Month: October 2009

China is preparing for the celebrations of 60 years of communist rule in October

By Helena Merriman, BBC News

This time a year ago, the world was reeling from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the multi-billion dollar rescue of Merrill Lynch and insurance firm AIG.

But for Joern Schuetumpf, a German publisher, life was looking up.
Mr Schuetumpf, director of Karl-Dietz, was revelling in the increase in sales of one of his books which was now selling at seven times the usual rate.

That book was Marx’s Das Kapital, the founding text of communism.
On television and radio outlets across the world, Marxists, socialists and anti-capitalist groups seized the moment in the post-Lehmans-world, to declare that the Western economic era was over.

Even before the crisis there were warnings. In March 2007, American writer and journalist Tom Wolfe said “we may be witnessing the end of capitalism as we know it”.

Then in September last year, the British political philosopher John Gray said that “the era of American global leadership is over… in a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed”.

‘The great story of our time’

But now, a year after, as the polemical dust settles, do leading commentators believe that we are at the brink of a new financial world order?

According to Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and author of The Post American World, we are.

“This is the major power shift of the last few centuries,” he says, speaking to the BBC World Service.

“For the first time in at least 300 years, you have non Western actors of a size and scale that will really be dominating the world.”
Yet Mr Zakaria does not think the West will be obliterated by the new scenario.

“America will be the most powerful economy in the world for the foreseeable future and the West will still be important… but it will have to share that power with countries, cultures and civilisations it has traditionally dominated, colonised and looked down on, and that re-balancing of the world will be the great story of our time,” he says.

BBC

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

President Obama attempts to depict proponents of Medicare for all as lefty health care “extremists.” But that’s precisely the kind of “robust” public plan favored by two-thirds of Americans, according to a recent poll. Obama is to the Right of the people, and the GOP is off the map.

“Most people favor a public option that is a lot more “robust” than anything the Congress is offering.”

Despite the infamous Max Baucus Senate committee’s long-anticipated rejection of even a fig leaf of a public health care “option,” public opinion remains remarkably firm in support of allowing everyone access to a comprehensive government health plan. A New York Times/CBS News survey last week provided the best polling evidence in recent months that most people favor a public option that is a lot more “robust” than anything the Congress is offering, aside from straight-up single payer.

The poll once again confirms that something very much like single payer remains an idea whose time has come. After all these month’s of the Obama Administration’s attempts to shrivel into near nothingness the very concept of health care “reform,” and despite the mad howlings of Republicans about the evils of “socialized medicine,” two-thirds of the American people still support a Medicare-like government health care plan. Unlike some recent surveys, the language of the pollsters’ question was straightforward and unambiguous:

“Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans?”

That is the definition of a very “robust” public health care option. Sixty-five percent of respondents said they were in favor.

“Americans overwhelmingly endorse expanding Medicare to all who want it.”

It’s a pity that the New York Times and CBS News neglected to ask how the public feels about a full-blown single payer plan, which has for years commanded strong majorities. But the poll does show conclusively that Americans overwhelmingly endorse expanding Medicare to all who want it – and let the private insurers sink or swim on their own.

BAR

By Govind Talwalkar

Sept.30 : When the ghost of his dead father told him that he (the king) had been poisoned by his brother who had then married the widowed queen, Hamlet’s whole moral world collapsed. In the circumstances, it was not that Hamlet hesitated to act but he was acutely aware of the dire consequences that would inevitably follow.

One is reminded of this tragedy as we look at the inner conflict which Mikhail Gorbachev underwent after assuming the office of the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985. He had the courage to admit that the system he had inherited was thoroughly rotten and suffered from widespread corruption and inertia.

The diary of Anatoly S. Chernyaev, an adviser to Mr Gorbachev from 1986 to 1989, is now available on the website of the National Security Archives and throws light on the extent of the rot in the Soviet Union.

Mr Chernyaev served in the Army during World War II, and later graduated from the Moscow University. He was a student of philosophy but was also interested in history, literature and art. After graduation, he joined the foreign department of the International Communist Party and then moved on to become Mr Gorbachev’s political adviser.

Mr Chernyaev was not an admirer of Joseph Stalin and was appalled with the corrupt administration of Leonid Brezhnev. No wonder he felt elated when Mr Gorbachev took over as the general secretary. Like millions of Russians, and foreigners, he too welcomed the innovative policies of the new general secretary.

As an adviser to Mr Gorbachev, Mr Chernyaev had access to several secret documents and was privy to confidential discussions. He describes corruption at higher levels — he writes about foreign secretary Andrei Gromyko taking bribes and gifts from diplomats seeking promotions, and his wife, whenever the couple visited New York, would purchase jewellery and expensive goods.

AA

ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION – URGENT APPEALS PROGRAMME

Urgent Appeal Case: AHRC-UAC-131-2009

2 October 2009
———————————————————————
BURMA: Three children among six females imprisoned with hard labour

ISSUES: Rule of law; judicial system; illegal detention; child rights
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Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has learned that three girls in Burma have been sentenced to a year in jail with hard labour for allegedly selling illegal lottery tickets. When the case against them came to court, the judge reportedly ignored evidence given that the three girls are not yet 16 years old, and should have been tried in a juvenile court. All six of the defendants claimed that they were innocent of the charges and that the police set them up; the AHRC has also received information that the police bribed the prosecutor to take the case.

CASE DETAILS:

In the mid-morning of 27 February 2009, a group of police from Daik-U station in Pegu, north of Rangoon, went to the house of Daw Aye Myint in Ushitkone village. She was in the fields at the time, and was called back to the house to find the police with her daughter, Ma Amy Htun, 15; her sister, Ma Sein Htwe, two other adult women and three other girls. The police accused them of running an illegal lottery ring–which are very common in Burma–and arrested them all. The accused denied the charges but were held at the local lock up and were denied bail. According to family members, each time they took food for the girls and women they had to pay the guards 500 Kyat (about 50 US cents) to give it.

One of the girls was found to be underage and was transferred to the juvenile justice system, but the others were recorded as ‘youths’, which under the current law in Burma means that they are 16 or 17 years old and can be tried as adults. The police allegedly falsified records to make the girls birth dates earlier than they are. The girls submitted evidence to the court, like testimonials from school headmistresses, to support the claim that they are children. The prosecutor and judge had special responsibilities to check the ages, which they failed to do. The police allegedly also paid the prosecutor to proceed with the case knowing that the ages of the girls had been falsely recorded.

As the government of Burma places special emphasis on the rights of women and children–the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women are the only two rights charters that it has joined–it should be possible to have this case opened and the girls released. The Child Law grants special authority to the social welfare minister to order immediate and unconditional release of children held in custody. So please sign and send the sample letter below.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

The AHRC has been documenting numerous cases that address what it has described as Burma’s ‘injustice system’ which can be accessed by going to the appeals homepage and typing ‘Burma’ or ‘Myanmar’ into the search box: http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/. Two special reports have also been issued in the article 2 periodical, Saffron Revolution imprisoned, law denied (vol. 7, no. 3, September 2008) and Burma, political psychosis and legal dementia (vol. 6, no. 5-6, December 2007). There are also a number of related sites, including the AHRC Burmese-language blog, Pyithu Hittaing and the 2008 AHRC Human Rights Report chapter on Burma.

SUGGESTED ACTION:

Please write to those listed below to call for the immediate release of the six convicted persons, especially the three girls. Please note that for the purposes of the letter Burma is referred to by its official name, Myanmar, and Pegu as Bago.

Please be informed that the AHRC is writing a separate letter to the UN Special Rapporteurs on Myanmar and the independence of judges and lawyers, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the UNICEF office in Burma and the regional human rights office for Southeast Asia calling for interventions into this case.
To support this appeal please click here

AHRC

Will a pill at breakfast improve concentration and memory—and will it do so without long-term detriment to your health?

By Gary Stix

Key Concepts

• College students and executives ingest stimulant drugs to enhance routine mental performance, although the compounds were never approved for that purpose.
• Some ethicists and neuroscientists have raised the prospect of making these drugs widely available for enhancement of healthy people who do not suffer from dementia.
• Questions remain about whether any drug that tinkers with basic mental functioning will be sufficiently safe and effective to be consumed like coffee or tea.

The symbol H+ is the code sign used by some futurists to denote an enhanced version of humanity. The plus version of the human race would deploy a mix of advanced technologies, including stem cells , robotics, cognition-enhancing drugs, and the like, to overcome basic mental and physical limitations.

The notion of enhancing mental functions by gulping down a pill that improves attention, memory and planning—the very foundations of cognition—is no longer just a fantasy shared by futurists. The 1990s, proclaimed the decade of the brain by President George H. W. Bush, has been followed by what might be labeled “the decade of the better brain.”

SA

For Immediate Release

(Washington, DC, September 17, 2009) Today the American Humanist Association, alongside a broad coalition of 57 other religious, civil liberties and education organizations, called for the review and withdrawal of a 2007 Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo that threatens religious liberty and civil rights. The groups, who issued their request via a letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder, argue that the Bush-era memo inaccurately interprets the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) as allowing religious organizations to discriminate on the basis of religion when hiring for taxpayer-funded positions.

“The Bush administration used the OLC memo to subvert federal law and allow religious groups to side-step important civil rights protections,” said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. “It’s high time it’s this legally unjustifiable rule is rescinded.”

RFRA was enacted in 1993 and prohibits substantially burdening religious exercise without a compelling reason. The 2007 OLC memo broadly interpreted that right to the free exercise as granting an exemption for religious organizations from federal non-discrimination law.

“The argument that requiring religious groups to abide by civil rights law unlawfully curtails their free exercise of religion simply doesn’t stand up to legal scrutiny,” said Speckhardt. “If religious groups want to only hire others of the same religion they are allowed to do so with their own money. But taxpayer dollars should never be used to fund discrimination. Religious groups that accept government money need to play by the same rules as everyone else.”

The letter can be found here.

AH

By Jonathan Magnus

A musical link has been formed between a Canadian university and Liberia in the form of an annotated CD produced by the University of Alberta and Liberian refugee musicians.

Michael Frishkopf, a music professor at the university, played a key role in establishing the relationship between the school and the refugees who lived at the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana during Liberia’s civil war.

Five thousand copies of “Giving Voice to Hope: Music of Liberian Refugees” are on sale in Canada following a recent launch at the university’s fine art gallery in Alberta. Almost 200 people were treated to live African drumming at the event. Images from the 28-page insert to the CD have been on exhibition at the university gallery.

Frishkopf, who also supervised the CD’s production, noted that westerners are usually shielded by geographical, social and political barriers from the harsh conditions that people such as the former refugees endured. He hopes the CD will help bridge that gap.

Photo Essay:

MyAfrica
The CD produced by refugees and a Canadian university.

“Psychologically, the only way we can continue to lead lives of relative privilege, alongside vague knowledge of a larger human world of deprivation, is through self-deception – forgetting, self-blinding, dehumanization,” he said. “A primary goal of this project is to foster remembrance, seeing and humanization of these psychologically excluded social worlds.”

The genres covered in the CD vary from roots-reggae to gospel. The 16 tracks capture the details of the desperate lives of the refugees. Among the images evoked in the songs is one of Liberians fleeing, clinging onto rails of over-loaded vessels and sailing for refugee camps.

From hoping for “No More War” by Morris Haynes to pleading to “Come Together Africa,” by God’s Family, the cry for a better future with lasting peace rings clear on each soundtrack. But the lyrics also tell of a world that needs to change for that peace to prevail.

“The songs on this CD mediate human presence, crossing social divides, not only between here and there, but among Liberian groups violently divided by civil war, re-harmonized in the camp through music,” Frishkopf said.

Political science professor Andy Knight, who has worked on the impact of war on children and had met with the refugees at the camp, said it’s important to avoid writing them off as victims.

“We need to look at war-affected people not just as victims but as resilient human beings,” Knight said at the launch. “The Liberians at Buduburam had resilience, despite been so badly affected by war. Their music and the local economy they created out of nothing at the camp are testament to that.”

Just under three years ago, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said Ghana had the largest refugee population in West Africa, including the more than 40,000 people who had fled Liberia – most of them to Buduburam camp.

AA

By TONY JIN

A court of Qingzhen, Guizhou province in China’s southwest, accepted the country’s first lawsuit against a government agency over environmental issues brought by a charitable organization on July 28. The All-China Environment Federation sued Qingzhen’s land and resources authority for granting a permit to Li Wanxian, the legal person for the construction of an ice cream workshop in the natural scenic spot of Baihua Lake. “We received reports from the public that the workshop poses a threat to the local ecosystems, and our investigation confirmed that this is true,” said Ma Yong, head of the federation’s environmental law supervision division. Existing Chinese laws require plaintiffs of civil cases to have direct interests in the case they put forth, which excludes public interest including environmental activism.

While the case is yet to be resolved it may mark a dramatic change in Chinese law and give enviormental protection groups a new tool to help prevent industrial pollution.

TCP

By Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai

tonight, i imagine
each of my fingers is a pen
drawing from a never-ending
inkwell, the colors from pinky
to thumb are lavender, goldenrod,
scarlet, pearl, black – the blackest
of all blacks

no more fumbling in my bag
on the subway or shaking
and throwing out bic after
bic, no more hardened crest
of flesh on my middle
finger, or smear of ink
across the side of my fist

it will be as i imagine it –
ink flowing from fingertips
like moisture gathering, the
act of writing becomes the act of
massaging, the fingertips
soft and round and bulbous at
one moment and then hardening
into a piercing tip the next –

from the inside out, the
nib comes, the pleasure of ink
draining onto the notebook
page, the subway bench,
the bathroom stall door, the
base of the statue, the newspaper
bundle, the lovers’ thoughts

it will be as i have imagined
it – my secret weapon constantly
at will, ethereal, immortal,
impishly half-human and half-
beast, like something winged or
clawed or scaled or poisonous,

i slide the sippers of the inkwells
from their shaft when necessary,
retract them to slink about
my daily business

it will be as i have imagined it –
my pen and hand as one –

words emancipated from their muffled
hives within my brain and body

free to ride the earth’s
tantalizing circuitry
of delible surfaces

free to live

Kelly Tsai’s website is http://www.yellowgurl.com/

By Evelyn Matsamura Kiapi

Kampala — In the wee hours of one Saturday morning, Mary Serumaga was woken up by a disturbing phone call. Her younger brother Robert Kalundi Serumaga had just been abducted by four unknown gun-wielding men the previous night.

He had been dragged by the belt and kicked. They even tried to undress him. They hit him to the ground until he fell unconscious. He was then whisked off into the night in the trunk of a Toyota saloon car.

For Mary, this sounded more like a scene from a movie rather than real life. And what could have Robert done that was so bad that he had to be treated that way, she asked herself. For all she knew, her brother is neither a politician nor criminal, but rather a writer, broadcaster and filmmaker. Mary was helpless.

“My first reaction was to pray for Divine Mercy. After that I was confident my brother would be delivered,” Mary told IPS in an interview.

Journalist Robert Kalundi Serumaga was abducted on the night of September 11, after leaving a weekly television talk-show, Kibazo on Friday on Wava Broadcasting Service (WBS TV). His partner Mary Ibazo, two fellow panellists and show host Peter Kibazo witnessed the abduction.

The show had discussed the then on-going stand-off between the Ugandan government and the largest ethnic group, the Kingdom of Buganda which culminated into city riots that saw tens of people lose their lives and property worth 40,000 dollars were destroyed.

Serumaga, who allegedly belittled President Yoweri Museveni on the show that evening, blaming him for the riots, was detained at unknown locations in Kampala city over the night of Friday and Saturday morning. It was until his family raised concern over his whereabouts that Serumaga was later brought to the Central Police Station. He told his family he had been beaten, tortured and threats made to his life.

The trend of events has created a fresh round of fear for the future of press freedom in Uganda. Four radio stations have since been closed down, accused of fanning the riots and inciting violence.

AA