also failed to listen to its diplomatic friends, its citizens, and sanity, on many things.