By B. R. Gowani

Happiness/Sadness

This must be the happiest day of your life as you will be entering the White House – a house that was built with the sole intent of housing rich white men. However, it is also the saddest day for your predecessor — not the outgoing president – but his father, the 41st president. Senior ruled at a time when US became the solo Empire of the world — in wake of the Soviet Union disintegration. His 1991 war against Iraq was instigated to impose the United States’ global hegemony. His son set that same Empire on a downward slide through his gringo-style violence which was, of course, conducted with blessings and full stimulus from the Jewish Lobby. It marks the beginning of the end of the US Empire.

Like many of your predecessors, Mr. Obama, your legs must have given up too at the thought of running for the highest office of the land, but you were damn smart, sir, to grab the two crutches offered to you (without which no body can even dream of reaching the highest office of the land): the Jewish Lobby and the Corporations.
One Cautionary advice: Never should a thought cross your mind that you can do away with either of these crutches. Let us look at what happened when you predecessor tried to explore the thought of eliminating the crutch: When George Bush Sr. asked the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir not to use the US loan money on building Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he felt the negative power of the Jewish crutch and this is widely believed to be the reason he lost the second term.

Hope/Change Technique

I don’t know whether you have seen Stanley Kubrick’s film “A Clockwork Orange,” or read Anthony Burgess’ novel the movie was based on. Let me briefly recap for you: the main character was violent. When the circumstances led to his arrest he volunteered himself to be used as a guinea pig by the state prison for the Ludovico Technique. He was cured from committing crimes. Upon his release, he had become completely non-violent. However, ultimately he returned to his old ways, when faced with adverse conditions.

You have used a similar technique but under a different strategy: Hope/Change. The people you’ve chosen to run your administration do not show change nor emanate any hope. So the effect of Hope/Change Technique is gradually wearing off and many people are returning back to their normal resigned selves realizing that the Hope is hopeless and the Change is sameness.

Colored People’s Tragedy

Historically, the Third World countries were occupied and colonized by white Europeans. However, when the oppression brought about uprisings, the colonizers trained a tiny select group to continue the oppression by handing them the aura of power. Then came the world wars and it became necessary for them to fight the home fire and they were forced to leave the colonies. By then, the colonies had been looted by the occupiers and their economies were intertwined with those of colonizers in such a way that economic dependency became the newly independent nations’ fate. The leaders of these nations who tried to carve their own paths were crushed or strangled economically and those who followed their dictates were allowed to loot for personal gain and forced to let the former colonizers continue to loot. Either way, the majority of people in those countries could not enjoy the fruits of freedom. The blame was, of course, laid on their non-whiteness in that it was said that the colored folks could not run the country effectively.

Never before in the history of the United States, or the world, has a colored person been known as “the most powerful man in the world.” This is a first. The reality that you’re inheriting a country which is bankrupt and the empire that is breathing its last breath makes your task more difficult. The US debt stands at $11 trillion, in addition to budget and trade deficits. We can not overlook the state of depression and joblessness the country is facing. If you fail to deliver much — which is highly likely — then the racist elements will point a finger at your skin tone.  They’ll intentionally overlook the fact that it has been all the white occupants of the White House that have brought this country to such a desperate bankrupt state.

What You Can DO

Even if you can only accomplish the following couple of things during your time in office, many people in the US and the world will remember you for a long time:

1. Try to eliminate the legal injustices and economic disparities between the colored and white people. In 2002, 50% of the people put behind bars for drugs were blacks. They make up only 13% of the total US population. One reason for this disparity is that the whites who have 18 ounces or 500 grams of cocaine are sentenced to the same imprisonment time as are blacks with 0.2 ounces or 5 grams of crack.

Or take for example the 18% children under 18 living in poverty in the US in 2007, where:
33.7% were Black children
28.6 were Hispanic children
11.9 were Asian children, but only
10.1 were White non-Hispanic children.
At the very least what you should plan to do is to reduce the above numbers as follows:
Black percentage by 23.6
Hispanic percentage by 18.5
Asian percentage by 1.8
to match the population spread and thus bringing equality in poverty.

These small changes will be a step in the right direction to eliminate disparity among the poor Whites, Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks.

2. Use all your charm and oratory power to convince the Israeli leaders and the Jewish Lobby in the US to refrain from blatant and destructive wars, such as the current one against the Palestinians in Gaza and the July 2006 war against Lebanon. Don’t try to stop them — because you cannot — from continuous murders of Palestinians and the Lebanese on a regular basis, albeit on a smaller scale. It’s just that when the killing is on a large scale, that even the US supported Muslim leaders get embarrassed and are forced to show little sympathy for the victims. This will also prevent you from facing awkward “shoe” moments.

You may be aware of what recently happened to the most powerful white man in the world. President George Bush got his final humiliation from the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently (as cited by Paul Craig Roberts):

“Early Friday morning the secretary of state [Condoleezza Rice] was considering bringing the cease-fire resolution to a UNSC [United Nations Security Council] vote and we didn’t want her to vote for it,” Olmert said. “I said ‘get President Bush on the phone.’ They tried and told me he was in the middle of a lecture in Philadelphia. I said ‘I’m not interested, I need to speak to him now.’ He [Bush] got down from the podium, went out and took the phone call.”

Bloody good performance for a leader of a tiny country, whose destruction of the Palestinian people depends on the arms and aid from the US. Goliath yet again got humiliated by David.

So Obamaji, to the Israeli government and the Jewish Lobby the most powerful black man in the world means nothing. In spite of you being in this dire circus environment (meticulously planned, strategized with no room for error), yet I cannot restrain myself from wishing you all the best.

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

*Aloha means dear or beloved in Hawaiian language and bwana means mister in Swahili language, spoken in Tanzania, Kenya, and some other African countries.

Paris Nov. 13. 1787.
…persevering lying. the British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, & what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. yet where does this anarchy exist? where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? and can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. they were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. god forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. the people cannot be all, & always, well informed. the past which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. we have had 13. states independant 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure. our Convention has been too much impressed by. . .

More:

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/105.html

WHAT IS CLONING?

Have you ever wished you could have a clone of yourself to do homework while you hit the skate park or went out with your friends?

Imagine if you could really do that. Where would you start?
What exactly is cloning?

Cloning is the creation of an organism that is an exact genetic copy of another. This means that every single bit of DNA is the same between the two!

You might not believe it, but there are human clones among us right now. They weren’t made in a lab, though: they’re identical twins, created naturally. Below, we’ll see how natural identical twins relate to modern cloning technologies.
How is cloning done?

You may have first heard of cloning when Dolly the Sheep showed up on the scene in 1997. Cloning technologies have been around for much longer than Dolly, though.

How does one go about making an exact genetic copy of an organism? There are a couple of ways to do this: artificial embryo twinning and somatic cell nuclear transfer. How do these processes differ?
More:
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/whatiscloning/

by Professor Sarojini Sahoo

Sexuality may well be the most rewarding bliss of all possible experiences that life can offer between two people passionately attracted to each other. The union it produces between men and women in love is so close and so complete that two finite individuals can interrelate almost as if they were one indivisible being. It involves not only physical but also psychological, spiritual, and somehow anthropological and social aspects. It is related to reproduction.

But because it does involve reproduction and transfer of genes, society has always tried to grip it under its control, denying any need of its other aspects. Even, anthropological theories are denied by the social gurus. Society or religion (I am unable to differentiate them) articulates its own definition of sex as all sexual activity ought to be potentially reproductive, that marriage must last forever, and that women must be subject to men. (Aquinas, Thomas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, Book 3 ”Providence,” Trans. Vernon J. Bourke, Doubleday, New York, 1967)

‘Dharma’ in Hinduism is different from the Western concept of religion. It is a code related to moral nature. There is a very negligible difference between this ‘dharma’ and ‘spiritualism’ whereas in the Western concept, ‘religion’ and ‘spiritualism’ are two different concepts. So society or religion always plays a role to suppress the sexuality and as the patriarchal dominance is more on these fields, questions about the morality and the politics of sex are usually considered in isolation from issues about gender and erotic sex.

But in spiritualism, it is related to an individual’s understanding for salvation and freedom. For Hindu spiritualism sexuality is represented as ‘kama’. It is one of the four necessities, four aims of life: Dharma, Artha (material goods), Kama and Moksha (liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth)

Kama is defined as the enjoyment of appropriate objects by the five senses of hearing, feeling, seeing, tasting and smelling, assisted by the mind together with the soul. The ingredient in this is a peculiar contact between the organ of sense and its object, and the consciousness of pleasure which arises from that contact. This is called Kama.

In Hindu spiritualism, Kama is not at all a ‘prohibited’ subject or we don’t find any ‘male dominancy’ there. Taking the lovers’ longing for reunion as a metaphor for the soul’s longing for union with the divine makes sexuality more acceptable in ‘Sufism.’ And in a later period, ‘Hindu Bhaktism’ by Sri Chaitanya also adopted this idea easily.

But in Western philosophy, the natural and the universal are sharply divided — like heaven and earth. The division of tasks between heaven and earth, suffering on earth and happiness beyond, is part and parcel of Western culture and its philosophy, religion and mythology. Westerners tend to see the sensuous world around us as false or illusory and the world ‘beyond’ as real. But in Hindu spiritualism, when you are in your sexual desire, you might sense complete presence in your sensuous world, a perfect moment which is spiritual, natural and carnal all at once.

Professor David Lee Miller in his book Philosophy of Creativity (Peter Lang Publishing Inc., New York, 1990) tries to define creativity as the “feeling” of pure experience vital to a realistic grasp of life with the ‘sensuous world’ (Miller named it ‘as-in-the-whole-Earth’). Plato first refused this ‘sensuous world’ and under Plato’s influence, Western thought has been dominated by a model (paradigm) of neglecting this knowledge and of value in experience. But Miller, in his book, tries to establish that creativity is of the whole Earth (or we can say ‘sensuous world’) rather than being limited to particular aspects.

It is the philosophy of sexuality in Hindu spiritualism that made Kalidas and Jaydev write two great masterpieces: Kumar Sambhav (Kalidas, fourth century B.C.) and Gita Govinda (Jaydev, twelfth century A.D.). These works depict lovers in separation and union; in longing and abandonment, and have been portrayed in thousands of exquisite miniature paintings in India.

Kumar Sambhav , is about the begetting of Kartikeya, the god of war who was the son of Siva and P?rvati, and depicts the monogamous form of sexuality. In contrast, the erotic love of Radha and Krishna in Gita Govinda is not limited to the love of only two persons, but is extended to the 1,600 women known as ‘gopis.’ Unlike in Kumar Sambhav, the love of Radha and Krishna was not at all a monogamous example as Radha never was the wife of Krishna and the ‘gopis’ were also well-connected with the god ‘Lord Krishna’ in sexual desire and lovemaking.

We can say the love of Krishna was polyamorous and was more an evocation and elaboration of passionate love or an attempt to capture the exciting, fleeting moments of the senses. It could also be an evocation of the baffling ways in which love’s pleasures and pains were felt before retrospective recollection, trying to regain a lost control over emotional life. This is why this love story grips our imagination every time we encounter the animated expressions, flashing eyes, and sinuous movements of a dancer, who as Radha, expresses her anger at Krishna’s infidelities or who as Krishna, begs forgiveness for his irresponsible dalliance.

Gita Govinda was first of its kind to be included in the ritual service of the temple of Lord Jagannath at Puri, one of the four most sacred pilgrimage places of Hinduism. So, as the concept of Brahmacharya (suppression of sexual desire) exists, so also exists the concept of spiritual sexism in every authentic entity in this Eastern religion.
But the fundamentalists always try to prohibit sex though no doubt, we are the product of sexuality and our mind characterizes what it experiences, which has a great influence on how our mind perceives the creative process. This creative process, as an inherent sexuality, is always enhanced when we are in sexual desire or find ourselves in the grip of sexuality.

The writing process is a sexual process. When a writer wants to expose a physical life or an energetic life, a creative tension and a flow of energy is generated in the creative process. This creative tension can be experienced as a sexual tension and the flow of energy creates life or describes a new life.

Religion or society never cares for any artistic sensibility as Plato’s domination and so this inherent sexual influence over creativity has also always been denied by our sexual gurus. So, we find there are descriptions of fetishism, voyeurism, and exhibitionism in the writings after the Second World War. We also find our writers/artists/musicians always have an inclination towards their sexual orientation and sexual behaviour and we encounter how much sexual desire they have.

We find Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Willa Cather, Emily Dickinson, Sarah Orne Jewett, A. E. Housman, T. S. Eliot, Federico García Lorca, Charlotte Mew, Viscountess Rhondda, Cicely Hamilton, Elizabeth Robins,Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoire were either homosexual or bisexual. In contrast, very few of Indian writers have had the courage to admit such truth but Amrita Pritam, Maitreyi Pushpa, Kamala Das, Harivanshrai Vachchan, and Rajendra Yadav are among them.

Still, Asian and African writers have not shown any admissible indication to point out their sexual inheritance in their writings, though their culture is more open to nature than Western cultures. This is a peculiar situation of contradiction and one which we cannot pass up.

Professor Sarojini Sahoo is an author and a feminist and can be reached at sarojinisahoo2003@yahoo.co.in. Her blog and website are http://sarojinisahoo.blogspot.com/ and
http://sarojinisahoo.com/

Slumdog Millionaire is the first great film of the new “flat world.” “Jamal” (Dev Patel), the hero of Slumdog Millionaire, is a Mumbai teenager who becomes a contestant on the Indian version of the TV game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The plot is as simple as can be: every time Millionaire’s host asks a new question, Jamal has a flashback. Each flashback leads Jamal to an answer and gives us another chapter of his life story.

Slumdog Millionaire rests on the shoulders of the nine young actors who play Jamal and his two fellow “musketeers” at various ages, and co-directors Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan do a dazzling job of completely individuating them through a complicated series of often heart-breaking adventures. Stay for the credits—they’re the icing on the cake. Bravo!
More:
http://www.womenarts.org/reviews/SlumdogMillionaireReviewFWA.pdf

by Nour Kharma

(9th Grade Gaza City resident)

Today, it is the two weeks of this horrible war. Last Saturday was the worst day of all. When I woke up in the morning one of my friends called. His voice sounded strange when I asked, “How are you?”
He answered “Fine, but have you heard any news about any of your friends?”

I was really scared, and asked him, “What’s wrong?”

He told me Christine died. I went into a state of shock. I still don’t believe it.

more: http://counterpunch.org/kharma01122009.html

by JANINE JACKSON

Jorge Gutierrez: “This is about the deep violence that in many ways this country is so obsessed with.” PHOTO/Famili

Janine Jackson interviewed Jorge Gutierrez about the Orlando massacre

Janine Jackson: In the wake of the horrific attack at Pulse in Orlando, it was all too clear what story some corporate media wanted to tell. Frank Bruni in the New York Times told readers, yes, it was LGBTQ people who were killed and injured, but the attack was really on “freedom itself,” because we in America “integrate and celebrate diverse points of view.” A Guardian journalist walked off the set of a Sky TV interview in which the host insisted the Orlando attack was on “human beings” enjoying themselves, and questioned why he, a gay man, would want to take “ownership” of the crime.

Media are backing off that “clash of civilizations” storyline a little bit, but their eagerness to cram the event into a xenophobic, anti-Islam narrative they’re comfortable with was telling. There’s a value to expanding our definition of “us,” so that we empathize whenever anyone is harmed, but then there’s also vaguing things out so much that you distort and misunderstand what’s happening and what’s at stake.

What if instead of lecturing us, media just listened to the people who were impacted? Joining us to discuss some of the many things that the Orlando killings give us to think about is Jorge Gutierrez, founder and national coordinator of Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement. Welcome to CounterSpin, Jorge Gutierrez.

Jorge Gutierrez: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

JJ: Many things, of course, are involved here. There’s access to absurdly lethal weapons and access to mental healthcare. There are a number of valid conversations that can grow from this. But it seems important to keep focus on who was targeted and who was killed. But the queer Latinx community is not one that big media have any deep knowledge of, for sure. The video that Familia released, and that’s been widely shared, spoke into that void. Tell us about why you made that video, and what was the message of it?

JG: Waking up on Sunday morning to such horrible news and knowing that this happened at a gay club, it happened on a Latino night where there was Latino and black folks and trans folks were there…. But we didn’t see that being visible in what the media was sharing all through Sunday. And so we thought that there was a need from us to center our lives and our community, and uplift our community in all of this. And so for us, it was a response directly to the erasure from mainstream media of the LGBTQ Latino community, and also a response from us, like you said, about what really happened.

And so we know that this conversation is so complex, and that there’s so many layers to it, but for us, it was important to center the LGBTQ Latino community in all of this. In some ways, we were creating our own narrative, our own story, our own media, because we felt that the mainstream media was ignoring the fact that more than half were Puerto Rican victims and then also Mexican victims and Salvadoran victims. And so we know that over 80 percent of the victims were Latino. And so for us, that was how we wanted to center the conversation.

JJ: Yes, we’ve heard people like Rep. Pete Sessions stumble his way through, you know, it was a young person’s club and some people were gay, but they were mainly Latino—as though some people just can’t see things together. And it’s this thing of intersectionality, you know, the term introduced by critical race theorist Kim Crenshaw, not to mean being two things at once, which we all are, but to mean the way that some people’s particular experience can be erased or made invisible by the way that we consider things along just one vector at a time.

People were gratified, for example, to see CNN’s Anderson Cooper when he was talking to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who opposed same sex marriage, and he was saying, you know, the language that you used in that fight, that gays and lesbians do social harm, you know, that language has repercussions. It isn’t that what happened on June 12 isn’t another order of horror, but there is an effort, isn’t there, to connect it to the violence against LGBTQ people of color every day?

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting for more