India Elects Corporate Govt; Human Rights Watch Govt Ties; Newspapers Silent on ALEC; Catholic War on Women

India Elects Hard-Right Hindu Nationalist as New Indian Prime Minister Backed by Corporate Interests. Early results from the largest election in the world show India’s opposition leader Narendra Modi has won a landslide victory to become the country’s new prime minister.

Letter to Human Rights Watch urges independence from US government. The issue of Human Rights Watch (HRW) and their close links to the US government has been highlighted by a recent letter sent to Ken Roth on behalf of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Mairead Maguire; former UN Assistant Secretary General Hans von Sponeck; current UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Richard Falk; and over 100 scholars. The letter focuses on HRW’s closeness to the US authorities and the “revolving door” phenomenon whereby key personnel revolve between HRW and the US government.

Ohio Newspapers Remain Silent on ALEC as Group Influences State Senate’s Anti-Renewable Legislation. As the Ohio Senate debated and passed legislation to freeze renewable energy and efficiency standards for two years, some of the state’s most-read newspapers chose American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) affiliates for nearly half of their interviews. Still, none of those publications have mentioned ALEC once since April 7. That’s a little troubling considering that the legislators behind the bill are members of or have ties to ALEC, the secretive group that lobbies on behalf of fossil fuel interests and connects companies to legislators that will fight for laws that curtail the advancement of renewables. The group crafts model legislation and its Private Enterprise Advisory Council includes Koch Industries, Energy Future Holdings, Peabody Energy and ExxonMobil—the type of companies that see the increased deployment of renewable energy as a financial threat.  

The Catholic War on Women. 

“They decided for Lent this year to put together an Internet meme asking people to pray for (three people): me, (and also) an abortion doctor, and a pro-choice journalist. They put the three of us, with our names, cities, where we work, etc., (and published) it in the blog post and told people to ‘pray’ for us.” This was a major concern because, as Katie says,” the anti-choice movement has used wanted posters to kill people. It has lead to assassinations.”

Sources: Democracy Now, Eco Watch, Human Rights Investigations, Popular Resistance.

Paul Brown is a retired neuroscience professor whose primary interests are human rights, overpopulation, mass extinction, global warming, and the military-industrial complex. Links to all his Before It’s News articles are at /contributor/pages/189/210/stories.html.