General Politics Three: But what is left/right?

[EnglishEdward]

Fascinating it won't work.

The bureaucrats will find that they have imprisoned themselves, and not the people, in their own rules.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Uttarakhand UCC: Indian state wants to govern live-in relationships​

Moving in with your partner in India's picturesque Himalayan state of Uttarakhand will soon require informing authorities and complying with a new law regulating "live-in" relationships.

This key provision within the state's expansive Uniform Civil Code (UCC) - which establishes a unified personal law for all residents, regardless of religion, sex, gender, and sexual orientation - has garnered more attention than the entire law itself. A common law has been one of the original promises of Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which also rules Uttarakhand.

Unmarried couples living together is still frowned upon in most parts of India, where these relationships are commonly referred to as "live-in".

Under the proposal, partners - the law specifies a man and a woman - must submit a live-in relationship statement to the registrar, who conducts a summary inquiry within 30 days. During this investigation, the partners might be asked to "supply additional information or evidence" if necessary. The registrar also forwards live-in relationship statements to the local police and informs parents if either partner is under 21.

If the official is satisfied, he enters the relationship in a register and issues a certificate; otherwise, partners are informed of the reasons for denial. The official can refuse registration if one partner is married, a minor, or if consent to the relationship is obtained through coercion or fraud.

Partners can terminate the relationship by submitting a statement to the official and providing a copy to their partner. Terminations of these relationships will also be reported to the police.

If partners fail to submit the live-in relationship statement, the registrar, if prompted by a "complaint or information," serves a notice demanding submission within 30 days.

Staying in a live-in relationship for over a month without informing the authorities can invite punishment: up to three months in prison, a fine of up to 10,000 rupees ($120; £95), or both. The punishment for making "false statements" or withholding information about the relationship may lead to a three-month-prison term, a fine of up to 25,000 rupees, or both.

Not surprisingly, the proposed law has sparked criticism from legal experts.

"A few years ago the Supreme Court had ruled that privacy was a fundamental right. The state has no business regulating intimate relationships between consenting adults and what makes this provision worse is the penal consequence a couple may end up facing for not getting the relationship registered . This is an appalling provision and must be struck down," says Rebecca John, a senior Supreme Court lawyer.

Currently, live-in relationships in India are referenced under the 2005 domestic violence laws, defining "domestic relationship" as, among other things, a connection between two individuals "in the nature of marriage".

To be sure, cohabiting unmarried couples are not entirely uncommon in India's bigger cities as young men and women relocate for employment and defer traditional marriages. (An aside: In a 2018 survey of over 160,000 households, 93% of married Indians reported having arranged marriages, while only 3% had "love marriages".) However, random surveys present a mixed picture.

In a May 2018 poll by Inshorts surveying 140,000 lakh netizens - 80% aged 18-35 - more than 80% of millennials viewed live-in relationships as taboo in India, while 47% preferred marriage in the choice between the two. One out of two Indians felt that living together was important to understand their partner better, according to a 2023 survey by Lionsgate Play, conducted among 1,000 Indians.

India's courts have sometimes frowned on live-in relationships. In 2012, a Delhi court deemed live-in relationships "immoral" and dismissed them as an "infamous product of Western culture", labelling them a mere "urban fad."

• What divorce and separation tell us about modern India

The Supreme Court has been more supportive. In 2010, the court endorsed the right of unmarried couples to live together in a case involving an actress accused of outraging public decency. In 2013, it urged parliament to enact laws safeguarding women and children in live-in relationships, ruling that such relationships were "neither a crime nor a sin", despite being socially unacceptable in the country. (In Uttarakhand's contentious proposed law, a deserted woman can seek maintenance from her live-in partner through the courts, and children born from such relationships will be deemed legitimate.)

Many fear the Uttarakhand law may drive away cohabiting couples, encourage reporting on them, and make landlords hesitant to rent to "unregistered" couples. Also, they say, the idea of counting and registering live-in couples seems peculiar in a country that hasn't conducted a population census since 2011.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-68224969

WTH? How are they going to enforce this?

 

[Samson]

WTH? How are they going to enforce this?

By harassing people they want to harass, just like most of these laws.

 

[Farm Boy]

Authority!

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

‘India Out’ campaigns simmer in Bangladesh amid election fallout

Calls to boycott Indian goods in Bangladesh follow allegations of Indian interference in national elections.

www.aljazeera.com

Spoiler excerpts :

Simmering anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh has boiled over in the past decade, culminating in public displays such as celebrations in Dhaka last year after India’s loss in the Cricket World Cup final.

But after last month’s elections in Bangladesh, in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina secured a fourth term while the opposition boycotted the polls, a massive “India Out” campaign was launched, alleging Indian interference in Bangladesh politics.

The Bangladeshi diaspora and opposition groups have fuelled this anti-India movement and advocated boycotts of Indian products. This movement mirrors similar campaigns in the Maldives, where Mohamed Muizzu capitalized on anti-India sentiment to win the presidential election.

Gono Odhikar Parishad, a rising political force aligned with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led opposition, is promoting the boycott movement. Party leader Nurul Haque Nur declared at a recent rally in Dhaka that “We all have to start an ‘India Out’ campaign'” while alleging Indian interference in the recent elections.

Rumeen Farhana, international affairs secretary of the BNP, told Al Jazeera that the people of Bangladesh never liked India’s interference in Bangladesh politics. “It’s now crystal clear that India did everything possible to keep the regime in power since 2014,” she alleged.

Resentment against India reached a boiling point in Bangladesh after Hasina’s Awami League secured a resounding victory in the January 7 elections, capturing 223 seats out of 300 in parliament. Critics alleged the process lacked legitimacy due to the opposition’s boycott and the presence of numerous Awami League-backed independent candidates, raising questions about the fairness of the vote.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered swift congratulations to both Hasina and “the people of Bangladesh for the successful conduct of elections”, endorsing the outcome. In contrast, Western governments expressed reservations, highlighting the boycott and the lack of a strong opposition presence.

Analysts, meanwhile, pointed out that boycotting Indian goods could have major repercussions for the economic relationship between the two countries.

India is a major exporter to Bangladesh with annual trade historically exceeding $12bn. Additionally, Bangladesh relies heavily on India for essential commodities, and the two governments are currently in talks on an annual quota of imports of Indian farm products.

Calling the anti-India campaign a “political stunt”, Munshi Faiz Ahmed, former chairman of the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies, a state-funded think tank, told Al Jazeera that the economic fallout of boycotting Indian products will be more severe for Bangladesh.

 

[Lexicus]

Halted funding for Israel, which is what so many Democrats have been clamoring for, but of course, the irony is, as always, the US will not get any praise or credit for it,

The whole "Biden should get some credit for performative hand-wringing even while supplying Israel with the physical means of genocide" argument is bad enough, but this is like saying we should give credit to the Trump administration because the Supreme Court struck down their Muslim ban. The US only failed to fund Israel due to its own political dysfunction, not because there is a majority opposed to it for any actually morally consistent reason.

 

[Kyriakos]

WTH? How are they going to enforce this?

No wall can withstand Ganesha's prying poboscis.

 

[Sommerswerd]

The whole "Biden should get some credit for performative hand-wringing even while supplying Israel with the physical means of genocide" argument is bad enough, but this is like saying we should give credit to the Trump administration because the Supreme Court struck down their Muslim ban. The US only failed to fund Israel due to its own political dysfunction, not because there is a majority opposed to it for any actually morally consistent reason.

Well I did say "the US" rather than "Biden", but that's a minor detail. I also didn't say that the US "should" get credit, I merely observed/predicted that they wouldn't, but that's also a minor detail. Your real point as I think I clearly understand it, that the failure to fund Israel isn't a moral decision that is being made as a statement against the war, but instead is essentially an accident/collateral consequence of the political situation in the US.

I think the point is valid, but I do have some thoughts about that. Most importantly, while I agree that a majority of US Congress members probably support aid to Israel, I also think there are a substantial number who do not, and I think that part of the inability to get aid to Israel passed is related to that. They tried to pass a "clean" bill to fund Israel in the majority-Republican House and it failed. It probably would not have failed if there were not Democrats who are just outright opposed to it.

Another thing is that for that reason I don't know if "dysfunction" is the right way to describe the failure to send aid to Israel. Do you want the US to send aid to Israel? They aren't doing it, at least not right now and not throughout this war. Do you really want to call that dysfunction? I agree that Congress is and has been dysfunctional, largely as a result of Republicans bowing to the whims of Trump... it just seems odd to call the delay in aid to Israel as "dysfunctional".

 

[Kyriakos]

I think that it flows from the US having (at least on practical levels) reverence for democratic procedures. Obviously this is often used as a tool by the sides, but in principle remains a force for good in the country.
If the US had some one-man-rule, they'd just do as they please with no check at all. Which we see elsewhere.

 

[Lexicus]

I also think there are a substantial number who do not, and I think that part of the inability to get aid to Israel passed is related to that.

I disagree completely on this; I think the sole reason it has failed is Donald Trump ordering the Republicans not to do a border funding deal.

Do you really want to call that dysfunction? I agree that Congress is and has been dysfunctional, largely as a result of Republicans bowing to the whims of Trump... it just seems odd to call the delay in aid to Israel as "dysfunctional".

Of course it's dysfunction. There are all kinds of things the government does that I'm not keen on it doing; the "functional" way to stop those things would be by passing legislation that addresses them or otherwise working within the system as it is supposed to work. For example, Biden enforcing existing US law against trafficking arms to the perpetrators of atrocities would be a "functional" way of halting Israel funding. The government failing to pass any spending bill because Trump ordered the GOP essentially not to pass anything while Biden is in office is dysfunction.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Biden angrily pushes back at special counsel’s report that questioned his memory, handling of docs

A special counsel report has found evidence that President Joe Biden “willfully” retained and shared highly classified materials when he was a private citizen, including documents about…

www.bostonherald.com

Special counsel: Biden 'willfully' disclosed classified materials, but no criminal charges warranted

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden “willfully” retained and disclosed highly classified materials when he was a private citizen, including documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan and other sensitive national security matters, according to a Justice Department report that nonetheless says no criminal charges are warranted for him or anyone else.

Well, ok then.
Good to be powerful.

**Edit**

Despite signs that Biden knowingly retained and disclosed classified materials, Hur’s report said criminal charges were not merited for multiple reasons. Those include the fact that as vice president, and during his subsequent presidency when the Afghanistan records were found, “he had the authority to keep classified documents at his home.”

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” investigators wrote.

He is running for re-election.
Be less harsh!

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

I don't see how this is good in any way for Biden.

I guess if you're really really cynical you could just say that he's really not running things as president anyway and is only a figurehead. If that's fine, then to that end, who is the public going to be voting for who are going to be making the actual decisions in another Biden White House?

 

[bernie14]

Biden angrily pushes back at special counsel’s report that questioned his memory, handling of docs

A special counsel report has found evidence that President Joe Biden “willfully” retained and shared highly classified materials when he was a private citizen, including documents about…

www.bostonherald.com

Well, ok then.
Good to be powerful.

**Edit**





He is running for re-election.
Be less harsh!

So, Republicans will be writing a letter to Kamala?

 

[Core Imposter]

One of the reasons that the public does not trust DC is found in the fact that this comes out when the coverage is focused on the Supreme Court. The habit of releasing news when the public's attention is elsewhere is damning to the insiders who reveal their low opinion of the masses. And it doesn't work, the public just gets more disgusted.

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” ― Abraham Lincoln

 

[Farm Boy]

So, seeing as this is a serious flaw, I assume you're totes gung-ho on Haley with your 1/140 millionth share?

 

[Core Imposter]

I have no idea at the moment. I am expecting an event.

 

[Kaitzilla]

In a rare press conference, President Biden spoke today.

 

[Broken_Erika]

In a rare press conference, President Biden spoke today.

He should have expected this since the Special Counsel is a Republican.
Didn't Biden choose him so that the Republicans couldn't complain as much?

 

[Kaitzilla]

One of the reasons that the public does not trust DC is found in the fact that this comes out when the coverage is focused on the Supreme Court. The habit of releasing news when the public's attention is elsewhere is damning to the insiders who reveal their low opinion of the masses. And it doesn't work, the public just gets more disgusted.

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” ― Abraham Lincoln

It's not like this is bad news quietly released on a Friday afternoon to hit page 8 on Monday.

No charges!
That is good news for an angry POTUS on Thursday.

 

[Core Imposter]

from the Biden news conference...the president of Mexico? I understand this stuff from seeing the aging of family members and frankly I have done this myself. I think it is shameful to disrespect Biden because of this but it is not going to get better and while I do not think he has reached the point that his judgement has been grossly impaired we all have to realize that point is coming and it not in anyone's best interest for that to occur in the Oval Office. Plus, we can't look into his head and recognize when such a moment has come. We can see the frustration and the reports of his temper and language all point to the same conclusion.

I watched the entirety of the Tucker Carlson interview of Vladimir Putin and it is sobering to think of either of the major candidates havng to match wits with Putin and Xi. We are not in a good position.