Month: March 2010

by MITU SENGUPTA

The unusually lengthy list of nominees for this year’s Best Picture Oscar features a slew of do-gooder films about the suffering of others. Most are about people who’re at a considerable cultural distance from the white, middle-class Americans who are the primary consumers of these films.

Lee Daniel’s Precious transports us to Harlem, to the world of Precious Jones, an illiterate, obese, and sexually abused black teenager. John Lee Hancock’s The Blind Side — adapted from a biography of NFL superstar, Michael Oher — follows the troubled life of another overweight and undereducated dark-skinned teen. Loaded with racial allegory, the science fiction blockbusters up for Best Picture also promise insight into the plight of the culturally distant — segregated blacks under South Africa’s apartheid regime in Niall Blomkamp’s District 9, and aboriginal communities on the brink of colonization in James Cameron’s Avatar. One might add to this mix last year’s Best Picture winner, Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, which ventured into the sprawling slums of Mumbai to chronicle the journey of a young boy, Jamal Malik, as he navigated through a childhood ravaged by violence and poverty.

These films are meant to be vehicles of social justice: stirring calls to action. Precious has been praised for its “inspiring message” and “glimpse inside a world we’d rather pretend does not exist in America,” Slumdog Millionaire for “entertain[ing] people into taking action for a compelling cause,” and Avatar for its anti-imperialist voice against “totalitarianism and genocide.” Many of Slumdog’s Oscars were dedicated to “the children,” and the child actors in the film — who’re actually slum-dwellers — were paraded about in tuxedos and colourful frocks. One should expect an onslaught of righteous acceptance speeches at this year’s Oscars too.

Hollywood’s in the midst of an altruistic moment — one with a distinctly cultural twist.

MRZine for more

Israel turned down a request by Catherine Margaret Ashton, the High Representative of the European Union, to visit the Gaza Strip during her one week tour of the Middle East, Israeli media reported.

They quoted political sources as saying that Tel Aviv has decided against granting the permission to Ashton to visit Gaza in mid March.

The sources said that Israel usually refuses such requests fearing that it might be explained as recognition of the “Hamas government”, adding that Ashton could visit Gaza via Rafah crossing.

Ashton said that she wished to visit Gaza to get first hand information on the conditions in the Strip one year after the Israeli war.

Irish foreign minister Michael Martin had called on EU foreign ministers to visit Gaza to get acquainted with the tragic conditions in the Strip, which he visited last week.

AlJazeera Magazine for more

(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)

ISLAMABAD: Reducing visa restrictions and non-tariff barriers and improving customs procedures, are among a host of steps South Asian countries can take to boost private sector-led growth, unlocking the region’s vast economic potential.

The report, Key Proposals for Harnessing Business Opportunities in South Asia, said South Asia, with a potential market of 1.5 billion people has significant comparative advantages in industries ranging from textiles and garments, to tourism, pharmaceuticals and information technology.

But it is also home to half of the world’s extreme poor, with 40 per cent of its total population living on less than $1.25 a day, it added.

The report has been prepared by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

Intraregional trade remains modest compared with other parts of the world, and numerous impediments prevent the private sector from taking a bigger economic role.

Cutting nonphysical barriers to trade and improving the climate for investment across borders will encourage greater private sector activity, lifting growth, cutting poverty and strengthening regional integration, the report says.

Among the steps it suggests are liberalising a South Asia visa exemption scheme, adopting a regional motor vehicular agreement to speed up the passage of goods vehicles across borders and streamlining procedures at land customs stations.

The News for more

(Submitted by Pritam Rohila)

by WILLIAM BLUM

www.killinghope.org

Informed consent

About half the states in the US require that a woman seeking an abortion be told certain things before she can obtain the medical procedure. In South Dakota, for example, until a few months ago, staff was required to tell women: “The abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being”; the pregnant woman has “an existing relationship with that unborn human being,” a relationship protected by the U.S. Constitution and the laws of South Dakota; and a “known medical risk” of abortion is an “increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide.” A federal judge has now eliminated the second and third required assertions, calling them “untruthful and misleading.” ¹

I personally would question even the first assertion about a fetus or an embryo being a human being, but that’s not the point I wish to make here. I’d like to suggest that before a young American man or woman can enlist in the armed forces s/he must be told the following by the staff of the military recruitment office:

“The United States is at war [this statement is always factually correct]. You will likely be sent to a battlefield where you will be expected to do your best to terminate the lives of whole, separate, unique, living human beings you know nothing about and who have never done you or your country any harm. You may in the process lose an arm or a leg. Or your life. If you come home alive and with all your body parts intact there’s a good chance you will be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Do not expect the government to provide you particularly good care for that, or any care at all. In any case, you may wind up physically abusing your spouse and children and/or others, killing various individuals, abusing drugs and/or alcohol, and having an increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide. No matter how bad a condition you may be in, the Pentagon may send you back to the battlefield for another tour of duty. They call this ‘stop-loss’. Your only alternative may be to go AWOL. Do you have any friends in Canada? And don’t ever ask any of your officers what we’re fighting for. Even the generals don’t know. In fact, the generals especially don’t know. They would never have reached their high position if they had been able to go beyond the propaganda we’re all fed, the same propaganda that has influenced you to come to this office.”
Continue reading “The Anti-Empire Report”

by TEESTA SETALWAD

The struggle of man (or woman) against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. — Milan Kundera

Sarika in Parzania PHOTO/Frontline

It was not simply the number of lives lost, though the number — perhaps 2,500 — is not insignificant. It was the cold-blooded manner in which they were taken. It was not simply that 19 of Gujarat’s 25 districts burned while Neros watched, fiddled and smirked but the sinister similarity in the way they were set alight. Militias were armed with deadly training, weapons, technology and equipment; with a lethal brew of deadly intent, inspired by constructed tales of hate, using the February 28, 2002 edition of a leading Gujarati daily that urged revenge; all combined with a deadly white chemical powder that seared to burn and destroy already killed bodies. And, of course, truckloads of gas cylinders, in short supply for cooking, were used instead to blast mosques and homes. Mobile phones and motorcycles made communications easy and movement swift.

Part of the plan was to humiliate, destroy and then kill. Another was to economically cripple. But at heart the desire was to construct a reality whereby a whole ten per cent of the population lives (and a few even prosper) as carefully whipped into shape, second-class citizens. Most incidents that racked the state, except the famed Best Bakery incident, took place in the glare of the day, not the stealth of the night. Critical to the plan to mutilate and humiliate was to subject women and girls to the worst kind of sexual violence. Tehelka’s “Operation Kalank” records victorious testimonies of rapists and murderers who claim to have received personal approbations from the man at the helm. Over 1,200 highway hotels were destroyed, more than 23,000 homes gutted, 350 large businesses seriously damaged (and are still unable to recover) and 12,000 street businesses demolished.

Indian Express for more

(Submitted by Mukul Dube)

by MAHMUD JEGA

Last week’s bizarre events on the national political scene was a case of natural sickness worsened by presidential power grab, compounded by ambitious scheming, amplified by many-sided incompetence, intensified by the two-faced antics of state officials, further magnified by the grandstanding of regional groups and power-seeking cliques, with foreign countries’ poke-nosing as the icing on the sour cake.

The family and political circle around President Umaru Yar’adua, obviously led by his wife Hajia Turai, went to unbelievable lengths to hide the truth about his physical state from all their countrymen. This much was evident from the late-night timing of the return trip, refusing to inform Acting President Jonathan or any ministers [including the 6 who were already in Saudi Arabia] that Yar’adua was on his way home, turning off airport lights, driving away airport officials, deploying Guards Brigades-men to the scene, sneaking the President into the State House and rendering him incommunicado thereafter.

Why should anyone go to this length to hide the truth? Obviously because Yar’adua is in a pitiable state physically and more seriously because his inner circle is completely intent on hanging on to presidential power using every method in, on, under and beside the books. Needless to add, the strategy being adopted speaks volumes about the quality of the persons behind the strategy.

The remarkable thing here is, Acting President Goodluck Jonathan’s camp does not have any higher strategic quality than the Yar’adua camp, as far as I can see from events in recent weeks.

Initially, Jonathan adopted all the right posture of blind political loyalty, which in Nigeria is the only winning formula for a Vice President [or a Deputy Governor], given the Constitution’s reckless vesting of “all Executive power of the Federation” in the President. Jonathan even firmly dismissed the pre-emptively planted media rumour that a “Northern clique” had asked him to resign from office so as not to succeed Yar’adua.

At some point though, Jonathan hearkened to other advice, abandoned this strategy and began to actively, though covertly, seek to consolidate his Acting Presidency and then made a lounge for the substantive Presidency. In so doing, the Jonathan men weren’t content to have constitutionality and morality on their side; they began to play a dangerous geopolitical card.

Daily Trust for rmore

(Submitted by Aslam Bhamani and Nizar Dhanani)

OPEN LETTER FROM LALIT TO LEADERS OF GREEN PEACE

Dear Leaders of Greenpeace,

We understand that your organization has taken a position in favour of the British Government’s outrageous plan to create a “Marine Park” on territory which is not its own, thus tricking ill-informed people into supporting the British State on rather vague grounds of “the environment”, while they are in fact banishing the people who lived there and flaunting the Charter of the UN.

We write in order to request you to re-think your position on what would in fact be the British Government’s perfidious imposition of a planned Marine Protected Area on part of Mauritius in order to mask the fact that it colonizes the land illegally. Britain colonizes the Chagos under the name of “British Indian Ocean Territory”. This colony is, as far as we know, recognized by no government in the world, except the USA, which has a huge military base on it. The Seychelles Government took the British to task, and took those of its islands in BIOT back, so blatant was the theft. The Mauritian Government has so far unfortunately been much more servile to its ex-colonizer.

The British government’s plan for a Marine Protected Area is a very weak, grotesquely transparent ruse designed to perpetuate the banning of the people of Mauritius and Chagos from part of their own country. And the UK has the cheek to do this, while at one and the same time, perpetuating a polluting nuclear base on Diego Garcia, part of this same stolen territory. The timing of their plan is also very humiliating for all those who have fallen into the trap: there is a European Human Rights Court which may soon hand down a judgment in favour of the right to return for Chagossians. Clearly the British Government is preparing a fall-back plan; if they lose the case, then there will be another “reason” for denying the banished people their right of return; another reason for keeping Mauritius from staking its claim under international law.

LALIT for more