Month: November 2009

Health minister Akira Nagatsuma recently disclosed that the nation’s relative poverty rate in 2007 was 15.7 percent. What are the implications of roughly one in six citizens living in “poverty”?

Let us introduce a Tokyo man in his 30s, a university graduate, who makes his living as a dispatched day laborer.

He works himself ragged delivering packages or sorting warehouse inventory, and takes home between 6,000 yen and 7,000 yen at the end of each grueling day.

He wants to get married and start a family some day, but knows that is pure fantasy at his income level. “When I don’t even know if I’ll have work tomorrow, how can I make plans for my future?” he laments.

The era in which nearly all Japanese citizens felt financially secure to consider themselves “middle class” is long gone. Today, there are people who cannot even meet their basic needs, no matter how hard they work. This is what the relative poverty rate of 15.7 percent implies.

The relative poverty rate represents the percentage of people whose income is less than half of the nation’s per-capita median income. A 2004 survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development put Japan’s relative poverty rate at 14.9 percent, which was the fourth highest among the 30 OECD member nations.

But the administration led by the Liberal Democratic Party had continued to withhold such figures from the public. The LDP refused to face the fact that Japan had become a “poor economic superpower.”

Significance of disclosure

The fact that the new government headed by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan has disclosed the nation’s relative poverty rate means the administration is not shying away from the grim reality.

This is significant in itself, but the act also carries even greater significance, in that the Hatoyama administration can now emulate Britain and other nations by setting a specific numerical target to fight poverty–by aiming, for instance, to “halve the relative poverty rate in five years.”

Where do the roots of poverty lie, and what will poverty do to our nation?

During the mid-1990s the progress of economic globalization intensified corporate competition around the world and destabilized employment in advanced nations. In Japan, nonregular workers began replacing full-time workers, and the LDP implemented policies to accelerate this trend. As a result, nonregular workers now account for one-third of the nation’s work force.

Traditionally, Japanese companies supported the lives of their employees and their families with a total package that included health care, pension and insurance against unemployment.

The rapid increase in the number of nonregular workers caused numerous people to lose those benefits. Public assistance was available for people who lost their livelihoods due to illness or old age, but since the system was not meant for younger, able-bodied people who were out of work, those people fell through the cracks in the nation’s safety net.

Asahi Shimbun for more

(Lola Karimova-Tillayeva)

Uznews.net – Uzbek President Islam Karimov must be proud of his daughters who are Uzbekistan’s ambassadors to UN agencies in Europe where they have become friends of A-list cinema and show business stars.

The president’s youngest daughter, Lola Karimova-Tillayeva, Uzbekistan’s ambassador to UNESCO, has hosted a reception in Paris on 8 April to present her new Uzbekistan 2020 charity fund.

Her website reported that the former First Lady of France Bernadette Chirac and the incumbent French president’s elder brother, Guillaume Sarkozy, a textile producer, had attended the reception.

French actor Alain Delon even kissed her hand, flattering her self-esteem.

The Uzbek president’s daughter was all glamorous, wearing diamonds and carrying a little silver bag.

What is it about the Uzbekistan 2020 fund that makes it possible for it to gather France’s beau monde around the daughter of one of the world’s most brutal dictators?

Karimova-Tillayeva’s website says that the fund aims to hold cultural and intellectual exchange between Uzbekistan and Europe and support children’s education and development in Uzbekistan. These aims should be achieved by 2020, which is why the fund is called Uzbekistan 2020.

The successful advancement of Lola Karimova and her sister Gulnara Karimova, who is Uzbekistan’s ambassador to the UN Office at Geneva, in the European high society is thanks to Europeans’ unawareness about the situation in Uzbekistan, believes Uzbek human rights activist Mutabar Tajibayeva, who is now in Paris.

“The French people know almost nothing about our country and that Gulnara and Lola are the daughters of the dictator who is responsible for the massacre of people in Andijan in 2005 and for the terrible human rights and economic situation in the country,” Tajibayeva said.

Tajibayeva has received France’s human rights award but she thinks that the award alone is not enough to create a public opinion about Uzbekistan and the Karimov family’s responsibility for repression, killings and torture in the country, she believes.

“The Karimov family bears personal responsibility for what Uzbekistan has been turned into under Islam Karimov’s rule and opposition and the public in Uzbekistan should show the true face of the dictator’s daughters to people in Europe,” Tajibayeva said.

“It is shameful and disgraceful that Delon kisses the hand of the blood-thirsty dictator’s daughter, and this is what we, Uzbeks, should work on,” she added.

Uzbekistan News for more

An open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury and primates of the Anglican Communion on Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill

By Davis Mac-Iyalla

To the Archbishop of Canterbury and primates of the Anglican Communion,

I am writing to you to call on the Church of England and the wider Anglican community to condemn Uganda’s proposed anti-homosexuality bill, which will make gay relations between disabled people and those under 18 a capital offence. “Carnal knowledge against the order of nature” – as homosexuality is termed in Ugandan law – is already punishable with life imprisonment. However, if passed, the new bill will widen the scope, including promoting homosexuality, aiding and abetting homosexuality and keeping a house “for purposes of homosexuality”. This means that the relatives and friends of gay couples could face execution if they allow them to stay in their homes.

The anti-homosexuality legislation proposed and enacted in Uganda and many other former British colonies has caused misery for many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, many of whom are forced to flee their countries due to this persecution. Religion is often cited as a justification for state and non-state violence against LGBT people. As a gay refugee from Nigeria who has faced this persecution, I am well aware of the misery LGBT people can go through in Africa. As a practising Anglican Christian, I believe it is crucial that the Anglican Communion unites to prevent the killing of people on the grounds of sexuality.

I would like to remind you that the Lambeth Resolution 10 in 1978 recognised the need for pastoral concern for those who are homosexual. Resolution I.10 from 1998 commits the communion “to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ.” It also condemned the “irrational fear” of homosexuality and called on the communion to assure homosexual people that “they are loved by God.”

Legislation of the kind proposed in Uganda is based on irrational hatred and a desire to entrench the stigmatisation of LGBT people. There is no place for love, understanding or acceptance in such laws. As such, the Church of England has a duty to condemn the anti-homosexuality legislation and put pressure on those MPs who support such laws. Whatever the divisions within the communion about homosexuality as a moral issue, Anglicans should unite in condemnation of violent persecution and discrimination of LGBT people whoever and wherever they are, particularly when it is carried out in the name of Jesus Christ.

Guardian for more

By Robert Young

Whose headless body is this
Whose scarlet shroud
Whose torn and wounded cloak
Whose broken voice? (1)

I Meditations on violence

The macho encounter between Simon Critchley and Slavoj Zizek over competing ethics of violence staged in the recent Naked Punch Supplement left me with the distinct feeling that violence is too important a matter to be left to philosophers. The problem with violence is that it is not just a concept, or a representation, or a problem of epistemology (though it is a problem for epistemology): violence changes the world, in its various ways, and always violently. Amidst the violence of the various late-Bush invasions of the last month of 2008, I tried running a test to see how Critchley and Zizek would help me both to understand the situation and to transform it. Zizek would deride those leftist liberals and even non-leftist liberals who simply deplored the use of violence without seeking to change the system that sustained it. That left me with very little, however, for even if I had wanted to change the system, and had been able to do so single-handedly, what exactly was ‘the system’ here for me to change, and how would I change it all at once? World revolution? What is the relation of the state to ‘the system’? Can we have a revolutionary practice, even internationalist, that is not tied to the nation state? On the other hand, Critchley’s account of the prohibition against violence as a guiding idea, rather than an absolute prohibition, on which to ground ethical behaviour however attractive as a maxim for personal practice would at the same time seem too open to utilization as a defence for its use by the state—‘it’s justified this time’, as the perpetrators and supporters of recent violence duly claimed.

As Critchley suggests, the problem with Zizek’s account of violence, in his book called simply On Violence, is the way that an emancipatory revolutionary violence is equated with Benjamin’s ‘divine violence’ or power and that nothing less will do. All other forms of political action seem to be collapsed into Zizek’s favourite trope, that opposing views are simply the two sides of the same coin. So, according to Zizek, the subjective reaction of those left-liberals who deplore the violence of suicide bombings are simply the other side of the same coin as those who carry them out, for the liberals fail to recognise the underlying systemic violence of the system that sustains their own (interrupted) peaceful existence. When, though, is an opposition a genuine dialectical opposition and when is it merely the other side of the same coin? Only, it seems, when violence sets itself against the system tout court. Yet will Zizek’s emancipatory violence change the entire global system at once? Moreover, does Zizek’s revolution promise to remove all forms of violence subsequent to the revolution? Neither seems likely or possible. The cost of Zizek’s espousal of a Leninist emancipatory violence comes with the assertion that all other forms of violence that happen around the world are simply not worth our attention: disregard them, for they are mere symptoms, not the cause. But isn’t this exclusive emphasis on revolutionary violence just the other side of the coin of the time-honoured Marxist-Leninist devaluation of all non-statist forms of struggle? Its vanguardism devalues the very involvement of the population in the violence of the system which Zizek accuses the liberal of ignoring. Whether the other side of the same coin or not, it is certainly the case that human violence operates within aggressively dialectical relationships.

Naked Punch for more

By Nadeem F. Paracha

A blogger makes a valid point in a recent blog on dawn.com. He suggests that the reason why recent election rallies in Gilgit-Baltistan are so diagonally different from those held in the rest of Pakistan is perhaps due to the lack of militant madressahs and the concept of political Islam in that area.

He is also right to note that the language and the overall content of the recent rallies by almost all the leading political parties there are squarely concentrated on various economic and development issues; whereas political rallies held by the same parties elsewhere in Pakistan are usually studded with impassioned sloganeering and jingoistic takes on Islam, India, Jews and America. The general aura of these rallies also smacks of a xenophobic and chauvinistic exhibition of ‘patriotism.’

Till about the late 1960s, political rallies, rather their content, were largely different in Pakistan. The people’s economic wellbeing and the country’s economic progress used to be the focus of the speakers at these rallies. However, things in this respect began to change with the consolidation of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (as an opposition leader) in 1967.

Already a gifted orator, Bhutto took his cue from the celebrated speakers of the 1960s’ leftist student leaders who in their passionate outbursts addressed economic issues using rhetorical Marxist lingo and revolutionary bravado.

In his speeches at the time, Bhutto too addressed economic issues faced by the people, but he began to use more and more revolutionary symbolism and lingo trying to work the crowds into a captivated frenzy, just like Mao Tse Tung was doing during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Aggressive vocal posturing became a hallmark of the Bhutto rallies, but this aggression got its first physical manifestation when during the 1970 election campaign, hoards of Jamat-i-Islami (JI) and its student wing, the Islami Jamiat Taleba (IJT) activists, started to attack Bhutto rallies.

In his book, Pakistan People’s Party: Rise to Power, Phillip E. Jones states that PPP rallies became a target of the JI and IJT activists who, incensed by Bhutto’s leftist rhetoric, labelled him as ‘anti-Islam’ and a ‘kafir.’ Till then political rallies were usually attacked and dispersed by government-hired hooligans and the police, so this was perhaps the first time one political party was attacking another party’s rally.

Jones further writes that to counter these attacks by the JI and IJT, the PPP formed the ‘People’s Guards.’ These were groups of tough young men picked from various leftist student organisations, especially the National Students’ Federation (NSF) that was supporting Bhutto. A number of clashes took place between the ‘People’s Guards’ and the JI activists during the 1970 election campaign.

The tone of Bhutto’s speeches became a lot more aggressive after he came to power in 1972 — especially from 1974 onwards, when smitten by the sudden turn that the ideology of Pakistan took after the East Pakistan debacle, both Bhutto and his political-religious opponents began using ‘Islam’ a lot more frequently. It was the Bhutto government which presided over the change of direction Pakistan’s history and school books took after the 1971 civil war in the former East Pakistan. It was also Bhutto who had Ahmadis declared as non-Muslim.

Dawn for more

By John von Radowitz

An unusual organ implant grown in the laboratory and rigorously tested on highly-sexed male rabbits could bring new hope to thousands of men.

Scientists in the US completely rebuilt the “stiffening” elements of the penis from donor cells – and showed that they worked.

Rabbits given the implants attempted to mate within one minute of being introduced to a female partner, and 83 per cent succeeded.
Study leader Professor Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University in New Carolina, said: “Our results are encouraging and suggest that the technology has considerable potential for patients who need penile reconstruction.

“Our hope is that patients with congenital abnormalities, penile cancer, traumatic injury and some cases of erectile dysfunction will benefit from this technology in the future.”

The mammalian penis is a surprisingly complex organ which once damaged is difficult to repair.

Erections are achieved by means of two sponge-like cylinders, or “corporal bodies”, on each side of the penis that fill with blood.

Disease and injury can lead to loss of the erectile tissue, which may also waste away if no erections occur for too long. This is a risk faced by patients who have had surgery for prostate cancer.

In extreme cases artificial silicone rods can be implanted into the penis but they do not function in a natural way.

The new research focused on growing new erectile tissue in the laboratory from seeded cells.

First smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells, similar to those lining blood vessels, were harvested from the erectile tissue of male rabbits.

Using a two-step process, these were then grown on a three-dimensional collagen “scaffolds” bathed in chemicals.

Independent for more

As the memory of communism fades, nostalgia is viewed as suspect – but to lament losses is not to wish state socialism back

By Maria Todorova

This year’s jubilee has been dominated by what all festive anniversaries do: remembering and celebrating a victory. Because it is an official victory, it is to a large extent a prescriptive remembering, focused on two central pillars and their firmly entrenched formulas: the “peaceful revolution” and the normative Vergangenheitsbewältigung, as in Germany. In Bulgaria, 1989 is popularly known, in a typically anticlimactic fashion, not as revolution, but as “the change” (promianata), much like the German Die Wende.

In fact, it started as a liberal intellectual revolution, soon to be transformed into a drastic social revolution, turning a fairly egalitarian society into one of enormous wealth differentiation and a marginalised intelligentsia. Even in this anniversary year, 1989 is not in the centre of popular attention except in small intellectual circles, but I would argue – counter-intuitively – that alongside its natural fading away, the memory of communism is growing in many and novel ways.

Communist presence diminished the fastest in the visual and symbolic sphere: almost 100 populated areas were renamed, street names were changed and a new coat of arms, national flag, anthem, and holiday system were adopted. A huge number of communist-era monuments were dismantled, the culmination being the dynamiting of the Dimitrov mausoleum in 1999. Rival ones were constructed, commemorating the victims of communism. While the monumental evidence from the communist period is clearly diminishing, it is more noticeable now when its presence is not mandated. It is acquiring the status of the formerly cherished pre-communist monuments.

In the legal sphere the memory of communism is still present, but is fading irreversibly. Legal proceedings against former communist politicians (few of which ended with convictions) hardly achieved the desired function of clearing up and catharsis. The repeal of repressive legislation, the restoration of private ownership of land and the restitution law sought to create a new owner class with a market orientation but the formation of the new moneyed elite followed different avenues. The secret files were opened but, compared to other East European societies, the attempt to condemn the past with the help of disclosures was unsuccessful. Only a small number of Bulgarians views the pre-1989 system as undeniably criminal. For the majority, the regime was restrictive of political and economic freedoms, but provided security, and the plummeting living standards in the 1990s contributed to this perception. The blanket criminalisation of communist rule in Bulgaria is a failure.

…

A joke encapsulates the ambivalent attitude toward the communist past, as it exemplifies the traditional ironic response of Bulgarians both before and after the fall of communism. A woman sits bolt upright in the middle of the night. She jumps out of bed and rushes to the bathroom to look in the medicine cabinet. Then, she runs into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator. Finally, she dashes to the window and looks out into the street. Relieved, she returns to the bedroom. Her husband asks, “What’s wrong with you?” “I had a terrible nightmare”, she says, “I dreamed we could still afford to buy medicine, that the refrigerator was absolutely full, and that the streets were safe and clean.” “How is that a nightmare?” The woman shakes her head, “I thought the communists were back in power.”

Guardian for more
(Submitted by Harsh Kapoor)

Leaked memo calls for reconciliation between the Afghan government and some Taliban leaders

UK officials have proposed a strategic reconciliation between the Afghan government and some Taliban leaders in the next two years, a leaked memo has showed.

The memo, seen by the BBC, calls for the removal of “reconciled Talibs” from the UN sanctions list.

It read: “We must weaken and divide the Taliban if we are to reduce the insurgency to a level that can be managed and contained by the Afghan Security Forces.

“This can be achieved by a combination of military pressure and clear signals that the option of an honourable exit from the fight exists.
“Putting in place the right combination of carrot and stick, at the right moment, will be critical to changing the calculations of individual commanders and their men.”

The Foreign Office refused to comment on the leaked documents.
The memo goes on to call for an Afghan-led, internationally based process that would involve reintegrating foot soldiers and their immediate commanders, the reintegration of the Taliban’s “shadow governors”, senior commanders and their forces and finally a reconciliation with the powerful Quetta Shura leadership.

New Statesman for more UK support for “Taliban reintegration” revealed in leaked memo

Leaked memo calls for reconciliation between the Afghan government and some Taliban leaders

UK officials have proposed a strategic reconciliation between the Afghan government and some Taliban leaders in the next two years, a leaked memo has showed.

The memo, seen by the BBC, calls for the removal of “reconciled Talibs” from the UN sanctions list.

It read: “We must weaken and divide the Taliban if we are to reduce the insurgency to a level that can be managed and contained by the Afghan Security Forces.

“This can be achieved by a combination of military pressure and clear signals that the option of an honourable exit from the fight exists.
“Putting in place the right combination of carrot and stick, at the right moment, will be critical to changing the calculations of individual commanders and their men.”

The Foreign Office refused to comment on the leaked documents.
The memo goes on to call for an Afghan-led, internationally based process that would involve reintegrating foot soldiers and their immediate commanders, the reintegration of the Taliban’s “shadow governors”, senior commanders and their forces and finally a reconciliation with the powerful Quetta Shura leadership.

New Statesman for more

Malalai Joya has been called the “bravest woman in Afghanistan” for her outspoken opposition not only to the U.S. occupation of her country, but both the corrupt U.S.-backed government of Hamid Karzai and the Taliban-led insurgency.

Joya was elected to Afghanistan’s parliament from Farah province in 2005, but was suspended several years later after other representatives claimed she insulted them. She has continued to speak out against war crimes and warlordism, in spite of numerous attempts on her life.

Joya is on a speaking tour of the U.S. for her book A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice. She talked to Deepa Kumar about the situation in her country and the message she hopes to bring to people in the U.S.
WHAT HAS been the impact of the U.S. occupation and its puppet government on women in Afghanistan? Has the U.S. liberated Afghan women as it claimed it would?

FIRST, LET me say that after September 11, the U.S. government threw us from the frying pan into the fire. Over the last eight years, the U.S., under the banner of women’s rights and human rights, has occupied my country, and millions of men and women have suffered from injustice, insecurity, corruption, joblessness, poverty, etc.
But women have suffered more–for them, it is almost as if the Taliban was still in power. After the war, the U.S. brought to power these misogynist warlords called the Northern Alliance, who are just like the Taliban. These were the same people who ruled between 1992 and 1996, and they attacked women’s rights and human rights.

This time, wearing suits and ties, they have again have come into power with the help of the U.S. That’s why today’s situation for women is worse, especially in many of the provinces. It is true that in some big cities like Kabul, Mazari Sharif or Herat, you will see that some women have been able to get jobs and an education. But in most of the provinces, women do not even have basic human rights–the situation is like hell.

Today, killing a woman is like killing a bird. Even in big cities, women do not feel secure, and so most of them wear the burqa. I believe that the burqa is a symbol of oppression. Yet women have to wear them just to be safe. So the disgusting burqa today gives life.

Over the last eight years, women in my country have not even regained the limited rights that they enjoyed in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. During that time, women could wear any kind of clothes they wanted to, and they had jobs, they could walk freely on the streets, and they didn’t have to worry about being kidnapped or raped.

Then, the warlords attacked women’s rights, and the Taliban continued this. The U.S. brought the same misogynist warlords back, and the only difference between the Taliban period and now is that all of these crimes are happening in the name of democracy. The warlord misogynists who are in power cover up, in the name of democracy, countless cases of rape, violence against women, domestic violence, suicide, etc. And these sorts of attacks are increasing rapidly.

Let me give you a few examples of the situation for women. I think it will help people in the U.S. to understand the situation better.

For example, recently in Jowzjan province, a 25-year-old girl burned herself in a hospital. These sorts of suicides are becoming common. We recently got a report that there have been 600 such suicides.

Also, a 5-year-old girl was killed by a 40-year-old man in Sar-e Pol province as she resisted his attempt to rape her. A 14-year-old girl was brutally gang-raped by three men, one of them the son of a member of the parliament. And this member of parliament, his name is Haji Payinda Mohammad, changed the age of his son in documents to show him to be less than 18, so he won’t be punished.

Socialist Worker for more

By Farzana Versey

If you believed the Indian media, then not only do Pakistani women possess cleavages and midriffs but their displaying these body parts is considered a fight against militancy. “Bare shoulders, backless gowns and pouting models are wowing Pakistan’s glitterati as the Fashion Pakistan Week shows the world a different side of the Taliban-troubled nation,” said one report. Are there no other paradigms for us to understand modern Pakistan? Do we even want to?

There is talk about Islamic clothes as opposed to what was witnessed on the catwalk. This is an artificial comparison. Social dress codes vary for regular wear even in the couture capitals of the world such as Paris, Milan and New York. However, the Indian media saturated with tribal chiefs found an opportunity to perform a virtual bereavement ritual as fashionistas supposedly braved gunfire to strut on the ramp.

This is a patronising attitude because we forget that we have to deal with not only the right-wing moral police but also educational institutions that lay down the rules. In Kolkata, for example, a college wanted its students to only wear sarees and not shalwar kameez; the elite St Xavier’s College in Mumbai issued a diktat against short dresses going completely against what Karan Johar has assiduously been promoting.

We want to look at modern Pakistan as the West does — a materialistic opposition to fanaticism. None of these people are modern in the sense of being ideologically driven. We give prime time and front-page space to wardrobe malfunction and there are psychological discussions on stress levels. It perhaps adds a similar dimension when we see our neighbour defying external stress.

A modern Pakistan is both a relief and a threat to India. It is a relief because there are mutual opportunities and back-scratching possibilities for the fake blonde bluster to cover up real blonde moments. It is a threat because we need those bearded guys and burqa-clad women to make us feel good about our democracy. For those who constitute the upper layer of any society, democracy is the ability to walk the ramp — for charity, theatrics, flaunting money, regenerated bodies, redeemed self-esteem and for flaunting trophy hubbies. To belong to the jet set, you need to walk the ramp.

Can such cocoons rebel against society? Take this headline: “Fashion takes a bow near the Taliban hub in Pakistan.” Do we know what a hub is? And how close is Karachi to the hub? The show taking place under heavy security does not, as a matter of course, catapult it to the level of a valid protest.

I can imagine our media chortling at the words of one expat Pakistani designer who said, “my muse is that quintessential modern woman who’s self-aware and knows what she wants. She’s ambitious and driven but isn’t afraid to flaunt her softer side in fear of contradicting that image. In fact, she embraces it.” Oh no, the power woman has those threads sewn into her mannequin frame and control over body means just not being able to exhale.

Why do these people assume that a woman in the tribal areas, if heard, might be unaware about what she wants? Is it not possible that her ambition is to not flaunt certain assets? The neocons transpose the victim of fanaticism against a peek preview of the houri from heaven and end up portraying extremism in two limited shades.

The positions are in place. Men have to take on the war against terror and women must do the phoney mommy of moderation act. Liberalism is the new poster girl and caters to market demands. No wonder it has degenerated to the level of the trivial.

Look beyond this current event and you will find that according to the Indian media, the great Pakistani moderns are not the true dissenting voices, but the flavours of the season. Modern is Imran Khan coming out of a socialite’s pool in Mumbai like Ursula Andress, Meera covering half her face with shades and the other half with braggadocio, politicians and diplomats wearing suits, media persons talking in clipped accents punctuated with home-grown patois, and activist cats crying over spilt milk of peaceful resolutions to the conflict.

The News for more