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WASHINGTON – From Barack Obama and Joe Biden to the AFL-CIO and progressive allies there have come declarations that the Minneapolis police killing of 46-year-old George Floyd on May 25 once again exposed the systemic racism that undergirds U.S. society. Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidency, added that this has been the case in America for 400 years.

It was certainly not an unusual move of the new Labour leader Keir Starmer to distance from Jeremy Corbyn’s policy on Kashmir and repositioning Labour on Kashmiri. The new leader of any political party, my not venture to alter the fundamental ideological line of the party, but he is always free to bring about changes in the strategies and tactics of the party keeping in view the immediate prevailing political needs of organisation.

The unlocking process of the Indian economy in phases which started from June 1, is going to be a tortuous one and the tackling of the problems emanating from the opening after 68 days of lockdown in four phases, requires visionary leadership from the centre as also the state governments. The centre this time left the decision to a big extent to the states since it perhaps understood the dimension of the damage that was caused to the economy and the lives of the common people, especially the migrant workers by sudden announcement of the lockdown from March 25. The damage is so extensive and the Covid management as of now is in such a precarious position, that the industries which are opening, may not get the confidence that the market for their products will improve soon.

Pictures and videos of Americans slugging it out in the streets with each other and with the police and National Guard over the Floyd death are full of reckless abandon, of people flouting every anti-coronavirus rule in the book; from social distancing thrown to the winds to facemasks missing from most mugs on show.

LUCKNOW: The Samajwadi Party national president Akhilesh Yadav has made it clear that it would not enter into alliance with any party for the 2022 assembly elections.

The Covid-19 has changed the dynamics of almost everything including politics in the world. Today, it poses challenges for all walks of life and also all kinds of institutions. This is true of democracy practitioners, civil liberties and political parties and democracy itself, as Trinamool Congress leader Dinesh Bhai Trivedi says!

The Indians lived for 68 days in the dread of death driven by the authority in the guise of combat with the pandemics of the corona virus. Many of dictations and orders by authorities in various states, districts as well as emotions and responses, actions and reactions in various sections leave a doubt whether authorities were combating the pandemics or exercising the authority acquired from the lockdown directive for their personal whims and fancies. Several directives restrictive in nature and outside the need and utility for the combating the disease was beyond comprehension.

Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States is terminating its relationship with the World Health Organisation (WHO) came as protests raged over the police killing of George Floyd.

Electoral compulsions and the impulse to keep the rightist forces in good humour have witnessed fundamental transformation of the UK’s Labour Party. The party has decided to divorce the left ideas and policy notwithstanding the ground realities favouring Labour Party embracing the socialist ideas for espousing the cause of the poor people who have significant number in the country.

The Financial Times of London is one of the most “respectable” bourgeois newspapers in the world. Even this newspaper has now come to recognise something which the Left has been saying for quite some time. In an editorial on April 3, 2020, it wrote: “Radical reforms in reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investment rather than as liabilities and look for ways to make the labour market less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda… Policies until recently considered eccentric such as basic income and wealth taxes will have to be in the mix.”