Month: July 2010

AVAAZ

Yesterday a massive global outcry stopped an Iranian woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, from being stoned to death.

But Sakineh still faces hanging, and today, fifteen more people await execution by stoning — people are buried up to their necks and large rocks are hurled at their heads.

Sakineh’s brave children’s international campaign shows that worldwide condemnation works. Let’s turn this family’s desperate appeal into a movement that ends stoning for good – sign the petition and send to everyone:

To Ayotollah Ali Khamenei and the leaders of Iran
We call on you to finally put an end to capital punishment by stoning and to reverse the unjust judgment in the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.

Sign the Petition

THE ECONOMIST

Dr Dehaene thinks that the VWFA [or visual word form area] may be responsible for the ability of some primates to recognise themselves in a mirror, or to recognise a tiger even if it is seen only in reflection—thus conferring an important survival benefit. That it is also crucial for reading might explain why children make a type of error he calls “early mirror reading”. It was thought that only dyslexic children were prone to confusing “b” and “d”, and “p” and “q”, and occasionally writing their names back-to-front, but Dr Dehaene has found that all children make this error.

The Economist for more

SURVIVAL

“A Jarawa man and boy by the side of the Andamans Trunk Road.” PHOTO/Salome

‘The Jarawa people lived successfully on their island without contact with outsiders for probably about 55,000 years, until 1998. Today, a road runs right through their forest home, and they risk decimation by disease. They call themselves the Ang, which means ‘human being’, yet they are being ogled at like animals in a game reserve.

Survival for more

via Bust Magazine

by BENJAMIN WOODS

As the global economic situation worsens and the US is bogged down in wars, breaks in the system will occur which allow social movements to arise. To counter this trend, the United States, the military arm of transnational capital, will display more military aggression. Of course, the president is simply continuing the expansionary and imperialistic policies of the white settler regime in North America that started with the theft of First Nation (Native American) lands and enslavement of African people.

In 2008, the US navy reactivated the Fourth fleet. The Fourth Fleet was established during World War II to combat the German Navy in Latin American waters. Following the end of the war, the fleet was deactivated. Although the US military contends the Fourth fleet’s reactivation is not a fundamental change in policy, governments in the region assert its purpose is to stop the rise of social movements in Latin America.

Black Agenda Report for more

ASHA BANDELE talks to MEGAN SULLIVAN

In The Prisoner’s Wife: A Memoir (Pocket Books, 1999), bandele narrates her relationship with the man who would become her husband: Rashid. Though when she met him Rashid had already spent nine years in prison, bandele would “do” several more years with him as his wife and the mother of their child. Ultimately, Rashid was released and deported to his native Guyana, where he lives today. In Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother’s Story (Collins, 2009), bandele tells readers about the deportation notice that changed her life, and spends some time describing her visits to Rashid, but mostly this is a story about raising a daughter as a single parent in New York. Again, since the focus of this issue is children of incarcerated parents, bandele and I spoke primarily about incarceration and the impact it has on children and families.

The Scholar and Feminist Online for more

by RAFIL KROLL-ZAIDI

Go, Amitabh-ji. Buy him off. Buy him off when there’s nothing left to purchase. This boy who would have been rich, who went abroad to seek his fortune and to die. He who would be brother but for the Radcliffe Line. You, who were born to the united India in whose eye he was not yet a gleam. You, prince who has retaken his kingdom. You, king, born subject—to all those straight-backed stiff-lipped Boyles and Beaufoys. You, born in Allahabad, God’s city. Your Sikh mother from what is now Pakistan. You who were, once, called the Angry Young Man. You who were the Muslim coolie Iqbal Khan.

…

You, the answer to question number one, for one thousand rupees. You, for whose autograph Jamal Malik swam a sea of human excrement.

Triple Canopy for more

via 3 Quarks Daily

by SHIMONA KANWAR

Minister of state for external affairs Preneet Kaur, who was on her visit to the PGI to attend it’s foundation day on Wednesday, says “It is a part of the SAARC nations’ project,” adding, “the inclusion of Pakistan for such a tele-consultation and education is in the pipeline.”

The Times of India for more

(Submitted by Pritam Rohila)

by GARDINER HARRIS

The reviewer, Dr. Thomas Marciniak of the Food and Drug Administration, found a dozen instances in which patients taking Avandia appeared to suffer serious heart problems that were not counted in the study’s tally of adverse events.

The New York Times for more

by ASKO PARPOLA

(Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi Classical Tamil Research Endowment Lecture, World Classical Tamil Conference, June 25, 2010, Coimbatore.)

The Ancient Indus Valley Region. Harappa

The bangle has a strong association with pregnancy in many parts of India. During pregnancy and childbirth, the mother and baby are both in great danger of being attacked by demons. In Tamil Nadu, in the fifth or seventh month after the conception of the first pregnancy, the expectant mother is ritually adorned with bangles and blessed by older women. The bangles symbolize an enclosed circle of protection.

Bangles and rings are connected with pregnancy not only as protective amulets but also as charms effecting reproduction. Such a practice is attested as early as around 1000 BCE, in Atharvaveda 6,81, a three-versed hymn addressed to pari-hasta, ‘bracelet’, literally ‘what is around the arm’. The bracelet is fastened upon a woman ‘intending that she shall beget a son’, as a charm that drives off the demons, opens up the womb and brings an embryo into it. In Indian folk religion, pregnancy bangles are offered to tree spirits or hung on sacred trees. William Crooke reports that at llahabad, near the tomb of a Muslim saint, is ‘‘a very old, large Champa tree (Michelia Champaka), the branches of which are hung with glass bangles. ‘Those anxious to have children come and offer the saint bangles, 7, 11, 13, 21, 29, or 126, according to their means and importunity. If the saint favours their wish, the Champa tree snatches up the bangles and wears them on its arms.’’ (William Crooke, Religion and Folklore of northern India, 1926, p. 417)

In Karnataka, bangles are similarly offered to the Hindu goddess Ellamma (a form of Durgaa) by women wishing to become pregnant. This widespread folk custom is likely to go back to Harappan traditions. The deity standing inside the fig tree in a famous seal from Mohenjo-daro wears bangles on both arms. The seven anthropomorphic figures at the bottom of this seal, wearing their hair in the traditional fashion of Indian women, are likely to be female and to represent the ‘Seven Mothers’, the Pleiades, famous as child-granting and child-killing goddesses like their son Skanda.

The Hindu for more