New York Times headquar

Distort the timeline to try and blame the Palestinians. The Times recounts yesterday’s latest news: Israeli airstrikes that killed 2 Gazans and mortar fire from Gaza that wounded 4 Israelis. But the paper nowhere mentions that 5 days earlier, on July 9, Israel had further choked off cargo shipments into Gaza, a territory which was already under a punishing blockade — a drastic act that any neutral observer might have concluded contributed greatly to the latest escalation.

Spend more time on Israeli victims than on Palestinian ones. Today’s online article has 6 full paragraphs on Israelis in the town of Sderot who were hurt by rockets or mortars. Three different Israelis were quoted, including one, Refael Yifrah, who said, “It’s better to be in Gaza where they get warning that they’re going to be fired upon in one neighborhood or another and they evacuate.  .  .  Here, there’s an alert, no one knows where it going to land.”

By contrast, the Times cited only one Palestinian by name, even though the paper has two reporters in Gaza City. The Times did report that Muhammad Abdelaal, a 30-year-old, “was interviewed at Shifa Hospital while soaked with blood and being treated for his wounds” — but, unlike the Israelis, he apparently didn’t say anything quotable.

Don’t challenge Israel’s framing of the events. The Times headline calls yesterday’s exchange the “Most Intense Fighting Since 2014 War” — without quotation marks. In fairness, the first sentence of the report does make clear that the “most intense” assessment comes straight from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But Israeli soldiers have shot dead at least 137 Gazans in the months-long Great March of Return and wounded more than 4000. Israeli snipers murdering un- or barely-armed protesters hardly qualifies as “fighting,” but it has certainly been more “intense” than yesterday’s events. Clearly Netanyahu wanted to distract world attention from those 137 dead Palestinians, and the thousands more wounded — and the New York Times let him get away with it.

(There is one minor mystery. The version of the Times report that appears on page 12 of the print edition this morning is moderately less biased: no headline about “Most Intense Fighting,” less coverage of the Israeli victims. Maybe the print editors are more aware of the blistering criticism that Times articles have gotten in recent months? Of course, many more readers will see the online version.)

Courtesy: https://mondoweiss.net/

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The NYT editorial titled “Modi’s Perilous Embrace of Hindu Extremists” had said that since he came to power in 2014, PM Modi “has played a cagey game, appeasing his party’s hardline Hindu base while promoting secular goals of development and economic growth”.

Calling Yogi Adityanath a “firebrand Hindu cleric”, the editorial said the move to name the 44-year-old as Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister is a “shocking rebuke to religious minorities”.

The editorial had said, “On Sunday, Mr. Modi revealed his hand. Emboldened by a landslide victory in recent elections in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, his party named a firebrand Hindu cleric, Yogi Adityanath, as the state’s leader. The move is a shocking rebuke to religious minorities, and a sign that cold political calculations ahead of national elections in 2019 have led Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party to believe that nothing stands in the way of realizing its long-held dream of transforming a secular republic into a Hindu state.”

In his Facebook Live on the day Yogi was chosen to tee the next chief minister by the BJP, Janta Ka Reporter’s editor-in-chief, Rifat Jawaid, was the first journalist to conclude that the decision had unmasked Modi by exposing his hollow agenda of development. (Watch the video below)

Making similar assertion, the NYT’s editorial said, “But the appointment shows that Mr. Modi sees no contradiction between economic development and a muscular Hindu nationalism that feeds on stoking anti-Muslim passions. Mr. Modi’s economic policies have delivered growth, but not jobs. India needs to generate a million new jobs every month to meet employment demand. Should Mr. Adityanath fail to deliver, there is every fear that he — and Mr. Modi’s party — will resort to deadly Muslim-baiting to stay in power, turning Mr. Modi’s dreamland into a nightmare for India’s minorities, and threatening the progress that Mr. Modi has promised to all of its citizens.”

(Additional inputs from PTI)

Courtesy: Janta Ka Reporter
 

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इस मामले में अमेरिकी अखबार न्यूयॉर्क टाइम्स ने नोटबंदी को भारतीय अर्थव्यवस्था के लिए 'भयावह योजना' करार दिया है। न्यूयॉर्क टाइम्स ने कहा है कि नोटबंदी के बाद भारतीय अर्थव्यवस्था भारी कठिनाई झेल रहा है और नकदी की कमी के कारण भारतीयों के जीवन में परेशानियां बढ़ रही हैं। 
 
न्यूयार्क टाइम्स ने सोमवार को अपने संपादकीय लेख में कहा कि भारत में 500 रुपये तथा 1,000 रुपये के नोटों के विमुद्रीकरण की भयावह योजना बनाई गई और उसे अंजाम दिया गया और इस बात के शायद ही सबूत हैं कि इससे भ्रष्टाचार पर लगाम लगी। 
 
सम्पादकीय में कहा गया कि, “भारत सरकार द्वारा अचानक सबसे ज्यादा चलन में रही मुद्रा को विमुद्रित करने के दो महीने के बाद अर्थव्यवस्था कठिनाई भरे दौर में है।” लेख के मुताबिक, “विनिर्माण क्षेत्र में मंदी है, रियल एस्टेट तथा कारों की बिक्री गिर गई है। किसान, दुकानदार तथा अन्य भारतीयों के मुताबिक नकदी की कमी ने जीवन को बेहद कठिन बना दिया है।” 
 
समाचार पत्र ने कहा, “नोटबंदी के कदम की योजना भयावह तरीके से बनाई गई और फिर उसका क्रियान्वयन किया गया। भारतवासी बैंकों के बाहर पैसे जमा करने व निकालने के लिए घंटों कतार में खड़े रहे।” सम्पादकीय लेख में कहा गया, “नए नोटों की आपूर्ति कम है, क्योंकि सरकार ने पर्याप्त मात्रा में पहले इन नोटों की छपाई नहीं की थी। छोटे कस्बों तथा ग्रामीण इलाकों में नकदी की समस्या विकराल है।”
 
न्यूयार्क टाइम्स ने सम्पादकीय लेख में कहा कि भारतीय रिजर्व बैंक ने कहा कि चार नवंबर को चलन में 17,700 अरब रुपये थे, जबकि 23 दिसंबर को यह आंकड़ा इसका आधा 9200 अरब रुपये हो गया। लेख में कहा गया कि इस बात के बेहद कम सबूत हैं कि नोटबंदी के कदम से भ्रष्टाचार से निपटने में सहायता मिली।

Courtesy: National Dastak
 

The post मोदीजी की नोटबंदी ने भारतीय अर्थव्यवस्था को गर्त में धकेल दिया- अमेरिकी अखबार appeared first on SabrangIndia.

“The Cost of India’s Man-Made Currency Crisis”, and cleared by NYT's powerful editorial board, it says, “The swap was atrociously planned and executed. Indians had to line up for hours outside banks to deposit and withdraw cash. New notes have been in short supply because the government did not print enough of them in advance.”

The editorial adds, “The cash crunch has been worst in small towns and rural areas. The amount of cash in circulation fell by nearly half, from 17.7 trillion rupees ($260 billion) on November 4 to 9.2 trillion ($135 billion) on December 23, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).”

The editorial notes, “ Two months after the Indian government abruptly decided to swap the most widely used currency notes for new bills, the economy is suffering. The manufacturing sector is contracting; real estate and car sales are down; and farm workers, shopkeepers and other Indians report that a shortage of cash has made life increasingly difficult.”

The editorial comes at a time when Union finance minister Arun Jaitley claiming  that India’s indirect tax receipts grew by 14.2% in December as compared to the same period last year, which suggests the government’s currency recall "didn’t hurt economic activity."

The editorial insists, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's move to swap Rs 500 and 1,000 notes, which made up about 86 percent of all currency in circulation, replacing them with new Rs 500 and 2,000 notes, has failed to identify people who were hoarding cash to avoid paying taxes or to engage in corruption.

In fact, in says, “No economy can lose that much currency in a few weeks without creating major hardship – certainly not one like that of India, where cash is used for about 98 percent of consumer transactions by volume.”

Pointing to how “Modi’s government” as an afterthought said “it was also eager for Indians to move to electronic transactions”, it notes, “While a growing number of people have debit cards and cellphones that can be used to transfer money, most merchants are not set up to accept such electronic payments.”

“The government had said that people bringing more than Rs 250,000 of the old notes to banks would have to show that they had paid taxes owed on the money. Because of those rules, officials had expected that a lot of black money would never make it back to banks”, the editorial recalls.

However, it regrets, “Indians have successfully deposited the vast majority of old notes. That suggests that either there wasn’t as much black money out there as the government claimed or that tax cheats found a way to deposit their hoards of cash without attracting the government’s attention, perhaps with the help of money launderers.”

Wondering if there would be strong political reaction, the editorial says, “Many Indians have said that they are willing to tolerate some pain in the fight against corruption. But their patience won’t last if the cash crunch continues and the swap does little to reduce corruption and tax evasion.”

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