by B. R. GOWANI

VIDEO/Mesum Sakhawat/Youtube

VIDEO/Shemaroo/Youtube

After a long wait Mughal-e-Azam, an epic film (mired in so many problems), was finally released in 1960 in Mumbai’s Maratha Mandir. At its premier, some Pakistanis, including Nazir and Swaranlata (a movie pair), were also invited. The most expensive movie of its time – it cost over a crore rupees – it had Madhubala, Prithviraj Kapoor, and Dilip Kumar in the lead roles. The especially built set of Shish Mahal had many visitors, including poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz and politician Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

One other film that created similar expectations was Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeeza, released in the early 1970s, with Meena Kumari, Ashok Kumar, and Raj Kumar. That movie also took quite a few years to complete and very many rupees. It was an epic too. Both were excellent movies with memorable songs and music.

Another epic, i.e., this year’s most awaited and the most expensive South Asian movie of all time – made at an exorbitant price of 60 crore rupees or 12 million dollars – with Madhuri Dixit, Aishwarya Rai, and Shahrukh Khan was released on July 12, 2002.

The film is based on Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s (1876-1938) famous Bengali novel Devdas. It’s a tragic love story that revolves around the younger of the two sons of an aristocratic family. Devdas’ carefree and loving nature doesn’t fit well with his class conscious and authoritarian father, and so he is sent off to London (in the novel it is Calcutta, though it was not unusual for the wealthy to go to London then) to study. He is back after a decade and once again starts seeing his childhood girlfriend Paro. Both have individual pride, however, both love each other too. On a family level, there is a big class difference; so the marriage proposal from her family is rejected. Paro risks her honor to pursue her goal, but a couple of wrong moves on part of Devdas sealed their fate. She is married off to a wealthy but older landlord. Thus begins a thirst never to be quenched – always to be intensified. He ends up an alcoholic and befriends a courtesan, Chandramukhi, whose profession he is never comfortable with but sympathizes with her plight. She makes life somewhat bearable. Nevertheless, his heart yearns for Paro.

Many versions have appeared on celluloid: one during the Silent Era in 1928; then by Promatesh Chandra Barua in 1936 with Kundan Lal Saigal in the lead; Bimal Roy’s in 1955 had Suchitra Sen, Vyajantimala, and Dilip Kumar; and the Pakistani (1964) version had Shamim Ara, Nayyar Sultana, and Habib. About seven others have been made in regional languages, including the 1935 Bengali version by P. C. Barua (also in the lead role), and the current Bengali one by Shakti Samanta, (the “Amar Prem” fame).

It’s a long time a Hindi/Urdu version was last made, and so no harm for a new one. Director Sanjay Lila Bhansali in one of his interview said that this is his interpretation for the present generation; to an extent one has to agree with him keeping in mind the changed times.

However, too loose an interpretation runs a risk of becoming a misinterpretation. After seeing “Devdas,” it is difficult to brush off that impression. There are scenes, songs, and situations he could have avoided:

The first scene is too long and superficial (on the pattern of Hum Aap ke Hain Koun and Bhansali’s own Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam). Devdas’ mother’s anxiety could have been conveyed in a fraction of the time.

Kiran Kher (Sardari Begum fame) is a good actress but her dramatic dialogue and a dance number is not only unnecessary but is out of place too. The novel had no such scene.

The heated encounter between Madhuri and Miilind Gunaji at Aishwarya’s place is irrelevant to the movie. Maybe Bhansali wanted to show a strong female. However, there was no need, because the scene where Paro goes to meet Devdas at 2:00 AM at night conveys that message. (“Devdas” was written in early 1900s. Much more radical, or in today’s terminology more feminist, was Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, also from Bengal. Her “Sultana’s Dream” written in 1905 shows women as rulers and men as domestic workers.)

The catchy “Dola re, dola re…” could have been shown as Devdas’ fantasy when he was in one of his drunken state rather than a real meeting and a dance between Paro and Chandramukhi. The novel mentions that images of both women came alternately and sometime together in his mind. He fantasized that both have become close friends.

Another unnecessary song is “Chhalak chhalak.”

Was this much expense necessary? Even if the film were about rajas and maharajas or nizams and nawabs, so much expense cannot be reasonably justified. The class clash is only in the beginning, otherwise the movie is basically about Devdas’ longing for Paro. Even the lower class Paro’s haveli is huge. Only in one scene – may be the director realized it – Paro’s father discusses their financial condition, and afterward when Paro’s mother goes to bed it breaks. Paro’s new haveli is the biggest one – probably to make her run longer in the end. However, in the novel Paro comes to know about her beloved’s demise in the evening – hours after his corpse was taken away by chandals or men of low-caste to the samshan or burning ground. The fire didn’t burn too long and so they left. His “half- burnt body” became food for the vultures, and then for dogs and jackals. (From V. S. Naravane’s English translation.) (Yes, the realistic literature and art have their own ways to proceed unlike the “Bollywood” way – or for that matter Hollywood or “Lollywood,” i.e., Lahore, Pakistan.)

The movie should have been more Devdas oriented – Bhansali should have tried to bring out the antagonist’s psyche more forcefully. It is two childhood scenes, his whipping by his father, and Paro’s yelling and running after him that are repeated a few times. Bhansali could have shown:

His lack of interest in studies; his running away from school; his fighting with his classmates; his occasional violence with Paro; her bringing of food for him.

(The same flash back technique could have been used for the above scenes too.)

After saying all these things, I would say that anybody who watches films should see this movie at least once. One nice thing it has done is to introduce the MTV generation to South Asian music, and that also a good one. The sets are spectacular, photography is brilliant, camera work is done in such a manner that things look much bigger and grander, dialogues are good but such as “I don’t like anyone touching you” reminds of Bombay films’ anti-heroes, or “This kind of advise even a pimp wont offer to his daughter” is a bit too crass. In acting, Shahrukh Khan is very good. On the commercial Hindi/Urdu cinema scene in South Asia, after Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan, it is Shahrukh Khan who can be truly regarded as both an actor and a star.

Aishwarya is good, still in few scenes the director could have extracted more from her. Madhuri is nice. Jackie Shroff as Chuni Babu is not constant. In at least one scene his voice sounds like that of Motilal (Bimal Roy’s Chuni Babu), but a little later he is back to his own voice. Additionally, in some scenes he overacts.

One cannot dismiss “Devdas” as Bhansali’s expensive fantasy or belittle his talents to make a grand epic film. He can be considered an heir – as far as grandeur is concerned – to K. Asif and Kamal Amrohi. (When young, he was asked by his father to go and see “Mughal-e-Azam.”) (Those who have seen “Pakeeza” would be reminded of “Inhi logon ne le liya dupatta mera,” when Madhuri is shown dancing while other nautch girls are dancing in the background.) British film director David Lean was once asked to give his opinion about Mughal-e-Azam’s epic-ness: he was not very kind. If he were alive today, one can’t say whether he would have openly appreciated the technical excellence of “Devdas,” but probably he would have grudgingly thought about it.

The film’s grandness cannot be denied; what pulls back one from admitting is the greatness thing. Paro’s beauty is slightly marred when she got hit. One wishes the same were true for the movie too – in a sense that so many avoidable things did not mar it.

A song’s couplet in the movie says:
The scar that you gave me
has enhanced my facial beauty

But with too many scars it just doesn’t work.

(Devdas was reviewed in 2002.)

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

by ANUSHE ENGINEER

For some people, activism is optional. For Sammi Deen Baloch, it isn’t. Her father was abducted when she was 10 years old, and since then, she’s marched from Quetta to Islamabad, protested in frigid weather, repeatedly challenged the state and put her safety secondary to her cause countless times, all so she can close a chapter in her life she didn’t choose to write.

Anyone who has shared her fate knows Sammi Deen Baloch as a household name —she’s been a beacon of hope in their darkest hour.

She recently took centre stage when the plight of enforced disappearances finally became a part of the national discourse as hundreds of Baloch women marched to Islamabad to protest the extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances in Pakistan.

It is difficult to believe that at just 25 years of age, Sammi has become a beacon of raising one’s voice against the unimaginable tragedy of losing loved ones to enforced disappearances, caught up in an endless cycle of protesting the violence against her people and being threatened into oblivion.

Clearly, no amount of threats has silenced her; if anything, she has emerged stronger, louder, and more fierce.

Well-thought-out words and fiery interviews may never do justice to describing who she is. One needs to see her in her element as an activist, a true paladin, to understand her tragic brilliance. Simply put, when Balochistan has plunged into darkness and despair, Sammi has been the light.

If circumstances hadn’t brought her to this junction, Sammi might have been an ordinary girl who never left her village. Her activism was born from the death of any sense of normalcy her family had, which, she gradually learned, was the tragic reality of hundreds of Baloch families.

“That’s when I knew I had to play this role, not just for myself but for them as well,” she told me.

For years now, she’s counselled these families on how to protest in the streets, which lawyers to contact and made them aware of the rights they’ve been denied.

Her selflessness comes from recalling the cluelessness and isolation of navigating activism at the tender age of 11; bus rides alone from Karachi to Quetta, where her court cases to locate her father were being heard; harassment and awkward stares, people shunning her mother for going against the grain.

As her fearlessness increased, so did the threats to her safety and what she said were attempts at hacking her phone. And this is in addition to the mental torture she’s had to endure for more than half her life.

“The way I’ve suffered, I don’t want other families to go through the same ordeal,” she said. “I want to show them how to resist.”

Enduring a living death

Sammi has always been vociferous in maintaining that women’s rights are central in the conversation surrounding enforced disappearances, a painstaking reality she knows all too well.

“If you want to make a woman endure a living death, kidnap someone from her household. I have lived it firsthand. My smartness, my creativity level, everything vanished when my father was kidnapped.”

Women bear the brunt of enforced disappearances when the men in their household are abducted, losing their source of income and sense of stability.

“They’ve taken away a husband from his wife, a son from the parents, a father from his children. Father, son, brother — these aren’t just words, there’s so much more tied to them. The memories, the remembrances, the cravings, the needs, the love — it’s all tied together. And it’s all taken away from us.”

She is particularly vocal about Baloch women’s lack of rights, which they are often unaware of as a result of being deprived of an education and basic resources.

Sammi has championed women’s rights for as long as she’s been vocal about enforced disappearances, and she’s grateful for the support lent by local women’s rights organisations.

It is the silence from their international counterparts she finds questionable.

“People talk about women’s rights all the time, do research studies, bag awards for their work. And yet, we haven’t seen any international organisations come to Balochistan and do research here,” Sammi said.

Balochistan has one of the highest maternal death rates, and the highest rate of children out of school. Hundreds of Baloch women are forcibly displaced, their children missing, Sammi laments, and yet international women’s rights organisations have not brought these issues to attention.

“The people of Balochistan are also human, please think of them as human too.”

She doesn’t believe in championing one cause over the other; she only wants that they don’t turn a blind eye to the plight of Baloch women. If anything, she’s repeatedly invited them to Balochistan to get a better sense of ground realities.

Dawn for more

by LYDIA KIESLING

Last summer, my kids and I spent a month in Greece, where their grandfather lives. Time and again, I was struck by a public attitude toward children I seldom encountered in America: unequivocal support.

On Athenian buses, women older than myself frequently gave up their seats for my 5- and 8-year-old daughters. On one trip, an older woman hauled my younger child up next to her and tucked her hand underneath my daughter’s elbow to prevent her from being thrown forward with every sudden stop. She held on to her like this for the whole ride.

In America, we socialize our children to see strangers not as helpers but as threats. Worried parents scour Nextdoor for loiterers and miscreants; neighbors routinely call the police when parents let their kids explore outside. And when kids aren’t being treated as endangered, they’re often viewed as a nuisance. How many articles have I read about whether children should be allowed on airplanes, or at weddings, or in restaurants?

Every country has its share of adults who pose a threat to children. But the difference in how America treats its kids goes far beyond the “it takes a village” attitude that prevails in countries like Greece. Virtually every other industrialized nation provides more government aid for their children than America does. Of the 38 countries that belong to the leading Western trade alliance, the US ranks No. 32 in spending on early childhood. In Sweden, which offers single parents a staggering 480 days of paid parental leave, preschool costs no more than 3% of a family’s gross income. America, by contrast, has no mandated paid parental leave. It has no universal childcare. Only one-third of American families can afford childcare, which consumes 27% of their income on average. Parents are being forced to leave big cities because they can’t absorb the costs of childcare, while those in rural areas often can’t find care at all.ADVERTENTIELees meer

America’s rampant child neglect doesn’t stop with its lack of day care. Infants are more likely to die in childbirth in America than in any other rich nation, and US newborns are more likely to grow up in poverty. Millions of children attend public schools that are literally falling apart. Children who are neglected — a loose term inextricably tied to poverty — are thrown into a foster-care system known for its propensity to harm children. The shortage of foster families is so critical that many kids wind up being temporarily housed in settings like casinos, office buildings, and juvenile detention facilities. The US is the only member of the United Nations that hasn’t ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which includes the right to be free from violence and labor exploitation. In Oregon, where I live, children as young as 9 are allowed to do agricultural work, and many states are trying to loosen their already flimsy child-labor protections so teenagers can be forced to work longer hours. The leading cause of death for American children and teens is gun violence.

All of which raises the question: Why does America hate its children?

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On the surface, America has always professed to love its children, and those who raise them. Women are told from birth that being a mother is “the most important job in the world,” that “children are our future.” “All I am I owe to my mother,” George Washington is said to have declared. And every May, when Mother’s Day rolls around, we are inundated with soft-focus advertisements celebrating the family as the core unit of American life.

But in practice, the rhetoric exalting motherhood has served not as a means for supporting children but as a tool for keeping women at home — while fending off demands for a broader and more supportive system of child-rearing. Even as women have become vital participants in the American workforce, the opposition to expanding childcare has remained remarkably persistent. In 2021, state Rep. Charlie Shepherd of Idaho made the connection explicit when he explained why he voted against state funding for early childhood education. “I don’t think anybody does a better job than mothers in the home,” Shepherd said. “And any bill that makes it easier or more convenient for mothers to come out of the home and let others raise their child, I don’t think that’s a good direction for us to be going.” (He apologized after an outcry, but everyone heard him loud and clear.)

America has often invoked the Red Scare as an excuse for abandoning its children. In 1971, the country was one signature away from having universal childcare. A bill had passed the House and Senate that would have created federally funded childcare centers across the US.

But a rogue’s gallery of Republicans persuaded President Richard Nixon to veto the measure, citing the threat of communism to the American family unit. Nixon wrote that he opposed committing “the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against the family-centered approach.” Kids needed to be raised by their mothers — without any help from the state.

The one time America extended a form of universal childcare, tellingly, was during World War II, when men were not around to perform critical manufacturing jobs. The Lanham Act created a patchwork system of childcare provided by churches, community centers, and large employers. But as soon as the war ended and men returned to the workforce, the program was shuttered, even as many women took to the streets to call for its continuation.

The situation is worse for people of color; racism is baked into the paradigm of family life in America. The earliest cohort of American caregivers in white homes were enslaved Black women. When President Franklin Roosevelt implemented the New Deal, he specifically exempted domestic workers, who were more likely to be women of color, from receiving Social Security benefits and labor protections. Women who took care of other people’s children were stripped of the economic power they needed to take care of their own kids, let alone pay someone else well to do it. As a consequence, childcare is still one of the lowest-paid American professions, even while the overall cost of providing this essential service has soared. We end up with a broken system where the majority of American families are unable to pay a caregiver, while many childcare workers can’t live on what they are paid. Nearly one-third of childcare workers have experienced food insecurity, and more than 100,000 have sought other forms of employment since the start of the pandemic, desperate for better pay.

For a brief moment, the pandemic threw America’s grim provisions for children into stark relief. Teachers, leery of returning to classrooms before the advent of vaccines, called out their schools for subjecting kids to deplorable conditions: inoperable or toxic water fountains, widespread mold, sweltering, unventilated spaces with windows rusted shut. Administrators and politicians, meanwhile, unironically pointed out that schools needed to be open because they were the only place where many children could be sure of a regular meal. In 2021, as childcare costs soared by more than 40%, Congress provided a massive cash infusion to states to stabilize childcare and supplied parents with both cash and an additional tax refund to support their kids. Seemingly overnight, child poverty dropped by 40%.

Business Insider for more

by JULIE WARK

Budi Hernawan said it ten years ago: “torture in Papua … has become a mode of governance.” It hasn’t stopped. It’s got worse. It’s got worse precisely because it’s a mode of governance accepted and blessed by the international “community” whose neoliberal politics of extraction means extermination of anything and anyone getting in its way.

It’s got worse just now because Israel’s genocide, ecocide, starvation, and torture in Palestine isn’t only distracting attention from these practices in smaller and more remote places but also showing that it’s okay, it’s part of our system, you can do it with impunity because it’s all part of a bigger plan, and even the US presidential elections might have something to do with decisions being made to let Israel get on with its murderous work. It’s okay because 91-times-indicted US presidential candidate Trump is given his electoral stump and media loudspeakers to warn, Hitler-style, that his enemies are “vermin”, that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and promising the largest ever deportation operation in U.S. history. Not that Europe is much better. Of course it’s not. It’s part of the same system. Just wearing different masks. One result is that, since 2014, some 29,000 people from empire-damaged parts of the world have died trying to migrate to Europe, and rejected by Europe. Many “could have been prevented by prompt and effective assistance to migrants in distress”. And it’s okay to have former Suharto son-in-law, mass murderer, war criminal Prabowo Subianto, former head of US-trained Kopassus “Special Forces” (special at torturing and kidnapping) as the new president of Indonesia. He’s our ally against China.

But what about torture itself? What about the human beings who are routinely called “moneys”, “dogs”, “pigs”, “rats” and “stone-age idiots” and thus harmed and mutilated by their fellow human beings? What about the place where it happens? Who allows it to happen? West Papua was handed to Indonesia (and international corporations) by the United Nations in a trumped-up referendum in 1969, but the brutality actually began in 1963 after Indonesia was given control of West Papua in the (Cold War) New York Agreement concocted by the United States, Holland, and Indonesia. What happened next? To start with, more than 500,000 people have been murdered. Institutionalised torture was part of that.

The latest example to come out of West Papua is from a highlands place called Yahukimo (named for the Yali, Hubla, Kimyal, and Momuna tribes in the area) with a population of about 362,000 (but more than half the population of Melanesian West Papua consists of Indonesian transmigrants—another slow but effective mechanism of genocide). Look at the videos, if you can stomach them. Look anyway, even if it makes you want to throw up, because this affects everyone who has something called humanity.

Here we see young Indonesians having fun as they joke about taking turns to thrash, stab, slash, and kick the “animal flesh” of a West Papuan man they have made to stand in a drum of freezing water. Seeing the suffering of the shivering, wounded man is unbearable. Seeing young men amused about what they’re doing to him is also unbearable. What world raised them to do this with their young lives? This is nothing new in Yahukimo. Last month two teenage boys were arrested and tortured by grinning Indonesian soldiers, who took trophy photos of their victims. Another five teenage boys were murdered by Indonesian soldiers in September 2023. Two women were raped and murdered last October. Some 40% of woman torture victims are raped. Illegal gold mining is killing people with mercury, precious metals, and in the name of security for the miners. Dozens of people have died in a recent famine in Yahukimo. That didn’t make world headlines either. Famine also happened in 2006, 2009, also unheadlined. It’s normal there. But who knows or cares about Yahukimo?

Unlike torture perpetrated in the infamous black sites, it isn’t secret in West Papua. Well, it isn’t and is, depending on the audience. On the one hand, it’s a show for Indonesian and Papuan audiences within West Papua and, on the other hand, in the international domain, it’s under wraps because Indonesia effectively seals the borders, and the international powers-that-be are happy with it for their own geopolitical reasons. It’s an international secret because Indonesia is “our” ally against China, not to mention easy legally untrammelled plunder of its natural resources.

Budi Hernawan describes ten aspects of torture in West Papua.

1) Most victims are village people, subsistence farmers, either accused of supporting the independence movement or “collateral” victims. The collateral crime doesn’t matter because, since West Papuans are described as animals and primitive, they’re innately members or sympathisers of “armed criminal groups” and, in their occupied land non-citizens, and therefore a threat by their very existence. So, they can all only be disciplined by the harshest of measures. Extreme Indonesian nationalist views dating back to Sukarno’s “Sabang to Merauke” (an Indonesia encompassing all the former Dutch East Indies) slogan, is an expression of sovereignty and a licence to kill the “animals” that get in the way of Indonesian settler colonial projects. Torture proves their subhuman nature.

Counterpunch for more

by VICTORIA TURK

Rest of World analyzed 3,000 AI images to see how image generators visualize different countries and cultures.

In July, BuzzFeed posted a list of 195 images of Barbie dolls produced using Midjourney, the popular artificial intelligence image generator. Each doll was supposed to represent a different country: Afghanistan Barbie, Albania Barbie, Algeria Barbie, and so on. The depictions were clearly flawed: Several of the Asian Barbies were light-skinned; Thailand Barbie, Singapore Barbie, and the Philippines Barbie all had blonde hair. Lebanon Barbie posed standing on rubble; Germany Barbie wore military-style clothing. South Sudan Barbie carried a gun.

The article — to which BuzzFeed added a disclaimer before taking it down entirely — offered an unintentionally striking example of the biases and stereotypes that proliferate in images produced by the recent wave of generative AI text-to-image systems, such as Midjourney, Dall-E, and Stable Diffusion.

Bias occurs in many algorithms and AI systems — from sexist and racist search results to facial recognition systems that perform worse on Black faces. Generative AI systems are no different. In an analysis of more than 5,000 AI images, Bloomberg found that images associated with higher-paying job titles featured people with lighter skin tones, and that results for most professional roles were male-dominated.

A new Rest of World analysis shows that generative AI systems have tendencies toward bias, stereotypes, and reductionism when it comes to national identities, too. 

Using Midjourney, we chose five prompts, based on the generic concepts of “a person,” “a woman,” “a house,” “a street,” and “a plate of food.” We then adapted them for different countries: China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Nigeria. We also included the U.S. in the survey for comparison, given Midjourney (like most of the biggest generative AI companies) is based in the country. 

For each prompt and country combination (e.g., “an Indian person,” “a house in Mexico,” “a plate of Nigerian food”), we generated 100 images, resulting in a data set of 3,000 images.

“Essentially what this is doing is flattening descriptions of, say, ‘an Indian person’ or ‘a Nigerian house’ into particular stereotypes which could be viewed in a negative light,” Amba Kak, executive director of the AI Now Institute, a U.S.-based policy research organization, told Rest of World. Even stereotypes that are not inherently negative, she said, are still stereotypes: They reflect a particular value judgment, and a winnowing of diversity. Midjourney did not respond to multiple requests for an interview or comment for this story.

“It definitely doesn’t represent the complexity and the heterogeneity, the diversity of these cultures,” Sasha Luccioni, a researcher in ethical and sustainable AI at Hugging Face, told Rest of World.

Researchers told Rest of World this could cause real harm. Image generators are being used for diverse applications, including in the advertising and creative industries, and even in tools designed to make forensic sketches of crime suspects.

The accessibility and scale of AI tools mean they could have an outsized impact on how almost any community is represented. According to Valeria Piaggio, global head of diversity, equity, and inclusion at marketing consultancy Kantar, the marketing and advertising industries have in recent years made strides in how they represent different groups, though there is still much progress to be made. For instance, they now show greater diversity in terms of race and gender, and better represent people with disabilities, Piaggio told Rest of World. Used carelessly, generative AI could represent a step backwards. 

“My personal worry is that for a long time, we sought to diversify the voices — you know, who is telling the stories? And we tried to give agency to people from different parts of the world,“ she said. “Now we’re giving a voice to machines.”

Rest of World for more

by MAX LAWSON

Christine Lagarde is one of the strongest proponents of gender equality amongst the global elite. President of the European Central Bank, she is also a former International Monetary Fund Managing Director and French finance minister. The former lawyer was the first woman to chair global law firm Baker McKenzie, the first woman to serve as a finance minister from any G7 country and then the first to lead the IMF.

I have had the opportunity to attend meetings between Lagarde and the head of Oxfam a few times over the last 10 years or so. She is always very impressive. The first time was in her office in France’s ultra-modern Ministry of Economy and Finance in Paris, overlooking the Seine. The office was incredible; it had a red sofa and a zebra skin rug. It felt like we were in a Duran Duran video from 1985.  We were here to talk about French support for a Financial Transaction Tax.

As we filed in and took our seats opposite her at a long table, she took one look at us, smiled, and said: “are there no women in Oxfam then?” We were indeed two Frenchmen, an Englishman (me), and an Australian — very pale and male indeed.

I think there is no doubt that Lagarde would describe herself as a feminist, and a very strong advocate of gender equality. She is also without a doubt a big fan of the current neoliberal economic system. She thinks it is far from perfect and could be a lot fairer, but nevertheless very much thinks that this is broadly the best way to organize capitalism.

An interview we did with feminist and decolonial political economist Bhumika Muchhala on our EQUALS podcast this week about feminist economics made me reflect on whether it is in fact possible to be both these things — a champion of feminism and a champion of the current economic system. Or is a “neoliberal feminist” an oxymoron? A contradiction in terms?

The gale force neoliberal headwind

Lagarde in her speeches draws attention to the progress women have seen over the last 50 years, something others too have highlighted. She points out that there is no doubt that in terms of cultural norms, legislation, and participation in the workforce, the life of women in most countries is much improved compared to 50 years ago. That there is still a very long way to go, yes, but that genuine progress has been made.

Muchhala’s argument, by contrast, is that what little progress there has been for women globally is overwhelmingly counteracted by the deeply sexist nature of the global economic system, particularly its neoliberal version. By squeezing workers’ wages and rights, by squeezing the ability of governments to build universal welfare states through seemingly permanent austerity, and by allowing corporations and the richest to increase their wealth at astounding rates, the current system is like a gale force wind blowing in the face of any attempts to take steps in the direction of gender equality.

Particularly, Muchhala felt that women’s participation in the workforce should not be taken as a proxy for women’s empowerment — something that is definitely often done by Lagarde and others.

Young women fighting for their rights in Myanmar

I remember a few years back meeting young women working in the garment industry in Myanmar. They were working 12-hour days in unsafe factories, dismissed for the smallest infringements, or sacked as soon as they got pregnant.

Yet many of these young women felt they were more economically empowered, far freer than their mothers and grandmothers, far more in charge of their own destinies. Their situation was both terrible and better than the past. The point, it seemed to me, was whether this was the best we could — or should — expect. Was the only way to get more women in the workforce globally to accept this appalling level of exploitation, too? Those young garment workers certainly didn’t think so, which was why they were organizing their first trade union, at huge risk.

It seems to me there is little doubt that the main beneficiaries of greater participation of women in the workforce are the owners of wealth. I just look around me here in the UK, where two salaries are needed now to support a household, when one was once enough. Where the huge subsidy of unpaid care is still exactly that: a subsidy to the formal economy (to the tune of at least $10.8 trillion a year). But now women are expected to work and care, too.

In a different system, a fairer system, the huge increase in women’s participation in the workforce should have led to everyone having to work less. The huge boost to productivity and growth, instead of building billionaire bank balances, if fairly distributed could have eliminated poverty and enabled the universal provision of public services, including care services like childcare, eldercare, and healthcare. It could have built a care infrastructure that would further increase both gender and economic equality, as well as well-being.

I think there is a parallel with the broader discussion of poverty and the neoliberal period. It is a fact that extreme poverty has fallen dramatically in the last 40 years, with over a billion less people living on less than $2 a day. Equally, it is true that there has been progress in terms of women’s empowerment and equality. But progress on both has, I think, been a tiny fraction of what it could have been if the global economy was organized on different lines. Instead, the neoliberal economic air we breathe, the neoliberal sea we swim in, constantly and structurally undermines much greater progress. I would go further, in fact: I think it makes a permanent end to poverty and to gender-based discrimination impossible.

Nowhere is that truer than in terms of inequality. As long as 66 cents in every dollar of new wealth goes directly to the top 1%, and as long as the global economy is organized in such a way to ensure that continues happening, women’s oppression will continue. Indeed, as Muchhala points out, women’s oppression is absolutely fundamental to this unequal system continuing, as so much wealth is extracted from their unpaid care work and underpaid work.

Inequality for more

by STEVE SWERDLOW

‘He just vanished’ ? missing activists highlight Tajikistan’s disturbing use of enforced disappearances

“He just vanished; left his apartment for a meeting and disappeared. We’ve checked all the police stations, jails, the hospital and migration centers. We don’t know what to do.”

These were the words Tajik opposition leader Suhrob Zafar uttered to me in late February 2023, days after Nasimjon Sharipov, his colleague in the political movement Group 24, went missing.

The two of them had lived for almost 10 years in Turkey, having fled Tajikistan in 2014 because of the government’s repression of opposition groups, including the banning of Group 24. Zafar told me that both men had recently received anonymous threats on their phones, warning that they would be kidnapped and sent back to Tajikistan, where the government routinely uses torture and lengthy jail sentences to suppress opposition.

Zafar and I stayed in touch until March 10, 2024, after which he stopped responding. I later learned that on that day Zafar too went missing. An unconfirmed report in independent Tajik media on March 20 suggested that both men had been seen in handcuffs exiting a plane at an airport in Tajikistan’s capital on March 15 – but to date, there has been no official word on the two activists’ whereabouts.

Alarm over the fate of both men is understandable. It tallies with research I recently conducted for the Washington, D.C.-based human rights group Crude Accountability documenting how Tajikistan has systematically engaged in the practice of enforced disappearances – deemed as one of the most pernicious crimes under international law.

Drawing on primary interviews and profiling 31 cases of incommunicado detention or enforced disappearances over a 20-year period, I traced how enforced disappearances have become a mainstay in Tajikistan’s playbook for suppressing dissent in this nation of over 10 million people.

A particular terror

Enforced disappearances occur when a government detains, captures, imprisons or kills while refusing to acknowledge a person’s whereabouts or their grave. In 2010, the U.N. General Assembly adopted The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which expressly states: “No one shall be subjected to enforced disappearance.” But Tajikistan has never been a signatory.

The practice unleashes a particular terror on both victims and their families: removing someone entirely from the access of their loved ones, while inflicting anguish and uncertainty that may continue for years, even decades.

“Disappearances” entered the popular lexicon after becoming the hallmark of brutal juntas that violently took power in Latin America 50 years ago, such as in Argentina and notably Chile, where at least 1,248 people were disappeared on the orders of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Half a century later, my research indicates that this pernicious practice is being committed with disturbing regularity by Tajikistan under the repressive rule of authoritarian President Emomali Rahmon.

Under Rahmon’s rule since 1992, Tajikistan has consistently been ranked among the “worst of the worst” when it comes to its political rights and civil liberties records.

The use of enforced disappearances by the Tajik authorities dates back to the 1992-97 civil war that ravaged the republic following the Soviet Union’s collapse, leaving anywhere from 20,000 to 150,000 dead.

Arriving at an accurate estimate of the number of Tajiks disappeared is extremely difficult.

Attempts by scholars and the United Nations working group on enforced disappearances, which visited the country in 2019, have been thwarted by Rahmon’s resistance to allow any critical examination of his troops’ potential abuses.

The U.N. team was unable to get official figures, noting an “unprecedented” indifference in shedding light on the matter in Tajikistan.

Nonetheless, they estimated that thousands of people were unaccounted for from the civil war period.

Exporting repression

The Conversation for more

The statement on the UN Partition of Palestine by the Arab Higher Committee is a reminder of the sordid history of the U.S. in the expropriation of land and the attempted ethnic cleansing of the people of Palestine.

Ceasefires of unceasing fire. Resolutions without resolve. Not for the first time, the US actions in the United Nations (UN) have exposed the wretched ineffectiveness of that international entity when it comes to defending the lives and rights of the Palestinian people. Just over a week ago, the United States refused to support the UN Security Council’s (UNSC) otherwise-unanimous vote for a temporary halt to the genocide in Gaza. For the first time, the US abstained from the ceasefire vote, instead of vetoing it outright, but quickly called the UN’s resolution “non-binding” – and, effectively, pointless. The blood-soaked palm of Linda Thomas Greenfield, again, signified the imperial and impetuous American abstention; the US greenlighting of a new $2.5bn weapons package to the zionist entity in the days after the UNSC vote cynically demonstrated that their real commitment is to genocide.

For Palestine, this is nothing new. The US has repeatedly refused to use the UN stage to censure the actions of the zionist entity against Palestine. And in fact, almost since the formation of the UN in 1945, the organization has repeatedly betrayed the Palestinian people as the US has either bought or bullied UN member states into supporting the zionists. Indeed, the 1948 UN vote that endorsed the partition of Palestine was less an exercise in international democracy than a performance of corruption, coercion, and intimidation by the US superpower over smaller, weaker states.

This history of bullying and brow-beating is described in detail in a February, 6, 1948 statement sent by Isa Nakhleh, Representative of the Arab Higher Committee, to the UN Palestine Commission following the vote in favor of partition. In the statement, Nakhleh asserts that “The Arab Higher Committee maintains that the partition recommendation does not represent the sentiments of the United Nations.” He accuses the US of strong-arming other UN members into voting for partition, writing, “The pressure put by the United States Delegation and Government on certain nations, whether at Lake Success

[in Long Island, site of the original UN headquarters]

or in these nations’ capitals, is nothing short of political blackmail.”

Of the examples of this political blackmail that Nakleh documents, two are particularly painful for us: that of Liberia, and that of Haiti. Both countries followed the US lead when it came to voting for partition, making both countries complicit in the inevitable decades of slaughter emboldened and enabled by the UN decision. Naklheh asserts that Liberia was going to vote against partition. However, the Liberian delegate, Ellen Scarborough, changed her vote after she was threatened with physical violence, prompting her to ask for police protection.

As for Haiti, it is worth reading Nakhleh’s comments in full:

The delegate of Haiti on Wednesday made a very strong speech against partition, on instructions from his Government. On Saturday he circulated a note to Delegations explaining that he is voting for partition in accordance with fresh instructions from his Government. The Haitian Delegate did not find words to describe his shame and he was seen in tears in the lobby and Delegates’ lounge. Being a sincere and noble man, he could not hide the fact that his Government surrendered to pressure and was forced into changing its instructions to him.

At the time, Haiti’s president was the progressive Dumarsais Estimé. Haiti’s delegate to the United Nations was Ernest Chauvet, the mulatto editor, as Cedric Dover described him, of Le Nouvelliste, who had been jailed during the US occupation of Haiti for his criticisms of the occupation’s policies and puppet government. Unsurprisingly, Chauvet denied Nakhleh’s accusations , claiming that Haiti’s entire history was one of standing up against the Great Powers while asserting an identification with the plight of the Jewish people.

Black Agenda Report for more

by SARAH FALCONE

Healthcare’s future has arrived, and it is becoming increasingly linked with robotics. Robotics in healthcare is gaining popularity. 

According to a recent analysis by InsightAce Analytic, the worldwide robotic nurse industry is expected to grow 17.07% to reach an astonishing $2,777.61 million by 2031. 

This promising rise demonstrates robotics’ growing significance and potential in revolutionizing healthcare delivery. Here we delve into notable recent advancements in the field and the implications of robotics in healthcare for nurses and healthcare workers.

Meet Nurse Robots and Healthcare AI Tools

In Japan, human-like robots have been utilized for years as supplemental healthcare workers in elderly homes across the country. More recently, hospitals and healthcare facilities have started to introduce nurse robots and other healthcare AI tools. 

Larger robotic machines can be used to carry out laborious physical tasks like moving patients, and smaller interactive robots are being used to combat loneliness and inactivity in the elderly population. 

1. Moxi

Austin, Texas-based Diligent Healthcare was established in 2017 and has been working on Moxi ever since. Moxi is an advanced robot designed to assist healthcare teams.

The robotic assistant is outfitted with modern sensors, cameras, and artificial intelligence algorithms that allow it to autonomously roam healthcare facilities, engage with people, and complete non-patient-facing tasks such as delivering lab specimens and supplies or collecting soiled linens. 

Moxi also greets patients in hallways and poses for selfies. The robot’s social intelligence enables it to learn and adapt to its surroundings.

Medical City Dallas and Medical City Denton are two facilities already using Moxi, and the staff seems to love it. “I was unsure about Moxi at first, but now that I know how to use it, I really like it… it saves us a lot of time,” said an employee in the radiology department.

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2. Robot Nurse Bear

Meet the robot nurse bear – Japanese robotics engineers at Riken and Sumitomo Riko Labs have created a robotic bear capable of helping care for elderly patients. This bear can lift a patient from a standing position or from the floor, transfer a patient to a wheelchair, carry a patient from point A to B, and turn patients in bed.

An increasing elderly population paired with an insufficient amount of healthcare workers able to care for it makes revolutionary inventions like nurse robots incredibly helpful.

Without sufficient staffing for elderly care, more Japanese citizens are forced to leave their jobs to take care of aging family members. And those who do work in nursing and healthcare, suffer from high stress and fatigue. So Japan is looking towards robotics for help. 

3. Robot Dinsow

Nurse for more