Kyai Habib leads the al-Imdad religious pesantren (boarding school)
in Bantul, Yogyakarta. His students are known as santri. For him,
environmentalism is both an everyday spiritual and a material practice.
He urges his santris to always follow Allah’s mandate to protect the
earth, while at the same time involving them in a recycling program as
well as a small-scale biogas project. For his hard work, he was awarded a
prestigious provincial environmental prize in 2020: the Kalpataru DIY.
Kyai Habib is an exemplary religious leader who has successfully
mobilised resources to green a local region in Indonesia. Many more like
him are out there, yet they do not often appear in the media, whether
mainstream or otherwise.
The involvement of religious groups in halting environmental problems
in Indonesia is a relatively new phenomenon. It took shape within
broader secular environmental discourse about climate change from the
early 2000s, specifically after the Bali Climate Conference of 2007.
Government meetings since then have often featured religious
non-governmental institutions (RNGIs) like Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul
Ulama (NU). These two biggest RNGIs each have environmental councils.
Muhammadiyah’s, originally known as the Lembaga Lingkungan Hidup
(Environment Institute), is now called the Majelis Lingkungan Hidup,
MLH-Muhammadiyah (Environment Council). NU has its Lembaga
Penanggulangan Bencana dan Iklim – LPBI-NU (Disaster Mitigation and
Climate Change Institute).
The future of religious environmentalism is promising. Muhammadiyah
claims to have 35 million members, and NU 90 million, representing
almost half of Indonesia’s population. With their pesantrens, schools,
mosques, and universities, these organisations have the power to
transform the country from a developing nation into a sustainable one.
But how might these institutions initiate such a transformation? To
understand the answer, we need to examine how they mobilise their
adherents at the local level to create concrete environmental
initiatives.
Muhammadiyah schools have been investing in green schools and
building renewable energy sources. NU pesantrens have been planting
trees. These programs reach beyond adherents to also engage local
villagers, who are attracted to both the spiritual and the material
incentives they offer.
Muslims affiliated with Muhammadiyah and NU believe God will
compensate them for their involvement both in the hereafter and
materially in this world. Spiritually, God will increase their iman
(faith) and recompense those who have protected nature in the life
hereafter by granting them jannah (paradise). Materially, God will
increase their concrete resources, such as money and property, in the
here and now.
Indonesian pious environmentalism involves both ecological and
economic activities. The intertwining of material and spiritual profit
is like two sides of a coin. They refer to the Qur’an to find the
religious basis for protecting nature. Some Qur’anic verses clearly
mention humanity as the vicegerent of God on Earth, mandated to look
after it. The emphasis is on balancing the needs of humanity and the
rights of nature. The Qur’an does not mandate Muslims to prioritise one
over the other, and many of the devout Muslims I talked to take this
message seriously.
The Earth is bigger than us
Kyai Thontowi for example, a leader of Pesantren Al-Wasilah Garut in West Java, has been involved in local efforts to green Garut, while at the same time mentoring local communities to secure their livelihoods. He said the Qur’an acknowledges the existence of non-human beings, including the earth itself. These non-humans always pray and glorify God. The earth is bigger than we are, he said, yet we are arrogant and ignorant and we act as if we are bigger than the earth. The Kyai says that we should reduce our ego by respecting the earth and positioning ourselves as its equal instead of its master. Kyai Thonthowi used this notion of equality to teach his santris to practice ecology (nature conservation) and economy (nature commodification). According to him, conservation is for the earth, and the economy is for humanity.
The 164-member World Trade Organization (WTO) has implicitly
rubber-stamped a widely-condemned policy of “vaccine apartheid” which
has discriminated the world’s poorer nations, mostly in Africa and Asia,
depriving them of any wide-ranging intellectual property rights.
As Max Lawson, Co-Chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance and Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, said at the conclusion of the WTO’s ministerial meeting last week: “The conduct of rich countries at the WTO has been utterly shameful”.
“The European Union (EU) has blocked anything that resembles a
meaningful intellectual property waiver. The UK and Switzerland have
used negotiations to twist the knife and make any text even worse. And
the US has sat silently in negotiations with red lines designed to limit
the impact of any agreement.”
The Geneva-based WTO, whose members account for nearly 98 percent of
world trade, takes decisions by consensus resulting in a rash of
compromises on some of the disputed issues.
Lawson said: “This is absolutely not the broad intellectual property
waiver the world desperately needs to ensure access to vaccines and
treatments for everyone, everywhere. The EU, UK, US, and Switzerland
blocked that text.”
This so-called compromise, he argued, largely reiterates developing
countries’ existing rights to override patents in certain circumstances.
And it tries to restrict even that limited right to countries which do
not already have capacity to produce COVID-19 vaccines.
“Put simply, it is a technocratic fudge aimed at saving reputations, not lives”, he warned.
Summing up the conclusions of the meeting, the New York Times said
last week that WTO members agreed to loosen intellectual property rights
“to allow developing countries to manufacture patented Covid-19
vaccines under certain circumstances.”
”The issue of relaxing intellectual property rights for vaccines had
become highly controversial. It pitted the pharmaceutical industry and
developed countries that are home to their operations, particularly in
Europe, against civil society organizations (CSOs) and delegates from
India and South Africa.”
Oxfam’s Lawson said: “South Africa and India have led a 20-month
fight for the rights of developing countries to manufacture and access
vaccines, tests, and treatments. It is disgraceful that rich countries
have prevented the WTO from delivering a meaningful agreement on
vaccines and have dodged their responsibility to take action on
treatments while people die without them.”
“There are some worrying new obligations in this text that could
actually make it harder for countries to access vaccines in a pandemic.
We hope that developing countries will now take bolder action to
exercise their rights to override vaccine intellectual property rules
and, if necessary, circumvent them to save lives.”
In a statement released last week, the People’s Vaccine Alliance,
said waiving intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines have
sparked worldwide debate, from Washington to Beijing and Davos to the
World Trade Organization.
“Waiver advocates say that prioritizing the intellectual property
rights of vaccine developers (many of whom have received governmental
support) is making the vaccination rollout slow and unaffordable for
billions of people in less-wealthy nations”.
Supporters of the status quo say a waiver would chill investment in the very pharmaceutical research that led to the vaccines’ creation, the Alliance said.
Russia’s Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange has announced it will allow the trading of 12 Hong Kong stocks from Monday, June 20, raising concerns that Russians may use Hong Kong to evade western sanctions. It remains unclear how the proposed cross-border stock trading can be done without the SWIFT.
According to the SPB Exchange’s announcement , brokers will be able
to trade 12 Hong Kong stocks from June 20. The 12 companies include CK
Hutchison Holdings, WH Group, Tencent Holdings, CK Asset Holdings, Sino
Biopharmaceutical, Xiaomi Corp, Sands China, Country Garden Holdings,
Sunny Optical Technology Group, Meituan, Alibaba Group and JD.com.
Sputniknews, a Russian news agency, said that the number of the Hong
Kong-listed stocks that could be traded on the SPB Exchange would
increase to 50 in two months, 200 by the end of this year and more than
1,000 next year.
Mankevich Vitaly Vikentievich, President of the
Russian-Asian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RASPP), was
quoted in the Friday Sputniknews report as saying that Russian people
could diversify their investments by trading Hong Kong stocks.
A stock trading department head of Russia’s Alfa Group told
Sputniknews that Russians would increase their investments in Chinese
assets, particularly Hong Kong’s information technology sector, due to
the rising risks of having their foreign assets frozen by the West amid
the unstable geopolitics. He said some Russians would convert their
euros and US dollars into renminbi.
Currently, the SPB Exchange allows brokers to trade 17 foreign-listed
stocks, mostly US-listed companies, such as Citibank, the Bank of New
York Mellon and Lumen Technologies. A statement titled“SPB Exchange is
operating normally” has stayed on top of the bourse’s website since late
April but it is unclear how it can trade foreign stocks without the
SWIFT.
Herman Gref, chairman of Sberbank, said Friday during the St.
Petersburg International Economic Forum that Sberbank stopped clearing
its cross-border contract payment service in the Chinese currency from
June 7 but the service had already been resumed.
Meanwhile, the Hong Kong stock exchange said it had not formed any
partnership with the SPB Exchange. It said on Friday that it believed
that the scheme was part of the global issuer promotion program rolled
out by the SPB Exchange.
Last August, Joseph Yam, an Executive
Council member and the former chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary
Authority, said Hong Kong had a role to help connect the financial
markets of the mainland and foreign countries. He suggested that
investors should be allowed to buy Hong Kong stocks in renminbi and sell
them in Hong Kong’s dollar currency, which is pegged to the US dollar.
Yam’s suggestion has so far not been implemented. However, The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said in early May that it had prepared emergency plans in case Hong Kong or mainland China eventually is sanctioned by the US.
In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo, Trump supporters, including Doug Jensen, center, confront U.S. Capitol Police in the hallway outside of the U.S. Senate chamber at the Capitol in Washington. PHOTO/AP$/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File
Christian nationalism was used to ‘bolster, justify and intensify the January 6 attack on the Capitol,’ said Amanda Tyler, head of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
A team of scholars, faith leaders and advocates unveiled an exhaustive new report Wednesday (Feb. 9) that documents in painstaking detail the role Christian nationalism played in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and calling it an unsettling preview of things to come.
Christian nationalism
was used to “bolster, justify and intensify the January 6 attack on the
Capitol,” said Amanda Tyler, head of the Baptist Joint Committee for
Religious Liberty, which sponsored the report along with the Freedom
From Religion Foundation. Tyler’s group is behind an initiative called Christians Against Christian Nationalism.
The organizations touted the report
as “the most comprehensive account to date of Christian nationalism and
its role in the January 6 insurrection,” compiled using “videos,
statements, and images from the attack and its precursor events.”
Located at the confluence of two great civilisations — the South Asian and the Middle Eastern — Sindh has been prone to invasions from all sides throughout history.
It was first annexed to the Persian Empire during the reign of
Achaemenian ruler Darius Hystaspes, around 519 or 518 BC. Sindh’s last
annexation took place in 1843, at the hands of the British East India
Company under the command of Sir Charles Napier.
This conquest may be considered a watershed in the history of Sindh.
However, barring a few exceptions, the event has not received the
attention it deserves. Over time, many myths have cropped up and hidden
the facts. An effort has been made here to narrate this real-life drama
played on the stage of Sindh in 1843, and the roles played by various
characters, from the Talpur rulers to Ranjeet Singh to the East India
Company.
THE TALPURS
The Talpurs migrated from Balochistan to Sindh on the invitation of
their murshid (spiritual guides), the Kalhoras, who needed their trusted
disciples to augment their defences. Dr Hamida Khuhro describes in
Mohammad Ayub Khuhro: A Life of Courage in Politics how the Talpurs left
their hilly abode and came to Sindh “with their camel caravans, wild
hillmen in their baggy trousers, long shirts, long matted hair, and huge
turbans, carrying their sheep across the hill streams, their women on
the camels, and bards singing of the great deeds of Baloch heroes.”
With their warlike qualities, they acquired such power that the later
generations of the Kalhoras felt insecure about them. The assassination
of a high-ranking officer through the machinations of the Kalhoras
proved to be the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back, and the
Talpurs revolted against their erstwhile masters and defeated them at
the Battle of Halani in 1783.
“View of the Ewen Breaker of the Pa. Coal Co. The dust was so dense at times as to obscure the view, January 1911 S. Pittston, Pa” PHOTO/Flashbak“Young pickers on Swift’s Bog. All working. Falmouth, Mass, September 1911” PHOTO/FlashbakThe only country in the world not to ratify the United Nations treaty to protect children’s right is the United States (in purple on the map) MAP/HumaniumThe first thing you notice is their eyes. Their eyes are filled with hardship, pain, and an immeasurable burden, intensely focused on the work-on the oranges or the broccoli or the wood. These are the eyes of the subjects of David Bacon’s new series of photographs, Living Under the Trees. PHOTO/TEXT/Santa Barbara Independent“An estimated 500,000 children are working on tobacco fields in the United States, most of them in extremely hazardous conditions.” PHOTO/DW
in the past, child labor was common in the United States
“There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work.”
now exploiting children for high profits, has become the norm
an old Native American chieftain was a given a tour of the New York City
Brooklyn Bridge, circus, skyscrapers, etc. were shown to the chieftain
many Christian men asked him:
“What is the most surprising thing you have seen?”
the Native American chieftain took his time and replied:
Since being elected to office in 2013, Seattle
City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and her socialist party have been
locked in a bitter battle against the city’s moneyed elites, who have
poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a corporate PAC called “A
Better Seattle” and saturated television and digital platforms with
negative advertising. Sawant is hated because she is effective.
Following a three-year struggle against the richest man in the
world—Jeff Bezos—and his political establishment, she and her allies
pushed through a tax on big business that increased city revenues by an
estimated $210 to 240 million a year.
Her leadership and her party provide an example of effective
resistance to the war being waged on the working class and the poor—but,
as she explains in this episode of The Chris Hedges Report,
every victory has been won in spite of entrenched opposition from
Democrats. Instead of depending on the Democratic Party establishment,
Sawant says the only way to make advances in the class war is through
class struggle and mobilizing ordinary people.
Chris Hedges interviews writers, intellectuals, and dissidents, many banished from the mainstream, in his half-hour show, The Chris Hedges Report. He gives voice to those, from Cornel West and Noam Chomsky to the leaders of groups such as Extinction Rebellion, who are on the front lines of the struggle against militarism, corporate capitalism, white supremacy, the looming ecocide, as well as the battle to wrest back our democracy from the clutches of the ruling global oligarchy.
Chris Hedges:In December,
Socialist Alternative leader and Seattle city council Member Kshama
Sawant defeated a well-funded campaign by the city’s business community
to remove her in a recall vote. Since being elected to office in 2013,
Sawant and her socialist party have been locked in a bitter battle
against the city’s moneyed elites, which has poured hundreds of
thousands of dollars into a corporate PAC called A Better Seattle and
saturated television and digital platforms with negative advertising.
She and her party have been denied ads by Google, YouTube, and Hulu.
Amazon alone spent over $3 million to defeat her when she ran for office
in 2019. Sawant is hated because she is effective. She helped lead the
fight in 2014 that made Seattle the first major American city to mandate
a $15 an hour minimum wage.
Following a three-year struggle against one of the richest men in the
world, Jeff Bezos, and his political establishment, she and her allies
pushed through a tax on big business that increased city revenues by an
estimated $210 to $240 million a year. She was part of the movement that
led to Seattle’s successful ban on school year evictions of school
children, their families, and school employees. She was one of the
sponsors of a bill that protects tenants from being evicted at the end
of their term leases, requiring landlords to provide tenants with the
right to renew their leases, and prohibiting landlords from evicting
tenants for nonpayment of rent if the rent was due during the COVID
emergency and the renter could not pay due to financial hardship.
Her leadership and her party provide an example of effective
resistance to the war being waged on the working class and the poor.
Joining me to discuss her nearly decade-long battle against the
billionaire class and the lessons we can take from her successful
struggle is Kshama Sawant.
So Kshama, the campaign to remove you from office was dirty. It was
highly funded. But rather than go on the defensive, you used the recall
campaign to collect over 15,000 signatures to establish rent control,
which I expect shocked your rich adversaries. I wondered if you could
explain those tactics.
Kshama Sawant:Yes. I think the
idea of going on the offensive for the working class and our
representatives and our movements to go on the offensive against big
business and the politicians that represent them is contrary to the
conventional guidebook we are handed down by the Democratic Party
officials and by the NGO leaders. And in fact, unfortunately, even many
social movement and labor movement leaders, the idea is that you can
actually make change by not antagonizing the powers that be and
resorting to moral persuasion and prioritizing peaceful – And not just
peaceful, but extremely cordial relationships with big business,
politicians, with Democratic Party politicians as in Seattle, and with
big business lobbyists.
Well, we threw that guidebook out the window because we understand
from our study of history as socialists, as Marxists, that that is
precisely what doesn’t work in the interest of the working class. And in
fact, it is not an incidental idea, this pervasive idea that, well, we
should all be talking nicely regardless of our position in society, and
that is the way to convince rich people to hand a little bit of crumbs
to those of us who don’t have any.
That idea is a false one, but it doesn’t incidentally exist in our
society under capitalism. It is very much a conscious narrative that is
put forward by the ruling class, by the capitalist class, by their
political representatives, and their media representatives in the
corporate media. Because it benefits them for working people to be
lulled into this idea that we’re all on the same side, this is a shared
situation, that COVID was a shared sacrifice.
Well, I think people’s eyes have been opened for the most part in
understanding that the very essence of capitalism is that the very
wealthy at the top, they make this enormous profit at the expense of
ordinary people. And the only way really to address the class war that
we face is through class struggle.
Chris Hedges:Can you talk about
the role of the Democratic Party, especially during your efforts to
raise the minimum wage, to protect people from evictions, to increase
taxes on large corporations such as Amazon? Where were the Democrats?
Kshama Sawant:Yeah, I mean just
to make sure all your viewers know, Seattle, the electorate, the
ordinary people are extremely progressive, and you could say it’s a
left-leaning city for the most part. And the city council has nine
council members. I am one socialist, and the rest of the eight have
always been Democrats from as long as I know. And certainly as long as
I’ve been on the council, since I took office in January 2014.
One of the first things that happened when I took office was these
two prominent Democrats, Democratic council members who came into my
office, sat me down, and said, well it’s all well and good – I mean, I’m
paraphrasing, obviously, I don’t remember the exact words – But
paraphrasing, that it’s all well and good. You roused the rabble and got
elected as a socialist, but we’re here to tell you that City Hall runs
on our terms and you are not winning any wage increase, let alone $15 an
hour. And less than six months later, we had won the $15 an hour
minimum wage. So that about sums it up for the Democrats.
And as you indicated, Chris, it has never changed. It has never been
different. It’s not like they were close to $15 an hour, but they were
forced to concede, and then they were morally persuaded to then be on
the side of working people. No, it has never been that way. As a matter
of fact, even the more self-described progressives, not the overt
corporate Democrats, even have played a role which is actually contrary
to the interest of working people, and every step of the way they have
placed obstacles in the path of winning these victories.
And so every such victory, not just $15 an hour, but the Amazon tax
that you mentioned, all the renters rights victories that we have won,
unprecedented renters rights victories that we have won, every single
victory has come about despite the either overt or backroom opposition
and tactics by the Democrats. And the reason we have won is because we
mobilized ordinary people, union members, to fight for it.
Chris Hedges:Yet, the rhetoric of the Democratic Party is aligned with your campaign. I mean, for instance, Biden, when he ran for the presidency, promised that he would work to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. He also promised to cancel student debt. And yet, once in power, of course, I think as your situation illustrates, they work at cross purposes, from certainly what they have espoused during campaigns.
The Ayahs’ Home housed hundreds of destitute caregivers
During
the heyday of the British empire, thousands of women from India and
other parts of Asia were brought to London to look after young children –
but many of these nannies were later abandoned and left to fend for
themselves. Now, a building in London which housed them is set to be
commemorated with a blue plaque.
The
blue plaque scheme, run by the UK charity English Heritage, honours
buildings across London that have been closely associated with important
historical figures.
Several
Indians – including independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, the country’s
first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and the architect of its
constitution BR Ambedkar – have been commemorated with the plaques. In
2020, World War Two spy Noor Inayat Khan became the first woman of Indian origin to receive a blue plaque.
The
honour for the Ayahs’ Home, which stands at 26 King Edward’s Road in
Hackney, East London, is the result of a campaign started by Farhanah
Mamoojee, a 30-year-old woman of Indian origin, who first heard of the
place when it was briefly mentioned in a BBC documentary.
The
building is known to have housed hundreds of destitute ayahs and amahs –
as Indian and Chinese nannies were called respectively.
Ms Mamoojee, and historians who have researched the role and contributions of these nannies, now hope that the honour will help shine a spotlight on these forgotten women.
Who were the ayahs?
Most of these women came from countries such as India, China, Hong Kong, British Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Burma (Myanmar), Malaysia and Java (part of Indonesia).
“Ayahs
and amahs were basically domestic workers and the backbone of British
families in colonial India. They looked after the children, entertained
them, told them stories, and rocked them to sleep,” says Rozina Visram,
historian and author of Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History.
When
these families returned to Britain, they would often bring their ayahs
back with them. Some were asked to accompany the families just for the
long, difficult voyage, Ms Visram says, while others were employed for a
few years.
“These nannies were usually provided with a return ticket back home at the expense of the family,” she says.
But
not everyone was as lucky – many were dismissed and abandoned by their
employers without any pay or arrangements for their passage back home.
Some were also forced to stay on because they couldn’t find families to
accompany them on the return voyage.
“This led to the ayahs being forced to fend for themselves,” says Florian Stadtler, a lecturer in literature and migration at the University of Bristol who has worked with Ms Visram on the topic.
According to Fermi’s Paradox
the apparent absence to date of observable extra-terrestrial
intelligent life suggests the lifetime of technological civilizations
may not be long, consistent with Carl Sagan’s estimate of relatively short life span of intelligent species which discover the means of self-annihilation. As the nuclear arms race began to escalate again in the late 1970s, Sagan became increasingly concerned about the life expectancy of our own civilization. The proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and of wars around the world in the 20-21st
centuries, as well as currently, testifying to the relevance of Fermi’s
paradox for the likelihood of a near-term omnicide of our war-like
civilization.
That
humans are capable of committing the most horrendous crimes toward each
other, other species and nature, including mass exterminations, is
demonstrated during the last century by the Nazi concentration camps and
genocidal conflicts such as in Viet Nam, Cambodia, Rwanda, Yemen, the list goes on …
Following Hiroshima and Nagasaki the rising prospects of a nuclear war,
with consequent firestorms, radiation from fallout, a nuclear winter,
and electromagnetic pulses are looming ever greater. According to Robock and Toon (2012) paper “Self-assured destruction: The climate impacts of nuclear war“,
a thermonuclear war could result in the end of modern civilization, in
part due to a long-lasting nuclear winter and the destruction of crops.
In one model the average temperature of Earth during a nuclear winter,
where black smoke from cities and industries rise into the upper
stratosphere, lowers global temperatures by 7 – 8° Celsius for several
years.
The effects of global heating are as severe as well as longer term. As stated by Hansen et al. (2012) “Burning
all fossil fuels would create a different planet than the one that
humanity knows. The palaeoclimate record and ongoing climate change make
it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points,
setting in motion irreversible changes, including ice sheet
disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline, extermination of a
substantial fraction of species on the planet, and increasingly
devastating regional climate extremes”
A global nuclear war,
with consequent radioactive environment in the background of an
accelerating carbon saturation of the atmosphere and global heating, can
only lead to the demise of the biosphere. The propensity of “sapiens” for genocide and ecocide, culminating in the Nazi gas chambers, the nuclear arms race , the destruction of the atmosphere, the mass extinction of species and the basic life support systems
of the planet, are hardly masked by the spate of hollow words and
Orwellian untruths by politicians and the bulk of the media, divorced
from morality and any action to avert the demise of life on Earth as we
know it.
Whereas the ultimate consequences of global heating could
occur within a century, including temperature polarities such as heat
waves and cooling of large ocean regions by ice melt flow from
Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets (Gikson 2019), a nuclear war on the scale of the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) can erupt on a time scale of minutes …
On
July 16, 1945, witnessing the atomic test at the Trinity site, New
Mexico, Robert Oppenheimer, the chief nuclear scientist, cited the Hindu
scripture of Shiva from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.
Sadly the behaviour of “Sapiens” is providing evidence for Fermi’s paradox in terms of species’ self-destruction, unless humans can wake up in time???