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By Countercurrents.org

04 January , 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Hunger haunts all. Hunger ultimately determines path of politics. War against hunger is going on for decades. What will be the number of hungry people in the world in 2013? The World Food Programme provides a list of 10 facts related to hunger.

A news item* of the WFP said:

How many hungry people are there in the world and is the number going down? What effect does hunger have on children and what can we do to help them? Here is a list of 10 facts that go some way to explaining why hunger is the single biggest solvable problem facing the world today.

1. Approximately 870 million people in the world do not eat enough to be healthy. That means that one in every eight people on Earth goes to bed hungry each night. (Source: FAO, 2012)

2. The number of people living with chronic hunger has declined by 130 million people over the past 20 years. For developing countries, the prevalence of undernourishment has fallen from 23.2 to 14.9 percent over the period 1990–2010 (Source: FAO, 2012)

3. Most of the progress against hunger was achieved before 2007/08. Since then, global progress in reducing hunger has slowed and leveled off. (Source: FAO, 2012)

4. Hunger is number one on the list of the world’s top 10 health risks. It kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. (Source: UNAIDS, 2010; WHO, 2011).

5. A third of all deaths in children under the age of five in developing countries are linked to undernutrition. (Source: IGME, 2011)

6. The first 1,000 days of a child’s life, from pregnancy through age two, are the critical window in which to tackle undernutrition. A proper diet in this period can protect children from the mental and physical stunting that can result from malnutrition. (Source: IGME, 2011)

7. It costs just US $0.25 per day to provide a child with all of the vitamins and nutrients he or she needs to grow up healthy. (Source: WFP, 2011)

8. If women in rural areas had the same access to land, technology, financial services, education and markets as men, the number of hungry people could be reduced by 100-150 million. (Source: FAO, 2011)

9. By 2050, climate change and erratic weather patterns will have pushed another 24 million children into hunger. Almost half of these children will live in sub-Saharan Africa. (Source: WFP, 2009)

10. Hunger is the single biggest solvable problem facing the world today.

* World Food Programme, “10 Things You Need To Know About Hunger In 2013”, Jan. 2, 2013, http://www.wfp.org/stories/10-things-you-need-know-about-hunger-2013

By Ranjan Soloman

3 January 2013

@ Palestine Update

Syria is on the brink of a huge externally sponsored disaster. Everything about what is happening in that country is repugnant and deplorable. The western allies are supporting a proxy war – a typical colonial tactic to destabilize and then conquer. The theory under construct now is that the Syrian regime is treacherous and dubious because it is preparing to assault the rebels with chemical weapons. The corporate media deals out this gobbledygook with a regularity and data that nudge gullible unthinking readers to swallow the bait. Not new, this strategy – echoes of Iraq and the invention of the Weapons of Mass Destruction conspiracy theory. The ‘chemical weapon’ theory has many buyers in the west. The media’s tactics in prompting and propping up ‘Islamaphobia’ is working. When war is announced and their armies and air force invades Syria to complete the job that the rebels cannot win on their own, the people of the west would have sanctioned the invasion believing that their leaders were engaged in the noble task of saving Syria from a maniac by a new name other than Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, or Osama Bin laden.

To do what it did in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, the West lied. It is lying now. The report is out and it is bad news. The US is now officially at war with Syria. They have de facto recognized the rebel fighters as a legitimate Syrian authority. The hard truth is that rebels have probably got the chemical weapons in their hands – they were smuggled from Libya months ago. They will be unleashed on innocent populations, the crime will be uncovered with devious propaganda and the west will then enter to announce their moral outrage! Then hand over Syria to the oil capitalists! Of course, there will be a stooge regime made functional and managed by the west. The terrorists would be transformed into rulers, diplomats, bureaucrats, and official army thugs.

Meanwhile the destabilisation of Syria will be intensified, the larger strategy being to generate chaos and disenchantment with President Assad- who may not have the support of all his people, but carries more credibility and standing than the rag tag opposition who strut around as ‘rebels with a cause’. The ‘rebels’ are mercenaries from outside Syria having infiltrated under orders to be ruthless, to kill, and be merciless. It is predicted that by the time the conflict sees any final solutions; more than 100,000 people could be killed. It could be even worse.

Chances for peace are denied only because they do not serve the interests of the west and Israel. Reasonable formulas for peace are dismissed as unworkable. The Syrian rebels reject dialogue until the departure of President Assad.

Russia and Iran are playing pivotal roles in preventing a human catastrophe in the country and seeking to resolve the crisis through diplomacy. They are not looking at regime change. Iran is vilified in the western world as a desperado nation whose only intent as a nation is criminal and, in the last few years, a nuclear risk. Iran has shown the maximum maturity and positive intent. Iran has, in fact, proposed a 6-point peace plan which assigns the Syrian nation the lawful right to decide it’s the destiny and future through an internationally-recognized democratic process. The plan, among others, calls for an immediate end to any armed actions; ushering in a UN-monitored democratic process; the Damascus regime and the opposition to cooperate with UN and its special committee to stop armed operations especially in the residential areas to restore peace and stability; an immediate, serious and just distribution of humanitarian aids to Syrian people; the lifting of economic sanctions on the Syrian people in order to prepare the ground for the return of all Syrian refugees to their homeland; the resumption of comprehensive national dialogues by different opposing social and political parties and Damascus to rapidly form a national reconciliation committee in order to unanimously form a transitional government; a free and competitive election for the formation of a new parliament and senate and the composition of a constitution; and the immediate release of all political prisoners from all parties by the government and opposition groups, and establishment of a competent court of justice to investigate cases of those who committed crimes in that country. Ironically, the plan also steps outside Syrian terrain when it asks for the media to cease wrong reporting about Syria- a ploy to ease international suspicion about the Assad regime and the character of the Syrian regime. With no counter argument worthy of contesting the Iranian plan, the Syrian rebels dismissed it as a “last-ditch bid to save the regime of President Bashar al-Assad”. The Syrian regime, on the other hand, is eager to examine legitimate options to bring to an end the nearly two-year crisis through political dialogue.

Syria faces a tragedy of incalculably sadistic scope. How many more deaths in war and post-war will it take to forge a peace?  There are still individuals and groups in the west who see through the cruel and self-fulfilling designs of their governments. Despite the hurdles, they are examining legal options in favour of Syria – an option that can take the western allies to the International Court of justice. The Rule of Law could well go in favour of Syria. If only the western allies truly believe in international law they would recognize that they are on the wrong side of the law. Mere sanctions – unilateral as they are in this case- are enough for a verdict in favour of Syria because sanctions are as bad as war and crimes that inflict suffering on innocent populations by bringing on disaster in the form of deprivation of the basics of life. Unless, the west is challenged for its illegal wars and leaders declared criminals, the assaults will continue with increased arrogance and brazenly. Moreover, the west is supporting armed crimes that it funds. Syria is a good test case for such action. The evidence against the west is quite harsh.

Badayl-Alternatives offer you the views expressed above along with weblinks that provide more analysis and perspectives into the Syrian tragedy. We hope this is useful in your understanding of the conflict especially at a time when the media provides a one-sided standpoint

By Cynthia Stephen

30 December, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

It is a real shame that our society has not understood the basic reason behind the increasing sexual violence against women and girls. The reason is that our society is deeply misogynistic, that is, woman-hating. This is seen even in ancient mythologies where women are almost always shown in poor light, as slaves to the men. Thus there is a denial of their basic humanity in the collective consciousness of our society. That is why crimes against women – not only rapes, but beating, mental violence, stalking, dowry violence – is not seen as a crime or treated as such, whether by the perpetrator, the police, or indeed the justice system itself.

In Bangalore we had the recent high-profile case of a famous actor who had a history of severe violence against his wife – finally being “compromised” with his wife, who had the courage to speak up in public, but then faced severe criticism for having dragged the family’s affairs into the public eye and pressure to compromise. But I think she has to be commended for speaking up. Because often victims of violence, and thier families, think that it is better to be silent about violence. This is again because of the lack value for a woman and her person – and many of the women are also co-dependents in the violent situations they face daily. This is not to blame the victim but to understand the reality that women are seen, and also taught by society that they are weak, vulnerable, and hence second-class citizens. Unless this situation is clearly understood and challenged, till everyone – the law, the police, families, each individual, and especially the men – are made to understand the equality, even the superior role, played by a woman in society, and this is given its due worth, such incidents will continue to happen.

The attempt to justify the violence by saying that women provoke men with their clothes or behaviour deserves to be dismissed with contempt. What justifies the now fairly commonly reported sexual attacks on minor children under the age of 8? what about the numerous cases of incest committed on children of thier families by fathers, cousins, uncles and grandfathers?

The role of increased and unmonitored access to pornography is an important factor that cannot be discounted. The young men and boys who consume pornography are predisposed to sexual violence, especially against a vulnerable ‘object’. Thus they are dehumanised and fail to see the sex act not in its human, relational aspect but only as a means to gratifying appetites aroused by the pornographic images.

This points to a failure in the way our society rears its young men and women. While something is being done to address women through empowerment programmes and education, nothing positive is being done to educate young men in this area. They need to see the world as not only thier space, but as the common heritage of both men and women. They have to be taught that women are to be valued highly for thier role in the family, society, and economy, and as common heirs of this world. They have to be taught that women and girls too have rights, they too are human, and they have to be respected, who ever and whatever they are.

The justice delivery to women is most neglected. This has to change. As far as possible, judges and prosecutors should be women to enable victims to speak with comfort, especially in the case of rape and sexual violence.

Cynthia Stephen is an Independent Writer and Researcher based in Bangalore

 

By R.B Sreekumar

30 December, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Mere legislation will not eradicate gender prejudice, sex crimes and emancipate women from inhuman man-made disabilities

The massive youth movement subsequent to the recent gruesome gang-rape in Delhi has rekindled discussion on gender justice. Socio-religious and cultural reforms, simultaneous to intellectual revolution, precede action towards political and legislative transformation. Our freedom struggle was born out of the Modern Indian Renaissance, enlightening many arenas of community life, heralded by Rajaram Mohan Rai, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule and others in the 19th Century. By the time Mahatma Gandhi launched the Non-cooperation Movement in 1921, large chunk of Indian elite was fully engaged in purifying Indian society from evils of widow-burning (Sati), child marriage, ban on widow remarriage, untouchability and numerous ghastly anti-women traditions. The enthusiasts of women reservation in legislative bodies, largely drawn from the creamy layer of urbanised educated middle class and protestors against sex crimes, have to have meaningful durable schemes to confront and stamp out multifarious obscurantist socio-religious practices and conventions, perpetuating subordination and discrimination of women in practically all facets of civil life in India. Grater presence of women in high positions of the First, Second Estates, Judiciary and leadership of political parties, devoid of massive campaigns to exorcise pre-modern religion – ordained traditions, would generate euphoria of equality, without substantial results and attitudinal change of Indian male, for the vast majority in the feminine world of India.

Lofty ideals of gender equality guaranteed by the Indian Constitution is cleverly nullified by socio-religious conventions in our society, by largely adhering to retrogressive customs glorified in the Smritis, particularly of Manu, Vyasa, Parasara and Vasista. Manu Smriti denigrated women, in chapter IX sloka 2 and 3, to slavish depth as part of divine order (Varnalingadharma). Daksha Smriti praised widows for committing suicide on their husband’s funeral pyre as “they will be respected in the heaven for such acts – Swarga lokae mahiyate”

Etymology of words relating to women in Sanskrit language does reflect their intrinsic lower status vis-à-vis men. Mahila (woman) means “land of festival (of course for men)”- Maham lati iti mahila. Bharya (Wife) denotes a person liable to be ruled – Bhartum yogya iti Bharya. Chastity and integrity are imperative for women whereas it is just optional for men. Ancient Indian compilation – Nitisara (edited by Shri K.P.A Menon) directed husbands to abandon wives if they were, argumentative; stealing husband’s money; disloyal; bad mouthing husbands; eating before husband taking food; going to other houses for gossip; even if ten sons were delivered by them, Sloka 12. Alas! there are no such stipulations for husbands, nor the word ‘patnivratan’ is ever in use like ‘pativrata’. In India, even waste material can fetch money, when accepted by others but for some body to accept a girl as wife her parents have to bribe him with dowry.

Puranas (18) and Epics – Ramayana and Mahabharata, are acclaimed as stories of illustrative actualisation of scriptural ideals that people ought to model themselves. None can / will dare to challenge or deviate from projected conduct of worshipful but patriarchal masculinity – centric Epic heroes like Dasarata, Rama, Bheesma , Krishna and so on. Hence anti women traditions got cemented and sanctified. Instances of gender prejudice is reflected in :- 1) Dasaratha not permitting his biological daughter Princess Santha, elder sister of Rama to inherit the throne of Ayodhdya; 2) Rama telling his step mother Kaikyei that if his father wanted he would abandon his mother also like the kingdom; 3) Parasuram (an incarnation of Lord Vishnu) killing his own mother, Renuka, on the orders of his father, Jamadagni; 4) Bheesma kidnapping three princesses of Kasi for making them brides of his brothers; 5) Rama and Krishna doing nothing to end practice of Sati – Urmila committing Sati after Lakshmana’s death and queen Madri entering the pyre of her husband Pandu and so on.

Women of all castes deeply suffered rigorous slavery than even men of lower castes and out-castes. Acceptance of slave women (dasis) as dowry from King Janaka Maharaja by Rama and his brothers (five hundreds slave women had gone along with Rama to Ayodhya from Mithila after his marriage); presentation of well ornamented slave girls as property for dice game by Yudhishtira, the paragon of virtue in Mahabharata, are a few abominable occasions, in the Epics. Pandavas not preventing mass suicide of Yadava women after the death of Krishna was another illustration of depravity. On the whole, the women characters in the Epics were dispensable and disposable commodity. King Yayati gave his daughter – Madhavi, famous for her ravishing beauty, to Muni Galavan, in lieu of horses which Yayati could not supply. Galavan kept Madhavi in the company of three Kings, for one year each, and obtained the required number of horses. Abandonment of pregnant Sita by Rama even after her proven chastity in the fire ordeal (Agniparisha) and later Ram asking Sita to publicly declare her honesty, which prompted self-respecting Sita to disappear into the Mother Earth (suicide), were demonstrative episodes of gross injustice. The audacity of many from the present decadent elite of India (politicians – note “dented and painted pretty ladies” – comment, senior police officials, self styled God men, priestly order of all religions) to blame female victims of sex crimes for the brutalities of men emerges from sacrilegious de-spiritualized legacy of pseudo-religions, and egregious and inequitable social ambience. This could explain our political parties fielding persons accused of sex crimes as candidates in elections, merely based on the factor of win-ability. The mentality of treating wife as a private property of the husband has recently prompted our legislators to legalize marital rape of wives above the age of 16 as lawful.

These Epic realities, religiously accepted by vast majority of people as sacrosanct had, set the tone and tenor of gender discrimination in the present times also. Hypocritical over projections viz extensive worship of female deities being a laudable feature (but even in major Devi Temples – Shaktipeedams – women are not appointed as even assistants to priests, thanks to economics and commerce); Goddesses being depicted as symbolic custodians of knowledge (Saraswathi), wealth (Lakshmi), and power (Amba/Parvathy), though in real life women are kept away from knowledge, wealth and power as far as possible in family, social and religious institutions, and so on, are meant for tokenist exhibitionism of gender equality. In most of the major religious bodies, Mathas and Ashrams no suitable female cadre is raised and nurtured for assuming positions of leadership and authority. Though Lord Buddha permitted women in the Buddhist Sanghams, that tradition was neglected later by the Monks later.

The much euologised Brahmavadinis (female hermits) in the Early Vedic period (1500 to 800 BC) were less than 30 as against 100’s of Rishis and Munis, enjoying all material pleasures including polygamy. No Goddess could aspire for more than one husband, whereas Gods are allowed multiple consorts.

For practicing Hindus, observance of 16 socio-religious and cultural rites (Shodasa Samskar), from conception of the child to funeral ceremonies, prescribed by Smritis and Dharmasastras, is unavoidable. Marginalisation and degradation of women in most of these 16 observances is quite pronounced. Girl child is not even entitled for Upanayan (investiture of sacred thread), Vedarambha (initiation to study) and Samavartan (convocation) ceremonies, while Namakaran (Naming) is conventionally avoided in many places for girls. Strangely the father or senior male family member do all auspicious rituals in most of the sixteen Samskaras, particularly Namakaran, Annaprashana (giving first cereal food), – though biology makes mother to be the food provider (Annadada) from the time of conception-, Vedarambha, Samavartan and so on. In Antyeshti (Funeral) son, nephew or male kith and kin of the deceased are alone permitted to do ceremonies.

Scriptural architecture of patriarchal Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is equally averse to the legitimate rights of women in domestic, social, religious and cultural fields. There are no prospects for a Lady Pope, Abbot or Archbishop of Anglican Church in the religion of apostle of love to all – Jesus Christ. In the priest-less faith of Islam also women are not permitted to do prayers (Namas) in mosques in many places, give religious discourses, and guide devotees in congregations, nor they can preside over religious or social gatherings like marriage, circumcision and funeral.

Any criticism against obscurantist anti-women practices in Hindu society will be counted by champions of orthodoxy by quoting egalitarian ideals of Sanatana Dharma, enshrined in Vedas, Bhagavat Gita and Upanisads, permitting the right of liberation (Moksha) or merger with God to animals also, display of devotion during Navrathiri to Goddesses, concept of mother being equal to God (Matrudevobhava), and so on. Those engaged in these symbolic lip-service and superfluous actions do not move further towards reform of Smriti – centered subjugation of women. Will they be ready to march out of retrogressive feudal medievalism of Smritis and recast conventions and traditions in tune with the ideals of Upanishads and other Sruti literature and ennobling concepts of post-Renaissance European enlightenment and modernism? Does women’s biology make her ineligible for priesthood and thereby gaining empowerment in socio-religious field?

Votaries of women reservation should campaign for induction of eligible women in Hindu priesthood, ecclesiastical order of Christianity and moulavi / imam cadre of Islam. Can we hope to have women pujaris in major Devi Temples – Shaktipeetas – Kamakhya in Assam, Ambaji in Gujarat, virgin Goddess temple in Kanyakumari (Tamilnadu) and Attukal Devi temple in Trivandrum (where largest congregation of women in whole world happens for annual Pongala – ceremonial offering of food by devotees) and so on? In 16 Samskaras of Hindus and similar rituals in the social life of minorities, mother, daughter and female members in the family should be given their due status and position in consonance with dictates of biology and laws of Nature. Reformers should target the core base area of socio-religious and behavioral barbarism practiced against women, so that we can usher in for gender justice and emancipation of 50% of Indian people from religion-ordained and culture-conditioned slavery. Let legislation and words pass and deeds prove.

R.B Sreekumar (IPS), Former DGP- Gujarat

By David Ignatius

30 November 2012

@ Washington Post

Syrian opposition leaders report an alarming growth within their ranks of fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, an extremist group linked to al-Qaeda.

The Jabhat group now has somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 fighters, according to officials of an non-governmental organization that represents the more moderate wing of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). They say that the al-Qaeda affiliate now accounts for 7.5 percent to 9 percent of the Free Syrian Army’s total fighters, up sharply from an estimated 3 percent three months ago and 1 percent at the beginning of the year.

The extremist group is growing in part because it has been the most aggressive and successful arm of the rebel force. “From the reports we get from the doctors, most of the injured and dead FSA are Jabhat al-Nusra, due to their courage and [the fact they are] always at the front line,” said a message sent today to the State Department by the moderate Free Syrian Army representatives, warning of the extremists’ rise.

These estimates are very rough, given the scattered and disorganized nature of the opposition. But they are based on detailed reporting from the field by the members’ military councils, which are the closest thing to an organized command structure among the rebels. In reports sent this week to the State Department, the NGO representing the Syrian moderates offered a detailed breakdown of the extremists’ growth:

* In Aleppo, the Jabhat force is reckoned at around 2,000, mostly in the Al-Bab area northeast of the city. This estimate is based partly on reports from a doctor in the area who has treated injured fighters. The total FSA presence in the Aleppo area is about 15,000.

* In Idlib province, west of Aleppo, Jabhat’s ranks number 2,500 to 3,000, or about 10 percent of the total number of FSA fighters there.

* In Deir al-Zor, to the northeast, the extremist group has about 2,000 of the FSA’s total force of 17,000, according to the reports. Among Jabhat al-Nusra’s most spectacular operations were recent seizures of the Al-Ward oil field and a Conoco gas field, the reports said.

* In Damascus, the Jabhat al-Nusra force is somewhere between 750 and 1,000. Another 1,000 fighters are spread around the country in Latakia, in northwest Syria, Homs in the center and Daraa in the south.

The Syrian reports paint a picture of a disorganized rebel force in which the extremists are filling the vacuum caused by the lack of clearly established command and control.

 

“In some areas, other extreme groups are merging with [Jabhat] al-Nusra, in others many are leaving it because they did not fulfill promises of support,” notes one report sent to the State Department.

In the chaos of the Syrian battlefield, smaller battalions drawn from neighborhoods or small towns are combining forces with larger groups to form brigades, many of them led by extremists. “This means more [mergers] of extreme groups within Jabhat al-Nusra as it becomes more and more franchised,” the report explains. “Their risk is paying off. They are on a high [rate] of growth.”

A message sent earlier this week from the Free Syrian Army representatives touted the new use of anti-aircraft missiles to down a Syrian helicopter: “It’s thrilling to see it [the anti-aircraft weapon] in action finally. The bad news is that it was not through the U.S. but from the regime bases fallen into the hands of the [FSA] battalions. The other bad news is that it’s not under the control or the supervision of the MC [Military Council] commanders.”

“We are feeling the heat, time is closing up, the fall of Assad appears to be in the very near future,” continued this message, sent last Tuesday.

As the rebels gain momentum, the spoils of war apparently are going to the rebel group that captures a particular Syrian army base. This is one factor boosting the rapid growth of Jabhat al-Nusra. Its fighters provide the muscle and weapons and, as a result, explained an official of the NGO that represents the moderate FSA fighters: “They will get all the goodies, reputation and recognition.”

By Akanksha Mehta

29 December, 2012

Countercurrents.org

The 23-year-old Delhi student who was gang raped and brutally assaultedon a moving bus in the capital has died in a hospital in Singapore after days of intensive medical treatment. The day before her death, the Indian Express published an interview they conducted with her brother. The interview raises serious questions about our political leadership, structures of policing, law and order, and problematic media reporting across the country.In a quote towards the end of the interview, the victim’s brother states, “Even when her friends or relatives come to visit, she asks us how much they know. When she hears of politicians coming, she gets scared. She keeps asking my mother if she has told anyone what happened.”These words, heartbreaking as they are, point to the deep-rooted misogyny and patriarchy that pervade our society, breeding structures, discourses, and attitudes that condemn victims of sexual violenceto a life of shame and silence. Misogyny and patriarchy that are perpetuated and sustained by our collective participation.

We participate when we repeatedly use the words alleged and reported before the word rape and sexual assault. We participate when we mourn and remember one victim of rape but forget and ignore thousands of others. We participate when we ‘other’ the perpetrators of sexual violence- when we blame the migrant, the laborer, the uncivilized rural outsider, the constructed rapist from the lower religion/caste/class while we absolve ourselves from the hatred we breed. We participate when we instruct our daughters to stay away from boys, to be home before sundown, to watch what they wear, to sit properly, to talk softly, to not draw attention to themselves, to not look at strangers, to cross their legs, to be discrete when buying sanitary napkins, to obey their fathers and brothers like they will obey their husbands one day. We participate when we tell young girls that a woman’s reputation is at stake every time she steps out of line and that fragile reputation holds her honor and her family’s dignity. We participate when we think of unmarried women as incomplete, when we label women without children as not-even-women. We participate when we ignore the domestic abuse happening in the homes of our neighbors and friends because we do not want to get involved in their private matters. We participate when we listen and then ignore.We participate when we tell our daughters, sisters, and friendsto deal with family matters within the four walls of the house andto suffer in silence so as not to shame the family. We participate when we tell women to adjust.

We participate when we switch on our televisions to watch yet another product of the industry that has shown young men and women all over the country that No doesn’t really mean No, it means chase her till she says Yes. We participate every single time a woman on-screen is portrayed as the maan and maryaada of her family, her religion, her nation. We participate when a script-writer thinks it is ok for a character to lose everything/commit suicide/be kicked out of her family as a consequence of her rape. We participate when we think that only happens in the movies.We participate when we don’t discuss with our grandparents/parentsthe problems with Ekta Kapoor’s imagination. We participate when we watch a few minutes of that-not-as-bad-as-the-others TV soap. We participate when in the name of time-pass and watching a mindless movie, we laugh and enjoy sexism with a side of overpriced popcorn. We participate when we buy those tickets to see our staples of untamed masculinity, victimized femininity , with the occasional insertion of ridicule in the form of a gay stereotype. We participate when we play those item numbers at our wedding sangeets and Diwali parties. We participate when we call routine sexual harassment eve teasing, when we ignore another whistle, another remark, and another slap on the ass as playfulness. We participate when we think it is ok for men to sightsee women, to refer to them as maal, to make chic-charts and rating lists. We participate when we ask someone to chill kar, to take a chill pill, to learn to take a joke. We participate when we stay silent and take a joke. We participate when we let boys be boys.

We participate when we want our sons and daughters to only be engineers and doctors, to stay away from all things controversial, to settle. We participate when we proclaim we can only be happy once the kids have settled. We participate when we support political parties, whose women leaders condemn a rape victim as a zindaa laash, placing her beneath those living and even those dead. We participate when we perform and recite the discourses of these parties, built entirely on women’s bodies, in our local parks, sabhas, and shakhas. We participate when we support political parties whose representatives hold the highest offices but are unable to put together an empathetic sentence. We participate when our political leaders use the word Maoists as an expletive. We participate when we ignore how women’s bodies have been central to discourses of counter-insurgency. We participate when we do not protest sexual violence by the military and paramilitary. We participate when we refuse to vote, when we want to stay away from the jhanjhat of politics, when we insist that we don’t care about the dirty business that is politics. We participate when we stay apathetic, when we embrace distance, when we adopt indifference as means of survival. We participate when we use the phrase Shining India. We participate when we fool ourselves into seeing it shine.

As I sit here mourning this young girl, whose name I do not know, I hope that her brutal deathsheds light on the countless other women and men who face systematic and often unreported sexual violence in our country. I hope it makes everyone of us introspect on our own contributions to rape culture, misogyny, and patriarchy. I hope it problematizes our notions of rigid masculinities, femininities, and heteronormativity.And I hope it highlights the resistance, the protests, the subversions, and the struggles, everyday and otherwise, of those who have challenged the aforementioned participations and of those who continue to do so.

Akanksha Mehta is an MPhil/PhD candidate at the Center for Gender Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She can be reached at www.twitter.com/SahibanInExile

– The Indian Express Interview can be found at- Chatterjee, Pritha. “ It’s like the life we had never existed… every day now passes in a flash” The Indian Express. December 28, 2012, http://m.indianexpress.com/news/%22-it-s-like-the-life-we-had-never-existed…-every-day-now-passes-in-a-flash-%22/1049876/

29 December 2012

@ BBC News

Police in New York have arrested a woman in connection with the death of a man pushed in front of a subway train.

Prosecutors said Erika Menendez, 31, was charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime.

She is alleged to have said that she hates Hindus and Muslims.

The victim, 46-year-old Sunando Sen, originally came from India. Witnesses said he was standing on a platform at a Queens subway station when a woman shoved him on to the tracks.

Mr Sen was a resident of Queens and ran a printing business on the Upper West Side.

Prosecutors said in a statement that Ms Menendez, from Rego Park, Queens, admitted pushing the victim, saying: “I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.”

Queens District Attorney Richard A Brown said that, according to the charges, Ms Menendez was seen talking to herself while seated on a bench at the subway station and was also seen pacing on the platform and muttering to herself.

“The defendant is accused of committing what is every subway commuter’s worst nightmare – being suddenly and senselessly pushed into the path of an oncoming train,” he said.

“The victim was allegedly shoved from behind and had no chance to defend himself. Beyond that, the hateful remarks allegedly made by the defendant and which precipitated the defendant’s actions can never be tolerated by a civilised society.”

Prosecutors originally said Ms Menendez was from the Bronx.

Fled the scene

Mr Sen’s death on Thursday was the second such killing this month.

Naeem Davis was charged with murder in early December after allegedly pushing a passenger to his death in the Times Square subway station at the beginning of December.

New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said such attacks were rare.

“You can say it’s only two out of the three or four million people who ride the subway every day, but two is two too many,” he told a press conference.

 

New York police spokesman Paul Browne said in a statement that investigations into the incidents were continuing.

By Naomi Wolf

@ Guardian UK

29 December 12

    New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves -was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations’ knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI – though it acknowledges Occupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a “terrorist threat”:

“FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.”

Verheyden-Hilliard points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it “police-statism”:

“This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

The documents show stunning range: in Denver, Colorado, that branch of the FBI and a “Bank Fraud Working Group” met in November 2011 – during the Occupy protests – to surveil the group. The Federal Reserve of Richmond, Virginia had its own private security surveilling Occupy Tampa and Tampa Veterans for Peace and passing privately-collected information on activists back to the Richmond FBI, which, in turn, categorized OWS activities under its “domestic terrorism” unit. The Anchorage, Alaska “terrorism task force” was watching Occupy Anchorage. The Jackson, Michigan “joint terrorism task force” was issuing a “counterterrorism preparedness alert” about the ill-organized grandmas and college sophomores in Occupy there. Also in Jackson, Michigan, the FBI and the “Bank Security Group” – multiple private banks – met to discuss the reaction to “National Bad Bank Sit-in Day” (the response was violent, as you may recall). The Virginia FBI sent that state’s Occupy members’ details to the Virginia terrorism fusion center. The Memphis FBI tracked OWS under its “joint terrorism task force” aegis, too. And so on, for over 100 pages.

Jason Leopold, at Truthout.org, who has sought similar documents for more than a year, reported that the FBI falsely asserted in response to his own FOIA requests that no documents related to its infiltration of Occupy Wall Street existed at all. But the release may be strategic: if you are an Occupy activist and see how your information is being sent to terrorism task forces and fusion centers, not to mention the “longterm plans” of some redacted group to shoot you, this document is quite the deterrent.

There is a new twist: the merger of the private sector, DHS and the FBI means that any of us can become WikiLeaks, a point that Julian Assange was trying to make in explaining the argument behind his recent book. The fusion of the tracking of money and the suppression of dissent means that a huge area of vulnerability in civil society – people’s income streams and financial records – is now firmly in the hands of the banks, which are, in turn, now in the business of tracking your dissent.

Remember that only 10% of the money donated to WikiLeaks can be processed – because of financial sector and DHS-sponsored targeting of PayPal data. With this merger, that crushing of one’s personal or business financial freedom can happen to any of us. How messy, criminalizing and prosecuting dissent. How simple, by contrast, just to label an entity a “terrorist organization” and choke off, disrupt or indict its sources of financing.

Why the huge push for counterterrorism “fusion centers”, the DHS militarizing of police departments, and so on? It was never really about “the terrorists”. It was not even about civil unrest. It was always about this moment, when vast crimes might be uncovered by citizens – it was always, that is to say, meant to be about you.

By Jonathan Cook

27 December, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Nazareth: Israel’s large Palestinian minority is often spoken of in terms of the threat it poses to the Jewish majority. Palestinian citizens’ reproductive rate constitutes a “demographic timebomb”, while their main political programme – Israel’s reform into “a state of all its citizens” – is proof for most Israeli Jews that their compatriots are really a “fifth column”.

But who would imagine that Israeli Jews could be so intimidated by the innocuous Christmas tree?

This issue first came to public attention two years ago when it was revealed that Shimon Gapso, the mayor of Upper Nazareth, had banned Christmas trees from all public buildings in his northern Israeli city.

“Upper Nazareth is a Jewish town and all its symbols are Jewish,” Gapso said. “As long as I hold office, no non-Jewish symbol will be presented in the city.”

The decision reflected in part his concern that Upper Nazareth, built in the 1950s as the centrepiece of the Israeli government’s “Judaisation of the Galilee” programme, was failing dismally in its mission.

Far from “swallowing up” the historic Palestinian city of Nazareth next door, as officials had intended, Upper Nazareth became over time a magnet for wealthier Nazarenes who could no longer find a place to build a home in their own city. That was because almost all Nazareth’s available green space had been confiscated for the benefit of Upper Nazareth.

Instead Nazarenes, many of them Palestinian Christians, have been buying homes in Upper Nazareth from Jews – often immigrants from the former Soviet Union – desperate to leave the Arab-dominated Galilee and head to the country’s centre, to be nearer Tel Aviv.

The exodus of Jews and influx of Palestinians have led the government to secretly designate Upper Nazareth as a “mixed city”, much to the embarrassment of Gapso. The mayor is a stalwart ally of far-right politician Avigdor Lieberman and regularly expresses virulently anti-Arab views, including recently calling Nazarenes “Israel-hating residents whose place is in Gaza” and their city “a nest of terror in the heart of the Galilee”.

Although neither Gapso nor the government has published census figures to clarify the city’s current demographic balance, most estimates suggest that at least a fifth of Upper Nazareth’s residents are Palestinian. The city’s council chamber also now includes Palestinian representatives.

But Gapso is not alone in his trenchant opposition to making even the most cursory nod towards multiculturalism. The city’s chief rabbi, Isaiah Herzl, has refused to countenance a single Christmas tree in Upper Nazareth, arguing that it would be “offensive to Jewish eyes”.

That view, it seems, reflects the official position of the country’s rabbinate. In so far as they are able, the rabbis have sought to ban Christmas celebrations in public buildings, including in the hundreds of hotels across the country.

A recent report in the Haaretz newspaper, on an Israeli Jew who grows Christmas trees commercially, noted in passing: “hotels – under threat of losing kashrut certificates – are prohibited by the rabbinate from decking their halls in boughs of holly or, heaven forbid, putting up even the smallest of small sparkly Christmas tree in the corner of the lobby.”

In other words, the rabbinate has been quietly terrorising Israeli hotel owners into ignoring Christmas by threatening to use its powers to put them out of business. Denying a hotel its kashrut (kosher) certificate would lose it most of its Israeli and foreign Jewish clientele.

Few mayors or rabbis find themselves in the uncomfortable position of needing to go public with their views on the dangers of Christmas decorations. In Israel, segregation between Jews and Palestinians is almost complete. Even most of the handful of mixed cities are really Jewish cities with slum-like ghettoes of Palestinians living on the periphery.

Apart from Upper Nazareth, the only other “mixed” place where Palestinian Christians are to be found in significant numbers is Haifa, Israel’s third largest city. Haifa is often referred to as Israel’s most multicultural and tolerant city, a title for which it faces very little competition.

But the image hides a dirtier reality. A recent letter from Haifa’s rabbinate came to light in which the city’s hotels and events halls were reminded that they must not host New Year’s parties at the end of this month (the Jewish New Year happens at a different time of year). The hotels and halls were warned that they would be denied their kashrut licences if they did so.

“It is a seriously forbidden to hold any event at the end of the calendar year that is connected with or displays anything from the non-Jewish festivals,” the letter states.

After the letter was publicised on Facebook, Haifa’s mayor, Yona Yahav, moved into damage limitation mode, overruling the city’s rabbinical council on Sunday and insisting that parties would be allowed to go ahead. Whether Yahav has the power to enforce his decision on the notoriously independent-minded rabbinical authorities is still uncertain.

But what is clear is that there is plenty of religious intolerance verging on hatred being quietly exercised against non-Jews, mostly behind the scenes so as not to disturb Israel’s “Jewish and democratic” image or outrage the millions of Christian tourists and pilgrims who visit Israel each year.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His new website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

By Prof. Francis Boyle

27 December, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

The Origins of the First and Second World Wars currently hover like Twin Swords of Damocles over the heads of all humanity

During the 1950s I grew up in a family who rooted for the success of African Americans in their just struggle for civil rights and full legal equality. Then in 1962 it was the terror of my own personal imminent nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis that first sparked my interest in studying international relations and U.S. foreign policy as a young boy of 12: “I can do a better job than this!”

With the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964 and the military draft staring me right in the face, I undertook a detailed examination of it. Eventually I concluded that unlike World War II when my Father had fought and defeated the Japanese Imperial Army as a young Marine in the Pacific, this new war was illegal, immoral, unethical, and the United States was bound to lose it. America was just picking up where France had left off at Dien Bien Phu. So I resolved to do what little I could to oppose the Vietnam War.

In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson gratuitously invaded the Dominican Republic, which prompted me to commence a detailed examination of U.S. military interventions into Latin America from the Spanish-American War of 1898 up to President Franklin Roosevelt’s so-called “good neighbor” policy. At the end of this study, I concluded that the Vietnam War was not episodic, but rather systemic: Aggression, warfare, bloodshed, and violence were just the way the United States Financial Power Elite had historically conducted their business around the world and in America. Hence, as I saw it as a young man of 17, there would be more Vietnams in the future and perhaps someday I could do something about it as well as about promoting civil rights for African Americans. These twins concerns of my youth would gradually ripen into a career devoted to international law and human rights.

So I commenced my formal study of International Relations with the late, great Hans Morgenthau in the first week of January 1970 as a 19 year old college sophomore at the University of Chicago by taking his basic introductory course on that subject. At the time, Morgenthau was leading the academic forces of opposition to the detested Vietnam War, which is precisely why I chose to study with him. During ten years of higher education at the University of Chicago and Harvard, I refused to study with openly pro-Vietnam-War professors as a matter of principle and also on the quite pragmatic ground that they had nothing to teach me.

Historically, this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions. Additionally, McKinley’s military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America’s economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the “open door” policy. But over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the “Pacific” would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the Republican Bush Jr. administration and now the Democratic Obama administration are threatening to set off World War III.

By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Jr. administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf and Africa under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against international terrorism; and/or (2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of democracy; and/or (4) self-styled “humanitarian intervention”/responsibility to protect. Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and domination of two-thirds of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundament and energizer of the global economic system – oil and gas. The Bush Jr./ Obama administrations have already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation. In this regard, the Bush Jr. administration announced the establishment of the U.S. Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, and exploit both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our human species. Libya and the Libyans became the first victims to succumb to AFRICOM under the Obama administration. They will not be the last.

This current bout of U.S. imperialism is what Hans Morgenthau denominated “unlimited imperialism” in his seminal work Politics Among Nations (4th ed. 1968, at 52-53):

“The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism are the expansionist policies of Alexander the Great, Rome, the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries, Napoleon I, and Hitler. They all have in common an urge toward expansion which knows no rational limits, feeds on its own successes and, if not stopped by a superior force, will go on to the confines of the political world. This urge will not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination–a politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the conqueror’s lust for power. It is, as we shall see, exactly the lack of moderation, the aspiration to conquer all that lends itself to conquest, characteristic of unlimited imperialism, which in the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of this kind… “

It is the Unlimited Imperialists along the lines of Alexander, Rome, Napoleon and Hitler who are now in charge of conducting American foreign policy. The factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of both the First World War and the Second World War currently hover like twin Swords of Damocles over the heads of all humanity.

 

Professor Francis A. Boyle is an international law expert and served as Legal Advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat on the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, as well as to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations from 1991 to 1993, where he drafted the Palestinian counter-offer to the now defunct Oslo Agreement. His books include “ Palestine, Palestinians and International Law” (2003), and “ The Palestinian Right of Return under International Law” (2010).