Category: Uncategorized

21 March 2009
The World Socialist Web Site has received further letters in response to the March 9 statement “Oppose LTTE campaign of threats and violence against SEP supporters in Europe!” We urge our readers and supporters to send protest letters demanding the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) immediately cease its attempts to suppress political debate within the Tamil community and end all threats against Socialist Equality Party members and supporters. (Previous correspondence can be viewed here.)
Comité de coordination tamoul en France,
Tamil Confederation—Germany and
The British Tamils Forum
Dear Sir,
I condemn the violence and threats by supporters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) against Socialist Equality Party (SEP) members and supporters while they were carrying out legitimate political work. I am aware that LTTE supporters made these anti-democratic acts on February 4 in London, Berlin and Paris and February 7 in Stuttgart while SEP members were distributing leaflets in anti-war demonstrations. LTTE must instruct its supporters and members to cease these acts.
I have experienced the SEP’s struggle for about two decades. It is defending the democratic rights of the Tamil masses against the attacks by the Sri Lankan government and racist thugs as part of SEP’s fight for socialism.
The Central Bank of Sri Lanka is a test case. Members of the SEP and its forerunner, the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL) in the Central Bank have consistently explained the disastrous consequences of anti-Tamil discrimination and the war of the Sinhala ruling class to the working class. This party has consistently demanded an end to the war and the withdrawal of Sri Lankan forces from the north and east as part of its struggle to unite Sinhala and Tamil workers against the capitalist classes of both camps.
The LTTE is against such a unity. In January 1996, the LTTE carried out a major bomb attack on the Central Bank, killing 91 and injuring more than one thousand. Many of the victims were employees of the bank. This attack played into the hands of the Colombo government and Sinhala communal groups seeking to sow hatred against Tamils and justify the war.
Sinhala chauvinists are branding those who oppose the war and discrimination against Tamils as Sinhala Tigers or Sinhala LTTE members. Leading SEP member and president of the Central Bank Employees Union, M.G. Kiribanda and supporters of the party were attacked as Sinhala Tigers by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna in 2007. Now the SEP members and supporters are attacked by the LTTE’s supporters because this party opposes the LTTE’s separatist capitalist perspective.
There must be complete democratic freedom to oppose and discuss alternative perspectives of the working class against Sri Lanka’s capitalist class and its government. Similarly, the LTTE should not attack the democratic rights of its political opponents, including those who criticise the LTTE’s separatist politics and advance a socialist alternative.
Premasiri Palpage
General Secretary of the Central Bank Employees Union
Sri Lanka
***
Comité de coordination tamoul en France,
Tamil Confederation— Germany and
The British Tamils Forum
I am writing from Annefield Estate at Hatton in the central hills of Sri Lanka. I must register my vehement condemnation and outrage over attacks on the members and supporters of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Paris, Berlin and London by LTTE supporters. I heard today yet another similar attack on SEP members took place on Sunday in Toronto, Canada.
SEP members and supporters were attacked because they were distributing leaflets to participants of the demonstrations against the Sri Lankan military’s anti-Tamil war. The leaflets called for the unity of Sinhala and Tamil workers to end the war and fight for socialist policies.
I can understand why the LTTE and its supporters are deadly hostile to the SEP’s policies. The LTTE has not urged the support of plantation workers, or any other section of the working class in the south, or the world working class, at any time against the war in the north and east and the repression against Tamils.
The LTTE is seeking the support of the Indian capitalist government and urging the support of the US and European powers. The LTTE is representing the Tamil bourgeoisie and fighting for a capitalist statelet. These powers now actually support the war. They are concerned only about their strategic interests. The establishment of a capitalist statelet with the help of the major powers, as the LTTE demands, will definitely be a trap for the Tamil workers and poor.
The SEP’s perspective is the socialist unity of the working class and the fight for a Sri Lanka-Eelam Socialist Republic as part of a socialist South Asia and international socialism. The SEP urges workers to oppose the war and demand the withdrawal of troops from the north and east. This is essential for the unity of the Sinhala and Tamil-speaking working class.
In February I contested the Central Provincial Council election from Nuwara Eliya District as an SEP candidate. Now I am contesting in the Colombo district in the Western Provincial Council elections. We are explaining this perspective to the working people and youth.
In 1948 the then government of the United National Party (UNP) abolished the citizenship rights of plantation workers. Later on, various governments declared they had restored the citizenship rights of these workers. But still Tamil-speaking plantation workers are treated as second class citizens in this country. During the last provincial elections, tens of thousands of workers did not receive voting rights. The reason given was that they did not have national identity cards.
The working class, including those in the plantations, is facing the brunt of the war. After the war started in 1983, hundreds of plantation youth were arrested as LTTE suspects without any evidence. I was arrested along with 22 others by the police in March 1995 and kept in various prisons for 18 months.
The police were forced to release 18 of us because of the vigorous campaign of the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), the forerunner of the SEP, with the support of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International. The RCL exposed the criminal war in the north and east, the plight of plantation workers and the arbitrary arrest of youth. We were inspired and decided to join the party because we saw a viable perspective.
Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) leader Thondaman and Upcountry Peoples Front (UPF) leader P. Chandrasekaran were in the cabinet of the capitalist government. They or their trade unions did nothing to release us. Instead they supported taking us into custody.
If we have learned at least one lesson since so-called independence in Sri Lanka, it is that the defence of the democratic rights of Tamil people and plantation workers cannot be achieved under the capitalist order and under any capitalist party, Sinhala, Tamil or Muslim. The LTTE shows no alternative to Tamil people but a blind alley and disaster. Democratic rights can be achieved only in the struggle for socialism.
I demand that the LTTE and its supportive organisations in Europe and elsewhere in the world stop all kinds of attempts to suppress political discussion among Tamil people and stop the violence and intimidation against SEP members.
T. Savarimuttu
Sri Lanka
***
Comité de coordination tamoul en France,
It is with deep regret that I have been reading about the seemingly orchestrated interference with the rights of free speech and political advocacy of supporters of oppressed Tamils. The descriptions of claims (accompanied by violent instances of physical repression) that only the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are entitled to take up the cause of Tamil emancipation smacks of arrogance and illogical sectarianism, at best, and ugly intolerance, at worst.
I urge all LTTE supporters to be inclusionary, as opposed to exclusionary, in furthering the worthy goals of liberty and respect for all in Sri Lanka and of the universality of freedom of speech, especially if it is controversial.
H.J. Glasbeek
Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar
York University, Toronto
***
To the LTTE,
Threats and physical attacks by supporters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) against Socialist Equality Party (SEP) members and supporters distributing SEP literature during last month’s Tamil diaspora demonstrations in Paris, London, Berlin, Stuttgart and Toronto in Canada deserve the condemnation of all right thinking people.
The SEP drew the ire of the LTTE because it offered an alternative to the latter’s bankrupt line of currying favour with the imperialist powers. Instead the SEP called for the mobilisation of the international working class to demand the unconditional withdrawal of Sri Lankan military forces from the North and the East of the island.
The LTTE’s perspective is the creation of a separate statelet in the North and the Eastern portion of Sri Lanka to serve the interests of the Tamil capitalist class. It hopes to create such a state through the mediation of the major powers internationally. Such a state will be a capitalist state for the working class, no less than the state run by the Colombo capitalists. The LTTE is organically hostile to the working class and cannot allow democratic freedoms so essential to defend the rights of the working class.
The major powers have nothing but their own global interest in taking sides in this civil war. Against the attempts to whip up racial, ethnic and religious communalism, the SEP fights to unite the working class internationally. It fights for the establishment of a Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and Eelam as part of a United Socialist Republics of South Asia. Its perspective of international socialist revolution alone is the road out of racial discrimination and repression everywhere.
This perspective lines up its adherents with millions of workers the world over who are now coming forward against the burdens of the world crisis of capitalism. The separatist perspective of the LTTE, which runs after the capitalist oppressors of the same millions, isolates the Tamil oppressed minority from the international working class.
The current LTTE attack on the democratic rights of the SEP is not episodic. In 1998 the LTTE arrested and detained four SEP cadres in the Wanni for more than 50 days, physically assaulting them.
The LTTE disenfranchised the Tamil people forcibly in the 2005 presidential election and prevented the SEP from holding an election meeting in Jaffna city with a death threat.
Before that, in 2003 an LTTE thug stabbed SEP member N. Kodeswaran with a spike at Kayts Island near Jaffna. Several weeks before this incident, Semmanan, the then LTTE political head for the islands off Jaffna, openly threatened SEP members in the leadership of the Kayts fishermen’s union after they refused to provide funds for the LTTE.
The LTTE fears that the SEP’s internationalist socialist perspective will penetrate the Tamil diaspora, which is overwhelmingly working class. While calling all those who uphold democratic rights to condemn the LTTE attack, I urge workers, intellectuals and especially youth to join the SEP and the International Committee of Fourth International to liberate humanity from exploitation and oppression.
Sincerely yours,
T. Ram
Socialist Equality Party
Jaffna Branch, Sri Lanka
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By Toru Fujioka

March 18 (Bloomberg) — When Yumiko Iwate’s pay was cut last year, she and her female colleagues all agreed there was only one thing to do: find a husband.
“I want to get married soon, hopefully by the end of this year,” said Iwate, a 36-year-old employee at a mail-order retailer in Tokyo. “The recession made me realize I’m not going to make as much money as I expected, and I’d be more stable financially if I had double income to fall back on.”
Women the Japanese call “marriage-hunters” are looking to tie the knot as companies from Toyota Motor Corp. to Sony Corp. fire thousands of workers and the nation heads for its biggest annual economic contraction since 1945. Marriages surged to a five-year high of 731,000 in 2008 as wages stagnated and the unemployment rate rose for the first time in six years.
“Financial concerns are a major reason for the increase in marriage-hunting,” said Toshihiro Nagahama, chief economist at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute in Tokyo. “Women are motivated more than ever to find a financially sound partner.”
The trend marks a reversal for women who put careers over families after Japan implemented equal labor rights 23 years ago. The number of marriages in the following decade slid 4.5 percent to an annual average of 746,000 compared with the decade before. Despite equal rights, women still make 43 percent less than men, giving them more reason to seek a partner during recessions.

‘As Good as Men’
“I know women before my generation worked so hard and pursued their careers so they could prove they’re just as good as men,” said Reiko Kubo, 25, who bought a good-luck charm at Tokyo Daijingu shrine. “They didn’t have to depend on men and that’s cool, but it’s not the path I want to follow.”
Tokyo Daijingu has come to be known as the marriage-hunters’ shrine, and the number of visitors has risen about 20 percent in the past year, said priest Yoshiyuki Karamatsu. For 5,000 yen, he will conduct a ritual to ward off bad spirits; the purification ceremony includes drinking sacred sake.
Recessions have encouraged the Japanese to wed before. Marriages rose when an asset-price bubble burst in the late 1980s and again after the technology crash in 2001. Analysts say the trend is gaining traction because the current slump is expected to spur record-high unemployment.
Economists at Dai-Ichi Life Research and JPMorgan Chase & Co. expect the jobless rate this year to surpass the postwar peak of 5.5 percent in 2003. Unemployment in January was 4.1 percent. Wages have slumped for three months, and the economy contracted an annualized 12.1 percent last quarter, the biggest drop since 1974.

Civil Weddings
Marriages are also increasing in other countries as recessions spread around the world. The number of civil weddings in London’s Westminster Register Office, the city’s most popular, rose 8.5 percent to 1,684 between April 2008 and February 2009 compared with a year earlier, according to Alison Cathcart, the superintendent registrar. “We certainly feel a lot busier,” she said.
Japan’s husband hunters are pursuing relationships the way they might search for jobs: They interview at agencies — dating agencies, in this case. They attend networking parties or just let friends know they are ready for commitment.
Iwate started her quest in December by writing New Year’s cards to 170 acquaintances from junior high school classmates to fellow dancers at salsa lessons, asking for help finding an eligible bachelor. Her five co-workers are in on the hunt, introducing each other to potential partners and putting sticky notes on the most useful pages of the “Complete Guide to Marriage Hunting” from “an an” magazine, a weekly publication for women in their 20s and 30s.

‘Looks Shouldn’t Matter’
The issue included articles telling readers that, while it’s acceptable to choose a husband by occupation, “looks shouldn’t matter because they’re not essential to leading a married life. You need to consider men you normally wouldn’t date.”
It listed character traits by job type: “Traders tend to be adventurous and forward-looking; pharmacists conservative and stable; sushi chefs patient and creative.”
It also cautioned against playing hard to get: Being coy “is strictly forbidden; men want to seriously date women who act natural.”
Business is booming at Green, a marriage-hunting bar in Tokyo’s nightlife district of Roppongi. Men pay 11,340 yen ($115) per visit to have waiters set them up with women, who get in free. The bar is booked solid on weekends, and membership is up 26 percent this year, according to owner Yuta Honda.

Dating Agencies
Interest in O-Net, Japan’s largest dating agency, is also rising. The number of people requesting applications jumped 10 percent in the past year, according to spokesman Toshiaki Kato. Shares of Watabe Wedding Corp., a wedding-planning agency, are up 55 percent since September, while the broader Topix index has slumped 30 percent.
Marriage hunting has even attracted the attention of policy makers, who have been trying for years to increase Japan’s birthrate. Women give birth to only 1.34 children on average in their lifetimes, government data for 2007 show, well below the 2.07 required for a stable population.
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By Huma Yusuf

Last Sunday, as the Long March heated up and tear-gas shells and stones littered the entrance to the Lahore High Court, news broke of Mukhtar Mai’s marriage to Nasir Abbas Gabol, a police constable who was assigned to protect her. The news unleashed a media firestorm that says more about international perceptions of Pakistan and the fallacy of objective journalism than it does about Mai’s matrimonial circumstances.
Many quirks about the way Mai’s wedding was reported are worth noting. Local and international papers alike continue to identify Mai as a ‘gang-rape victim’ even while celebrating her successes as a women’s rights activist who fought her rapists in court and established the first girls’ school in Meerwala as well as several women’s centres. The Urdu-language press in Pakistan emphasized the fact that Mai had married a police constable in headlines and photo captions. Given the tainted reputations of low-level police officers in this country, dwelling on his profession can be read as a way to suggest that rape victims get what they deserve.
Meanwhile, the international press largely twisted coverage of Mai’s marriage to make it seem like the ultimate good news story. Indeed, as civilian-police clashes erupted in Lahore, Mai’s news made for the perfect ‘happy ending’ narrative that no one at that time thought the Long March would deliver. Juxtaposed with the ‘failed state’ doom and gloom being prompted by the showdown between the government and protestors, Mai’s wedding delivered foreign desk editors the positivity needed to balance their coverage of Pakistan. As a result, the internet is now brimming with reports of Mai’s nuptials that are contradictory and confused.
The New York Times tried to keep things upbeat by describing Mai as a stigma-shattering crusader who had become a giggling bundle of joy on the occasion of her wedding. This is the first quote from her in the story:
“He says he madly fell in love with me,” Ms. Mukhtar said with a big laugh when asked what finally persuaded her to say yes.

But the cracks appear to those who keep reading, only to discover that Mai did not marry Gabol for love, but rather to save his first wife from the fate of a divorcee.

Four months ago, he tried to kill himself by taking sleeping pills. “The morning after he attempted suicide, his wife and parents met my parents but I still refused,” Ms. Mukhtar said.
Mr. Gabol then threatened to divorce his first wife, Shumaila.
Ms. Shumaila, along with Mr. Gabol’s parents and sisters, tried to talk Ms. Mukhtar into marrying him, taking on the status of second wife. In Pakistan, a man can legally have up to four wives.
It was her concern about Ms. Shumaila, Ms. Mukhtar said, that moved her to relent.
“I am a woman and can understand the pain and difficulties faced by another woman,” Ms. Mukhtar said. “She is a good woman.”

Although the run-up to Mai’s marriage is more grim than glamorous – she had vowed never to marry, but relented when Gabol attempted to commit suicide and then threatened to divorce his first wife – the British daily, The Independent, spun it as another one of her admirable victories.

By marrying, she has defeated another stigma for rape victims in Pakistani society. Ms Mai, named Glamour magazine’s Woman of the Year in 2005, met Mr Gabol in 2002 when he was posted to the police station in her village after the rape. His parents approached her 18 months ago with the offer of marriage but she declined. Having threatened to kill himself, the officer said he’d divorce his first wife if she did not agree. Eventually, his first wife’s family met Ms Mai and persuaded her to accede to his request.

For their part, Pakistani bloggers were grateful for the distraction from depressing Long March news and took it upon themselves to shower Mai with blessings and felicitations. Changing Up Pakistan (CHUP), for example, recasts Gabol – who should be maligned for mistreating his first wife by threatening her with divorce – as “lovestruck” and reframes the marriage as Mai’s attempt to crush female oppression.

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By Rafia Zakaria

Marriages are routinely and unapologetically arranged to solidify business interests, land disputes and old vendettas. The woman, then, with the maligning spectre of divorce hanging over her, is left to endure whatever abuse her husband or in-laws may heap on her

Recently, Mukhtar Mai’s married Nasir Abbas Gabol in her low-key hometown of Meerwala. The publicity and the debate generated by the event, however, resonated across the globe, garnering attention from international newspapers and television channels.

Yet, unlike the coverage of the brutal events and awe-inspiring heroism that initially catapulted Mukhtar Mai into the public eye, many of the stories published in the Western media betrayed the confusion of attempts to process the somewhat unlikely union.

Indeed, Mukhtar’s marriage presents a conundrum even to Pakistani feminists. Should the fact that Mukhtar chose to get married after having vowed never to do so be celebrated or condemned? How should one evaluate the fact that she was to be a second wife? Even further, is the act of marrying a man who threatens to kill himself and destroy his own family if she refused him an act of resistance or coercion? Should the fact that she set the conditions for the marriage be touted as an example for other women? Finally, was there possibly a romantic spin to be put on the story, where a constable entrusted with guarding his charge falls in love with her and ultimately marries her despite the social stigmas attached to her?

A cornucopia of questions thus surrounds this very Pakistani marriage while raising issues that rarely make their way into public discourse regarding the nature of marital relationships.

Let us first consider the most controversial of the facts, that Mukhtar is Constable Gabol’s second wife. Many narratives of victimhood and religious piety surround polygamous unions in Pakistani society. Religious scholars routinely skirt around the contextual reality that the Quranic revelation that allowed polygamy was revealed when the entire Muslim community numbered 770 and many of the men had been massacred in the Battle of Uhud. Accosted with the imprimatur of religious sanctity, polygamy is presented not as a provisional allowance made under specific circumstances but rather as an entitlement, any abridgement of which is an attack on the rights of a Muslim man.

Religious discussions aside, however, Mukhtar’s acquiescence shows the complexity of polygamous unions from both a socio-cultural and personal perspective. In her statement following the solemnisation of the nikah, Mukhtar clearly stated that her decision to marry was heavily influenced by the fact that she was saving three marriages. The seemingly unstable constable had threatened not only to divorce his previous wife, but this would have led to the ensuing divorce of Gabol’s own sisters that were married to his wife’s relatives.

Thrust however unceremoniously into the midst of these marital dramas and having the futures of three other women riding on her decision, it is little surprise that Mukhtar did ultimately agree to marry Abbas Gabol. A woman who had committed her life to saving women thus did, not what would ultimately have made the boldest feminist statement and demand that he relinquish his wife and substantiate the equality of man and woman. Instead she did what she could to save who she could, given the status quo.

It is this status quo that merits the most attention in the discussion surrounding Mukhtar’s marriage. It forces one to consider whether the most pragmatic approach to female survival in a male-dominated society is figuring out a way to save those that you can or choose to make grand statements of resistance.

Perceived in this way, Mukhtar’s decision is an avowal of the realities of feudal Pakistan where women cannot live alone without male protectors and where marriage is a calculation in survival than an exercise in romance. In Mukhtar’s case, the situation was even more egregious, given the fact that the man wanting to marry her was none other than the person entrusted by the government to be her protector.

In a patriarchal system where unprotected women are fair game for all manner of abuse, the petulance and immature threats of Constable Gabol were bolstered as entitlements. By preying on Mukhtar’s compassion and the reality that three women would be abandoned and stigmatised if she did not relent, Mukhtar relented and Constable Gabol succeeded in his aim.

The interpretation of circumstances presented is but an interpretation substantiated only by the few facts available in the public domain. Yet despite its speculative dimensions, the dynamics of Mukhtar Mai’s marriage is representative of many unions that take place within Pakistan. Women who have faced divorce or any other form of social stigma are left in the uncomfortable position of choosing to live as unwanted and often maligned guests in their fathers’ or brothers’ homes or acquiesce to being second wives.

In other cases, marriages are routinely and unapologetically arranged to solidify business interests, land disputes and old vendettas. The woman, then, with the maligning spectre of divorce hanging over her, is left to endure whatever abuse her husband or in-laws may heap on her in an effort to salvage her marriage and avoid bringing shame on her family.

With the arrival of children, the seal of dependency is complete and many women are left forever dependent on the man whose identity legitimates their existence in the world.

Mukhtar Mai came into the spotlight to demand justice against the perpetrators who committed a horrific crime against her. Her position in the limelight, given her poverty and the unwillingness of many to acknowledge the existence of such brutality in our society, raised a public outcry. Her marriage, in this larger sense, is representative of similar realities that are also worthy of discussion.

Will it ever be possible for Pakistani women to live independently without a male protector? Will Pakistani marriages ever be more than arrangements that are made for men and by men? If these questions are deemed worthy of introspection and public debate in Pakistan, then Mukhtar Mai may have saved a lot more than just three marriages.

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

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Exactly what can we car drivers do to help save the environment and preserve a most important resource?
Today marks another United Nations World Day for Water or simply, World Water Day.

I am not writing to ask you to help the 1.1 billion people around the world living without a reliable water source, nor the 2.4 billion without adequate sanitation.
I am trying to tell you why a car (yes, that includes mine and yours) is a leading contributor to water shortages, contamination and, worst of all, poisoning.
CAR WASH
You’ve read it all before, about how a hose-down car wash wastes anywhere from 200 to 500 litres of filtered and treated water.
Even using a high-pressure water spray (like at your local car wash) it would still waste some 60 to 150 litres.
The more often you wash your car, the more water you waste that could be put to more productive use like washing your clothes, gardening or cooking.
I recently asked a car wash operator in Bangkok how often his customers visit, and he told me that most of the regular customers turn up once a week or more, often during the rainy season.
Now, if I use a median figure of 105 litre per wash – that’s 5,406 litres or about 5.4 cubic metres or tonnes of water a year for one car!
If all 8.8 million cars and pick-ups in Thailand did the same, that would be more than 48 billion litres, or 48 million tonnes of water – that’s the same as all the people living in Phuket and Phetchaburi provinces use at home in one year!
By contrast, a survey found drivers in the UK wash their cars on average only seven times per year.
If you live where tap water always flows, try visiting a drought-hit area anywhere this hot season and stay there for a week and you’ll appreciate what a blessing it is to have running tap water.
If a clean car is a must for your image and self-esteem, can you please scale down the water usage to a bucket or two of water and wipe the car with a wet cloth instead?
It would only use four to 10 litres of water – a saving of 90%.
Another concern about car washes is that the detergent and grime that’s washed away with the water will eventually affect the environment.
You can see for yourself – at any car wash in Thailand – how the water is disposed of. It is simply discharged into a public drain, which goes straight into a khlongs or rivers and ends up in the Gulf of Thailand.
…

DRINKING WATER
Bottled water needs up to six times as much water to produce as is in the bottle – so, for example, a 0.5 litre bottle needs as much as three litres of water.
That’s an awful waste.
So, I tried a little experimenting at home and found that it takes no more than 1.5 litres of tap water to thoroughly wash a 0.5 litre plastic bottle.
After topping it up with home-filtered water, this bottle used up two litres of water in total.
Therefore, I could actually be saving one litre of water for every 0.5 litres of drinking water if I prepare myself.
I drink, on average, 2.5 litres of water inside my car every week – that’s 130 litres a year.
This means if I were to use my own bottle I could be saving 260 litres of water per year – more than enough to fill a bath or clean my car with a bucket every week for the whole year.
Moreover, I would not be throwing away between 217 and 260 empty plastic bottles a year – amounting to 6.5kg of almost completely unrecyclable PET plastic.
The only issue is having to thoroughly clean your bottle, especially the mouth-piece, every day or two to prevent germs from accumulating and giving you tummy trouble.

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ISTANBUL – A global ministerial meeting was putting the final touches here Saturday to resolutions for tackling the world’s water crisis but activists attacked the process as a corporate-driven fraud.

Demonstrators, protesting against the privatization of water resources clash with riot police in front of the venue of the World Water Forum in Istanbul March 16, 2009. Turkish police fired teargas to disperse a group of hundreds gathered at the start of the global water forum in Istanbul on Monday and detained 17, state-run news agency Anatolian reported.

The communique to be issued by more than 100 countries on World Water Day on Sunday climaxes a seven-day gathering on how to provide clean water and sanitation for billions and resolve worsening water stress and pollution.
“The world is facing rapid and unprecedented global changes, including population growth, migration, urbanization, climate change, desertification, drought, degradation and land use, economic and diet changes,” according to a draft seen by AFP.
The document, which is non-binding, spells out a consensus for boosting cooperation to ease trans-boundary disputes over water, preventing pollution and tackling drought and floods.
It also describes access to safe drinking water and sanitation as “a basic human need.” France, Spain and several Latin American countries were striving to beef up this reference, from “need” to “right,” a change that could have legal ramifications.
But campaigners representing the rural poor, the environment and organized labor blasted the communique as a sideshow, stage-managed for corporations who are major contributors to the World Water Council, which organizes the Forum.
Maude Barlow, senior adviser to the president of the UN General Assembly, said the Forum promoted privatization of resources by “the lords of water” and excluded dissident voices.
She called for the meeting to be placed under the UN flag.
“We demand that the allocation of water be decided in an open, transparent and democratic forum rather than in a trade show for the world’s large corporations,” Barlow told a press conference.
David Boys, with an NGO called Public Services International, said “transparency, accountability and participation” were absent from the Forum, and dismissed the ministerial statement as “vapid.”
Around 880 million people do not have access to decent sources of drinking water, while 2.5 billion people do not have access to proper sanitation, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in a report on Tuesday.
By 2030, the number of people living under severe water stress is expected to rise to 3.9 billion, a tally that does not include the impacts of global warming, according to the OECD.
The World Water Council, based in the southern French city of Marseille, holds the World Water Forum every three years. The Istanbul conference, the fifth in the series, drew a record more than 25,000 participants, and registrations from at least 27,000.
The Council’s website says it is funded by more than 300 member organizations from 60 countries, including water utilities, governments, hydrological institutions and associations involved in research, environment and education.
Its president, Loic Fauchon, rejected charges of elitism and exclusion.
“Everyone is invited, and in any case, everyone comes these days,” he told AFP.
He added: “If it (the Forum) were organized by the United Nations, it would lose its characteristic of being open to all. In a UN conference, not everyone who wants to come can participate. In the World Water Forum, anyone can take part.”
The Istanbul Forum has focused overwhelmingly on issues of policymaking and includes a big trade fair by water utilities and engineering firms.
It has also staged side events on issues of civil society, but to a far smaller degree than in other big environmental meetings.
Grassroots campaigners have complained of high registration fees, of geographical separation from the main conference events and of overbearing security.
© 2009 Agence France Presse

via http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/21-3

(This post was originally published on June 30, 2008, and recently appeared on The New York Times’s list of most-viewed stories for 2008.)

Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice.

1. Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters.
How to eat: Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power.

2. Cabbage: Loaded with nutrients like sulforaphane, a chemical said to boost cancer-fighting enzymes.
How to eat: Asian-style slaw or as a crunchy topping on burgers and sandwiches.

3. Swiss chard: A leafy green vegetable packed with carotenoids that protect aging eyes.
How to eat it: Chop and saute in olive oil.

4. Cinnamon: May help control blood sugar and cholesterol.
How to eat it: Sprinkle on coffee or oatmeal.
5. Pomegranate juice: Appears to lower blood pressure and loaded with antioxidants.
How to eat: Just drink it.

6. Dried plums: Okay, so they are really prunes, but they are packed with antioxidants.
How to eat: Wrapped in prosciutto and baked.

7. Pumpkin seeds: The most nutritious part of the pumpkin and packed with magnesium; high levels of the mineral are associated with lower risk for early death.

How to eat: Roasted as a snack, or sprinkled on salad.
8. Sardines: Dr. Bowden calls them “health food in a can.” They are high in omega-3’s, contain virtually no mercury and are loaded with calcium. They also contain iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese as well as a full complement of B vitamins.
How to eat: Choose sardines packed in olive or sardine oil. Eat plain, mixed with salad, on toast, or mashed with dijon mustard and onions as a spread.

9. Turmeric: The “superstar of spices,” it may have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties.
How to eat: Mix with scrambled eggs or in any vegetable dish.

10. Frozen blueberries: Even though freezing can degrade some of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables, frozen blueberries are available year-round and don’t spoil; associated with better memory in animal studies.
How to eat: Blended with yogurt or chocolate soy milk and sprinkled with crushed almonds.

11. Canned pumpkin: A low-calorie vegetable that is high in fiber and immune-stimulating vitamin A; fills you up on very few calories.
How to eat: Mix with a little butter, cinnamon and nutmeg.

You can find more details and recipes on the Men’s Health Web site, which published the original version of the list last year.

In my own house, I only have two of these items — pumpkin seeds, which I often roast and put on salads, and frozen blueberries, which I mix with milk, yogurt and other fruits for morning smoothies. How about you? Have any of these foods found their way into your shopping cart?

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http://www.livescience.com/

Are you listening to me? Didn’t I just tell you to get your coat? Helloooo! It’s cold out there…

So goes many a conversation between parent and toddler. It seems everything you tell them either falls on deaf ears or goes in one ear and out the other. But that’s not how it works.

Toddlers listen, they just store the information for later use, a new study finds.

“I went into this study expecting a completely different set of findings,” said psychology professor Yuko Munakata at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they’re just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different.”

Munakata and colleagues used a computer game and a setup that measures the diameter of the pupil of the eye to determine the mental effort of the child to study the cognitive abilities of 3-and-a-half-year-olds and 8-year-olds.

The game involved teaching children simple rules about two cartoon characters – Blue from Blue’s Clues and SpongeBob SquarePants – and their preferences for different objects. The children were told that Blue likes watermelon, so they were to press the happy face on the computer screen only when they saw Blue followed by a watermelon. When SpongeBob appeared, they were to press the sad face on the screen.

“The older kids found this sequence easy, because they can anticipate the answer before the object appears,” said doctoral student Christopher Chatham, who participated in the study. “But preschoolers fail to anticipate in this way. Instead, they slow down and exert mental effort after being presented with the watermelon, as if they’re thinking back to the character they had seen only after the fact.”

The pupil measurements showed that 3-year-olds neither plan for the future nor live completely in the present. Instead, they call up the past as they need it.

“For example, let’s say it’s cold outside and you tell your 3-year-old to go get his jacket out of his bedroom and get ready to go outside,” Chatham explained. “You might expect the child to plan for the future, think ‘OK it’s cold outside so the jacket will keep me warm.’ But what we suggest is that this isn’t what goes on in a 3-year-old’s brain. Rather, they run outside, discover that it is cold, and then retrieve the memory of where their jacket is, and then they go get it.”

The findings are detailed this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Munakata figures the results might help with real situations.

“If you just repeat something again and again that requires your young child to prepare for something in advance, that is not likely to be effective,” Munakata said. “What would be more effective would be to somehow try to trigger this reactive function. So don’t do something that requires them to plan ahead in their mind, but rather try to highlight the conflict that they are going to face. Perhaps you could say something like ‘I know you don’t want to take your coat now, but when you’re standing in the yard shivering later, remember that you can get your coat from your bedroom.”

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Survival International, an international movement in defense of tribal people is accusing the makers of a controversial film of inciting racial hatred against Brazilian Indians. The charges are being made to mark the UN International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, March 21.

The film, “Hakani”, has been watched by more than 350,000 people on YouTube and claims to be the true story of a Brazilian Indian child buried alive by her tribe. Survival argues the film is faked, that the earth covering the children’s faces is “actually chocolate cake”, and that the film’s claim that infanticide among Brazilian Indians is widespread is false.

“People are being taught to hate Indians, even wish them dead,” says Survival’s director, Stephen Corry, in an interview about “Hakani”. “Look at the comments on the YouTube site, things like, “So get rid of these native tribes. They suck”, and, “Those amazon mother f***ers burying (sic) little kids, kill them all.”

“The film focuses on what they claim happens routinely in Indian communities, but it doesn’t,” Corry says. “Amazonian infanticide is rare. When it does happen… it is the mother’s decision and isn’t taken lightly. It’s made privately and secretly and is often thought shameful, certainly tragic.”

“Hakani” was directed by David Cunningham, the son of the founder of an American fundamentalist missionary organization called “Youth with a Mission”, which has a branch in Brazil known as Jocum. Corry argues that the missionaries try to downplay their involvement in the film.
“You’re invited to give money to UNKF, but you aren’t told what the initials mean (it’s part of the mission),” Corry says. “The evangelical involvement is not mentioned at all. Even if you download the full film, the credits are unreadable, so you can’t tell who is behind it.”

Corry says the film is part of the missionaries’ campaign to pressure Brazil’s government to pass a controversial bill, known as “Muwaji’s law”. This would force Brazilian citizens to report to the authorities anything they think is a “harmful traditional practice” – a law which would “foster witch-hunts”, “roll Brazil back centuries” and “could bring catastrophic social breakdown”.

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