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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).

By Ismail Salami

27 December, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Terrorism is terrorism and it cannot be defined otherwise unless the interests of one party tilt the scale in disfavor of another and the dichotomization of the terrorists in Syria into good and bad by the West casts doubt on its claim on democracy.

In a somber political tone, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lashed out as “absolutely unacceptable” the West’s support for the terrorists in Syria in his exclusive interview with Russia Today.

Lavrov said the West has divided the terrorists into “bad” and “acceptable,” throwing its support behind the latter.

“It’s absolutely unacceptable, and if we follow this logic it might lead us to a very dangerous situation not only in the Middle East but in other parts of the world, if our partners in the West would begin to qualify terrorists as bad terrorists and acceptable terrorists,” the Russian foreign minister said.

The dichotomization of such a grave issue by the West is almost nothing new. The delisting of MKO, a long-considered terrorists group, by Washington is in line with this process of redefining well-established concepts and terms by the West.

Paradoxically, the MKO has been supported by Washington even when it was on the terrorist list. They even received their training at the hands of the Bush administration.

In a enlightening article, Seymour Hersh showed that US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) trained members of the Iranian Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MKO) at a secretive site in Nevada from 2005 to at least 2007. According to Hersh, MKO members “were trained in intercepting communications, cryptography, weaponry and small unit tactics at the Nevada site up until President Obama took office.”

In a separate interview, a retired four-star general said that he had been privately briefed in 2005 about the training of MKO members in Nevada by an American involved in the program. He said that they got “the standard training in commo, crypto [cryptography], small-unit tactics, and weaponry—that went on for six months. They were kept in little pods.” He also was told, he said, that the men doing the training were from JSOC, which, by 2005, had become a major instrument in the Bush Administration’s global war on terror.

To the dismay and disappointment of many, US State Department decided in September to remove the MKO from the terror lists.

US State Department said its decision to delist the group was made because the group has not committed any terrorist acts for a decade and brashly whitewashed the fact that the group has been to all intents and purposes instrumental in carrying out nuclear assassinations in the last few years in Iran. Although the group has never officially assumed responsibility for the assassinations (which is quite natural), there is solid evidence suggesting that it has been complicit in these terrorist acts.

The terrorist group made unrelenting efforts for years to be removed from the terror list and enlisted a number of Republican and Democratic officials to lobby on its behalf. Instead of paying lobbying fees to them, “it offered honoraria ranging from $10,000-$50,000 per speech to excoriate the US government for its allegedly shabby treatment of the MEK. Among those who joined the group’s gravy train are former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, Rudy Giuliani, Alan Dershowitz, and former FBI director Louis Freeh. Many of them profess to have little interest in the money they have collected” (Richard Silverstein, The Guardian September 22, 20212).

MKO has long been engaging in a series of sabotage and terrorist activities against the Islamic Republic in league with Israeli intelligence agencies.

In January 2012, Benny Gantz, the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, told a parliamentary committee: “For Iran, 2012 is a critical year in combining the continuation of its nuclearisation, internal changes in the Iranian leadership, continuing and growing pressure from the international community and things which take place in an unnatural manner.”

Just 24 hours after Israeli military chief warned of unnatural events for Iran, Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was assassinated in broad daylight. It soon transpired that it had been a joint Mossad-MKO operation.

The MKO has reportedly assassinated over 12,000 Iranian citizens, seven American citizens, and tens of thousands of Iraqi nationals.

Anyhow, the dichotomization of ‘terrorists’ into good and bad is far uglier than any form of apartheid.

A comparatively similar story is being repeated in Syria. Washington has branded the Qatar-funded Al-Nusra Front as a terrorist organization. But why? They are fighting against the government of Bashar al-Assad together with other militants in Syria who are chiefly composed of foreign mercenaries. The former are considered terrorists simply because they to a large extent fly in the face of Washington’s policies in Syria. So, it is Washington or the US-led West which decides who is a terrorist and who is not.

Let us not forget that the notorious al Qaeda which is sowing seeds of blind extremism and religious sectarianism in the world was founded and financially supported in the seventies by Washington and CIA in an apparent bid to fight the Soviets. Robin Cook laments the creation of al Qaeda and says, “Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden’s organization would turn its attention to the west.”

This CIA-created Frankenstein’s monster has not changed but has grown up monstrously.

Truly known to be one of the most misinterpreted and misused words, terrorism is defined and refined by the West according to the context where it proves deleterious or beneficial to those who define the term.

Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

 

By Joshua Brollier

27 December, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

“The problems started for me at eighteen,” Madleen Kulabsaid quietly, sitting just meters from the shore of the Mediterranean . “The police and port authorities did not want me to sail as a woman.” Though Madleen has emerged from this recent challenge, receiving a permanent permission to fish from the Gazan Interior Ministry, this is not the first hardship she has stared down and overcome in her lifetime.

As Gaza ‘s only professional fisherwoman, Madleen’s sailing career began at an early age. Her father, MahrousKulab, taught her how to fish from the time she was six years old. “I went with my father from six years to thirteen. Our boat had no engine at that time,” she remembered with a certain fondness. At thirteen, Madleen personally made the decision to carry on fishing and support her family when her father’s legs were paralyzed from a form of palsy. Her father initially refused to allow her to go alone, but having no other viable means to support the family, he conceded.

While many children were focusing on the usual hassles of homework andfinishing primary school, Madleen found it “easy and enjoyable” to sail due to her strong background on the sea. That is not to say that fishing off Gaza ‘s coast has beenwithout the typical dangers associated with maritime work nor the specific challenges that Palestinian fishers face due to the Israeli blockade. There were frightening times, like the instance she fell overboard in rough waters or when the Israeli Navy fired on her with water cannons and live ammunition.

“They had to know who I was and that I was a woman. All the Gazan fishermen are forced to register with Israel so they even had my ID and picture,” said Madleen. She has intentionally limited herself to staying within the increasingly shrinking limits of the blockade imposed by the Israeli Navy to avoid troubles, but this has not spared her harassment. She says the prime area to fish is around 11 nautical miles, but the Gazans sometimes experience confrontations with the Navy even within the three nautical miles that Israel says is acceptable. This three mile limit was supposedly reopened to six after the November 21 st , 2012 ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, but Gazan fishermen have had little practical success with many having been shot, arrested, imprisoned and their boats confiscated. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 85% of the Gaza Strip’s fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due to these Israeli military measures.

Though Madleen’s fishing crew has grown to include heryounger brothers and her little sister, Reem,Madleen is still the primary provider for the family and is also responsible for selling the fish in the market. With approximately 90% of Gazan fishermen living in poverty and the industry rapidly declining , Madleen hopes that she can continue to sail for at least another two years. “If my brothers can take over at that point, fine.” Madleen and the Kulab family have attracted considerable amount of international attention due to the uniqueness of their situation. They received a motorized boat as an Eid gift from the Welfare Association for Youth. Additionally, Al Jazeera, BBC and Press TV ran features about Madleen.

Two-thousand and twelve proved to be most challenging year for Madleen when she crossed the line into official womanhood in the eyes of the law. Her boat was confiscated by Hamas authorities and held for nearly six months. With the assistance of concerned Gazans and human rights organizations, Madleen challenged the impoundment in court and won. She is now the only permitted fisherwomen in Gaza , provided that she does not sail with any other adult males. This makes her work difficult, but she is eager to be on the water again and earning money for family. When asked about general acceptance from the other fishermen, Madleen replied, “I have no problems with the fishermen. They support me and treat me as a daughter or sister.”Without question, she deserves their respect.

Madleen is currently resuming school after taking a year’s break to work. She hopes to study sport in college, and she has recently passed an examination by the Civilian Defence Administration for swimming and diving.

Joshua Brollier is a co-coordinator with Voices for Creative Nonviolence in Chicago . He has just returned from an emergency delegation to the Gaza Strip. He can be reached at Joshua@vcnv.org.

Captions:

•  Madleen Kulab. December 19 th , 2012 .

Photo- Maher Alaa

•  The Israeli Navy shot Gazan fisherman, Mosa’ad Baker, and confiscated his boat on Dec 17, 2012 .

Photo- Maher Alaa

By David Freed

@ Los Angeles Times

25 December 12

How long should we as a nation continue to sacrifice blood and treasure for what is clearly a losing proposition?

My soldier son called last month to wish his mother and me a happy Thanksgiving. My iPhone buzzed and there he was, sitting in a gun tower, his smiling face bathed in gauzy infrared light, an M249 machine gun propped at the ready behind him. For security reasons, we didn’t talk about his location. It could’ve been Afghanistan, Iraq or Kuwait. He’s spent the better part of this year serving in all three.

His infantry company will soon be rotated back to the United States after a one-year deployment. Because he’s an officer, he’ll probably be among those on the last plane out. We’re hoping it’ll be by Christmas. My son would like to be home for the holidays, of course, but his biggest concern is getting back before the start of postseason play in the NFL. He’s warned me, however, that the mysteries of Army upper management may mean we are both disappointed about the timing of his return. And so the clock ticks. Slowly.

During my son’s tour of duty – his first overseas assignment – the number of U.S. dead in Afghanistan climbed past 2,000, while the total wounded surpassed 18,000. That’s about 500 fewer Americans killed and nearly three times the number wounded during the Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive in 1968. Certainly, Vietnam was a much different engagement than the one in Afghanistan, which has gone on for more than 11 years, but the casualty figures from both, in my estimation, raise the same question:

How long should we as a nation continue to sacrifice blood and treasure for what is clearly a losing proposition?

While Tet was by no means a victory for North Vietnam, the offensive demonstrated to the American public that the communist forces were still capable of waging war on a broad scale, contrary to Pentagon assurances that the enemy had been nearly beaten into surrender. Tet disabused many Americans of the notion that the war was winnable and helped spur the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Southeast Asia five years later.

In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, the Pentagon routinely claims that American-led combat power has measurably degraded the enemy’s capacity to fight. Still, that enemy continues to wage war effectively. Witness the rising phenomenon of what the Defense Department refers to as “green on blue” shootings – Taliban sympathizers within the Afghan military and police turning their weapons on NATO military trainers. In 2007, there were two such insider attacks, resulting in two deaths. This year, 58 of the nearly 400 coalition military personnel who died in Afghanistan, including 35 Americans, were felled in such attacks.

These incidents don’t often make the daily news cycle anymore. But they are far more important than lurid insights into the extramarital dalliances of generals. There are still about 67,000 U.S. soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines deployed in Afghanistan, alongside 37,000 military personnel from other coalition member nations. The White House has said it intends to keep thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan more or less indefinitely, both to help train Afghan forces and to carry out counter-terrorism operations, long after NATO’s mission in Afghanistan formally concludes at the end of 2014.

But what is to be gained by stationing so many troops in Afghanistan after 2014? In fact, why not leave now?

In 2001, American forces invaded Afghanistan with the goal of hunting down 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and toppling the Taliban government, which had allowed Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network safe haven. Bin Laden is now fish food, courtesy of SEAL Team 6, and what remains of his inner circle is on the run, thanks chiefly to CIA and Air Force drone strikes in the remote tribal regions of neighboring Pakistan. Logic suggests that ground forces should be stationed there instead of in Afghanistan, but that won’t happen any time soon. Pakistan, our “ally” in the fight against international terrorism, wouldn’t allow it.

Washington’s goal from the start has been to train Afghans to the point that they can stand up alone against the Taliban. No question, some units among the 337,000 soldiers and police who compose Afghanistan’s National Security Forces are up to the task. But, after more than a decade of intense drilling, many other units remain woefully, almost comically, unprepared. At what point does the problem become Afghanistan’s and not ours?

It’s hard to see how the United States can help much in the current climate. Joint operations have had to be significantly curtailed because of the rise in green-on-blue shootings. Indeed, Americans stationed at bases that also house Afghan military or paramilitary are now required to carry their weapons with them at all times; at night, they sleep under the watchful guard of other, fully armed Americans.

Realistically, objectively, what future is there in a partnership like that?

About five years ago, I read a book by an Islamic scholar, Rory Stewart, who decided he’d become the first tourist to walk across a post-Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Relying on his wits, knowledge of Muslim customs and the kindnesses of strangers, Stewart trekked for a month from village to village. His “The Places in Between” proved a remarkable travelogue, if for no other reason than it underscored just how primitive and disconnected much of Afghanistan really is. Loyalties rarely extend beyond the village, the tribe and Allah.

Given those realities, the idea of instilling in the Afghan people anything resembling American-style, flag-waving, defend-the-homeland nationalism is almost laughable. It would be laughable were it not for the fact that more than 2,000 brave Americans have died trying to change things. How many more have to die before enough is enough?

I want my son home. I want to watch him eat a barbecued tri-tip burrito with guacamole from his favorite restaurant, the kind he’s been craving for nearly a year, the kind you can’t get in an Army MRE packet. I want to see him open holiday presents. I want to watch football with him. Most of all, I don’t want to lie awake anymore, staring at the ceiling, wondering if he’s still alive.

I don’t want him to go back to Afghanistan. I don’t want anyone’s son or daughter to have to go back.

It’s no longer worth it.