Month: June 2010

by MITU SENGUPTA

American cultural and moral superiority, it seems, boils down to its women’s ability to fill their purses with condoms, drop their panties in the office, and simulate oral sex at parties. Abu Dhabi may be a paradise filled with peacocks and Lamborghinis, but it’s a “backward” land of sexually silenced women. America may have had its butt kicked by this parvenu of globalization (symbolically, the girls are evicted from their plush hotel after Samantha’s arrest for indecent behaviour), but it’s where women run bra-less and free, wear tuxes to gay weddings, and radiantly sing Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” at karaoke bars.

Dissident Voices for more

by ARDESHIR COWASJEE

In January 1949, governor of the Punjab Francis Mudie sent a note to Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan complaining that Punjab Chief Minister Mamdot was one up on the centre and even Jinnah “every time that they have intervened and the feeling is growing that the centre is powerless even when the government is hopelessly corrupt and the administration paralysed … no questions of policy are even contemplated”.

The services were demoralised, ministers were interfering in the administration, “becoming more and more rapacious”. Land grabbing was the fashion from the start — the Punjab chief minister was described as “lazy, inefficient and a liar”, his main interest being the acquisition of evacuee land out of which he and his family and followers had all done splendidly.

Dawn for more

by CHRISTOPHER INTAGLIATA

Researchers looked at stats for 2006 from 54 health districts in western Brazil. The sites had more than 15,000 cases of malaria. The investigators compared those cases to deforestation in the same health districts over the previous 10 years. They found that a loss of just four percent of forest cover was associated with nearly 50 percent more malaria cases. And malaria risk was highest five to 10 years after the jungle was cleared.

Scientific American for more

by DANIELA PERDOMO

Not only is FGM being practiced relatively widely in the United States, it’s happening in the most hallowed halls of American medical science. In fact, the head of the pediatric urology department at Cornell University’s New York Presbyterian Hospital — which is often ranked among the top 10 hospitals in the country — has been operating on young girls who suffer from what he (and likely the girls’ guardians) have decided is “clitorimegaly,” or oversized clitorises.

In order to relieve these girls from what seems like little more than a cosmestic issue, Dr. Dix P. Poppas cuts out parts of the clitoris’ shaft, saving the glans, or tip, for reattachment. Poppas triumphantly calls the procedure — rebranded a clitoroplasty — a “nerve sparing” one unlike the FGMs practiced in other countries.

Alter Net for more

(Submitted by Shahabuddin Haji)

by SIMON HOUPT

Last Sunday, during a rally in lower Manhattan opposing a mosque planned for the former World Trade site, protesters held up signs that read, “All I need to know about Islam, I learned on 9/11.” Sure, that’s like saying, “All I need to know about Christianity, I learned during the Crusades.” But it points to a bald fact: Islam has some work to do.

The Globe and Mail for more

Link

(Submitted by reader)

by M. SUCHITRA

Things have turned out to be just as he had warned. Bastar now, is the colour of blood. A danger zone, marked in deep red on the national security map. The armed battalions of the state and the Centre are combing Dandakaranya for Maoist guerrillas as part of Operation Green Hunt. The red brigades too are hitting back. The war against terror is peaking.

Matrubhumi for more

via Counter Currents

(Submitted by Mukul Dube)

by CHRIS MARSDEN

The Saville Report into Bloody Sunday in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on January 30, 1972, maintains the cover-up of one of the most infamous massacres ever perpetrated by British imperialism.

Even after the passage of 38 years, the truth—that the murder of 14 unarmed civil rights protesters was carried out under orders from the Conservative government of Edward Heath and the army top brass—is denied.

World Socialist Web Site for more

by REAZ AHMED

Bangladeshi researchers have successfully decoded the jute plant genome opening up a new vista in the development of variety of the world’s most adorned biodegradable natural fibre.

Experts said this gene sequencing would help improve the fibre length and quality, including colours and strength; and develop high yielding, saline soil- and pest-tolerant jute varieties through genetic engineering.

The Daily Star for more