Month: March 2010

by Selig S. Harrison

In response to U.S. pressure, India and Pakistan recently conducted their first diplomatic dialogue since the Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba staged its terrorist attack on Mumbai in November 2008. The discussions were acrimonious, and the blame game began almost immediately after. As a precondition for substantive negotiations, India demanded punishment of the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack and a crackdown on Lashkar-e-Taiba’s paramilitary operations. Pakistan repeated its longstanding position that negotiations on other issues cannot proceed unless the Kashmir issue is addressed.

To promote a détente, the U.S.should support Pakistan’s embattled president, Asif Ali Zardari, in his escalating struggle with the generals in Islamabad over the terms of peace with New Delhi. The principal obstacle to peace is the Pakistan Army, which needs tensions with India to justify the enormous, U.S.-subsidized defense budgets that underpin its privileged status in Pakistan. Serving and retired generals run a variety of Army-linked business conglomerates with net assets exceeding $38 billion.

Zardari is often dismissed as a corrupt playboy incapable of governing. But he has demonstrated surprising courage and consistency in seeking to downgrade the Kashmir issue and to jump-start economic cooperation with India, starting with liberalized trade, as the key to stabilizing Pakistan. Oversize defense budgets cripple Pakistan, he argues, by starving economic-development programs. Islamist extremists exploit the resulting economic unrest. Hardliners in Islamabad warn that opening up trade would lead to economic domination by India. But Zardari argues “economic isolationism” has necessitated costly imports from afar that would be much cheaper from next-door India and has denied many Pakistani industries profitable export markets in that country. On Kashmir, Zardari suggests that the issue be deferred until economic cooperation gradually softens political tensions. He notes that India and China have combined a de-escalation of their border dispute with increased economic interchange.

Newsweek for more

via Indus Asia Online Journal

Here are the business interests of “Zuma Incorporated” — of President Jacob Zuma and his women, children and other close relatives — as far as we could identify them from public sources.

There are likely to be some inaccuracies, many gaps, as well as stories to tell about what exactly these companies do. Have they landed contracts simply on the strength of the Zuma name? Do they do business with the state? There may also be close relatives we have not identified. If you can help complete the picture, please click here to email your responses to the Mail & Guardian.

Mail & Guardian for the list

by PATRICIA GROGG

HAVANA, Mar 19, 2010 (IPS) – At the age of 17, Meybelin Bernárdez is clear about the future: “When I finish my studies, I’ll return to help my community get on its feet,” the young Garifuna woman from Honduras, who is studying medicine in Cuba, says without hesitation.

With her head held high, she adds: “I want to be an example for future generations of women. The conditions we live in are really bad, we have a lot to do for our people.”

Her mother, whose skin is as dark as hers, taught her that the most important thing in life is to study.

“But a poor black girl like me couldn’t even dream of being a doctor without this scholarship,” she tells IPS.

Bernárdez belongs to the Garifuna ethnic group, descendants of African slaves who survived the sinking of two Spanish galleons off the coast of the Caribbean island of St. Vincent in 1635, where they intermarried with members of the local Carib tribe.

The Garifuna are estimated to number around 600,000 in Central America, the Caribbean, Mexico and the United States today.

Inter Press Service for more

by MARC BEKOFF and JESSICA PIERCE

Looking for the roots of human morality in the animal kingdom? Focus on canines, who know how to play fair

Every dog owner knows a pooch can learn the house rules—and when she breaks one, her subsequent groveling is usually ingratiating enough to ensure quick forgiveness. But few people have stopped to ask why dogs have such a keen sense of right and wrong. Chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates regularly make the news when researchers, logically looking to our closest relatives for traits similar to our own, uncover evidence of their instinct for fairness. But our work has suggested that wild canine societies may be even better analogues for early hominid groups—and when we study dogs, wolves and coyotes, we discover behaviors that hint at the roots of human morality.

Morality, as we define it in our book Wild Justice, is a suite of interrelated other-regarding behaviors that cultivate and regulate social interactions. These behaviors, including altruism, tolerance, forgiveness, reciprocity and fairness, are readily evident in the egalitarian way wolves and coyotes play with one another. Canids (animals in the dog family) follow a strict code of conduct when they play, which teaches pups the rules of social engagement that allow their societies to succeed. Play also builds trusting relationships among pack members, which enables divisions of labor, dominance hierarchies and cooperation in hunting, raising young, and defending food and territory. Because this social organization closely resembles that of early humans (as anthropologists and other experts believe it existed), studying canid play may offer a glimpse of the moral code that allowed our ancestral societies to grow and flourish.

Scientific American for more

(Reuters) – Eight years after the fall of the Taliban, who banned television and barred women from appearing in public without an all-enveloping burqa, the Afghan government is fighting a losing battle to keep female flesh off TV.

In a country that remains deeply conservative and male-dominated, the government has the power to impose fines or shut down broadcasters for showing images of women deemed racy. Yet the guidelines seem to be observed largely in the breach.

Urban Afghans are now spoiled for choice with a remarkably vibrant array of TV stations. At any given moment, viewers can flip between news, cooking shows, cartoons, Turkish soap operas, Iranian dramas and hugely popular Indian films, with their gyrating sari-clad heroines.

To get around government restrictions on showing female flesh, TV stations employ full-time pixilators, charged with adding blurry blotches over bare arms, legs, necklines and midriffs. But if you watch long enough, you can easily spot a swaying elbow, a naked ankle or even an exposed strip of waist.

Reuters for more

via Index on Censorship

by GEORGE MONBIOT

Idiots. Morons. Blockheads. Numbskulls. Nothing quite captures the mind-withering stupidity of what has just happened in Doha. Swayed by Japan and a number of other countries, some of them doubtless bought off in traditional fashion, the members of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) have decided not to protect the Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Those who opposed suspending trade in the species argued that the temporary ban proposed by Monaco would devastate their fishing industries. There is some truth in this: for the years in which bluefin stocks would have been allowed to recover, the export ban would have put people out of work and reduced the output of their industry. But the absence of a ban ensures that, after one or two more seasons of fishing at current levels, all the jobs and the entire industry are finished forever, along with the magnificent species that supported them. The insistence that the fishing can continue without consequences betrays Olympic-class denial, a flat refusal to look reality in the face.

One of the commenters on a Guardian thread this week, who lives in Japan and uses the tag Kimpatsu, related his experiences of trying to discuss these issues.

“the Japanese policy towards both Bluefin tuna and whales has two engines of motivation. The first is the fact that the average Japanese is in denial about the imminent extinction of these creatures; the thought runs that as they have always eaten these animals (and many Japanese mistakenly think that the whale is a fish) since time immemorial, they will be able to continue doing so indefinitely into the future. When pressed on the subject of hunting to extinction, they grow aggressive. (I know from personal experience.) The second reason is the low-grade paranoia that informs all Japanese interaction with the outside world; the notion of Nihon tataki (Japan-bashing) is omnipresent. If you protest against whaling or tuna fishing, you’re a cultural imperialist. If you point out that some Japanese are members of Greenpeace or oppose whaling (my GP is one), then “you don’t understand Japanese mind so much”. Remember: all your actions against whaling and overfishing are driven by a deep-seated, irrational hatred of Japan. Consequently, when you push, they push back.”

Counter Currents for more

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has learned that four men who allegedly assisted in the rape of a young Hindu girl have been granted pre-arrest bail by a session court. Rape is a non-bailable offense in Pakistan and this is against criminal procedure and the law. Attempts by the family to file an FIR and obtain a medical report have been obstructed by local police, who later arrested the victim’s father on a false offense. Meanwhile members of an illegal tribal court have reportedly proposed that the victim marry her rapist and convert to Islam. She has threatened public self immolation if the perpetrators are not arrested and brought to justice by the authorities.

CASE DETAILS:

According to information received from local NGOs, the Pakistan Dalit Solidarity Network and All Kohli, Ms. Kastoori, seen in the video clip below (also here), is 17 years old and was abducted on 24 January 2010.

After being taken in the evening by Ramzan Khoso, Habib Ullah Khoso and Ghulam Nabi Khoso, with the help of their armed guard Verio Gur-Ro, Kastoori was allegedly raped by Ramzan, the eldest of the brothers. She was recovered the next day from the mens’ residence by a group from her community, where she was found tied up.

On 26 January Kastoori’s parents tried to register a First Information Report at Nagar Parker police station but were turned away. Because of this they could not obtain an official medical checkup for her at the civil hospital or the Nagar Parker hospital, which they attempted to arrange on 27 January.

Please visit Asian Human Rights Commission for more and to sign the petition.

via Indus Asia Online Journal

Thirty years later, it is still painful for Filomena Cúmez to remember her son Álvaro Adolfo Cúmez, disappeared on July 26, 1980. PHOTO/TEXT by James Rodriguez

Mi Mundo for more pictures

Seeds and fruit of the M. oleifera, ready for cooking. In some parts of South Asia it is known as saragwa and in Malayalam language as Murunggi.

Considered to be one of the world’s most useful trees, seeds from the Moringa oleifera tree (known in Hausa as Zogale), can produce a 90.00% to 99.99% bacterial reduction in previously untreated water.

A low-cost water purification technique published in Current Protocols in Microbiology said it could help drastically reduce the incidence of waterborne disease in the developing world.

“Moringa oleifera is a vegetable tree which is grown in Africa, Central and South America, the Indian subcontinent, and South East Asia.

A billion people across Asia, Africa, and Latin America are estimated to rely on untreated surface water sources for their daily water needs. Michael Lea, a Current Protocols author, and a researcher at Clearinghouse, a Canadian organisation dedicated to investigating and implementing low-cost water purification technologies, believes the Moringa oleifera tree could go a long way to providing a solution.

Lea said “Not only is it drought resistant, it also yields cooking and lighting oil, soil fertilizer, as well as highly nutritious food in the form of its pods, leaves, seeds and flowers. Perhaps most importantly, its seeds can be used to purify drinking water at virtually no cost.”

Moringa tree seeds, when crushed into powder, can be used as a water-soluble extract in suspension, resulting in an effective natural clarification agent for highly turbid and untreated pathogenic surface water. As well as improving drinkability, this technique reduces water turbidity (cloudiness) making the result aesthetically as well as microbiologically more acceptable for human consumption.

Daily Trust

by JEREMY SALT

…

Herein lies the fatal weakness of the Arab world. The fundamental problem is not just Israel and the ‘west’. It is certainly not the man and woman on the street. From Morocco to the gulf they support the Palestinians wholeheartedly. The central problem is the lack of will and principle in the Arab state system, and underneath this, the lack of democracy. Almost all of the ‘leaders’ who speak for the Arabs on the world stage are unrepresentative, either because they have no elections or because they debauch the electoral process. They are the guardians of ‘western’ interests, not the interests and aspirations of their own people. Proper democratic processes would result in the election of governments that would give active support to the Palestinians. There would be no wall between Egypt and Gaza and there would no negotiations or backdoor trade with Israel as long as it occupies and colonises Arab land. There would no deals with a man whose media abuses the Arabs and supports their enemy. In the real world of international diplomacy states usually use their resources to achieve diplomatic and strategic ends. Only the Arab states (especially the Gulf States) give theirs away for nothing. While the people of the West Bank and Gaza are struggling to hold their ground, while their friends and supporters around the world rally and campaign for them, they are let down at every turn by their Arab ‘brothers’ holding positions of power and influence.

Palestine Chronicle for more

(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)