by B. R. GOWANI

In July 2024, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said

Russia’s present fertility rate is 1.4 children per woman

“This is comparable to European countries, Japan and so on. But this is disastrous for the future of the nation.”

to maintain it’s current population,

it needs a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman

Russia’s Health Minister Dr Yevgeny Shestopalov told women

“Being very busy at work is not a valid reason, but a lame excuse.”

when the interviewer countered the Health Minister

“There are people who work 12 to 14 hours – when do they make babies?”

Health Minister was ready with the answer

it’s a different matter whether the answer made any sense

“You can engage in procreation during breaks, because life flies by too quickly.”

how long is the break?

more time’s required for sex when 2 persons like each other or are in love

but for procreation purpose not much time is necessary

a woman is to be treated as a child-producing machine so no love is needed

but then, why the procreation process during the breaks only?

why not also during work hours?

place some portable sex-rooms (like portable toilet) in working areas

whenever anyone has sexual thoughts, that person could visit the sex-room

but there is a minor problem …

is the health minister recommending anyone to have sex with anyone?

because all the husbands/wives couldn’t be working at the same place

ditto with all the girlfriends/boyfriends or live-in-partners

Russia’s then Health Minister had recommended similarly in July 2023

“A belief has developed that a woman should first get an education and build a career and that only after that should she think about having children.”

education & career first; children later is an “improper practice”

Tatyana Butskaya (MP or Member of Parliament) showcased her wisdom

“Each employer should look at their workplace, what is your birth rate? Here in your team.”

“Do you have one more child this year from each person who can give birth to a child this year – or not?

“This is exactly how we should pose this question…we will monitor it. In a year, our task is, of course, to increase it.”

let’s hope the monitoring is not this kind of Woody Allen film scene

MP Zhanna Ryabtseva wants girls to begin producing children at 18

“Give birth, give birth and give birth again, you need to give birth, give birth at 18.”

Politician Anna Kuznetsova wants women to have 4 or more children

“You should start giving birth at 19-20 years old. Then, statistically, the family will be able to have three, four, or more children.”

but why? so Russia could have more …

serfs, servants, slaves, soldiers, shoppers …

the world has turned into a commercial wasteland

life revolves around work, work, work, …

produce, produce, produce, …

consume, consume, consume, …

waste, waste, waste, …

Russia & other countries can stabilize their birthrates

provided they arrest this rampant capitalism

less work, less production, less consumption, less waste

this will give time for people to relax …

in turn, more time will incentivize those people who want more children

forcing and monitoring women to produce more children is wrong

it will also create financial problems for most women

children need decent education, housing, health, social environment

so …

will the government provide these resources?

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

by NAZIM KARIM

Shedding light on marginalised voices

Drawn to connect with individuals who have suffered trauma, Jazzmin Jiwa has forged a reputation as a fearless journalist willing to uncover uncomfortable stories that reveal some of the darker truths about society. 

Jazzmin understands the anguish of being uprooted, and the crises in identity and security that follow—her grandparents were expelled from Uganda in 1972, along with many others, while her mother was stranded as a young student in London at the time.

It’s no surprise then that Jazzmin’s upbringing led to a passion for storytelling and a desire for social justice, focused largely on dispossessed and marginalised sections of society. 

“Being a refugee is an ultimate story of survival,” says Jazzmin. “Survival beyond the home you lose, the heritage ripped from your being. The surroundings and smells of the familiar that disappear. The reciprocal nature of familiarity and how it nourishes your spirit… gone.”

When picking a career path, she wanted to “tell stories of human connection through personal experiences that override differences in religion, culture, race, and political beliefs,” and chose journalism as a way to do so. 

“Journalism is an act of truth, accuracy and bearing witness to the world as you uniquely see it.”

One of her first projects in the field involved research and work on the harrowing six-part documentary series Working Lives: Human Traffic for BBC World News.

The stories covered reflect the humiliation and abuse of African women in Saudi Arabia and the UK, sentenced to domestic servitude and child labour. The series also includes an interview with former First Lady of Egypt Suzanne Mubarak about child trafficking and underage marriages in Egypt, which often lead to the domestic abuse of young girls.

Jazzmin collaborated on the project with Ismaili journalist Faridoun Hemani of Linx Productions, and it was this internship that helped propel her career as a broadcast journalist.

She continues to cover human trafficking, with her most recent piece appearing on CBC Radio after she obtained an archive of voice notes women recorded while held captive. The acclaimed Pulitzer Center funded her in-depth field reporting.

Another area of interest is conflict and its consequences. Two decades ago, Liberia endured a civil war in which more than 20,000 young children were recruited for combat. When the fighting ended, many resorted to crime, drugs, and living in ghettos. Jazzmin was interested in programmes that were rehabilitating the youngsters and providing them with opportunities to work. She interviewed a former child soldier, who had been instrumental in convincing fighters to disarm.

The Ismaili for more

(Thanks to reader)

FRONTLINE

A Hindu farmer and a Muslim shopkeeper, side by side, carrying a sacred symbol through village streets. Children of all faiths, learning songs that blend stories from different religions. An entire community, setting aside differences to celebrate as one.

Welcome to Muharram in Karnataka, India.

Together We Sing documentary examines this distinctive cultural phenomenon in rural Karnataka,. Here, the Islamic observance of Muharram has evolved into a community-wide celebration that transcends religious boundaries. The film presents an in-depth look at the Rivayat singers, whose performances combine elements from Islamic and Hindu narratives. It documents the practice of Hindu villagers adopting the attire of Muslim ascetics during the festival, a custom that symbolizes interfaith respect and understanding. Through interviews with community leaders, academic experts, and local residents, the documentary explores the historical development of this shared tradition. It analyzes the socio-cultural factors that have shaped this unique observance over time, while also addressing the contemporary challenges it faces. “Together We Sing” offers more than a mere description of a festival. It provides a case study in community cohesion, demonstrating how shared cultural practices can foster unity in diverse societies. In an era often characterized by religious and cultural divisions, this film presents an alternative narrative of cooperation and mutual respect. The documentary invites viewers to explore a lesser-known aspect of Indian cultural life, where a religious commemoration has developed into a unifying social event. It illustrates how the villages of Karnataka have cultivated a distinctive approach to communal harmony through their annual Muharram celebrations.

Youtube for more

by BRIAN MIER

Millions of Brazilians woke up on August 31 in a country without X, after the Supreme Court ordered the national telecommunications agency to block the social media platform. This move culminated over a year of X’s refusal to follow Brazil’s telecommunications laws, particularly those requiring deplatforming of suspects in internet crime investigations. In a single day, X lost 22 million users, while alternative platform Blue Sky gained 2 million new Brazilian users in just three days. The order to ban the platform initially came from Supreme Court Minister Alexandre de Moraes, a figure vilified by the Bolsonaros and the international far right, and was ratified by a 5-0 vote in the Supreme Court’s 1st working group three days later.

Musk closes offices to aviod liability, Brazil freezes assets

The Court order came 12 days after Elon Musk closed X’s Brazilian offices to avoid liability for criminal charges against the company. With X owing R$9 million in fines, the Supreme Court froze the Brazilian assets of Musk’s company Starlink—a minor player in Brazil’s internet service provider industry, serving 250,000 clients in a country of 220 million. After the ban, a furious Musk used his own social media platform to attack one of Brazil’s 11 Supreme Court Ministers, Alexandre de Moraes, inadvertently doxing allies by publishing court documents containing their personal data.

Hailed as a victory for sovereignty while criticized by the far right as an affront to U.S. free speech principles, the X ban is the latest chapter in over a year of conflicts between Brazil and the world’s richest man.

To understand how Brazil reached this point, we must go back to October 18, 2018, between the first and second rounds of Brazil’s Presidential elections. That day, investigative journalist Patricia Campos Mello published an article in Folha de São Paulo exposing a group of Brazilian businessmen for spending R$12 million to slander presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro’s rival, Fernando Haddad, on Meta’s WhatsApp platform. Using illegally acquired personal data, the group microtargeted segments of the population with disinformation. For instance, evangelical voters were bombarded with doctored photos falsely claiming that, as mayor, Haddad distributed baby bottles with penis-shaped nipples to São Paulo pre-school students. As a result, Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court—comprising 3 Supreme Court Justices, 2 Superior Court Judges, and 2 lawyers—immediately launched an election fraud investigation.

This led to a surge in threats against judges in the Supreme and Superior Electoral Courts, extending to their families and calling for a military coup to shut down the Supreme Court. Among those making the call was Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Congressman Eduardo, who recorded a YouTube video seen by hundreds of thousands, saying, “All you need to shut down the Supreme Court is a single soldier or corporal […] Do you think anyone will protest in its defense?”

Unlike some countries, the Brazilian judiciary lacks its own police force. According to the 1988 Constitution, judiciary police duties are assigned to the regular police. The system’s failure to adequately address threats against Supreme and Superior Electoral Court judges prompted Chief Justice Dias Toffoli to issue a decree on March 14, 2019, allowing Supreme Court Minister Alexandre de Moraes to directly supervise a federal investigation into these threats.

As a result, Moraes became the main target of a hate campaign by Bolsonaro’s allies, who argued that, as a victim, he was unqualified to investigate his aggressors. Meanwhile, online threats against the judiciary intensified.

On October 29, 2021, the Superior Electoral Court announced the results of its investigation, with 5 of its 7 Justices confirming that the Bolsonaro campaign had used social media to commit election fraud in 2018. Unable to determine the fraud’s impact, the Court issued no punitive measures. However, Justice Moraes, set to take over the Presidency of the Superior Electoral Court six weeks before the 2022 presidential elections, announced that they now understood the scheme and that anyone using similar tactics in 2022 would “go to jail for attacking elections and democracy.”

Moraes, a conservative appointed to the Supreme Court by coup president Michel Temer in 2017, was already a target of Bolsonarista claims of a “communist dictatorship of the toga.” His upcoming role as head of the electoral court during the presidential election drove the Brazilian far-right into a frenzy.

As destroying the Supreme Court and installing a military dictatorship became the Bolsonarista rallying cry, de Moraes ordered several preventive arrests. These included Congressman Daniel Silveira for abusing his authority by repeatedly urging the army to shut down the Supreme Court while defying court orders. Sara Giromini, who styled herself as Sara Winter after the English fascist leader, was also arrested. She set up an Azov-inspired paramilitary camp outside Brasília, then led followers to camp out in front of the Supreme Court, launching increasingly large fireworks at the building for three days while making online threats against de Moraes and his family.

United World International for more

by HUMA YUSUF

The government installs a ‘web management system’. Unidentified men whisk away a YouTuber who posts satirical content. A fashion designer threatens legal action against the director and cast of a TV serial. A legislator objects to a female professional’s outfit and calls for SOPs for women’s attire. These may seem like disconnected matters. But they are signs that a surveillance society is becoming entrenched in Pakistan, an outcome we must resist.

Anxieties about surveillance have been mounting globally and are largely linked to ‘surveillance capitalism’, ie, the commodification of personal data, particularly by Big Tech. There is a growing focus on the extent to which individuals are aware of what personal data they are surrendering, to whom, and why.

Concerns about surveillance capitalism mounted when it became clear that customer data collection was enabling not only targeted advertising and improved user experience but also behavioural manipulation, for example, by skewing voting preferences. The regulation of Big Tech and its use of personal data will soon be a key human rights battle.

In this context, old-fashioned state surveillance — in the sense of the state collecting information about its citizens — seems passé. But it continues to be a major concern globally, and certainly in Pakistan.

In an article for Constitutional Political Economy, Alshamy et al argue that state surveillance can either be protective-productive or predatory. In the former case, the state collects personal information to support citizens and improve welfare service delivery. In the latter, state data collection “reduces citizen welfare by violating the rights of citizens or by extracting resources from citizens to benefit a small group of politically connected elites. This harms individual agency, freedom and self-governing democracy.”

The authors note that predatory data collection is non-transparent, poorly legislated and regulated, and often in the service of nebulous national security considerations that can be interpreted variously by whichever stakeholder has most power. In this scenario, the courts become helpless to challenge surveillance, as they too become subsumed by the state narrative. The plight of missing persons in Pakistan is the perfect illustration of a predatory surveillance state in action.

Dawn for more

by MICHAEL ALBERT

Other than for those gunned, bombed, or starved to death, wartime differs from peacetime mostly psychologically. Injustice and killing accelerate in wartime, though not as much as some analysts think. Meanwhile, peacetime imposes immense suffering and travail in too many places to list, including the global south but also the slums, inner cities, rural counties, sweatshops, classrooms, bars, and bedrooms of even “advanced industrial societies.” 

More, wherever elites spread overt war, rapacious peace, and global boiling—they also feast on the indignities and deprivations of wage slavery, racial repression, and sexual objectification. There is not this or that oppression. There is a totality of oppressions. Rapacious peace is genocidal war by another name. Global boiling escalates and diversifies the carnage. Class, race, gender, and power hierarchies curtail freedom and obliterate fulfillment.

Still, even more than other intersecting ills, war aggressively intensifies and localizes the body count. War reveals death and injustice with vengeful clarity. War trumpets loudly. Everyone hears Gaza. 

War spreads reasons to resist. War grows activism precisely as slaughter grows body counts. With war, corpses assault eyes everywhere. With war, material devastation lays waste to homes and hospitals. With war, souls flee devastation. So who is war good for? The rich, the powerful, and the sadistic.

A question arises for each person who suffers war, endures rapacious peace, or fears global boiling’s suicidal embrace. Should I resist, and, if so, how? 

Should I go to the next available demonstration? Should I resuscitate my activism that has long been mothballed? Should I increase my time or type of involvement? Should I organize others? And if I should do any of these things, what logic should guide my actions?

Wars, like rapacious peace and global boiling, are pursued by elites who have elite reasons for their madness. We may dispute details of what those reasons are, but beneath their contingent contentious details we know elite reasons always seek to enlarge the systems that deliver elite dominance. International law and justice at best weakly watch or at worst cheerlead. Poor suffering humanity becomes at best lamentable collateral damage, at worst a welcome target that elites gleefully bomb and starve.

Then, as battles rage, two additional dynamics emerge. One, the big muddy grabs and holds the war machine. Added dynamic, avoid defeat which would undercut future authority. Two, the dangling putrid prize, more profits to be made, entices new participants. Added dynamic, opportunistically pursue profitable paths that raging battles produce.  Finally, of course and as well, larger systemic schemes of imperial domination of a region’s resources or control of its trade routes underpin war. And while details of all such factors can be tirelessly debated—one might for example point out that a region’s resources are already well in hand, or note how to bypass contested trade routes—we should acknowledge that for purposes of answering “why demonstrate?,” efforts to pinpoint disputed details rarely have much consequence. 

Z Network for more

by BEN NORTON

US Big Tech corporations are like the feudal landlords of medieval Europe. These Silicon Valley monopolies own the digital land that the global economy is built on, and are charging higher and higher rents to use their privatized infrastructure.

Every other company – not just small businesses, but even relatively large ones – must pay rent to these corporate feudal lords.

Amazon takes more than 50% of the revenue of the sellers on its platform, according to a study by the e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse.

Amazon’s cut of vendor revenue steadily rose from roughly 35% in 2016 to just over half as of 2022.

In fact, Amazon basically sets prices in markets by using its infamous “buy box”. The platform removes the button if a user sells a product at a price higher than those offered on competing websites.

A staggering 82-90% of purchases on Amazon use the buy box. So if a business does not list the price that Amazon wants, they won’t receive the buy box, and their sales will fall.

Neoclassical economists endlessly condemned the inefficiencies of the central planning of the Soviet Union, but apparently have little to say about the de facto price setting being done by neo-feudal corporate monopolies like Amazon.

A monopolist in the 20th century would have loved to control a country’s supply of, say, refrigerators. But the Big Tech monopolists of the 21st century go a step further and control all of the digital infrastructure needed to buy those fridges — from the internet itself to the software, cloud hosting, apps, payment systems, and even the delivery service.

These corporate neo-feudal lords don’t just dominate a single market or a few related ones; they control the marketplace. They can create and destroy entire markets.

Their monopolistic control extends well beyond just one country, to almost the entire world.

If a competitor does manage to create a new product, US Big Tech monopolies can make it disappear.

Geopolitical Economy for more

by NATHAN DONLEY

Millions of American users of glyphosate-based Roundup have likely assumed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would never have approved the pesticide unless it was safe.

But the science-based truth has never been as cut and dried as the EPA and Bayer, which bought Roundup maker Monsanto in 2018, have made it sound. In a series of trials across the country, juries – and the public – have learned that despite the safety claims by Bayer and the EPA, hundreds of studies by independent scientists link glyphosate herbicides to serious health harms, including cancer.

Even though Bayer maintains that its glyphosate products are safe and not carcinogenic, the company has thus far agreed to pay out more than $10 billion in settlement costs to tens of thousands of glyphosate users suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), and thousands of lawsuits remain. 

In an effort to block further litigation, the chemical giant has turned its focus to getting federal and state legislation passed to block Roundup users from suing the company for damages. According to a recent Washington Post article, Bayer helped draft language for a legislative measure that would limit the types of lawsuits brought by the Roundup users. That measure is included in the US House of Representatives version of the 2024 Farm Bill, which is slated to be finalized later this year. The company has also been pushing lawmakers in several states to pass similar measures. 

Key to Bayer’s messaging to legislators is that, because glyphosate is EPA-approved, research showing its harms should be rejected. But the process by which the EPA approved glyphosate decades ago has never been reassuring to independent scientists such as myself. EPA scientists conducting initial assessments of glyphosate in the 1980’s discovered several mice dosed with the pesticide developed rare kidney tumors, prompting the scientists to confirm the pesticide’s link to cancer.

Then the EPA’s pesticides office did what it often does: It ignored the troubling research and the recommendation of its own scientists and approved the pesticide without acknowledging its documented link to cancer.

Even the EPA’s subsequent assessments and reapprovals of the pesticide, required every 15 years, have been plagued by questionable science. In 2022 a federal appeals court ruled that the agency’s finding that glyphosate has no link to cancer violated its own Cancer Guidelines and “was not supported by substantial evidence.”

Now it’s these problematic EPA endorsements that Bayer insists should be the basis for putting limits on the lawsuits glyphosate users can file. 

Monsanto — and now Bayer — have tried to undermine independent scientific research by attacking any findings of glyphosate’s harm. The company even tried to covertly influence research that was then falsely presented as being independent of the chemical giant. That attack campaign took on a new urgency in 2015 when the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, often considered the gold standard in cancer research, found glyphosate to be a probable cause of cancer. Bayer’s response was to blast IARC for “cherry-picking” research.

In fact, IARC researchers upheld the highest standards by including only the findings of transparent research that could be reviewed for accuracy. That meant they could not include Monsanto’s claims of glyphosate’s safety because they could not review the company’s research data to verify those findings. Conversely, the EPA has relied heavily on Monsanto’s studies of its own product in assessing glyphosate’s safety.

The EPA’s questionable process for assessing glyphosate’s cancer risk is hardly an isolated case.

That process was reflected in the EPA’s 2020 decision to reapprove the extremely toxic pesticide dicamba even though the drift-prone poison continued to damage more than a million acres of off-target crops and native plants the subsequent year. And earlier this year the EPA released a report defending the safety of paraquat, signaling it was likely to reapprove the pesticide that’s banned in 58 countries and has been linked to Parkinson’s disease in hundreds of independent studies. As with glyphosate, those actions reflect the agency’s culture of undervaluing compelling independent research on pesticides’ harms.

And that may be the most far-reaching verdict to come out of the glyphosate trials: The disturbing revelation that consumers simply cannot trust that a pesticide is safe simply because it gets the EPA’s stamp of approval.

That science-based reality should prompt legislators on both sides of the aisle in Congress and state legislatures to stand up for consumers and reject Bayer’s immoral push to block people suffering from cancer from suing the company.

The New Lede for more

by ABIGAIL TULENKO

Both folktales and formal philosophy unsettle us into thinking anew about our cherished values and views of the world

The Hungarian folktale Pretty Maid Ibronka terri?ed and tantalised me as a child. In the story, the young Ibronka must tie herself to the devil with string in order to discover important truths. These days, as a PhD student in philosophy, I sometimes worry I’ve done the same. I still believe in philosophy’s capacity to seek truth, but I’m conscious that I’ve tethered myself to an academic heritage plagued by formidable demons.

The demons of academic philosophy come in familiar guises: exclusivity, hegemony and investment in the myth of individual genius. As the ethicist Jill Hernandez notes, philosophy has been slower to change than many of its sister disciplines in the humanities: ‘It may be a surprise to many … given that theology and, certainly, religious studies tend to be inclusive, but philosophy is mostly resistant toward including diverse voices.’ Simultaneously, philosophy has grown increasingly specialised due to the pressures of professionalisation. Academics zero in on narrower and narrower topics in order to establish unique niches and, in the process, what was once a discipline that sought answers to humanity’s most fundamental questions becomes a jargon-riddled puzzle for a narrow group of insiders.

In recent years, ‘canon-expansion’ has been a hot-button topic, as philosophers increasingly ?nd the exclusivity of the ?eld antithetical to its universal aspirations. As Jay Gar?eld remarks, it is as irrational ‘to ignore everything not written in the Eurosphere’ as it would be to ‘only read philosophy published on Tuesdays.’ And yet, academic philosophy largely has done just that. It is only in the past few decades that the mainstream has begun to engage seriously with the work of women and non-Western thinkers. Often, this endeavour involves looking beyond the con?nes of what, historically, has been called ‘philosophy’.

Aeon for more