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By Philip Ochieng (The Citizen)

According to elementary physics, water always finds its level. Barack Obama epitomises the fact that, no matter how you tilt the ground, water eventually returns to the horizontal plane natural to it.

Like H2O, too, the human mind is homogeneous in its chemical composition, namely, in what defines us as a species. Yet an overgrowth of pernicious ideology has long tilted the playing ground terribly against some humans.

Europe’s intelligentsia the very world elite whose education should make them know much better than we has poisoned the mass mind with the completely unscientific teaching that the Negro’s mental and moral composition is inferior to the Caucasian’s.

Still hag-ridden by this evil thought, the white mercantile world continues to think of black people in terms of cheap labour and profit, the very yoke which has arrested the expression and development of our natural mental and manual potentialities ever since the slave days.

Even in the 21st century, black Africans remain the world’s poorest, hungriest, most diseased, most mal-governed, most despised, most aided human lot.

But all of these superlatives are a direct consequence of 500 years of a kind of Mercators projection of thought.
Eurocentrism puts the North namely, Europe — on top of the world’s map, not only in geographical terms but also in terms of knowledge, technique, economy, development, military clout and the super-wisdom called democracy.

And it puts the South — namely, Africa — at the very bottom of that map. By what logic of the cosmos do we think of the South as down and the North as up or of black Africa as sub-Saharan (Africa below the Sahara)? Many do see how serious the question is.
Once you accept such terms — imposed by Europe — you tacitly agree that Europe is above the Sahara.
Once you do that, Europe’s self-proclaimed superiority quietly sinks into your subconscious. Without knowing it, you internalise the idea that Africa is naturally inferior.

By its own mental and financial servility towards Europe, the black elite — the product of a deeply corruptive European-imposed educational system — simply intensifies the Northern world’s conception of us as childlike, helpless, beggarly, needing compassion.

The compassion must, however, be accompanied by spanking because, with children, you cannot afford to spare the rod.
That is why even the most junior white diplomat in African capitals feels free to comment licentiously about the erratic ways of governments.

But water finds its level. In proportion as black people have been freed to participate equally in each social field, in the same proportion have they excelled in those fields.
Music, entertainment and sports were the first fields to be levelled for competition with whites.

And so, in instrumentation or voice, in comedy or theatre, in soccer or cricket, in tennis or golf, in pugilism or hockey, in dance or skiing, in the short dashes or the marathons, black men and women have progressively dominated the world’s events ever since a black athlete stunned Hitler in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

The door to economics and education — especially in science and technology — was the last to be opened to the former victims of slavery and colonialism. That is why, in these fields, the black person still generally lags behind.

However, despite the conspiracy of silence by the white corporate media, the fact is that Western blacks have patented a hundred times more inventions than even the black world is aware of.

In the social fields, acclaimed and domineering white European intellects have declared that blacks (and Jews) are too deficient, mentally, to make any history.

Yet we have recently witnessed some phenomenal events. A black Kenyan has twice been elected mayor in an all-white Canadian city.

Citizen for more

By Javier Darío Restrepo (Inter Press Service)

BOGOTA, Jun 13 (IPS) – Colombian journalist Hollman Morris phoned an international news agency and said in an agitated voice: “I am being followed by the police.”

As he left his apartment on the north side of Bogotá, he saw a police car on the other side of the street; when he reached his parents’ apartment a few minutes later, to drop off his kids, another car was parked near the building.

And when he reached the spot where he was planning to meet with this reporter, a third car with plainclothes police officers made it clear to him that orders had been given to follow him.

Ten days earlier, President Álvaro Uribe had publicly accused Morris of being an accomplice of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) because of his newspaper coverage of the release of a group of kidnapped victims by the insurgent group.

A few weeks later, Morris commented in a meeting of journalists on the “chilling” discovery of a dossier in his name that had been kept for some time by the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS) – Colombia’s domestic secret police service, which answers directly to the office of the president – when its offices were searched on orders from the attorney general’s office in the midst of a scandal over widespread illegal wiretapping.

The file contained photos and information on his parents, siblings, wife and children, and on his day-to-day movements, with a level of detail that reminded those looking at it of the thorough investigations carried out by hired killers while planning their hit jobs.

Morris is one of the reporters who was targeted by the DAS, which illegally eavesdropped on a wide range of opponents of the right-wing Uribe administration. Searching through DAS computers, investigators from the attorney general’s office found that the secret police had intercepted the phone calls and e-mails of Supreme Court justices, opposition lawmakers, reporters and even the likely presidential candidate of the opposition Liberal Party, Rafael Pardo.

The ongoing scandal over illegal wiretapping operations by the DAS has led to the resignation of the director of the intelligence agency, María del Pilar Hurtado, and investigations of the last four directors as well as 30 DAS agents.

The similarities of the case with the Watergate scandal, which forced U.S. president Richard Nixon (1969-1974) to step down, have been cited by opposition figures calling on Uribe to resign – not a likely outcome, however, due to the president’s high level of popularity and Colombian society’s jaded attitude towards such scandals, which are all too common in this country.

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By Ron Jacobs (Monthly Review Zine)

Here comes the hysteria and bold-faced lies. In the wake of the Iranian election, various commentators and so-called reporters in the United States are reacting as if the end of the world was at hand. Although nobody knows for certain and everyone only has the words of Western press pundits and an angry candidate to go by, virtually every mainstream US news source is calling the re-election of Ahmadinejad the result of fraud. There has been no verification of this from any objective source, nor has there been any proof beyond the speculation of media folks who either want to create a story or are so convinced of what they believe to be the incumbent’s essentially evil nature that they can not comprehend his re-election. A good example of this is a story by Bill Keller in the New York Times. In that piece, Ahmadinejad was once again incorrectly called a Holocaust-denier and his support was put down as being comprised mostly of women-hating peasants and civil servants who somehow benefited from his patronage. The liberal reformer Moussavi’s supporters were portrayed in a considerably more favorable light.

Completely missing from Keller’s piece and many other pieces in the US mainstream media (and liberal magazines like The Nation) is any genuine attempt to analyze both the class nature of the different candidates’ supporters and the role Washington plays in the media’s perception of Iranian politics. Keller’s most honest analytical statement in his entire piece: “Saturday was a day of smoldering anger, crushed hopes and punctured illusions, from the streets of Tehran to the policy centers of Western capitals.” Keller and his fellow journalists accept that the desires of Western capitals, especially Washington, should be important to Iranians. While this may certainly be the case among a small number of the intelligentsia and business community in Iran, the fact is that the West, especially Washington, is still not very popular among the Iranian masses. Not only are they aware of decades of Western intervention in their affairs, the fact that thousands of US troops continue to battle forces in two of Iran’s neighbors makes Washington unwanted and detested. Why should they do anything to please it? Yet, in the minds of the US news media, it is Washington’s needs that dominate all discussion.

As for the class analysis, rightly or wrongly, Ahmadinejad seems to appeal to the majority of peasants and workers in Iran. Just like Marat and the Jacobins appealed to the peasants and urban poor during the French revolution while Brissot and the Girondins appealed to the merchants and educated classes, Ahmadinejad’s support comes from those who need bread while Moussavi’s comes from those with plenty of bread and now want more civil liberties. While it is arguably true that Ahmadinejad’s policies have caused as many economic problems as they have solved, the fact remains that his supporters believe in his 2005 campaign call to bring the oil profits to the dinner table. Mr. Moussavi’s statements regarding the eventual reduction of commodity subsidies that benefit the poor may have hurt him in that demographic more than his supporters acknowledge. In a Washington Post article published the day before the election, it was noted (along with the fact that Ahmadinejad won the 2005 election with a “surprising” 62% of the vote) that his economic policies included the distribution of “loans, money and other help for local needs.” One of these programs involved providing insurance to women who make rugs in their homes and had been without insurance until Ahmadinejad came to power. Critics, including Moussavi, argue that his “free-spending policies have fueled inflation and squandered windfall petrodollars without reducing unemployment.” There are other elements at play here, including the fabled corruption of certain unelected leaders in Iran and the role the international economic crisis plays in each and every nation’s economy — a factor from which Iran is not immune. In addition, the particular nature of an Islamic economy that blends government and private business creates a constant conflict between those who would nationalize everything and those who would privatize it all.

MR Zine for more

By Ingrid B. Mork

I watched President Ahmadinejad`s press conference on Al-Jazeera and was impressed by the politeness and deference conferred on the Iranian President by most of the people of the press who were present.

The moment he was re-elected, the threats, the aggressive stance and rhetoric started up again from the directions of the US and Israel.

I have yet to hear anyone in Iran make threats against anyone.

The difference with the Iranian elections, it seemed to me, was this: in both Iraq and Afghanistan the US were able to control the elections to ensure the election of a government which could be controlled by the US in accordance with US and Israeli wishes. The US and Israel were unable to control the elections in Palestine but were able to emasculate the democratically elected government in various ways, economically, geographically and by using Hamas` rivals to undermine them physically. The Lebanese elections were influenced by both the US and Israel in various ways but the Iranian elections proved to be a little more difficult to sway.

It now remains to be seen whether the Palestinians will receive the justice they so richly deserve. It is, unfortunately, too late to turn back the hands of time and restore Palestine to the land it once was. Power, greed and corruption have put an end to that pipe dream and there is little chance that the Israelis will withdraw behind their ugly wall, rebuilt on the green line of 67, live their lives and allow the Palestinians to live theirs.

How different things might have been had the Zionists not been so brutal and driven by power and greed?

It also remains to be seen whether or not the Obama administration will realize that the Palestinians will not, nor should they, settle for anything less than their rights.

Photo/Bryan Denton for The New York Times
Wedad Lootah, who wears a full-length black niqab, has been a marital counselor in Dubai for eight years.

By ROBERT F. WORTH (New York Times)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates
WEDAD LOOTAH does not look like a sexual activist. A Muslim and a native Emirati, she wears a full-length black niqab — with only her brown eyes showing through narrow slits — and sprinkles her conversation with quotes from the Koran.

Yet she is also the author of what for the Middle East is an amazingly frank new book of erotic advice in which she celebrates the female orgasm, confronts taboo topics like homosexuality and urges Arabs to transcend the backward traditions that limit their sexual happiness.
The book, “Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples,” is packed with vivid anecdotes from Ms. Lootah’s eight years as a marital counselor in Dubai’s main courthouse. It became an instant scandal after it was published in Arabic in the Emirates in January, drawing praise from some liberals and death threats from conservatives, who say she is guilty of blasphemy or worse.

Ms. Lootah, a strong-willed and talkative 45-year-old, is one of a small but growing number of Arabs pushing for more openness and education about sex. Unlike earlier generations of women who often couched their criticism in a Western language of female emancipation, Ms. Lootah and her peers are hard to dismiss as outsiders because they tend to be religious Muslims who root their message in the Koran.
Ms. Lootah, for instance, studied Islamic jurisprudence in college, not Western psychology, and her book is studded with religious references. She submitted the text to the Mufti of Dubai before publishing it, and he gave his approval (though he warned her that Arab audiences might not be ready for such a book, especially by a woman).

“People have said I was crazy, that I was straying from Islam, that I should be killed,” Ms. Lootah said. “Even my family ask why I must talk about this. I say: ‘These problems happen every day and should not be ignored. This is the reality we are living.’ ”

She is not a liberal by Western standards. One of the themes of her book is the danger of anal sex and homosexuality generally, not because of AIDS but because they are banned by the Koran. But her openness about the issue was itself a shock to many here.
In Saudi Arabia and other countries where the genders are rigorously separated, many men have their first sexual experiences with other men, which affects their attitudes toward sex in marriage, Ms. Lootah said.

“Many men who had anal sex with men before marriage want the same thing with their wives, because they don’t know anything else,” Ms. Lootah said. “This is one reason we need sex education in our schools.”

She is also emphatic about the importance of female sexual pleasure, and the inequity of many Arab marriages in that respect. One of the cases that impelled her to write the book, she said, was a 52-year-old client who had grandchildren but had never known sexual pleasure with her husband.

“Finally, she discovered orgasm!” Ms. Lootah said. “Imagine, all that time she did not know.”

Another important theme of the book is infidelity. The prevalence of foreign women in Dubai and the ease of e-mail and text-message communication has made cheating easier (and easier to detect), Ms. Lootah said, helping push the divorce rate to 30 percent.
NYT for more

By Antara Dev Sen (Asian Age)

I am most disappointed that the histrionics over the Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament was limited to the cowboys of the cowbelt. The Yadavs seem to be the most vocal opponents of the bill. Not a single Southern MP has offered to self-immolate. Only Sharad Yadav has threatened to drink poison, a la Socrates. (Curiously, this did not spark a stampede of honourable members offering him their best venom.) The charming Lalu Prasad Yadav declared that this bill was a conspiracy to finish off regional parties and prevent the empowerment of the backward. And dear old Mulayam Singh Yadav was blunt. You won’t get back in here, he warned the male MPs cheering the bill: “For all the table-thumping now, soon you will be thumping your charpoys at home!” His trusted deputy Amar Singh added later: “The careers of many established leaders will be destroyed as their seats are lost due to women’s reservation”. The talk of quotas within quotas was eyewash, the bill’s opponents were driven by the fear of exclusion. And this for just ensuring that one-third of MPs are women. What would the poor dears do if women were actually given half the sky — and Parliament?

The touching insecurity of male MPs is not without reason. Socrates believed, as Mr Sharad Yadav will confirm: “Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior”. We see it around us — given equal opportunity, education and support, women generally do better than men, starting right from school. Take the most recent examination results. The two CBSE toppers were girls, as were the three IAS toppers. And since 1984, the percentage of women candidates winning seats in Parliament has been consistently much higher than men. Reportedly, the average winnability of women candidates in the last five Lok Sabha elections is 12.5 per cent, as opposed to 8.3 per cent for men.

Denying women a fair chance is essential to keep the patriarchal power structure alive. So Indian women are usually not allowed to study much. About half are married off before turning 18. They are kept out of decision-making, and even what they earn is usually spent by their husbands or fathers. Empowering women politically is one decisive way to change our deeply sexist society. Women MPs have for years cut across party lines to come together in support of the Women’s Reservation Bill. This time, with the commitment of President Pratibha Patil and the Congress, the unambiguous support of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Left, it seems likely to be passed.

So why am I not delighted at the prospect? First, because I was never a fan of the bill. In 1996, when it was first tabled, it seemed like a personal insult. Plant women in the highest decision-making office in the country? There was a difference between panchayats and Parliament, for heaven’s sake. Would we be reserving ministries next? Clear the way, remove the obstacles, watch women glide in on their own steam. We don’t need no reservation, we don’t need no seat control.

As the bill aged, I mellowed. And bowed to the passion of senior MPs like the late Geeta Mukherjee. There was an urgent need to increase women’s participation in the political process and to rectify the shameful imbalance of political power. If reservation is the only way our dear politicians can get more women into Parliament, so be it. Quotas can fast-track social justice, and with an abysmally low percentage of women MPs (we have finally reached 10 per cent this year, a record) it seemed fine to jump the queue. When the quota lapses 15 years later, may the best candidates win.

Now, 13 years of debates and dithering shows that the bill will not fast-track gender justice. We should have looked at other ways of politically empowering women. Instead, we are stuck in the rut of cliched tokenism that does nothing for women’s empowerment.
To make matters worse, this week it seems like the quota will be reduced from 33.3 per cent to 20 per cent. This is unacceptable. Once there is a quota, women will not get general seats and will remain stuck in the 20 per cent seats reserved for them, chosen arbitrarily by a draw of lots.
Asian Age for more

By Syed Saleem Shahzad (Asia Times Online)

KARACHI – The controversial re-election at the weekend of hardline President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to a second four-year term raises a cloud over United States President Barack Obama’s hopes of engaging Iran in serious negotiations.

For a recently activated nexus, though, Ahmadinejad’s unexpected thumping victory and the intense reaction it has aroused among supporters of the main losing candidate, reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi, provide a golden opportunity for renewed efforts to destabilize Iran.

The nexus includes the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (MKO), a militant Islamic organization that advocates the overthrow of the government; the Pakistani-based Iranian Jundallah, a Sunni group opposed to Tehran; the regional drug mafia and al-Qaeda.

Iranian state radio reported on Tuesday that eight people had been killed during Monday’s protests in Tehran
after tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets. The reports said the deaths came after “thugs” attacked a military post. The mass protests in the capital were the biggest since the Iranian revolution in 1979.

Even though Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called for an inquiry into allegations of vote-rigging – there is going to be a recount – the unrest is likely to continue as it is highly improbable the result will be reversed.

“The turmoil is unprecedented and has indeed manifested the divisions in Iran,” commented Pakistani Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed in a television interview. Mushahid, an expert on Iran and an enthusiastic supporter of the revolution, is known for keeping close contact with the government in Tehran.

The troubles in Iran come at a critical juncture for the Barack Obama administration in the United States
, which has pledged better relations with Iran – a country that for years has been vilified by successive US governments, especially by the George W Bush administration, which accused Tehran of having a nuclear weapons program.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said on Monday, “We are in a position of still assessing what went on, and it’s difficult to assess, because there weren’t any international monitors at the elections. He added that Washington was “deeply troubled by the reports of violence, arrests and possible voting irregularities”.

The crux, though, is that Obama’s policy of engagement requires that he deal with Iran – indeed, he needs the country with regards to the US’s withdrawal of forces from Iraq, and the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

ATO for more

By Robert Jenson (Z Space)

Apartheid is dead in South Africa, but a new version of white supremacy lives on.

“During apartheid the racism of white people was up front, and we knew what we were dealing with. Now white people smile at us, but for most black people the unemployment and grinding poverty and dehumanizing conditions of everyday life haven’t changed,” a black South African told me. “So, what kind of commitment to justice is under that smile?”

This community activist in Cape Town said that, ironically, the end of South’s Africa’s apartheid system of harsh racist segregation and exploitation has in some ways made it more difficult to agitate for social justice today. As he offered me his views on the complex politics of his country, Nkwame Cedile, a field worker for People’s Health Movement, expressed a frustration that I heard often in my two weeks in the country: Yes, the brutality of apartheid ended in 1994 with free elections, but the white-supremacist ideas that had animated apartheid and the racialized distribution of wealth it was designed to justify didn’t magically evaporate.

That shouldn’t be surprising — how could centuries of white supremacy simply disappear in 15 years? What did surprise me during my lecture tour was not the racial tension but how much discussions about race in South Africa sounded just like conversations in the United States. There was something eerily familiar to me, a lifelong white U.S. citizen, about those discussions. I have heard comments from black people in the United States like Cedile’s, but I’ve also heard white Americans articulate views on race that were sometimes exactly like white South Africans’. I learned that even with all the differences in the two countries there are equally important similarities, and as a result the sense of entitlement that so many white people hold onto produces similar dodges and denials.

Those similarities: South Africa and the United States were the two longstanding settler states that maintained legal apartheid long after the post-World War II decolonization process. The crucial term is “settler state,” marking a process by which an invading population exterminates or displaces and exploits the indigenous population to acquire its land and resources, with formal slavery playing a key role at some point in the country’s history. Both strategies were justified with overtly racist doctrines about white supremacy, and both required the white population to discard basic moral and religious principles, leading to a pathological psychology of superiority. Both of those settler strategies have left us with racialized disparities in wealth and well-being long after the formal apartheid is over.

The main difference: The United States struggles with its problem with a white majority, while South Africa has a black majority. But what I found fascinating his how little difference that made in terms of the psychological pathology of so many white people. So, as is typically the case, my trip to South Africa taught me not only about racism in South Africa but also in the United States, which reminded me that perhaps we travel to observe others so that we can learn about ourselves.

From a two-week trip I wouldn’t claim deep insights or knowledge about South Africa. My contact in the country, outside of informal chats with people on the street, was limited primarily to university professors and students, or left/progressive activists in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban. I didn’t have a chance to get behind the gates in the wealthy neighborhoods or talk to elite business people, and my travels in the black townships were limited in time and scope. But with those limits, some clear patterns emerged about the moderate/liberal/left white people I engaged with.

[A footnote on racial terms: In South Africa people sometimes talk about race in terms of white and black, with “black” in that context meaning all people who aren’t of European descent. More specifically, the black population is made up of black Africans (such as the Zulu and Xhosa), Indians (descended from various waves of immigration from India), and coloured (mixed-race). Most whites tend to identify as of primarily English or Dutch/Afrikaner background. Many people in South Africa try to avoid apartheid-era terminology but still sometimes use these four traditional racial categories, in part because they are the basis for measuring economic progress in relation to various forms of affirmative action.]

Z Space for more

GAZA CITY: Former US president Jimmy Carter yesterday met Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in the Gaza Strip, where he called for a lifting of Israel’s blockade, saying Palestinians are being treated “like animals.” Following the talks, Carter called for an end of “all violence” against both Israelis and Palestinians.

This is holy land for us all and my hope is that we can have peace… all of us are children of Abraham,” he said at a joint news conference with Haniya, prime minister of the Hamas government in the Palestinian enclave. Hamas, a group pledged to the destruction of Israel which violently seized power in Gaza two years ago, is listed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the United States and the European Union.

Carter was expected to pass on a letter from the parents of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier seized by Gaza militants including Hamas in a cross-border raid almost three years ago, and who remains in captivity. Earlier Carter denounced the Israeli blockade and the destruction wrought by its 22-day military offensive against Gaza in December and January.

My primary feeling today is one of grief and despair and an element of anger when I see the destruction perpetrated against innocent people,” Carter said as he toured the impoverished territory. “Tragically, the international community too often ignores the cries for help and the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like human beings,” he said.

The starving of 1.5 million human beings of the necessities of life-never before in history has a large community like this been savaged by bombs and missiles and then denied the means to repair itself,” Carter said at a UN school graduation ceremony in Gaza City. The United States and Europe “must try to do all that is necessary to convince Israel and Egypt to allow basic goods into Gaza,” he said. “At same time, there must be no more rockets” from Gaza into Israel, said Carter, who brokered the historic 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

I have to hold back tears when I see the deliberate destruction that has been wracked against your people,” he said at a destroyed American school, saying it was “deliberately destroyed by bombs from F16s made in my country.” Israel’s offensive killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and left large swathes of the coastal strip sandwiched between Israel and Egypt in ruins. Thirteen Israelis also died in the conflict. “I feel partially responsible for this as must all Americans and Israelis,” Carter said.

Kuwait Times for more