By Paul Craig Roberts

On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the US Department of State to monitor anti-semitism world wide.

To monitor anti-semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition? Basically, as defined by the Israel Lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to any criticism of Israel or Jews.

Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House.
As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands.

It will be a crime for Christians to acknowledge the New Testament’s account of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus.

It will be a crime to report the extraordinary influence of the Israel Lobby on the White House and Congress, such as the AIPAC-written resolutions praising Israel for its war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza that were endorsed by 100 per cent of the US Senate and 99 per cent of the House of Representatives, while the rest of the world condemned Israel for its barbarity.

It will be a crime to doubt the Holocaust.

It will become a crime to note the disproportionate representation of Jews in the media, finance, and foreign policy.

In other words, it means the end of free speech, free inquiry, and the First Amendment to the Constitution. Any facts or truths that cast aspersion upon Israel will simply be banned.

Given the hubris of the US government, which leads Washington to apply US law to every country and organization, what will happen to the International Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the various human rights organizations that have demanded investigations of Israel’s military assault on Gaza’s civilian population? Will they all be arrested for the hate crime of “excessive” criticism of Israel?

This is a serious question.

A recent UN report, which is yet to be released in its entirety, blames Israel for the deaths and injuries that occurred within the United Nations premises in Gaza. The Israeli government has responded by charging that the UN report is “tendentious, patently biased,” which puts the UN report into the State Department’s category of excessive criticism and strong anti-Israel sentiment.

Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government to silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and Israeli soldiers have exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the premeditated murder of women and children urged upon the Israeli invaders by rabbis. These acts are clearly war crimes.

It was the Israeli press that published the pictures of the Israeli soldiers’ T-shirts that indicate that the willful murder of women and children is now the culture of the Israeli army. The T-shirts are horrific expressions of barbarity. For example, one shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a crosshairs over her stomach and the slogan, “One shot, two kills.” These T-shirts are an indication that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is one of extermination.

It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and Israeli peace groups. For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Jeff Halper of ICAHD have shown a moral conscience that apparently does not exist in the Western democracies where Israel’s crimes are covered up and even praised.

Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff Halper? Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but simply report what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for “spreading hatred of Israel, an anti-semitic act”?

Many Americans have been brainwashed by the propaganda that Palestinians are terrorists who threaten innocent Israel. These Americans will see the censorship as merely part of the necessary war on terror. They will accept the demonization of fellow citizens who report unpalatable facts about Israel and agree that such people should be punished for aiding and abetting terrorists.

A massive push is underway to criminalize criticism of Israel. American university professors have fallen victim to the well organized attempt to eliminate all criticism of Israel. Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at a Catholic university because of the power of the Israel Lobby. Now the Israel Lobby is after University of California (at Santa Barbara,) professor Wiliam Robinson. Robinson’s crime: his course on global affairs included some reading assignments critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

The Israel Lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice (sic) Department that it is anti-semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying. The Israel Lobby succeeded in getting their trial delayed for four years, and now Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped charges. Yet, Larry Franklin, the DOD official accused of giving secret material to Rosen and Weissman, is serving 12 years and 7 months in prison.
The absurdity is extraordinary. The two Israeli agents are not guilty of receiving secrets, but the American official is guilty of giving secrets to them! If there is no spy in the story, how was Franklin convicted of giving secrets to a spy?

Criminalizing criticism of Israel destroys any hope of America having an independent foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American rather than Israeli interests. It eliminates any prospect of Americans escaping from their enculturation with Israeli propaganda.

Counterpunch for more
(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)

By Tim Wise

As a general rule, one should regard with a mountain of salt anything to be found on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Committed to the promotion of right-wing economics and social policy, and unburdened by such mundane requirements as fact checking, the writers of the Journal’s daily screeds have long taken liberty with supposedly sacrosanct journalistic principles like truth. To wit, their utterly fallacious hit job on the Community Reinvestment Act back in September, in which they blamed the subprime mortgage meltdown–and virtually the entire economic crisis–on black and brown poor folks who received loans for which they were unqualified thanks to liberal reforms. A few months later, the generally splendid and fair-minded news reporters at the Journal utterly debunked the claims that the CRA had been the cause of the problem, but this mattered not to the editorial staff. They never printed a retraction for their wrong-headedness. Dishonesty in the pursuit of Austrian economics is no vice, apparently.

This week, the Journal was at it again, taking their reactionary mendacity to new heights, as they weighed in on the “reverse discrimination” case being considered by the Supreme Court. To hear the editors tell it–and this is a position advanced by conservative radio and even some mainstream journalists–Frank Ricci and his seventeen co-plaintiffs were the victims of unfair “racial preferences” for blacks in the New Haven, Connecticut fire department. Although they had scored highly enough on their supervisor exams to be promoted to one of several open positions for lieutenant or captain, the test was ultimately tossed out, supposedly because no black test-takers had earned a score that would have qualified them for such a promotion. Decrying the blatant racial balancing that such an action is interpreted to signify, the right has been portraying Ricci, et al. as the latest poster children for white victimization. As the Journal explained it on April 22 (the day the Court heard oral arguments in the case) “the plaintiffs deserve to have the law applied equally-whatever the color of their skin.”

Not only was the decision by New Haven authorities unfair generally, according to this narrative, but it was especially injurious to Mr. Ricci, who, the New York Times informs us gave up a second job so he could study “up to thirteen hours a day,” and who, because of his dyslexia, “paid an acquaintance to read textbooks onto tapes” for him, and who practiced day and night, using flashcards to help him remember the minutiae that would no doubt find its way onto the test. Ricci scored sixth out of seventy-seven firefighters who took the exam, and would have stood a good chance of obtaining one of the leadership positions had the test been certified by officials in New Haven.

Although one is free to disagree with the decision to throw out the test, before reaching such a conclusion it would help to know the facts–all of them–behind the case. Sadly, one will not glean such information from the snippets provided thus far in the news, or from the blatantly inaccurate account in the Journal editorial. Though they suggest, “the facts of Ricci are not in dispute,” nothing could be further from the truth. They are, and the facts as articulated by the Wall Street Journal couldn’t be more incorrect.

Facts of the Case: What Ricci is and Isn’t About

Red Room for more

Women’s groups in Kenya have started a week-long “sex strike”, in an attempt to press the country’s leaders to resolve rifts and work together. Ten non-governmental organizations urged women across the nation to boycott sex with their husbands and partners along with a statement calling for reforms in government and action on promoting women’s rights.

Rukia Subow, chairwoman of the Women’s Development Organization, said the group believed the boycott would persuade men to press the government to make peace. Ida Odinga, the wife of the Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, said on Thursday that she would join the strike to protest against divisions between her husband and the country’s president.

It was not clear whether the wife of Mwai Kibaki, the president, would join the strike. The east African country has been in political turmoil since a presidential election in December 2007 which Odinga accused Kibaki of stealing. Protests led to violence that killed more than 1,000 people and left more than 600,000 homeless.

Lanka Truth

by Catherine Lutz

Much about our current world is unparalleled: holes in the ozone layer, the commercial patenting of life forms, degrading poverty on a massive scale, and, more hopefully, the rise of concepts of global citizenship and universal human rights. Less visible but equally unprecedented is the global omnipresence and unparalleled lethality of the U.S. military, and the ambition with which it is being deployed around the world. These bases bristle with an inventory of weapons whose worth is measured in the trillions and whose killing power could wipe out all life on earth several times over. Their presence is meant to signal, and at times demonstrate, that the US is able and willing to attempt to control events in other regions militarily. The start of a new administration in Washington, and the possibility that world economic depression will give rise to new tensions and challenges, provides an important occasion to review the global structures of American power.

Officially, over 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees are massed in 909 military facilities in 46 countries and territories.[1] There, the US military owns or rents 795,000 acres of land, and 26,000 buildings and structures valued at $146 billion. These official numbers are quite misleading as to the scale of US overseas military basing, however, excluding as they do the massive buildup of new bases and troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as secret or unacknowledged facilities in Israel, Kuwait, the Philippines and many other places. $2 billion in military construction money has been expended in only three years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Just one facility in Iraq, Balad Air Base, houses 30,000 troops and 10,000 contractors, and extends across 16 square miles with an additional 12 square mile “security perimeter.”

Deployed from those battle zones in Afghanistan and Iraq to the quiet corners of Curacao, Korea, and England, the US military domain consists of sprawling Army bases, small listening posts, missile and artillery testing ranges, and berthed aircraft carriers.[2] While the bases are literally barracks and weapons depots and staging areas for war making and ship repair facilities and golf courses and basketball courts, they are also political claims, spoils of war, arms sales showrooms, toxic industrial sites, laboratories for cultural (mis)communication, and collections of customers for local bars, shops, and prostitution.

The environmental, political, and economic impact of these bases is enormous and, despite Pentagon claims that the bases simply provide security to the regions they are in, most of the world’s people feel anything but reassured by this global reach. Some communities pay the highest price: their farm land taken for bases, their children neurologically damaged by military jet fuel in their water supply, their neighbors imprisoned, tortured and disappeared by the autocratic regimes that survive on US military and political support given as a form of tacit rent for the bases. Global opposition to U.S. basing has been widespread and growing, however, and this essay provides an overview of both the worldwide network of U.S. military bases and the vigorous campaigns to hold the U.S. accountable for that damage and to reorient their countries’ security policies in other, more human, and truly secure directions.

Japan Focus for more

Progressive Nepali Forum in Americas (PNEFA) is deeply concerned over the unfortunate political developments arising out of the civilian coup staged by President Dr. Ram Baran Yadav in connivance with the Nepal Army General
Rukmangad Katwal, who was fired by the Maoist?led government for his insubordination to civilian authority.

PNEFA believes President Yadav’s move has not only violated the constitution but also seriously undermined the legitimate mandate of a democratically elected civilian government. While reinstating the fired Chief of the Army Staff the President has overstepped the boundary of the constitution. He has acted in a regressive and reactionary way, a move reminiscent of Ganendra Shah’s assumption
of executive power through dismissal of the elected government in February, 2005.

We further believe that the President has become a pawn at the hand of conniving military generals, foreign stooges, and anti?national elements positioned inside different political parties. As a result, President Yadav has lost the moral as well as constitutional ground to lead the office of highly respected institution of Presidency.
We urge all Nepalis who believe in democracy, rule of law, and civilian government to condemn this unconstitutional act and demand immediate withdrawal of his illegal move.

We also strongly condemn the act of certain foreign powers, whose interference in Nepal’s internal political dynamics encourages the regressive forces to turn the country back to the sad condition that existed before the last elections.

We also condemn United Marxist Leninist (UML), Nepali Congress (NC) and other forces who sought foreign help and made themselves available to be played at the hand of foreign power. This tactic might have served these opportunist parties’ political expediency but it has hurt the patriotic sentiment of the people of Nepal.

PNEFA welcomes the decision of Prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to resign and congratulates for his bold action. We urge CPN Maoist to act proactively and to carry forward the agenda of writing the new constitution. The peace process must be allowed to work to its logical end of full democracy.

We urge the Supreme Court to nullify the President Yadav’s unconstitutional action and restore civilian supremacy. Failing to do so, we urge the members of Constitution Assembly to impeach the President, safeguard national independence by saying NO to foreign meddling in internal affairs of Nepal. We believe in the unflinching unity among patriotic and republican democrats to safeguard national
unity and independence.

Advisers
Chitra Tiwari
Gopi Upreti
Shailesh Shrestha

Executive Board
Abi Sharma, President
Santosh Thapalia, Vice President
Chandra Rai, General Secretary
Bhanu Poudyal, Secretary

Members
Bikash Jaisi
Karsang Lama
Subas B K
Shambhu Kattel

2779 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5N 4C5
Tel: (604) 506 9259, Email: pnefacc@gmail.com

(Submitted by SANSAD

MUMBAI: Last week, Durban-based sales advisor Joe Singh and his partner Wesley Nolan solemnised their relationship at a ceremony where a Hindu priest officiated. In the Singh living room, Wesley tied a necklace with a Ganesha pendant around Joe’s neck. The couple, now honeymooning in Mauritius, chose the Ganesha instead of garlands because both of them are “staunch Hindus” and wanted the Elephant God to “ward off evil and remove obstacles from their path”.

The grooms had sent out shimmering wedding invitations weeks in advance, had hand-embroidered shervanis shipped all the way from India, and took their vows before a hawan or ceremonial fire. They spent around 18 months preparing for the day and Joe’s mother Rita Govender said the larger family had been extraordinarily supportive of the plan.

A year ago, a Mumbai-based IT professional married his white boyfriend of five years in a boisterous ceremony in Seattle. They too had the shervanis and hawan. Around 450 people attended, many of them uncles and aunts from Mumbai. The boy’s parents initially had serious reservations about making their son’s sexuality public. “But by the end of it, his mother was in mother-in-law mode,” laughs one of the guests.

These warm, happy stories may sound unbelievable given the stream of stories of social hostility against gay people, but the fact is that same-sex marriage ceremonies have been performed in Indian households, rich and poor, and in cities and small towns alike. While the hawan nuptials may not have legal standing, the ritual is remarkable in a country where homosexuality is still considered a criminal act punishable by up to ten years’ in the clink. Ironically, the police cannot bust a same-sex marriage because a ceremony cannot prove homosexuality as defined by Section 377.

A Mumbai activist from Gay Bombay confirms that there are reports of marriages every week, whether it is a lesbian couple in Punjab or Kerala or gay men in Gujarat or Delhi. Ashok Row Kavi, who pioneered the opening of the closet in India, says he knows several couples who have tied the knot. “There’s one big plus-point about Hindu priests,” says Kavi with a straight face. “They’ll forget about everything if you show them a few bucks.”

Same-sex marriage ceremonies are not an entirely new phenomenon, although they’ve largely stayed under the radar. Sixteen years ago, when Aditya Advani told his parents he was gay, his mum first hugged him and then suggested that he put in a matrimonial ad in a leading Indian newspaper, for a suitable boy. Two years later, in 1993, he brought Michael Tarr home to meet the family. It was on this visit that Aditya complained about having to attend yet another family wedding. “I don’t know these people, why do I have to go to the wedding? They would never come for mine,” he griped. To which, his mother, a lawyer who, in Aditya’s words, “tends to shake the premise of things”, said half-jokingly, “Why not? Let’s have a ceremony for Michael and you.” And so there was one.

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By Angela Robson

The dangerous practice of ‘widow cleansing’ is starting to come out into the open

Healthy conversation: a group of men discuss the taboo of widow cleansing and (left)former cleanser Esban Ochanga. Photo: Frederic Courbet

The men sitting in the shade of a large thorn tree on the outskirts of Kano-Angola village, 10 miles inland from the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya’s Nyanza province, are in buoyant spirits today. There is bravado, there are lewd jokes, but there are also long periods of silence.

One man in particular commands attention. As soon as he begins to talk, the rest of the group listen deferentially. Esban Ochanga is tall and slender with a far-away look in his eyes. He has called the men together to talk about the practice of widow cleansing, whereby Luo women, after the death of their spouse, are pressurized into having unprotected sex; ostensibly to allow their husband’s spirit to roam free in the afterlife. It is a tradition rarely spoken about in public. ‘I knew my brother had died and they told me it was AIDS, but I thought a Luo could not die because of that virus,’ says Ochanga. ‘So I cleansed his widow and I contracted HIV. That is what killed my first wife.’

With the spiralling rates of HIV, men have become reluctant to inherit or cleanse widows. About 15 per cent of the population in Nyanza have HIV; 63 per cent live below the poverty line. In Kano-Angola, two-thirds of people who have tested for HIV have turned out positive.

Increasingly, ‘male cleansers for hire’ – who go from village to village to perform the service – are being brought in. Ochanga tells the group that a cleanser operating in Kano-Angola is even having sex with recently deceased women, at the behest of their families. None of the men look surprised. ‘The commercial part of widow cleansing, I also did,’ admits Ochanga to the group. ‘It was for the money and it seemed easy.’

Though most of the men gathered are HIV positive, Ochanga is the only one to have come out openly to his wives and community, not only about his status but also about his work as a cleanser. Working as a volunteer peer educator with the Movement of Men Against AIDS in Kenya, a charity which encourages men to play a more prominent role in Africa’s response to HIV, Ochanga and other members of the community are supporting people to have HIV tests and to use condoms. Ochanga says he takes antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) and practises safer sex with all his wives. Two are HIV positive, the other is negative.

Mother-to-child HIV transmission rates are dropping and Ochanga says that – as a result of discussion groups like this – attitudes are beginning to change. ‘How much were you paid to cleanse?’ asks a man in his thirties, laughing nervously. ‘The price of a cow. Just one night and you’ve got a cow,’ replies Ochanga, shrugging his shoulders. ‘My grandfather did it, my father did it, so I was not afraid of doing it. But the sons of this village will cease to do it.’

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By Kamila Hyat

There are two dimensions to the challenge of defeating the Taliban. One of course is the issue of re-gaining control over the territories they have wrested away from the state. The military successes in Dir and Buner, as the army moves into a new phase of aggression, are of course encouraging. The mysteries of how tactics in this respect are decided remain rather obscure though. In the past the civilian governments have implied that the military is unwilling to take on the Taliban. In an unusually strong set of comments the US has meanwhile slammed the government while praising the military.

What wheels are moving behind the scenes we don’t quite know – but we have learnt from the past to be wary in such situations. And meanwhile, despite the increasingly nonsensical statements of Sufi Mohammad, who now says democracy is un-Islamic and Sharia must extend across Pakistan, the ANP government seems determined to cling to its myth of a peace accord that seems increasingly fragile by the day, if not the hour.

There is, however, another aspect to battling the Taliban. That is the question of control over minds. The Zia years taught us how difficult it can be to fight off notions of morality used to brainwash and blind people. The dance with orthodoxy that began during the 1980s – when TV actresses rose from their beds with dupattas miraculously intact – lingers on. It has taken nearly two decades to reclaim some of the space Zia stole away from us, and re-discover music, classical dance and the simple liberty to dress as we choose.

Now the Taliban have launched a new threat to these basic freedoms. In Lahore’s Liberty Market shopping centre – women have been ordered over loudspeakers to cover their heads. The more relaxed dress codes that had become the norm, echoing back to a happier time in the 1960s and the 1970s have begun once more to retreat. Many women admit they are more careful than ever before about how they dress in public. In both Karachi and Lahore stories echo of threats being made to women shoppers in the streets. These may be inaccurate, but they add to the fear we all feel almost constantly.

The threat to schools – especially those that are co-educational or which take in just girls – is also terrifying. No one could perhaps have imagined a situation where security cameras appear at school gates, visitors face elaborate searches and pupils live in fear of bomb attacks. This could be the work of the handful of elements on the lunatic fringe who have in the past placed explosives at juice shops frequented by young couples and attacked the venue of a performing arts festival. It could also be the doing of individual ‘pranksters’. But the effect it has had is very real – altering the city scene forever.

Absurdly, even an up-market ‘Islamic’ school, where girls and boys are taught to memorise the Holy Quran alongside other lessons, and whose tiny pupils, some little more than toddlers, step out of their cars wearing headscarves and caps, has been threatened. But then again the fact that such schools have mushroomed in all our cities – educating the children of the elite in air-conditioned classrooms – reflects a change in mindset.

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