#national democratic alliance

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Hannah Ellis-Petersen at The Guardian:

Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party has lost its parliamentary majority, dealing an unexpected blow to the prime minister and forcing him to negotiate with coalition partners in order to return to power. With all votes counted early on Wednesday morning, it was clear that the landslide for the BJP predicted in polls had not materialised and instead there had been a pushback against the strongman prime minister and his Hindu nationalist politics in swathes of the country. The party lost 62 seats, bringing its total down to 240, below the 272 required for a parliamentary majority. It is the first time since Modi was elected in 2014 that the BJP has not won a clear majority on its own. Nonetheless, together with its political allies, known as the national democratic alliance (NDA), its win amounts to about 292 seats, which is enough to form a majority government to rule for the next five years and return Modi to office for a third term.

Meanwhile, the opposition alliance, which goes by the acronym INDIA, far outperformed expectations, collectively winning more than 230 seats. The alliance, formed of more than 20 national and regional opposition parties, had come together for the first time in this election with the aim of defeating Modi.

Incumbent Indian PM Narendra Modi and his right-wing BJP won the most seats, but not enough to gain a majority on its own in the recent election in India. Modi is likely to remain PM, as his coalition partners National Democratic Alliance are likely to cobble a majority.

[about-changing-generation]

Era of National Democratic Alliance end?

Bihar is a state of India. The politics of Bihar is popular and interesting revolves around 2-3 parties because major people are illiterate and they choose caste as medium for voting. It's not that all the people are illiterate on the other hand it's said that Biharis are the backbone of Indian administrative machinery. Almost every district in India has a DM or SP, who belongs to Bihar. Bihar accounts for nearly 450 out of total 5,500 IAS officers in the country. One in 10 bureaucrats shaping the destiny of India in North or South Block is from Bihar and they are also strong the mathematics subject. Many interesting language and people can be which will make you stay in Bihar for some more days than you expected…….Read Full Article on -:👇

[n7india]

इतिहास में प्री-पोल अलायंस इतना सफल नहीं हुआ है, जितना NDA हुआ : नरेंद्र मोदी

New Delhi: राष्ट्रीय जनतांत्रिक गठबंधन (NDA) की शुक्रवार को संयुक्त बैठक में नरेंद्र मोदी को तीसरी बार सर्वसम्मति से नेता सदन के रूप में चुन लिया गया है। नरेंद्र मोदी तीसरी बार प्रधानमंत्री के तौर पर शपथ लेंगे। एनडीए संसदीय दल के नेता चुने जाने के बाद पीएम मोदी ने अपने भाषण की शुरुआत में कहा कि मेरे लिए खुशी की बात है कि इतने बड़े समूह को आज मुझे यहां स्वागत करने का अवसर मिला है। जो साथी विजयी…

[india-times]

Markets Rally for Second Consecutive Day: Sensex Surges Over 696 Points

The bullish trend in the market continues as the 30-share BSE Sensex surged by 696.46 points to 75,078.70 in early trade, marking a second consecutive day of gains. The buoyant start on Thursday follows the unanimous election of Narendra Modi as the leader of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). This decision has instilled confidence in investors, leading to a continuation of the…

[signode-blog]

The Indian Stock Markets and General Elections: Analyzing the Reactions in 2004, 2009, 2014, and 2019

The Indian stock markets, like their counterparts around the globe, are significantly influenced by political events, with elections being one of the most critical. The general elections in India not only determine the political leadership but also set the tone for economic policies and reforms that can impact investor sentiment and market performance. This article delves into the reactions of…

[thenewzpeg]

Congress and India Alliance winning confidence across the country: DCM D K Shivakumar

Bengaluru, May 17: Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar today said that the Congress party and India alliance was winning the confidence of people across the country. Speaking to reporters at Vidhana Soudha about his election campaign in Uttar Pradesh, he said, “I am confident India alliance will win more than 40 seats in Uttar Pradesh. Mallikarjun Kharge has announced 10 kg rice for the poor.…

[rodaportal]

What are the Main Causes of War?

🌐 Dive into the depths of human conflict with our latest YouTube video, "What are the Main Causes of War?" 🤔 From territorial disputes to economic interests, religious differences to internal strife, we unravel the complex tapestry of motivations behind global conflicts.

🕊️ Let's foster understanding, diplomacy, and peace together. Join the conversation by watching the video here: 🎥✨

[warningsine]

The Brotherhood Alliance—a tripartite military alliance comprising the Arakan Army (AA), Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA)—launched simultaneous attacks on regime targets and bases in several towns in northern Shan State early on Friday.

As the attacks began, the MNDAA, an ethnic Kokang armed group based in northern Shan State’s Kokang region, issued a statement announcing the launch of anti-regime Operation 1027, a reference to Friday’s date, Oct. 27.

It said the operation was aimed at rooting out the military dictatorship, fulfilling the desire of the people of the country and protecting them from the junta’s daily arbitrary killings.

It also aims to stop the military regime from attacking ethnic armed organizations with heavy weapons and air strikes, and to build a federal democratic union with authentic self-administrative regions, the group said.

Finally, it said the operation aims to eradicate cyber scams in the Kokang region, also known as Shan State Special Region 1, which are mainly operated by the military regime and allied militia groups.

The AA and TNLA said in a separate, joint statement issued by all three EAOs on Friday that they are both also involved in Operation 1027.

At 4 a.m. Friday, the ethnic groups simultaneously attacked regime targets in Kyaukme, Kutkai, Muse, Lashio, Namkham, Nawnghkio and Chin Shwe Haw in northern Shan State and the ruby mining area of Mogoke in upper Mandalay Region, according to the resistance groups and locals.

Resistance groups also raided militia bases in Lashio Township, including an attack on junta forces at a tollgate at the entrance to Lashio town, the largest city in northern Shan State.

The MNDAA also announced it had blocked the Lashio-Muse Highway and Lashio-Chin Shwe Haw Road since this morning to prevent regime reinforcements from using the routes.

It strongly urged people not to violate its ban on using the roads, saying it would regard any vehicles on the routes as junta logistics vehicles and target them for attack.

A Lashio resident told The Irrawaddy on Friday morning that the junta had been counterattacking the ethnic armed groups using aircraft and artillery in the township since 8 a.m.

“The junta shelled and bombed villages and some residential wards in the northeast of the town. There were civilian casualties. But rescue groups have been unable to reach the area,” the resident said.

The MNDAA reportedly seized control of Chin Shwe Haw town from the military and occupied it on Friday. It also claimed to have seized junta outposts in strategic locations including the Chin Shwe Haw Bridge, Hopan, Kunlong and Mong Koe, as well as outposts on the outskirts of Lashio.

A resident in neighboring Hopan town told The Irrawaddy that “The MNDAA previously said intense clashes would come after Oct. 27.  But the attacks started at 4 a.m. this morning in Hopan. A lot of junta police and pro-junta militias were killed in the attack. The junta counterattacked with artillery and air strikes.”

MNDAA troops reportedly seized a junta-run customs office in Chin Shwe Haw, killing more than 15 police officers and pro-junta militias.

A photo that went viral online appears to show the dead bodies of around 15 policemen being placed on a road near a checkpoint.

Meanwhile, as part of Operation 1027, TNLA troops managed to seize two strategic military outposts near the Namhkam-Nam Hpat Kar Road in Namhkam Township, northern Shan on Friday morning.

On Wednesday, clashes broke out in Kunlong Township, Lashio District, northern Shan State when the three ethnic armed groups launched joint attacks on three junta camps, including one near the road to Chin Shwe Haw.

The Myanmar military regime is facing attacks by the People’s Defense Force (PDF), which is the armed wing of the civilian National Unity Government (NUG), as well as ethnic armed groups across the country, except in Rakhine State where the AA and the junta agreed a temporary ceasefire in late 2022.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Rachel Savage at The Guardian:

South Africans go to the polls on 29 May in elections in which the ruling African National Congress party could lose its majority for the first time since it swept to power in 1994 after the end of apartheid. Chronic unemployment, inequality, power cuts and corruption have contributed to a haemorrhaging of support for the ANC, which won the 2019 election with 57.5% of the vote.

Who are the ANC’s challengers?

The ruling party is battling against established opposition parties such as the economically liberal Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Marxist-inspired Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). It is also being challenged by upstarts such as the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, led by the former president Jacob Zuma, who is bitterly opposed to the current South African leader, Cyril Ramaphosa. Polls have consistently shown the ANC getting less than 50% of the vote. A telephone tracking survey by the Social Research Foundation had it on 44.1% of the vote in a 60% turnout model this week, compared with 39.1% a month earlier. Some analysts think the ANC could still scrape a majority, noting that phone polls often have significant flaws, including underestimating ANC support in rural areas where many poorer votes do not have phones.

[...]

How will the elections work?

Almost 28 million South Africans are registered to vote in national and provincial elections, less than half of the 62 million population. The 400-seat national parliament will vote for the president no later than two weeks after election day. There is no constitutional process for forming a coalition government. South Africa uses a system of proportional representation. Voters get three ballots – two for the National Assembly, each allocating 200 seats, and one for their provincial legislature. One of the national ballots will only have political parties on it. The second will be for one of nine multi-member provincial constituencies. Voters can either opt for a party, which will list its candidates’ names, or an independent.

Could the days of the incumbent African National Congress (ANC) having a majority in South Africa be over and be forced into a coalition to keep them in power? We'll find out in the elections today.

See Also:

MCI Maps Substack: Issue #182: South Africa Election Preview: The ANC Faces its Greatest Test

[heritageposts]

An Israeli influence campaign is using hundreds of online avatars and fake social media accounts to attack Democratic lawmakers critical of Israel and promote news articles disapproving of the United Nations Palestine refugee agency (Unrwa), according to a report by the Israeli online watchdog, Fake Reporter. According to the report, the targeted campaign has used more than 600 avatars, sending out 58,000 tweets and social media posts to circulate articles published by The Guardian, CNN and Wall Street Journal, among other major news outlets that amplify Israel’s position on the war. The campaign relies on three major social networks, UnFold Magazine, Non-Agenda and The Moral Alliance, which were created prior to the war in Gaza. But the Hamas-led 7 October attack on southern Israel sent the accounts into round-the-clock posting. The sites, according to Fake Reporter, are geared specifically to a “progressive audience”, publishing content on climate change, AI regulation, and human rights, in addition to the war in Gaza. They have more than 43,000 followers across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The avatars promoting the content talk up their identity with lines like, “As a middle-aged African American woman” and use hashtags like #FaithJourney and #AfricanAmericanSpirituality.

Some examples from the report:

And continuing,

The avatars were all created on the same day and their profiles were written with the same formula, subbing out just a few words. The declared gender and ethnicity of the avatars don’t match the profile photos, which have been taken from websites selling headshots. The campaign works to amplify news stories published by major media outlets. First, the fake news sites share the reports. Then, the avatars share them across social media, including on the official accounts of Democratic lawmakers. Avatars also shared social media posts showing video clips of what appeared to be Pro-Palestinian protestors calling for "massacres to be normalised" and calling for the US to "go to hell", contrasting that with peaceful protests of pro-Israel protestors.   In other cases, Avatars simply reshared widely published video clips of US lawmakers questioning the heads of Ivy League schools about antisemitism on campus.  [...] According to the report, around 85 percent of all the US politicians targeted by the campaign were Democrats, and 90 percent of them were African Americans. Ritchie Torres, a black Democratic Congressman with generally pro-Israel views, garnered the most social media engagement from the avatars. Other lawmakers targeted included Cori Bush; Lucy McBath; House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries; and Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. Israeli news site Haaretz reported in January that the Israeli government had launched an online influence campaign to respond to pro-Palestinian content and reports about Hamas.  It’s unclear whether the campaign revealed by Fake Reporter is part of that initiative.

. . . continues at MME (20 Mar 2024)

[txttletale]

What are your criticisms of Chavismo and Maduro just out of curiosity?

now i'd like to preface this with a disclaimer that any opposition ghoul would do nothing but sell the country out to the USA and UK every which way in a heartbeat--maduro is better than any alternative, whether that's guaidó or whichever neoliberal puppet they prop up to replace him.

anyway, there were two key problems with chavismo. firstly, it's fundamentally a national-bourgeois led social democratic movement. obviously in an imperialized country like venezuela this made it profoundly progressive, and the achievments of the bolivarian revolution were incredible--chávez cut malnutrition in half, cut unemployment in half, sent millions of children to school and gave millions of elderly people pensions. however, this project of wealth distribution ultimately had to accomodate the national bourgeoisie. which of course on one hand you can argue was completely necessary, but on the other hand allowed the parasitic classes to entrench themselves firmly within elements of the state apparatus and made chavismo as a project entirely incapable of confronting the national bourgeoisie or corruption.

these of course are the realities of 'democratic socialism', of sweeping a socialist into office in a bourgeoise democracy. through some extremely clever political structures, such as the new constitution, communes, and bolicarian circles--he was able to move much more radically than most in his position. but ultimately, he could not escape the fundamental limits of the source and constraints of his power.

the second is that--and this is a very tawdry and obvious piece of analysis--while it is of course admirable and correct that he seized the nation's oil wealth and enriched the country with it--the way he did it was obviously shortsighted. without a sovereign wealth fund, worker's democratic control of the oil industry, or a solid and far-ranging investment plan, he laid the groundwork for some of the current crisis on the assumption that oil prices would stay high forever.

maduro inherited these faults and added far more of his own. during the crisis that began in earnest in 2016, the other shoe dropped wrt oil prices at the same time as the US tightened their murderous sanctions regime. faced with economic crisis, maduro has broadly chosen to move from chávez' strategy of accomodation with the national bourgeoisie to a full on alliance. social programs have been slashed, pensions cut, wages have plummeted, and worst of all, maduro has sold off countless state enterprises in the hope that oft-prayed to benevolent deity, "foreign capital" would miraculously heal the economy. in the course of this he made an enemy of many early chavistas, as well as the leftmost wing of chávez' coalition -- he has mobilized the full force of the bourgeois state against the country's communist party and other genuinely revolutionary movements, most gallingly the marxist-leninist movimiento tupamaro.

so, tldr: chavismo was genuinely radical compared to even your average third-world social democracy--however it remained fundamentally constrained in what it could accomplish by the lack of an actual proletarian state, was unable to rid itself of reliance on the national bourgeoisie for that same reason, and made some very avoidable mistakes in the handling of the nation's oil wealth--maduro inherited those flaws but has been much more accomodating to both national and international capitalists to the detriment of the people of venezuela.

[zvaigzdelasas]

The big three tropical rainforest nations – Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – are in talks to form a strategic alliance to coordinate on their conservation, nicknamed an “Opec for rainforests”, the Guardian understands.

The election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, has been followed by a flurry of activity to avoid the destruction of the Amazon, which scientists have warned is dangerously close to tipping point after years of deforestation under its far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.

During his first speech as president-elect, Lula pledged to fight for zero deforestation in the Amazon, while Colombia has proposed creating an Amazon bloc at Cop27, and Norway’s environment minister is moving to reinstate a billion-dollar fund to protect the rainforest after it was halted under Bolsonaro.[...]

The alliance could see the rainforest countries make joint proposals on carbon markets and finance, a longtime sticking point at UN climate and biodiversity talks, as part of an effort to encourage developed countries to fund their conservation [...]

Oscar Soria, campaign director of the activism site Avaaz, said the alliance could be an “Opec for rainforests”, akin to the oil producers’ cartel, which coordinates on the fossil fuel’s production levels and price. Before being elected, Lula said any alliance could be expanded to other rainforest countries, such as Peru and Cambodia.

“This deal could be a promising step forward, as long as Indigenous peoples and local communities are fully consulted in the process and their rights and leadership respected,” Soria said.

5 Nov 22