Europe Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, Capitalism, Wind of Change Asia and Africa:
In Europe, the feudal class rebelled against the excesses of kings and forced them to grant some powers to the aristocracy. Civil rights were celebrated in the Magna Carta. Parliaments were born.
Europe entered the Enlightenment phase. Industrial revolution caused a qualitative and quantitative change in the mode of production. National bourgeoisie emerged. They needed workers, produce of the land and power to acquire both. They aligned themselves with royalty and aristocracy in turn and gradually over powered both.
Capitalism was born and ushered in democracy, which empowered the bourgeoisie as everyone (men only) had a vote and would naturally support the party of the people who offered them employment.
Women started getting franchised only at the end of the nineteenth century with Australia-New Zealand taking the lead. Great Britain actually gave them a vote after the USA did.
Capitalists and merchants found it difficult-expensive to acquire raw material and needed markets for their products as well. They went around marauding all over the world and found easy pickings among the people who were self-sufficient and had neglected coastal defense. They subdued people of Asia, Africa and Americas. The Church gave them official permission and blessings. The world entered the imperialist age.
Infrastructure had to be developed in colonized lands. Natives had to be given the education to be able to perform minor administrative work as useful subjects with docility. A comprador class had to be developed to control the natives as the rulers lacked adequate numbers. This applied more to thickly populated and advanced countries in Asia. In Americas and Australasia, the simple device of genocide worked fine.
In North America slaves were imported for harsh manual labor.
Africa was a different case altogether. It was generally not fertile; Arabs and later the Europeans took over the productive parts.
The educated and the rich among the people of the colonies in Asia and Africa wanted to replace the foreign rulers. Independence movements started raising their head. Meanwhile, supported by the masses, the Communist Party in Russia had overthrown the Czar and established a dictatorship of the ‘proletariat’ via the agency of members of the party. They owed their success partly to the fact that Europe was in the throes of WW I.
WW I did not adequately settle the conflict over the share claimed by colonial powers in the lands of Asia and Africa. After an uneasy peace of just over two decades, WW II broke out. Capitalism, with help from socialism, defeated fascism. The Soviet Union acquired much of Eastern Europe as spoils of war. The Hot war was replaced by a cold one.
Led by the now dominant USA, an existential struggle ensued between the Soviet Union and the imperialist powers. A pressure was on the much-weakened Britain to let go of the colonies, lest they follow the socialist path. They ‘granted’ independence to a cunningly nay devilishly divided India. That bit of chicanery would pay rich dividends.
Winds of change were blowing in Asia and Africa. People overthrew the yoke of foreign rule. Nehru, Nasser, Nkrumah, Tito and Sukarno raised the banner of the non-aligned movement.
The French wanted to hold on to Indo-China. Humiliated by a peasant army, they handed over the fight to the USA. Eisenhower, a general who had been transformed into a hero by WWII, led the country. His secretary of state, a hard-boiled cold warrior by the name of John Foster Dulles, subscribed to the domino theory. If one (Vietnam) were allowed to fall, all Asia would tumble into the lap of communists. He also led the campaign of sabotage against nationalist governments and corralled countries like Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Jordan into mutual’ defense treaties.
The biggest success was the over throw of Mossadeq in Iran in 1953. Military take over in Pakistan in 1958 was part of the same grand plan. Murder of Lumumba in Belgian Congo in 1961, China-India border war of the same year, 1965 overthrow of Sukarno, the 1967 Arab debacle among such diverse episodes, were the natural and sequential consequences.
The USA and Shah o o Vietnam, Iran, Big Money Back as Superpower, USSR Collapses, Globalization:
The USA, after attempts at a face saving formula, had failed, was driven out of Vietnam. The country went through a period of introspection but recovered in due course only to suffer a serious setback in the fall of the Shah of Iran, who was driven out in 1979 by a coalition of petit and commercial bourgeoisie, intellectuals, radical leftists and the clergy.
The US government thought that they could make a deal with the successor government. But the hatred for the Shah, and by corollary for the USA was such, and the clergy was led by the messianic zeal of Khomeini, that they managed to sideline and defeat all the factions and excluded the USA from the game.
Post-WW II the West including Europe had to concede some measures of an egalitarian system lest people opt for socialist parties, as they nearly did in Italy and France. The labor party in the UK and the governments in Scandinavian countries offered wide-ranging reforms in health care, education and welfare. The USA only offered health care and social security to the elderly and some assistance to the poor.
By the mid-sixties, big money had had enough of government intervention and took vigorous steps to regain lost ground. Corporately funded think tanks, academics and intellectuals developed a neo-liberal ideology. A concerted campaign, to take over the media, political parties and academia was launched. The Right Wing Evangelist Christian operatives threw their wholehearted support behind building a neoliberal coalition and played a key role in persuading the working class to vote against their interests.
With the 1979 advent into the power of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA in 1980, the conservative movement came into its own. Post Thatcher and Reagan, Tony Blair in Britain and Bill Clinton in the USA abandoned their base of support and continued the ‘good’ work.
The fossilized Soviet leadership blundered into a confrontation in Afghanistan with the combined might of the West and subsidiary states like Pakistan and Iran. That, together with the largest to the under developed world, which kept their own citizens in relative want, took a heavy toll. Advances in mass communication had made Soviet citizens aware that they were subsidizing poorer and noncommunist countries.
Gorbachev took over and tried gradualism. He did not get anywhere. The military made a final but botched attempt to retrieve the situation. A true blue reactionary, Yeltsin took over.
The Soviet Union imploded on itself. The USA became the only super power. Muslim countries, which had gleefully helped out in the decline and demise of the Soviet Union, became the object of western corporate greed. They were sitting on most of the oil in the world.
Saddam who had bankrupted his country by helping the West by waging a war against Iran for eight long years was enticed into ‘retaking’ Kuwait, which had been a part of Iraq in Ottoman times. He had taken the precaution of taping his discussion with the US ambassador April Gillespie, that the USA had no position in his interest in Kuwait. It was all to be of no avail.
The Soviet Union was no longer in the equation. Bush the senior gathered a coalition force under the umbrella of the U.N.O and put Saddam in a bottle.
A few years later Yeltsin gave away a majority of the assets of the country to corporate parasites in return for comparatively little in election contributions. (There were no billionaires in the USSR in 1993. In 2000, there were 24). Russia became an economic basket case.
With the USSR out of the picture, the capitalists changed their tactics. They truly globalized and resorted to accumulation now at a greater cost to their own ‘people’. Manufacturing went to China, IT to India. Ranks of US unemployed, barely employed and inadequately employed swelled. Social benefits, little that they were anyway, were further whittled down. Forty-five million US citizens have no health coverage. At least twice as many have inadequate insurance. Hospital bills are the biggest cause of personal bankruptcy. Obama shied away from the Public Option. Obama Care only diverted more public funds to the health industry.
Third world satraps vied with each other in selling national assets. World Bank and International monetary fund underwrote projects, which would pauperize the countries. W.T.O helped along with discriminatory policies. Economic hit men and good old CIA destabilized any recalcitrant rulers.
Militant Islam Faustian Bargain, 9/11, Control over Assets:
Militant Islam had long had the “Great Satan” in its sights. They had made a “Faustian” bargain with one devil against what they perceived to be the more pernicious enemy in Afghanistan. Freed by the collapse of the USSR from the constraints of having to look over its shoulder, the great Satan was extending itself. It was hitting Muslim interests right and left. The worst cut of all was stationing of its troops in the holy land of Hejaz.
Palestine under Israeli heels remained a long festering sore. Muslim wealth was under ‘Kafir’ control. Muslim rulers had sold their soul.
Following the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan, civil war broke out in the country. Taliban, supported by the establishment in Pakistan emerged as victors and imposed a particularly barbaric regime under which women wearing high heels were beaten on the legs with sticks, men were stoned to death in public, without the benefit of an adequate trial, minorities were massacred, their women raped and boys sodomized.
They naturally infiltrated into Pakistan, where at one time the popular chant was, “Kaun bachaiga Pakistan, Taliban, Taliban” (who will save Pakistan? Taliban! Taliban!!).
The US looked on. One state department official, reminded of the promotion of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and their subsequent ditching, disdainfully responded, “There is no social security in such affairs”.
Right wing politicians of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan opportunistically sided with the extremist element. The latter came to be known as Taliban Khan.
They could not take the ‘Great Satan’ head on. Bombings of the Twin Towers, naval ships, and embassies culminated in 9/11. Little Britain had its own 7/7.
That properly woke the West up. But they reacted in a typically self-serving imperialist fashion.
Fundamentalist Christians gave ecclesiastical reasons for economic wars. They got Bush to the stage where the Supreme Court could put him in the White House. Academics developed spurious thesis of ‘Clash of Civilizations’. Bush found excuses – weapons of mass destruction, WMD’s in the popular usage, invented for the specific purpose and launched the war of liberation on Iraq. Britain helped along by announcing that Saddam was capable of launching missiles at targets hundreds of miles away at a few hours’ notice. When no WMD.’s were found, removal of Saddam became the moral excuse/imperative.
The real agenda was control over oil resources, the encirclement of Iran and China and infiltration of former Soviet Asian republics. Corporate interest was served by giving no bid contracts to minions of Dick Cheney and security firms like Blackwater.
Today we celebrate World Indigenous people’s day but in the backyard of the biggest democracy of the world is the systematic isolation and displacement of millions of Adivasis in the name of development. A veteran activist is fighting for the rights of the Adivasis in the Narmada valley, but the government is determined to ‘develop’ the state even when it ensures dislocation of thousands of Adivasis in India. Can we expect anything from those in power who have already decided what is ‘good’ for Adivasis by dislocating them without any honourable rehabilitation? The state does not even allow activist to peacefully protest against a project which has never been shared with those who are going to be affected. The brutal and condemnable police action against the Narmada activists led by Ms Medha Patkar, in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh reflect the methodology of the Indian state which does not believe in dialogue on the issue of ‘development’. Those who challenge it peacefully are anti-national while others who have picked up the guns have only given state legitimacy to brutally suppress the Adivasi revolt in the name of Naxalism. Frankly speaking, fasting methods will not move Indian elites unless it is either done by the prime minister or some Swamies and Babas. Anna Hazare’s fast was to discredit the Manmohan Singh government, and the nation is paying the price for it. Not that we loved Dr Singh but definitely he was much soberer and better than his alternative’.
Medha Patkar has courageously led the movement of the Narmada people for two decades or more, but at the same point of time, there is a need to introspect the strategies adopted by the movement. It needs to push the Adivasi resistance like Jharkhand where they have courageously fought the state apparatus and its attempt to amend the CNTA and SPTA. While no fix module could be developed as things depend on local conditions and many other things but definitely Gandhian methods have kept people apolitical and have only strengthened the opponents. I have never supported Gandhian methods of fasting because the state apparatus knows better when should the ‘fast” be given a national status and when not. Gandhi’s fast could not provide justice to people, neither did it create leadership from those communities for whom it was done. Gandhian fasts are largely meant to strengthen the leaders and not the people most of the time. The focus of a movement should be to politicise the battle and develop young leadership from those sections of society which we lead. That is my criticism of most of the movement as they are built around one person who is a ‘Nayak’ or messiah. All of sudden we take the person to high mountains, make him or her responsible
The focus of a movement should be to politicise the battle and develop young leadership from those sections of society which we lead. That is my criticism of most of the movement as they are built around one person who is a ‘Nayak’ or messiah. All of sudden we take the person to high mountains, make him or her, responsible for the fate of people and after some time the mistakes of these ‘great’ people then cost the entire society too much. It is not merely in political circles, the disease of hero worshipping has ruined democratic processes everywhere right from political parties to social movements to trade unions, or the individual family lives where ‘hero’ cant to anything wrong and can’t be critiqued. India must get out of hero worshipping. It is not merely with Modi or Gandhis, but it exists at every level. We need to focus on developing combined leadership keeping future of the movement in mind. A movement must change our perception too. It has to adopt diverse methods too that develop democratic spirit and democratize our mindset and social behaviour patterns.
Our solidarity with the cause of the Narmada and the heroic struggle that Medha ji has lead so far, but it is also time to think beyond. It would be great if some Adivasi leadership is evolved and allowed to lead the movement and decide their future too. I am not saying this without any reason as we find more and more Sangh Parivar element now active in the Adivasi regions as more Babas, more Eklavya Vidyalayas and more Hanuman Mandirs in these regions. Like Shiv-charcha in Uttar Pradesh, they depoliticised many among the Dalits and OBC communities. It is going the dangerous way in the Madhya Pradesh, Chhattishgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand and other regions.
As we know the Jharkhand government has brought the anti-conversion law which is a deliberate attempt actually to divide the Adivasis on religious line. Such things are bound to happen. It is, therefore, time to develop much more powerful political leadership among the Adivasis who can raise the issue and compel the governments to accept their demands. A movement has to highlight the issues of the people which in all fairness Narmada has done, but it now should take it further in the greater interest of the community. Narmada’s issue is not a merely ecological disaster that it is bound to bring but also annihilation of the Adivasi culture.
The government of India is duty bound to protect the Adivasi land and culture. Today when the world celebrates Indigenous People’s Day on August 9 and lets us remind the government to protect and promote the Adivasis natural habitats, their land and culture but is it possible from those who take pride in their Aryans values and feel everyone living in India is indigenous’ person. It is time for the international community to ask the government of India to acknowledge Adivasis as indigenous persons as only then they would be duty bound to protect them under the international laws for the protection of the indigenous people. India simply has no such laws because it has depoliticised the Adivasi leadership and promoting superstition in the name of culture among them. The state has failed to protect Adivasi zones and whatever little laws are there from the past are being amended to hand them over to greedy corporations.
On the World Indigenous People’s day we realise how in the name of ‘development’ the Adivasi lives are being threatened, their lands are being taken over forcibly, and their areas are being converted into militarised zones to protect those looters who are coming there to mint money destroying the naturally rich environment. The aim of raising the issue of indigenous people meant to protect the Adivasi zones from not merely encroachments of outsiders but also from the mindless destruction in the name of development which has virtually made them landless and homeless in their land. India and its neighbours have deliberately not treated the Adivasi people as indigenous persons for political purposes. The RSS in India has called them ‘vanvasis’ or forest dweller a clever term to defunct the Aryan invasion theory.
India must embrace the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People adopted on September 13th, 2007 at the UN General Assembly which is the comprehensive document to protect the rights of the indigenous people and India is duty bound to protect the rights and culture of Adivasis.
Article 10 of the ‘declaration’ says that ‘Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, with the option of return’.
In the past 70 years, more than 9 million Adivasis became victims of ‘development’, and the governments have rarely shown any concern about that. If India amends its constitution and technically categorise the Adivasis as Indigenous people, it will be accountable to UN General Assembly on the Indigenous People’s right. Like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many other democracies, India needs to apologise to its indigenous people for the historical wrongs and neglect to its first people. It has done gravest damages to Adivasis culture and land and a constitutional amendment giving them the status of indigenous people will enhance the Adivasi rights and provide them much more strength and power to protect their culture and land from the onslaught of greedy corporates who in active connivance of the power elite are responsible for large scale displacement and cultural annihilation of Adivasis. It is time to take this issue seriously. The Adivasis have protected our environment, and the nation needs to protect them, and the best way would be to allow them to develop their land through their traditional democratic methods which are defined and protected under the international laws.
The media reports on the recent death of Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, of cancer after years of imprisonment, have focused on his life, especially the prison years and the continued surveillance of his wife, the poet Liu Xia. There has been less emphasis on the Charter 08 positions which still exist as “fire under the ashes.” Liu Xiaobo was the principle writer of Charter 08, but it was a collectively written policy paper and was then co-signed by a good number of academic intellectuals.
Charter 08 is consciously modeled on Charter 77 of Czechoslovakia, largely written by Vaclav Havel but also a collective effort of people to promote plurality, diversity and the capacity of self-organization outside the narrow boxes into which the state wanted to place people. This starting point of an autonomous culture was not a polemic against officialdom which could have been easily put down. Rather it was poets and novelists, painters and filmmakers, dramatists and political theorists attempting to go beyond or around censorship – what Havel called “The Power of the Powerless”.
Cultural challenges in the arts and sciences are more fundamental and enduring than a political manifesto. Thus governments watch cultural currents closely for danger signs of post-totalitarian currents.
Charter 08 is a combination of political propositions, basically of a liberal order and a broader call for the promotion of cultural and intellectual diversity. The political proposition of Charter 08 were continued in the November 1993 “Beijing Peace Charter” whose spokesperson was Qin Yongmen and the 1998 short-lived China Democratic Party led by Wang Youcai.
There were three elements in Charter 08 that were particularly frightening to Chinese government authorities and which led to the imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo for “inciting subversion of state power and the overthrow of the socialist system.” Only one element was directly political: the call for a federal constitution for China. The Charter 08 proposals were consciously timed to recall the 1908 first constitutional proposals as the Qinq dynasty was falling apart. This first constitutional proposal was to facilitate the transition from an empire with an emperor to a republican form of government largely practiced in Western Europe.
The constitutional forms which followed with the creation of the Republic of China as well as the later People’s Republic have been highly centralized. Proposals for regional autonomy such as those put forth by the Tibetans have always been considered as “splitist” – leading to dissolving China into its ethnic areas, again, leading as in the 1920s-1930s to the rise of “War Lords”. There is some discussion of federalism permitted when discussing the administration of Hong Kong and possible relations with Taiwan. However, federal structures for the “Mainland” are outside of tolerated issues. The mention, without much elaboration of a “federal republic” in Charter 08 raised red flags that were not missed by the authorities. As Liu Xiaobo wrote “Of the four pillars of totalitarian rule, only political centralization and its blunt repression remain… The two fold tyranny of the Maoist era – persecution of the flesh and trampling of the spirit – is no more, and there has been a significant decline in the effectiveness of political terrorism”.
The other two subjects that cause sleepless nights to government officials and that Charter 08 and Liu Xiaobo stressed were the growth of a pluralistic civil society and the possibility of nonviolent action — Mahatma Gandhi’s name being mentioned.
The role of civil society, especially in the break up of the Soviet Union and the end of its direct influence in Eastern Europe is a theme which has not escaped the attention of the Chinese government. Liu Xiaobo’s views were directed to civil society action in China. Liu Xiaobo wrote “China’s course of transformation into a modern, free society is bound to be gradual and full of twists and turns. The length of time it will take may surpass even the most conservative estimates… Civil society remains weak, civic courage inadequate and civic wisdom immature: civil society is still in the earliest stages of development, and consequently there is no way to cultivate in a short time a political force adequate to the task of replacing the Communist regime… Yet, in the post-Mao era, the society entirely based on official authority no longer exists. An enormous transformation toward pluralism in society has already taken place, and official authority is no longer able to fully control the whole society. The continuous growth of private capital is nibbling away at the regime’s economic foundation, the increasingly disintegrated value system is challenging its ideology, the persistently expanding civil rights protections are increasing the challenges to the strength of the arbitrary authority of government officials and the steadily increasing civic courage is making the effectiveness of political terror wither by the day.”
Even more dangerous was Liu Xiaobo’s evocation of Mahatma Gandhi and nonviolent action. As Liu Xiaobo wrote “The greatness of nonviolent resistance is that even as man is faced with forceful tyranny and the resulting suffering, the victim responds to hate with love, to prejudice with tolerance, to arrogance with humility, to humiliation with dignity, and to violence with reason. The victim, with love that is humble and dignified, takes the initiative to invite the victimizer to return to the rule of reason, peace and compassion, thereby transcending the vicious cycle of replacing one tyranny with another.”
“Nonviolence is committed to putting freedom into practice in everyday life through initiation of ideas, expression of opinions and rights defense actions and particularly through the continuous accumulation of each and every rights defense case, to accrue moral and justice resources, organizational resources and maneuvering experience in the civil sector. When the civic forces are not yet strong enough to change the macro-political environment at large, they can at least rely on personal conscience and small group cooperation to change the small micro-political environment within their reach…Bottom-up reform requires self-consciousness among the people, and self-initiated, persistent and continuously expanding civil disobedience movement among the people.”
At a time when there are more and more what the government calls “incidents” – strikes and demonstration concerning working and housing conditions, resident permits, and confiscation of rural lands for building projects, the government can easily fear that all these “incidents” combine into a country-wide protest movement with some overall leadership and a creative use of nonviolent techniques.
The body of Liu Xiaobo was burned quickly after his death, in part so that his friends could not attend the ceremony. However, there is fire under the ashes, and we can expect new nonviolent actions led in the spirit of Liu Xiaobo but with new leadership.
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Rene Wadlow
Rene Wadlow
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
Attention ‘wannabees’ who think they are as good as White Americans.
This is an abstract from a chapter from my first book,”A Medical Doctor Examines Life on Three Continents,”
[/themify_box]When I arrived in the country in 1974, the United States of America was friendlier to immigrants and diverse ethnicities than any other country I had lived and worked in. I had also discussed the working conditions with friends in countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, France, Holland and Germany. They all discriminated to various degrees against foreigners, minorities and new immigrants. The US was entirely different. I was offered a senior position in a good hospital on the basis of my British qualification. I was made to feel at home in Brooklyn, was invited to homes of my
When I arrived in the country in 1974, the United States of America was friendlier to immigrants and diverse ethnicities than any other country I had lived and worked in. I had also discussed the working conditions with friends in countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, France, Holland and Germany. They all discriminated to various degrees against foreigners, minorities and new immigrants. The US was entirely different. I was offered a senior position in a good hospital on the basis of my British qualification. I was made to feel at home in Brooklyn, was invited to homes of my coworkers, encouraged to develop a private practice and assisted in many other ways.
I also came across several physicians of subcontinental origin in positions of authority in my hospital and other hospitals in the area. Immigrants from the subcontinent counted business tycoons, corporate heads, banking chiefs, partners in investment firms, members of think tanks and elected officials among their ranks. By the waning years of the twentieth century, Muslims had made great political headway in the United States. Expatriates and local followers of the faith had united on a broad based platform and played a great part in raising public consciousness about the faith. Interfaith dialogue had become fashionable. They generously contributed to electoral campaigns. organizations like the Council on American Islamic Relations and American Muslim Alliance earned public recognition and the former had access to the White House. Muslim haters like former congressman Suarez and a senator from South Dakota, lost re-election races largely due the work of Muslim activists, not the least among them the cabbies in New York City, who transported voters to election booths to vote against Suarez.
By the waning years of the twentieth century, Muslims had made great political headway in the United States. Expatriates and local followers of the faith had united on a broad based platform and played a great part in raising public consciousness about the faith. The interfaith dialogue had become fashionable. They generously contributed to electoral campaigns. organizations like the Council on American Islamic Relations and American Muslim Alliance earned public recognition and the former had access to the White House. Muslim haters like former congressman Suarez and a senator from South Dakota lost re-election races largely due to the work of Muslim activists, not the least among them the cabbies in New York City, who transported voters to election booths to vote against Suarez.
A US senate candidate refused to accept a platform presented to him in New Jersey. A corps of volunteers manned the phones for seventy-two hours non-stop. The man lost.
US society is rather insular, though post 9/11 their perception of the outside world has undergone a change. Pre 9/11, an average person had little knowledge of anything outside his/her own region. New York City was as foreign to someone from the Midwest as to a person from Nagpur, India. The reasons for that lie outside the scope of this book.
The US has been ascendant since World War I and may only now be beginning to grow out of its resplendent (and reckless) imperial youth. It has gone to war in the Middle East twice in less than two decades. It has failed to realize that social and political awakening follow acts of both group and state terrorism.1
The illusions of invulnerability and invincibility, and for many, trust in their government, were shattered by 9/11. Rumors abounded about who did it, who knew, and who should have done what to prevent it. After the disbelief, terror and numbness had worn off, unprecedented outrage took over in the United States. Every foreign-looking person was a suspect. The general line given was that this crime had been committed by a band of men under the leadership of a Saudi Osama bin Laden. Muslim women with the traditional hijab 2 were harassed. Government agencies put out incomplete and misleading information that did nothing to underscore the fact that all Arabs/Muslims/brown people were not the same. George W bush made an irresponsible remark about a “crusade”3 against terror. A Sikh was killed because he had a long beard and a turban — like Osama bin Laden’s.
People of all shades of complexion between white and black were targeted. Facts that were glossed over include the point that those named as the hijackers had been beneficiaries of the Saudis, who not too long ago were funding 22,000 religious seminaries in Pakistan, and the Saudi ruling family was as close to the American establishment as could be and acted as their surrogates in the region. There were links with US security agencies that had trained fighters to oppose the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Also ignored was the fact that the US government was supporting Israel in perpetrating a reign of terror on the Palestinians.
Gross injustice breeds terrorism. The US fanned the panic by cracking down on everyone: friends, foes, and its own citizens. All air space and harbors were closed. 4 The whole Western world was shocked. Someone had hit the two main citadels of US hegemony — the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The US gathered a huge harvest of sympathy and the voters were happy thenceforth to approve any curb on their liberties in the name of fending off another such disaster. bush gave an ultimatum to Afghanistan to hand over osama bin Laden and sent a belligerent notice to Musharraf: “You are with us or against us” (never mind that his first responsibility was the integrity of the Pakstani nation).
Terrorism is the war of the poor; war is the terrorism of the rich — Peter Ustinov.
Hijab, the head covering, was originally ordained for wives of the prophet so that other men would not pester them.
The word, referring to the massacre of Muslims in Jerusalem in one of the crusades, has historic anti-Muslim connotations.
But members of the bin Laden clan, business partners and benefactors of the bush family, were whisked out on secret flights.
The Taliban rebuffed the ultimatum. Osama’s forces were strong and he was an icon. Americans went into Afghanistan with great hubris and in the first round made short work of any organized resistance. but they did not get Osama.
It would all have been well, if the US had left it well enough alone. but apparently this was just one move in what was intended as a larger campaign. The Bush league now set out to pulverize what they painted as Islamo-fascists everywhere.
It is curious that they chose to begin in the officially secular state of Iraq. Lies that Iraq had WMDs were invented, convincing the public that there were grounds for an attack. The Democratic Party, perhaps scared of being accused lack of patriotic fervor, fell in line.
The US defense budget at $451 billion already exceeded the combined defense spending of the rest of the world.1 More funds were allocated.
It was taken as a given that Iraqis would turn to America as a savior, and out of gratitude hand over the oil wells to US-dominated multi-national corporations (MNCs), elect a “democratic” government with a prime minister in the image of Tony Blair, and all would be well. Spinmeisters even staged the ecstatic scenes of Saddam’s statue being toppled.
There was apparently not much discussion of an exit strategy; perhaps there was no intention of exiting at all. Within the United States, all kinds of illegal and unconstitutional acts were perpetrated under the blanket cover of national security. The congress passed the draconian USA Patriot Act, which gave law enforcement agencies great leeway. 2 Legal Muslim charitable organizations sent money to the destitute in Middle East and South Asia, as Oxfam and others did to South America; but now the former were targeted, harassed and intimidated. Their leaders were often arrested and held without bail.
People became shy to contribute to humane causes lest their motives be misconstrued.
Bush captured the White House for a second term. Iraq continued to spiral out of control. The US applied techniques perfected in Central and North America. They funded, trained and supplied arms to Iraqi equivalents of the Contra in Nicaragua with similar results — mass murders, kidnappings, torture, rape and mass displacement of population internally and out of the country, but on a far larger scale. About a million Iraqis had been killed by the end of 2007. Over three million in external and two million in internal exile had been rendered homeless. Altogether about a quarter of the country’s population was affected.
The nearest rivals are Russia at $65 billion and China $56 billion a year.
A mini 9/11, the event of 7/7 in the UK, gave an excuse to the neo-con government of Tony Blair to persuade the British parliament to pass draconian anti-immigrant laws.
[pullquote]Alan Greenspan, long serving Chairman of the Federal Reserve bank, wrote in his post retirement autobiography that oil was the reason all along.[/pullquote] In order to distract attention from the gaps between rhetoric and reality in Iraq, and the failure to achieve the apparent goals, debates were raised over the “need” to attack Iran on the totally spurious grounds that the country is developing atomic weapons — this in spite of repeated declarations of International Atomic Energy Agency that they had been unable to find any evidence to the effect.
[themify_quote]Successive US governments used Al-Qaida, Taliban, and Saddam Hussein as surrogates to secure US interests. It made pragmatic sense, we were told. but no one likes being ditched after having been used. Thugs require aftercare. US government agencies failed to provide that. [/themify_quote]
The late aftermath of 9/11 was even worse for non-white foreigners. Smarting from their monumental failure, the security agencies went after the most vulnerable among them, hundreds of thousands of people who had overstayed their visas, etc., and were running grocery stores, cabs, restaurants, and doing other odd jobs. They were rounded up wholesale and held incommunicado. Families in many cases had no knowledge of the whereabouts of loved ones for weeks, even months. One of my friends, Sibghat U. Kadri, a barrister on the Queen’s Counsel (2) no less, was interrogated on arrival at Chicago’s o’Hare Airport and quizzed on an anti-Musharraf speech he had given. Criticizing satraps was also terrorism!
The quality of life of all South Asians and others has been badly affected. The image of the United States has been tarnished and it is highly debatable if security was enhanced. Some second-generation South Asian students in the US contemplated a future career in Canada, Europe or South Asia. And whereas very few first-generation immigrants used to plan to return to their native land, now most of them are giving serious thought to the matter.
We might have to face the prospect of a reverse brain drain. The trend is conspicuous among doctors from Pakistan. After passing the requisite tests to qualify for a training program in this country, fully one-third are denied visas. The usual excuse is that the Homeland Security Department has denied clearance. Physicians working in the US on different kinds of visas accept the appointment in remote, poor and under-served areas under an assurance that their status will be adjusted. They were ordered to report to INS offices all over the country for “validation of visa,” then were interrogated and harassed. They were interviewed in a room next door to a hall with a prominent sign, “Detention Cell.”
A physician driving back to New York City from Florida stopped at a restaurant on the way. The waitress was not happy with the tip. She called the FBI and said that he looked like a terrorist. The man was picked up and held without the benefit of legal counsel for two weeks. His wife happened to know an attorney who had been a public prosecutor. He pulled strings and got the doctor out of jail. Meanwhile one of the doctor’s patients, who had been admitted in a hospital, sued him for abandonment.
Highly regarded barristers are appointed to the rank. only they are allowed to appear before the judiciary committee of the House of Lords, the British equivalent of the US Supreme Court.
An Oxford University student (of Indian origin) and his English girlfriend boarded a plane in London to attend a music festival in New York. The check in clerk told her supervisor that the man looked like a terrorist. The Canadian and US governments were immediately warned. It was panic. Canadian air force planes escorted the flight to the US border where US F16 fighters took over and accompanied the airliner to JFK. Both passengers were arrested and kept in jail for three days.
Crossing the border from Canada used to be a breeze. Now visitors are stopped at random. My van was once checked for radiation and we were made to wait for a long time. Driving back on my next visit, I told the immigration agent that I had bought a bottle of whisky. He waved me on without a question. Alcohol had conferred good citizen status on me!
People who bore grudges reported on neighbors they did not like. One house in Pittsburgh was raided because a neighbor had seen the woman of the house putting something suspicious in the garbage can. They had exchanged harsh words a few months ago. The suspicious material turned out to be spoiled beef curry.
The Economy suffered. Whole neighborhoods were rendered desolate. To cite one example out of a score of hundreds, numerous shops were shuttered and whole blocks of apartment buildings abandoned in Coney Island Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. None of these people supported terrorism. Airlines went bankrupt, as people were scared of visiting the US.
I know of several businessmen who were grilled because they had offices in South Asia and had to, of necessity, transfer funds overseas for employees’ salaries and other expenses. Their clients panicked and the businesses failed, adding to unemployment.
The initial panic has subsided after a while, conditions remained uncertain. The random harassment continued. (Trump and Co are trying to bring the time back).
The ill-considered and imprudent military adventure in Iraq enhanced the sense of insecurity. Saddam was a brutal, fiendish and unregenerate tyrant. His removal was an undoubted act of humanity. but a perpetuation of occupation is an unmitigated disaster. Measures to reduce US troop casualties inevitably lead to increased Iraqi civilian deaths and injuries.
Private security forces have run amock. They and fundamentalist cohorts react in kind.
Afghanistan is an exact parallel. Afghans are veterans of innumerable resistance movements. They humiliated Russians at the height of their power and the British when the sun never set over the Empire.
Immigrants always carry a baggage of norms, mores, traditions and customs from the old country. I have used the term “baggage” advisedly, and not in any derisory sense. It is a heavy load that they carry and it keeps them from moving ahead. The burden of racial, linguistic and religious differences can be even heavier. They might be vegetarians, halal meat eaters or observe other food restrictions. By and large, they are comparatively sexually conservative.
Their culture and religion discriminates against women.1 For many, their home environment was post-colonial, feudal or tribal. They were caste- and sect-ridden.
Only India had representative government, which was substantially marred by covert and lately overt mistreatment of Muslims and Untouchables.
Because of the baggage, the first generation of all immigrants tends to ghettoize. That alienates them further from the locals. The second generation rebels against tradition and tries to assimilate. They are often thwarted in their longings. Insecurity breeds intolerance and fundamentalism widen the divide more.
Muslims specially do not assimilate easily. They do not drink and are not very tolerant of others faiths. They insist that women wear hijab, so hoodlums have no problem identifying them. This is reminiscent of Nazi fascists who forced Jews to wear the Star of David.2
Charging or paying financial interest is proscribed in their dogma. They are forced to rationalize in order to get by in the Western world: mortgages involve interest so they stoop to such subterfuges as getting a loan which included a “mark up” calculated on what would been interest plus loan. Others keep the money under the mattress and get into trouble when they offer thousands of dollars in cash when buying a car.
Saudis, the Wahabi Munafiqeen, invest in interest bearing accounts in the United States. Their women wear dresses from the most expensive boutiques under the traditional dress and take off the outer covering as soon they land at a Western airport. Saudi princes import liquor in boxes declared as furniture. 3
South Asian immigrants were, by and large, educated and brought much-needed skills in medicine, engineering and trade. They were welcomed and made much of in early years. They worked hard and distinguished themselves in the medical, financial and commercial fields. In the beginning, they were far too few in numbers to congregate in ghettoes which were to mushroom in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois and many other states.
But with success came jealousy on the part of the natives. Some South Asian students in university campuses are routinely called new colonizers by black youth. South Asians can help avoid some of the misunderstandings by being circumspect — but honest — in discussions. To the extent they may have a different perspective on events, they can try to base such discussions on rational information instead of what may be termed instinct and conviction, that is, “gut” reactions and emotion.
They can bring some knowledge of history and geography to the discussion while impressing upon all that they are as loyal to the country as the progeny of those who migrated a few generations before them. They should participate in civic affairs, shun and deplore extremist views vehemently, and counsel people with nefarious views to either shape up or ship out. There is little merit in ostentatious exhibition of such social customs as the Hijab, which was, in any case, ordained only for the prophet’s wives, so street Arabs won’t harass them.
They should also try to grow out of deliberate ghettoization of their communities. They must above all learn to separate religion from politics. Muslims should also keep in mind that the US is still a more open and tolerant society than many in South Asia or the Middle East, Europe and other continents. Incidents much less earth shattering than 9/11 have led to the annihilation of suspect communities — in Iran in 1953, Indonesia in 1965, the then East Pakistan in 1971, Karachi and Jordan in the 1980’s, the Syrian town Hammas in 1986, Bosnia in the early 1990’s, Gujarat in India in 2001. The list is endless.
Ethnic cleansing is endemic in Israel, India, Pakistan, several African countries and sporadically elsewhere. And history suggests that events that set off such reaction sometimes turn out to be complicated affairs, involving provocateurs and false-flag operations intended to inflame a relatively stable situation.
Even in the comparatively enlightened versions of the Islamic faith, women have half a vote as the witness in a court of law, half as much inheritance as male siblings and if a person has only female children the share that would have gone to a male child goes to a male cousin. A woman may be divorced by a simple device of the husband saying so three times.
A stark example of ‘conditioning-brain washing’ is that some European Jews took to exhibiting the sign of David with ostentation and as a right rather than as a symbol of victimization.
A newspaper reported that a prince arrived from Europe and declared that the wooden crates he had brought contained furniture. one crate crashed. Whisky started pouring out. The customs man called the palace to report, “Your Highness, your furniture is leaking.” Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School in her book World on Fire contends that if “democracy” were to be introduced in the Mid East, fundamentalists and others who fail to admire the US, globalization and free markets, would easily defeat Hosni Mubarak and other rulers in the region.
The title above is a verbatim quote taken from any number of seriously uninformed TV physicians, paid trolls and paid celebrities as they have gleefully joined the popular CDC, WHO, AAP, AAFP and AMA-sponsored campaigns that have denigrated (and therefore infuriated) the witnesses of the hundreds of thousands of over-vaccinated, vaccine-injured, vaccine-disabled or vaccine-killed infants, children, adults and soldiers.
Particularly angered are the parents, siblings, neighbors and other loved ones of the vaccine-traumatized victims, for they KNOW FOR CERTAIN THAT THE VACCINES POISONED THEIR LOVED ONES BECAUSE THEY SAW WHAT WAS HAPPENING BEFORE THEIR VERY EYES. These witnesses knew the truth, even though their physicians (especially, apparently, pediatricians) and their clinics refused to listen to them and often fired them and their families when they logically refused to accept “coincidence” as the reason for the catastrophic vaccine-induced illness that suddenly changed their normal baby into a chronically ill or dead one.
Well-informed parents are beginning to realize – despite the aggressive propaganda campaigns from Big Pharma, Big Medicine and Big Media – that vaccines are NOT necessarily safe. Indeed they are seeing that they can be lethal. Many parents are also beginning to see that vaccines are NOT necessarily effective long-term either. As opposed to natural childhood infections giving life-long immunity, vaccines for such mild infections as measles, mumps and chickenpox need frequent booster shots to theoretically provide partial immunity.
Parents who can’t expect to get thorough information about the CDC’s and AAP’s over-vaccination mandates from their clinics are having to do their own research on neurotoxicology , and they are beginning to realize (no thanks to their too-busy and relatively un-informed physicians) that the vaccines that are planned for their precious kids contain varieties of neurotoxic ingredients in the cocktails of baby shots. As many as 3 injections at one sitting are supposed to go into the tiny muscles of 6 or 8 or 10 pound babies at their 2, 4 and 6 month well baby check-ups. These injections may contain live viruses, aluminum, mercury or unintended contaminants all of which the vaccine manufacturers admit may cause brain inflammation or infection.
The most brain toxic vaccine ingredient in this era since the year 2000 is aluminum, which is increasingly in many infant vaccines. The most brain toxic metal that was in vaccines in the latter two generations of the 20th century was mercury (thimerosal) – a preservative that was removed from many vaccines around 2000 because pediatricians KNEW that it was the major cause of the pediatric autism spectrum disorder (ASD) epidemic that had no other plausible explanation. Because of that knowledge, the AAP (the American Academy of Pediatrics that now infamously denies the connection between vaccines and ASD), with no help from the CDC, eventually helped convince the vaccine manufacturers to remove mercury from most vaccines.
Babies, most notably the premature ones, always have immature, leaky blood-brain barriers (and leaky guts) that allow some of these toxic vaccine ingredients to enter the brain. Both aluminum and mercury – even in “trace” amounts – are known to adversely affect both the blood-brain barrier and the placental barrier, with serious implications for pregnant women who are increasingly prompted to submit to expensive and probably fetotoxic vaccinations.(!).
<<<Paid Trolls are Behind Much of the Smearing of the Vaccine-injured>>>
The ubiquitous smear campaigns against what paid trolls pejoratively call “anti-vaxxers” target any and all rational and scholarly skeptics of America’s blatantly over-vaccination agenda – a American national agenda that 1) over-vaccinates the most children in the entire developed world, 2) has the worst infant mortality rate in the entire developed world and 3) has the largest percentage of autistic kids in the entire developed world. But Big Pharma’s toxic over-vaccination agenda is highly profitable for 1) Big Pharma, 2) Big Medicine, 3) pediatricians, 4) medical clinics and 5) Big Media (which makes billions of dollars per year from Big Pharma advertisers).
The propagandistic smear has been orchestrated by organizations (and their paid trolls) representing the 5 corporate institutions named above, who are drafting laws to make more and more of these toxic vaccines compulsory, as has happened in California in 2016. Even Big Pharma-bribed politicians – all totally ignorant of the neurotoxicology of America’s over-vaccination agenda – are joining the irrational campaign.
What is saddest is how vicious have been the attacks against the independent, non-pharma scientist-scholars who have actually done well-designed toxicology research that PROVES (to any unbiased physician or otherwise smart person that isn’t conflicted and immobilized by financial or professional conflicts of interest) that what the CDC and AAP is saying about vaccine safety is untrue.
Sadly, every major media outlet seems to employ attractive, highly indoctrinated, financially- and professionally-conflicted full-time celebrity physicians to only report on medical issues that are favorable to the network’s Big Pharma advertisers. Therefore no news will be effectively reported that might expose any of Big Pharma’s many blatantly fraudulent practices.
<<<Jimmy Kimmel: Don’t Criticize What You Can’t Understand>>>
And then there are ignorant celebrities who have joined the well-financed and well-organized smear campaign (ex Jimmy Kimmel) who know nothing about the science of vaccine neurotoxicology, a science that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that intramuscularly-injected aluminum (which is in most infant vaccines as an “adjuvant” – look it up) and intramuscularly-injected mercury (thimerosal) are common causes of childhood brain damage that can be diagnosed as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Asperger’s Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Autoimmune/inflammatory SyndromeInduced by Adjuvants (ASIA), Autoimmune Disorders, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Allergies (and that’s just the list of vaccine-induced disorders that start with the letter “A”), tic disorder, seizure disorder, dementia, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, etc, etc, depending on what age the brain was sufficiently poisoned and what location in the brain was most seriously affected.
The sad reality is that most physicians (including my own) had woefully inadequate medical school training about neurotoxicology, immunology, vaccinology and nutrition, at least partly because Big Pharma has devious influences on medical education – hoping to create endless supplies of prolific prescription-writers and vaccine supporters.
A couple of years ago, prior to his pregnant wife (highly likely) receiving her mercury-laden prenatal flu shot and her aluminum-laden prenatal DTaP shot, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel chimed in with the CDC/AMA/AAP’s “just get your damn shots” campaign that demonized 1) parents and loved ones of vaccine-injured babies and children, 2) unbiased research immunologists, 3) unbiased neurotoxicologists, 4) the 10 – 15% of pediatricians who actually listen sympathetically to their patients, and 5) other scholarly and critically-thinking science-minded folks who know that toxic vaccine ingredients commonly sicken many of America’s over-vaccinated children.
Knowing that the most common neurotoxic vaccine ingredients (aluminum and mercury) 1) are both mitochondrial toxins, 2) are both blood-brain barrier toxins, 3) are both capable of crossing the placental barrier and 4) are both exponentially more poisonous when given together, it shouldn’t surprise any logical thinker that bad outcomes should be expected when metal-containing vaccines are given in cocktails at the same time, whether they are given to a soldier, a baby, a child, a pre-pubertal girl or an adult heading towards dementia.
And knowing that Jimmy Kimmel’s baby was tragically born with Tetralogy of Fallot (a heart defect that is caused by some toxic exposure to the embryo or fetus at a certain critical time in the pregnancy), one must wonder if Kimmel’s pregnant wife might have taken seriously Jimmy’s order to “just get your damn shots”. Or perhaps she might have followed the suggestion of her obstetrician (whose lobbying organization, ACOG, is now aggressively pushing DTaP and influenza vaccinations [!] along with her immature developing fetus – each of which are suspected to be teratogenic (causing fetal anomalies).
I conclude with some appropriate quotes that should give some uncertain or blind pro-vaccinators pause and give them interest and the willingness to go to the massive volume of unbiased medical literature to learn the truth about the dangers of over-vaccinating children.
I don’t expect changing the minds of those who have been indoctrinated by Big Pharma and Big Medicine. I also don’t expect influencing paid or unpaid trolls to actually go to the many references and scholars that I have referred to in the past. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. And you can point out the conflicts of interest of the ignorant naysayers and trolls but that won’t stop them from continuing to criticize the science that they are either incapable of understanding or unwilling to listen to.
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“You might as well consult a butcher on the value of vegetarianism as a doctor on the worth of vaccination.” – George Bernard Shaw
“It is difficult to get a man to understandsomething, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair, American anti-fascist, anti-imperialist author
“No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable…for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death.”– President Ronald Wilson Reagan, as he signed The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986, absolving drug companies, pediatricians and all vaccine providers from all medico-legal liability when children die, become chronically ill with vaccine-induced autoimmune disorders or are otherwise disabled from vaccine injuries. (That law has led directly to an expected reckless, liability-free development of scores of new, over-priced, potential block-buster vaccines, now numbering over 250. The question that must be asked of Big Medicine’s practitioners: How will the CDC, the AMA, the AAFP and the American Academy of Pediatrics fit any more potentially neurotoxic vaccines into the current well-baby over-vaccination schedule?)
“By Nov. 1, 2016, $3.5 billion had been awarded to more than 3,500 vaccine victims through the federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) created under the 1986 NCVIA law.”
“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses … the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.”— Dresden James
”In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act“. – George Orwell
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Is the Childhood Vaccine Schedule Safe?
1976: 1 child in 30 was learning disabled → 2013: 1 child in 6 is learning disabled.
1980: 1 child in 27 had asthma → 2013: 1 child in 9 has asthma.
1992: 1 child in 500 developed autism → 2013: 1 child in 50 develops autism.
2001: 1 child in 555 had diabetes → 2013: 1 child in 400 has diabetes.
THREE TIMES AS MANY VACCINATIONS FOR CHILDREN
1953: CDC recommended 16 doses of 4 vaccines (smallpox, DPT) between two months and age six.
1983: CDC recommended 23 doses of 7 vaccines (DPT, MMR, polio) between two months and age six.
2013: CDC recommended 50 doses of 14 vaccines between day of birth and age six and 69 doses of 16 vaccines between day of birth and age 18.
MULTIPLE VACCINATIONS GIVEN SIMULTANEOUSLY
In 1983, the CDC directed doctors to give a child no more than 4 vaccines (DPT, polio) simultaneously.
By 2013, the CDC directed that a child can receive 8 or more vaccines at once.
The Institute of Medicine published a report in 2013 stating that “key elements of the entire [CDC recommended childhood vaccine] schedule – the number, frequency, timing, order and age of administration of vaccines – have not been systematically examined in research studies.”
VACCINATIONS DURING PREGNANCY
A new CDC policy directs doctors to give pregnant women one dose of influenza vaccine in any trimester and one dose of the pertussis containing Tdap vaccine after 20 weeks during every pregnancy. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has determined that large, well-controlled long term studies have not been conducted to confirm that influenza and Tdap vaccination during pregnancy is safe.
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“The evidence strongly suggests that it is the vaccines and the vaccinated who are spreading the diseases for which vaccines are given.”
“The real issue is viral shedding. Viral vaccines are vaccines containing live viruses, even if they are weak or attenuated strains. These live viruses shed for varying amounts of time in the body fluids of a vaccinated individual – and can be transmitted to others. You can absolutely catch the virus (or bacterium) from someone who has just been vaccinated against that disease. Not only that, but viral shedding from vaccines is leading to viral and bacterial mutations, helping to create a phenomenon of new and dangerous strains of disease which can evade treatment by becoming accustomed to whatever drugs get thrown at them.”
“The U.S. has maintained one of the world’s highest child vaccination rates and lowest infectious disease rates, even as public health officials have been unable to explain why so many of today’s highly vaccinated children are so sick and disabled. Also unexplained, is why America has the worst infant mortality rate of all developed nations, with 6 out of 1,000 babies dying before their first birthday.
“Maternal mortality in the U.S. has also become one of the worst of all industrialized nations, with between 12 and 28 women in 100,000 dying within one year of giving birth, a maternal mortality rate that more than doubled between 1990 and 2013. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), annually an estimated 1,200 women in America suffer fatal complications during pregnancy and childbirth and another 60,000 suffer near-fatal complications.
“Women having babies in the U.S. today, who represent the most vaccinated generations in our nation’s history, are now also being given influenza, diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus vaccines during pregnancy, a federal maternal vaccination policy that was launched in 1997 with administration of influenza vaccine during any trimester and was widened in 2011 with the addition of a pertussis containing TDaP shot after 20 weeks gestation.
“As of 2015, about half of the nation’s pregnant women or nearly 2 million women, were either vaccinated with TDaP vaccine during pregnancy (42 percent) or influenza vaccine before or during pregnancy (50 percent) or received both vaccines.” – Barbara Loe-Fischer, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC)
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What has happened to the health of children in America since the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act was passed in 1986?
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“After drug companies, pediatricians and all vaccine providers were shielded from accountability and liability for vaccine injuries and deaths, U.S. health officials tripled the numbers of vaccinations recommended for children – from 23 doses of seven vaccines in 1986 to 33 doses of nine vaccines by 1997, which has escalated to a current 69 doses of 16 vaccines. States also increased the numbers of vaccinations required for children to attend school and, by 1997, it was obvious that a growing number of highly vaccinated children in America were never well anymore.
“The new and unprecedented child chronic disease and disability epidemic that has perfectly coincided with the expansion of the child vaccine schedule over the past 30 years is having a devastating effect on children, their families and our nation. Today, 1 child in 6 in the U.S. is learning disabled; 1 in 9 has asthma; 1 in 10 has ADHD; 1 in 50 develops autism; and 1 in 400 has diabetes. Millions more are suffering with severe allergies epilepsy, anxiety and depression, and other kinds of brain and immune disorders marked by chronic inflammation in the body.” – Barbara Loe-Fischer
“If we listen to present-day wisdom, we are all at risk of resurgent massive epidemics should the vaccination rate fall below 95%. Yet, we have all lived for at least 30 to 40 years with 50% or less of the population having vaccine protection. That is, herd immunity has not existed in this country for many decades and no resurgent epidemics have occurred. Vaccine-induced herd immunity is a lie used to frighten doctors, public-health officials, other medical personnel, and the public into accepting vaccinations.” – Russell Blaylock, MD
“The live polio vaccine…contains live attenuated polioviruses. Those polioviruses, when you take that [live] vaccine, you shed them in your body fluids – your saliva, urine, and stool…Whether you have the a viral infection or you get the live attenuated vaccine, you shed live viruses in your body fluids and you are able to transmit the virus to other people who come in contact with your body fluids.” — Barbara Loe-Fisher
”Curbing civil liberties under the guise of protecting the public health and national security has become big business. In 1982, when the pharmaceutical industry threatened to stop producing government licensed and recommended vaccines for children unless vaccine manufacturers got a product liability shield, Congress gave Big Pharma most of what it wanted in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. It was tort reform legislation sold to parents and the American public on the backs of children legally required by states to get federally recommended vaccines to attend school.
“Even though by Nov. 1, 2016, $3.5 billion had been awarded to more than 3,500 vaccine victims through the federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) created under the 1986 law, two out of three claims have been denied throughout the entire history of the law’s implementation. Most of the compensation awards today are for adults injured by flu vaccine – not for children required to get vaccines to go to school.
“While the government denies compensation to many children, whose lives have been destroyed by state mandated vaccines, in the past five years liability-free drug companies have joined forces with politically powerful medical trade groups to change state vaccine laws. They are lobbying state legislatures to severely restrict the medical exemption and eliminate the non-medical religious, philosophical and conscientious belief exemptions for children attending school.” — Barbara Loe-Fisher
“…our current results are consistent with the existing evidence on the toxicology and pharmacokinetics of aluminum adjuvants which altogether strongly implicate these compounds as contributors to the rising prevalence of neurobehavioral disorders in children. Given that autism has devastating consequences in a life of a child, and that currently in the developed world over 1% of children suffer from some form of ASD, it would seem wise to make efforts towards reducing infant exposure to aluminum from vaccines.“— C A Shaw, PhD
“There is a serious problem with vaccine safety. Vaccine aluminum adjuvant has adverse neurological effects, at dosages that are recommended by the US CDC. Vaccine critics are supported by the science. Parents refusing to vaccinate according to the recommended CDC schedule are supported by the science.Use aluminum-containing vaccines with great caution, or not at all.” – C. A. Shaw, PhD
“Aluminum is an experimentally demonstrated neurotoxin and the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant…research clearly shows that aluminum adjuvants have a potential to induce serious immunological disorders in humans. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation andassociated neurological complications and may thus have profound and widespread adverse health consequences.” (From Tomljenovic and Shaw’s journal article “Aluminum Vaccine Adjuvants: Are They Safe?”, published in Curr Med Chem 2011;18(17):2630-7.)
“The CDC says that 36,000 people die from the flu every year in the US. But actually, it’s closer to 20. However, we can’t admit that, because if we did, we’d be exposing our gigantic psyop. The whole campaign to scare people into getting a flu shot would have about the same effect as warning people to carry iron umbrellas, in case toasters fall out of upper-story windows…and, by the way, we’d all be put in prison for fraud.” – Jon Rappoport
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[themify_quote]
“A 2007 [Zika] outbreak on Yap Islands in Micronesia is estimated to have affected nearly 75% of the (island’s) population of some 12,000 people, and a 2013 outbreak in French Polynesia affected nearly 28,000 of 270,000 residents. Neither epidemic caused a spike in microcephaly.” — qz.com
“The correlation between a) the presence of Zika and b) babies with the microcephaly birth defect is so weak and sparse, it constitutescounter-evidence for Zika as the cause…the overwhelming majority of birth-defect cases show no presence of Zika. Therefore, the Zika-carrying mosquitoes have no business being the target of toxic spraying. But they are. And the spraying increases the risk of neurological damage in babies.” – Jon Rappoport
“Microcephaly may result from any insult that disturbs early brain growth…Annually, approximately 25,000 infants in the United States will be diagnosed with microcephaly…” – From the Report of the Quality Standards Subcommittee of the American Academy of Neurology and the Practice Committee of the Child Neurology Society. (Neurology 2009 Sep 15; 73(11) 887-897)
“…even the ideal influenza vaccine, matched perfectly to circulating strains of wild influenza and capable of stopping all influenza viruses, can only deal with a small part of the ‘flu’ problem because most ‘flu’ appears to have nothing to do with influenza. Every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory specimens are tested across the US. Of those tested, on average 16% are found to be influenza positive.”– Dr Peter Doshi (from a British Medical Journal review article, “Influenza: marketing vaccines by marketing disease” 2013 (BMJ 2013; 346:f3037)
“…It’s no wonder so many people feel that ‘flu shots’ don’t work: for most flus, they can’t, work because most diagnosed cases of the flu aren’t the flu.” – Jon Rappoport
“[According to CDC statistics], ‘influenza and pneumonia’ took 62,034 lives in 2001—61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified.” – Dr Peter Doshi, from in his 2005 BMJ report, titled, “Are US flu death figures more PR than science?” (BMJ 2005; 331:1412
“Between 1979 and 2001, [CDC] data showed an average of 1348 [flu] deaths per year (range 257 to 3006).” – Dr Peter Doshi
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[themify_quote]
“Official data shows that large scale vaccination has failed to obtain any significant improvement of the diseases against which they were supposed to provide protection” — Dr Sabin, developer of Polio vaccine
“The greatest threat of childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them through mass immunisation…..There is no convincing scientific evidence that mass inoculations can be credited with eliminating any childhood disease.” — Dr Robert Mendelsohn, MD
“The only safe vaccine is one that is never used.” — Dr. James A. Shannon, National Institutes of Health
“No batch of vaccine can be proved safe before it is given to children.” – Dr Leonard Scheele,Surgeon General of the United States, addressing an AMA convention in 1955
“It is pathetic and ludicrous to say we ever vanquished smallpox with vaccines, when only 10% of the population was ever vaccinated.” — Dr Glen Dettman
“The decline in infectious diseases in developed countries had nothing to do with vaccinations, but with the decline in poverty and hunger.” — Dr Buchwald, MD
“There is a great deal of evidence to prove that immunisation of children does more harm than good.” – Dr. J. Anthony Morris (formerly Chief Vaccine Control Officer at the US Federal Drug Admin.)
“There is insufficient evidence to support routine vaccination of healthy persons of any age.” — Paul Frame, MD, Journal of Family Practice
“I think that no person would permit anybody to get close to them with an inoculation if they would really know how they are made, what they carry, what has been lied to them about and what the real percent of danger is of contracting such a disease which is minimal.” — Dr Eva Snead
“The evidence for indicting immunisations for SIDS is circumstantial, but compelling. However, the keepers of the keys to medical-research funds are not interested in searching this very important lead to the cause of an ongoing, and possibly preventable, tragedy. Anything that implies that immunisations are not the greatest medical advance in the history of public health is ignored or ridiculed. Can you imagine the economic and political import of discovering that immunisations are killing thousands of babies?” — Dr William C. Douglass, MD (Honored twice as America’s ‘Doctor of the Year’)
“Sudden Infant Death Syndrome has been reported following the administration of DPT. The significance is unclear. 85% of SIDS cases occur in the period 1 through 6 months of age, with the peak incidence at age 2 to 4 months.” (From the accompanying insert to Connaught Labs’ DPT vaccine) —Jane Orient, MD, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)
“If you want the truth on vaccination you must go to those who are not making anything out of it…My aim has been to show that you have a powerful body to fight in the medical profession. We cannot be stirred without great effort. We are a kind of Juggernaut; we have to be dragged; we will not go. Let each one take his doctor, or, if he be so fortunate as not to need one, the doctor who lives nearest to him, and try and instruct him (about the dangers of vaccination). Send him the literature of the subject; he may not read it, but he may. Every little helps. – Instruct the people by means of public lectures and meetings. Show them as plainly as you can the uselessness and dangers of vaccination. Teach them that they must not go to the medical profession for counsel on the matter. If cases of small-pox were isolated and the clothes of the sufferers disinfected, the disease would not spread. If you wish to avoid smallpox, you must live pure and simple lives. If we crowd together we must expect disease; if we keep our skins closed, the impurities of the body are retained, and these impurities are the food upon which small-pox thrives. If your constitution is in a bad, state and you come in contact ‘with small-pox, you will probably have it.” — Dr T. R. Allinson
“The greatest threat of childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them through mass immunisation…There is no convincing scientific evidence that mass inoculations can be credited with eliminating any childhood disease.”— Dr Robert Mendelsohn, MD
“Vaccine-induced herd immunity is a lie used to frighten doctors, public-health officials, other medical personnel, and the public into accepting vaccinations.” – Russell Blaylock, MD
“the 271 vaccines in development span a wide array of diseases, and employ exciting new scientific strategies and technologies. These potential vaccines – all in human clinical trials or under review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – include 137 for infectious diseases, 99 for cancer, 15 for allergies and 10 for neurological disorders.” — PhRMA (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America), the pharmaceutical industry’s trade association and powerful lobbying group
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Dr Gary G. Kohls, MD
Dr Gary G Kohls MD
is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his forty year family practice career. He is a contributor to and an endorser of the efforts of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and was a member of MindFreedom International, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
While running his independent clinic, he published over 400 issues of his Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter, which was emailed to a variety of subscribers. (They have not been archived at any website.) In the early 2000s, Dr Kohls taught a graduate level psychology course at the University of Minnesota Duluth. It was titled “The Science and Psychology of the Mind-Body Connection”.
Since his retirement, Dr Kohls has been writing a weekly column (titled “Duty to Warn”) for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota. He offers teaching seminars to the public and healthcare professionals.
UK miner Vedanta Resources’ today argued against a major pollution case being tried in UK in the first day of its appeal hearing in London.
The hearing was met with solidarity protests at the Royal Courts of Justice demanding justice in the eleven year case on behalf of the victims.
The May 2016 London judgment which allowed the case to be heard in the UK indicted Vedanta subsidiary Konkola Copper Mines for financial secrecy, historic dishonesty and attempts to pervert the course of justice.
The latest hearing in the case of the Chingola communities consistently polluted by Vedanta subsidiary Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) began at the Court of Appeals in London today (1). A rally organised by Foil Vedanta(2) with Pan African solidarity groups took place outside the court in solidarity with the victims of ongoing pollution who have been fighting legal battles for justice in Zambia, and now the UK, for eleven years.
Activists from Pan African Society Community Forum (PASCF), Women of Colour in Global Women’s Strike and London Mining Network joined Foil Vedanta today to rally outside the Royal Courts of Justice calling for justice for thousands of Zambian villagers polluted by UK firm Vedanta Resources, and echoing their demands. The protesters sat in the public gallery of the court which was packed with observers and press. Inside the court Vedanta’s lawyers began their appeal against a May 2016 decision to allow the villagers’ case to be heard in the UK, arguing that Vedanta has no duty of care to claimants potentially polluted by subsidiary KCM. The case is being heard by Lord Justice Jackson, Lord Justice Simon and Mrs Justice Asplin and may continue for several days. Vedanta’s company secretary Deepak Kumar attended the hearing along with Geoffrey Green, a non executive director and former partner in law firm Ashurst LLP.
The claimants, represented by UK law firm Leigh Day, are from farming and fishing communities downstream of KCM’s mines and plants. They have suffered continual pollution since UK firm Vedanta Resources bought KCM in 2004. In 2006 a major pollution spill hospitalised hundreds who drank River Kafue water containing 10 x acceptable levels of copper, 770 x manganese and 100 x cobalt. They filed a law suit in 2007 and were awarded a landmark $2 million fine in 2011 in the Zambian High Court, but KCM appealed and in 2015 the Supreme Court upheld the guilty verdict but removed all compensation. As a result the victims took their case to UK lawyers.
On 27th May 2016 the Hon Justice Coulson awarded 1,826 Chingola villagers the right to have their case demanding compensation for personal injury and loss of livelihood due to gross pollution heard in the UK. The judgment stated that KCM and parent company Vedanta had attempted to pervert the course of justice in Zambia, and claimed KCM could even declare insolvency in Zambia to avoid paying victims, noting the company’s financial secrecy and historic dishonesty as exposed in a previous UK judgment in 2014.(3)
A Chingola resident and claimant in the case who did not want to be named said:
“The case has dragged on for far too long. Meanwhile lives have been lost due to the pollution and the surviving families are still suffering. In December the World Bank lent Zambia $100 million to deal with mining pollution. This confirms the scale of the problem. The affected people should be compensated immediately.”
Recent news coverage has detailed the ongoing pollution, sickness and poverty suffered by the affected communities.(4) Protesters outside and inside the Court decried the British company’s complete disregard for human rights and environment, and echoed the community’s demands for KCM to:
Stop polluting the rivers immediately. Close down the plant until pollution control measures are replaced and upgraded.
Provide clean water to the villages immediately, by tankers or pipes.
De-silt the Mushishima stream and Kafue River and remove contaminated waste.
Remediate the entire polluted area to make it safe to live, farm and fish there again.
Compensate the affected people for loss of health and livelihood. All medical costs should be paid by KCM/Vedanta in future.
Samarendra Das from Foil Vedanta said:
“The environmental racism of copper mining companies, and the impunity they enjoyed during Rhodes’ British South African Company era is continuing to haunt Zambia through the colonial legacy issues of KCM/Vedanta. It is time that justice is delivered. The Kafue River must be cleaned up, and the eleven years of suffering of pollution affected communities must stop.”
If the appeal is rejected the case will be a precedent for holding a UK mining company responsible for the actions of its subsidiary.
In 1932, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein conducted a correspondence subsequently published under the title ‘Why War?’ See ‘Why War: Einstein and Freud’s Little-Known Correspondence on Violence, Peace, and Human Nature’. In many ways, this dialogue between two giants of the 20th century is symbolic of the effort made by many humans to understand that perplexing and incredibly damaging feature of human experience: the institution of war.
In a recent article, the founder of peace research, Professor Johan Galtung, reminded us of the legacy of Freud and Einstein in this regard and reflected on their dialogue, noting some shortcomings including their failure to ‘unpack conflict’. See ‘Freud-Einstein on Peace’.
Of course, Freud and Einstein weren’t the first to consider the question ‘Why War?’ and their dialogue was preceded by a long sequence of individuals and even some organizations, such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and War Resisters’ International, who sought to understand, prevent and/or halt particular wars, or even to understand and end the institution itself, as exemplified by the Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1928 outlawing war. Moreover, given the failure of earlier initiatives, many individuals and organizations since Freud and Einstein have set out to understand, prevent and/or halt wars and these efforts have taken divergent forms.
Notable among these, Mohandas K. Gandhi was concerned to develop a mode of action to deal with many manifestations of violence and he dramatically developed, and shared, an understanding of how to apply nonviolence, which he labeled satyagraha (holding firmly to the truth), in overcoming large-scale violence and exploitation. He successfully applied his strategic understanding of nonviolence to the Indian independence struggle against British colonial rule. But while Gandhi was happy to acknowledge his debt to those who had gone before, he was not shy in proclaiming the importance of finding new ways forward: ‘If we are to make progress, we must not repeat history but make new history. We must add to the inheritance left by our ancestors.’
My own journey to understand human violence was caused by the death of my two uncles, Bob and Tom, in World War II, ten years before I was born. My childhood in the 1950s and 1960s is dotted with memories of my uncles, stimulated through such events as attending memorial services at the Shrine of Remembrance where their war service was outlined. See ‘My Brothers’ on my father’s website.
But by the early 1960s, courtesy of newspaper articles and photos, I had become aware of exploitation and starvation in Africa and elsewhere, and as a young university student in the early 1970s I was reading literature about environmental destruction. It wasn’t just war that was problematic; violence took many other forms too.
‘Why are human beings violent?’ I kept asking. Because I thought that this question must have been answered somewhere, I kept reading, including the work of Freud and Karl Marx as an undergraduate, but also the thoughts of many other scholars, such as Frantz Fanon, as well as anarchists, feminists and those writing from other perspectives which offered explanations of violence, whether direct, structural or otherwise.
By the early 1980s I had started to read Gandhi and I had begun to understand nonviolence, as Gandhi practised and explained it, with a depth that seemed to elude the activists I knew and even the scholars in the field that I read.
Separately from this, I was starting to gain a sense that the human mind was not something that could be understood well by viewing it primarily as an organ of thinking and that much of the literature and certainly most of the practitioners in the field of psychology and related fields, especially psychiatry, had failed to understand the emotional depth and complexity of the human mind and the implications of this for dealing with conflict and violence. In this sense, it was clear to me, few had understood, let alone been able to develop, Freud’s legacy. This is because the fundamental problem is about feeling (and, in relation to violence, particularly suppressed fear and anger). Let me explain why.
Violence is something that is usually identified as physical: it involves actions like hitting, punching and using weapons such as a gun. This is one of the types of violence, and probably the one now most often lamented, that is inflicted on indigenous peoples, women and people of colour, among others.
Separately from this, Gandhi also identified exploitation as violence and Galtung elaborated this concept with his notion of ‘structural violence’. Other forms of violence have been identified and they take many forms such as financial violence, cultural violence and ecological violence. But violence can be more subtle than any of these and, hence, much less visible. I have given two of these forms of violence the labels ‘invisible violence’ and ‘utterly invisible violence’. Tragically, ‘invisible violence’ and ‘utterly invisible violence’ are inflicted on us mercilessly from the day we are born. And, as a result, we are all terrorized.
So what are ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence?
In essence, ‘invisible’ violence is the ‘little things’ we do every day, partly because we are just ‘too busy’. For example, when we do not allow time to listen to, and value, a child’s thoughts and feelings, the child learns to not listen to themSelf thus destroying their internal communication system. When we do not let a child say what they want (or ignore them when they do), the child develops communication and behavioural dysfunctionalities as they keep trying to meet their own needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, they are genetically programmed to do).
When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize with and/or judge a child, we both undermine their sense of Self-worth and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail, moralize and/or judge.
The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout their childhood by this ‘invisible’ violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others). However, parents, teachers and other adults also actively interfere with the expression of these feelings and the behavioural responses that are naturally generated by them and it is this ‘utterly invisible’ violence that explains why the dysfunctional behavioural outcomes actually occur.
For example, by ignoring a child when they express their feelings, by comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when they express their feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing their feelings, by terrorizing a child into not expressing their feelings (e.g. by screaming at them when they cry or get angry), and/or by violently controlling a behaviour that is generated by their feelings (e.g. by hitting them, restraining them or locking them into a room), the child has no choice but to unconsciously suppress their awareness of these feelings.
However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing their awareness of their feelings (rather than being allowed to have their feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed their awareness of the reality that caused these feelings. This has many outcomes that are disastrous for the individual, for society and for nature because the individual will now easily suppress their awareness of the feelings that would tell them how to act most functionally in any given circumstance and they will progressively acquire a phenomenal variety of dysfunctional behaviours, including many that are violent towards themselves, others and/or the Earth.
Moreover, this emotional (or psychological) damage will lead to a unique combination of violent behaviours in each case. And some of these individuals will gravitate to working in one of the social roles that specifically requires, or justifies, the use of ‘legitimized violence’, such as the violence carried out by police, prosecuting lawyers, magistrates and judges, as well as that inflicted by the military. Others, of course, will operate outside the realm of legitimized violence and be labelled as ‘criminals’.
But, you might be wondering, what is the link between what happens in childhood and war?
The answer is simply that perpetrators of violence, and those who collaborate with them, are created during childhood. And these perpetrators and collaborators are all terrified, self-hating and powerless – for much greater detail of the precise psychological characteristics of perpetrators of violence and their collaborators, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’ – and they go on to perform all of the key roles in creating, maintaining, equipping, staffing and legitimizing the institutions of war and in conducting it.
If it weren’t for the violence to which we are all mercilessly subjected throughout childhood, there would be no interest in violence or war of any kind. If we were raised without violence, we would be naturally peaceful and cooperative, content to spend our time seeking to achieve our own unique evolutionary potential and to nurture the journey of others as well as life itself, rather than just become another cog in someone else’s military (or other bureaucratic or corporate) machine.
A child is not born to make war. But if you inflict enough violence on a child, and destroy their capacity to become their own unique and powerful self, they will be terrorised into perceiving violence and war as their society wants them to be perceived. And violence and war, and the institutions that maintain them, will flourish.
If we want to end war, we must halt the adult war against children as a priority.
It is a tragic measure of the depravity of human existence that genocide is a continuing and prevalent manifestation of violence in the international system, despite the effort following World War II to abolish it through negotiation, and then adoption and ratification of the 1948 ‘Genocide Convention‘.
According to the Genocide Convention, genocide is any act committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group by killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group and/or forcibly transferring children of the
group to another group.
While this definition is contested because, for example, it excludes killing of political groups, and words such as ‘democide’ (the murder or intentionally reckless and depraved disregard for the life of any person or people by their government,) and ‘politicide’ (the murder of any person or people because of their political or ideological beliefs) have been suggested as complementary terms, in fact atrocities that have been characterized as ‘genocide’ by various authors include mass killings, mass deportations, politicides, democides, withholding of food and/or other necessities of life, death by deliberate exposure to invasive infectious disease agents or combinations of these. See ‘Genocides in history‘.
While genocide and attempts at genocide were prevalent enough both before World War II (just ask the world’s indigenous peoples) and then during World War II itself, which is why the issue attracted serious international attention in the war’s aftermath, it cannot be claimed that the outlawing of genocide did much to end the practice, as the record clearly demonstrates.
Moreover, given that the United Nations and national governments, out of supposed ‘deference’ to ‘state sovereignty’, have been notoriously unwilling and slow to meaningfully respond to genocides, as was the case in Rwanda in 1994 and has been the case with the Rohingya in Myanmar (Burma) for four decades – as carefully documented in ‘The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya‘ – there is little evidence to suggest that major actors in the international system have any significant commitment to ending the practice, either in individual cases or in general. For example, as official bodies of the world watch, solicit reports and debate whether or not the Rohingya are actually victims of genocide, this minority Muslim population clearly suffers from what many organizations and any decent human being have long labeled as such. For a sample of the vast literature on this subject, see ‘The 8 Stages of Genocide Against Burma’s Rohingya‘ and ‘Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar‘.
Of course, it is not difficult to understand institutional inaction. Despite its fine rhetoric and even legal provisions, the United Nations, acting in response to the political and corporate elites that control it, routinely fails to act to prevent or halt wars (despite a UN Charter and treaties, such as the Kellogg-Briand Pact, that empower and require it to do so), routinely fails to defend refugees, routinely fails to act decisively on issues (such as nuclear weapons and the climate catastrophe) that constitute global imperatives for human survival, and turns the other way when peoples under military occupation (such as those of Tibet, West Papua, Western Sahara and Palestine) seek their
support.
Why then should those under genocidal assault expect supportive action from the UN or international community in general? The factors which drive these manifestations of violence serve a diverse range of geopolitical interests in each case, and are usually highly profitable into the bargain. What hope justice or even decency in such circumstances?
Moreover, the deep psychological imperatives that drive the phenomenal violence in the international system are readily nominated: in essence, phenomenal fear, self-hatred and powerlessness. These psychological characteristics, together with the others that drive the behaviour of perpetrators of violence, have been identified and explained – see ‘Why Violence?‘ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice‘ – but it is the way these (unconsciously and deeply-suppressed) emotions are projected that is critical to understanding the violent (and insane) behavioural outcomes in our world. For brief explanations see, for example, ‘Understanding Self-Hatred in World Affairs‘ and ‘The Global Elite is Insane‘.
Given the deep psychological imperatives that drive the violence of global geopolitics and corporate exploitation (as well as national, subnational and individual acts of violence), we cannot expect a compassionate and effective institutional response to genocide in the prevailing institutional order, as the record demonstrates. So, is there anything a targeted population can do to resist a genocidal assault?
Fortunately, there is a great deal that a targeted population can do. The most effective response is to develop and implement a comprehensive nonviolent strategy to either prevent a genocidal assault in the first place or to halt it once it has begun. This is done most effectively by using a sound strategic framework that guides the comprehensive planning of the strategy. Obviously, there is no point designing a strategy that is incomplete or cannot be successful.
A sound strategic framework enables us to think and plan strategically so that once our strategy has been elaborated, it can be widely shared and clearly understood by everyone involved. It also means that nonviolent actions can then be implemented because they are known to have strategic utility and that precise utility is understood in advance. There is little point taking action at random, especially if our opponent is powerful and committed (even if that ‘commitment’ is insane which, as briefly noted above, is invariably the case).
There is a simple diagram presenting a 12-point strategic framework illustrated here in the form of the ‘Nonviolent Strategy Wheel‘.
In order to think strategically about nonviolently defending against a genocidal assault, a clearly defined political purpose is needed; that is, a simple summary statement of ‘what you want’. In general terms, this might be stated thus: To defend the [nominated group] against the genocidal assault and establish the conditions for the group to live in peace, free of violence and exploitation.
Once the political purpose has been defined, the two strategic aims (‘how you get what you want’) of the strategy acquire their meaning. These two strategic aims (which are always the same whatever the political purpose) are as follows: 1. To increase support for the struggle to defeat the genocidal assault by developing a network of groups who can assist you. 2. To alter the will and undermine the power of those groups inciting, facilitating, organizing and conducting the genocide.
While the two strategic aims are always the same, they are achieved via a series of intermediate strategic goals which are always specific to each struggle. I have identified a generalized set of 48 strategic goals that would be appropriate in the context of ending any genocide here. https://nonviolentliberationstrategy.wordpress.com/strategywheel/strategic-aims/
These strategic goals can be readily modified to the circumstances of each particular instance of genocide.
Many of these strategic goals would usually be tackled by action groups working in solidarity with the affected population campaigning in third-party countries. Of course, individual activist groups would usually accept responsibility for focusing their work on achieving just one or a few of the strategic goals (which is why any single campaign within the overall strategy is readily manageable).
As I hope is apparent, the two strategic aims are achieved via a series of intermediate strategic goals.
Not all of the strategic goals will need to be achieved for the strategy to be successful but each goal is focused in such a way that its achievement will functionally undermine the power of those conducting the genocide.
It is the responsibility of the struggle’s strategic leadership to ensure that each of the strategic goals, which should be identified and prioritized according to their precise understanding of the circumstances in the country where the genocide is occurring, is being addressed (or to prioritize if resource limitations require this).
I wish to emphasize that I have only briefly discussed two aspects of a comprehensive strategy for ending a genocide: its political purpose and its two strategic aims (with its many subsidiary strategic goals). For the strategy to be effective, all twelve components of the strategy should be planned (and then implemented). See Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.
This will require, for example, that tactics that will achieve the strategic goals must be carefully chosen and implemented bearing in mind the vital distinction between the political objective and strategic goal of any such tactic. See ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions‘.
It is not difficult to nonviolently defend a targeted population against genocide. Vitally, however, it requires a leadership that can develop a sound strategy so that people are mobilized and deployed effectively.
We have exciting news! On June 15, more than 130 nations will re-convene at the United Nations for the final session of negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Sign this petition today to tell the President of the UN conference, Ambassador Elayne Whyte Gomez of Costa Rica, that you support this essential step in the worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons.
Our Director of Programs, Rick Wayman, will meet with Ambassador Whyte in New York during the week of June 19. He will personally deliver your signature and comments to her at that time.
While the U.S. and other nuclear-armed and nuclear-allied nations are boycotting this process, the clear majority of the world’s nations are ready to definitively prohibit nuclear weapons – the only weapon of mass destruction not currently banned. We must support their courageous leadership in banning these weapons that threaten the future of civilization and most complex life on the planet.
Sign the petition as soon as possible to ensure that your signature and comments are included in our submission to the President of the nuclear ban treaty negotiations.
[themify_box]Madame President,
We the undersigned strongly applaud your leadership in the negotiations on a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons. We are hopeful for a positive outcome in July.
We consider this to be a very positive step toward a world free of nuclear weapons, and appreciate your efforts to craft a strong, meaningful treaty.
We look forward to working with you, and all nations participating in good faith in this process, to achieve swift entry into force of this treaty, and on future steps toward the total elimination of nuclear weapons.[/themify_box]
Report on Round Table Discussion on “Future of Democracy, Social Justice and Secularism in India”
Introduction
The Round Table Discussion on Future of Democracy, Social Justice and Secularism in India, was organized by Centre for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS), Mumbai, on 28th May at GD Parikh Hall, University of Mumbai, Santacruz, Mumbai. Approximately 50 participants attended the Discussion. The participants consisted of academicians, activists and media persons.
Darryl D’Monte
Hosted by Kishore More of GD Parikh Hall, University of Mumbai, the conference was opened by Adv. Irfan Engineer, Director, CSSS, Mumbai, who gave a brief background about Round table discussion and its nature. Mr. Darryl D’Monte chaired first session on political mobilization and started the session by putting forth his thoughts on political mobilization.
However, the narrative discussed and drawn in the Round Table Discussion on Future of Democracy, Social Justice and Secularism in India can be divided in two sections to answer questions raised about introspection as to where the progressive movements including the secular movement had its shortcomings and the interventionsthat can be undertaken to strengthen secular and democratic values in the society.
The crux of the discussion was that the middle class is disconnected from social movements. The social movements as well as civil society organizations have failed to a large extent to mobilize or interact with them. Till the decade of 70s, the middle class was sensitive towards the social movements. However after that the social movements also receded. There was no religious agenda till 1986 that was placed by social movements to interact with the middle class. This agenda was provided by the Shah Bano case. The Hindutva forces capitalized on this vacuum and filled this vacuum with a hegemonic discourse which focused on stigmatizing and demonizing the Muslim community. Leaders from progressive movements like the Unions also supported right politics though on issues on unions they supported the politics of the left. This led to steady decline of the left and liberal ideologies since the right captured the imagination and support of the middle class.
One reason for the decline of progressive ideologies was the friction and divisions within them. The communist movement was divided which was then unable to raise class consciousness amongst professionals due to its sectarian issues. Also the secular movement along with other progressive movements did not address the economic issues of the poor. The aspirational middle class in an increasingly globalized world didn’t get mobilized for secular movement. Due to casualization of work there was a steady collapse of the working class.
This trend of political mobilization has continued and today the situation is alarming with the change in discourse of democracy. The nexus with political establishment and institutions like media has deepened leading to a challenge to freedom to expression and their ability to raise the issues of social justice. The discourse on democracy has changed to an extent that symbols like cow are used to perpetuate violence on minorities violating their right to life with disturbing impunity. The state is silent on such violations and thus used as a tool to consolidate power by capitalists and the hegemonic forces. The nexus between political power and capitalism doesn’t augur well for secularism.
In the second session followed by short break, was chaired by Dr. Ram Puniyani, Chairman of CSSS, talked about primary goal of right politics is to subjugate Dalit’s and women and not only minorities. He observed that the phenomenon of social engineering is at play.
There were serious concerns raised about middle class being victim of social media, and noting that liberals should be active on social media so as to counter any false marketers.It was pointed out that other parties apart from BJP lack IT cells. While resisting biases in education, Institutions have important role to play. Reading group will help out everyone understand what is meant by Democracy, Nation State, Social Justice, Secularism to start with. In order to counter prejudices, focus should be on students and dispelling their myths through active and innovative engagement.
It was suggested that a web of learning through e-groups should be created and music and rap can be used to communicate with youth to convey various concepts.Distribution of booklets of constitution along with rallying, going to village communities for a dialogue and making of social alliances can help in revisiting the vision of our liberal founders.
There is a necessity to publicize how many dalits, adivasis displaced as land taken from them and handed to capitalists as there have been recurring instances when democratic spaces, fellowships and scholarships are shrinking.
Lawyers, doctors, and other professionals can come together, and interventions can be taken on job losses by TV.There can be campaigns in community and within community to engage with religion and go to people.
There is need of consciousness & awareness among people about how communalism affects.
The idea of CSSS being resource center for future activities was suggested. Mosque can be a community centre. A forum as well as alternate, print, radio media should to be created to come together. Short Film Competition can be held in the context where participants are oriented to contents. We need to work for peasants & workers movements. Democratic families are need of the time where family will act as a site for battle ground.
Debates and interventions must be initiated on nationwide ban on cow slaughter through litigation and spreading awareness about how livelihood will be affected.
The way in which a society treats its children reflects not only its qualities of compassion and protective caring but also its sense of justice, its commitment to the future and its urge to better the human condition for coming generations.
As the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children proclaimed at the United Nations in New York, 30 September 1990, “There can be no task nobler than giving every child a better future… The children of the world are innocent, vulnerable and dependent. They are also curious, active and full of hope. Their time should be one of joy and peace, of playing, learning and growing. Their future should be shaped in harmony and co-operation. Their lives should mature and broaden their perspectives and gain new experiences.”
Thus the Association of World Citizens worked hard for the creation of the UN-sponsored International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World. 1999 had been the International Year for a Culture of Peace with UNESCO as the lead UN agency for the Year. David Adams of the UNESCO Secretariat was the motor of the Culture of Peace concept. We had worked closely together, as all UN Years depend for their impact more on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) than on governments who are willing to vote at the General Assembly for a special theme as a UN Year but then do rather little else.
As has happened with other UN theme Years, such as the 1975 Year of Women, as little can be done in a year, the UN Year is transformed into a Decade. Thus it was thought that the Culture of Peace Year could be transformed into a Culture of Peace Decade. Some of us involved thought that “Culture of Peace” as a title was not very specific and did not set out the method nor the people who were the prime agents. Thus the idea of adding the term “Non-violence” as the method and “children of the world” as the prime agents. The UNESCO staff person in New York and a world citizen colleague started contacting diplomats at the UN in New York to get the Decade proposed.
We ran into sharp opposition at the start from the representatives of the USA and the UK who said “We already donate money to UNICEF; we don’t need an additional decade for the children of the world.” Fortunately, we had the diplomatic skill of the Ambassador of Bangladesh with us who took the lead in convincing other government. Moreover, it is difficult for governments to oppose doing good for children – at least in theory. Some governments thought that the title was too long, especially for publicity purposes and wanted to shorten it. “Non-violence” could easily have been dropped. In the middle of the discussions on the name, my colleague in New York called me in Geneva to ask about the name change. I replied that I thought also the name too long, but it was not up to NGO representatives to suggest what words should be cut, that was up to government diplomats. As the governments could not agree, the too long title remained. The governments did little, but there was strong non-government efforts of which the world citizenship emphasis on harmonious education was an important contribution.
There has been a constant international effort to create a legal basis for the rights of the child. The legal framework for the welfare of the child began early in the League of Nations efforts with the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924 largely influenced by the Polish educator and writer Janusz Korezak (1878-1942). He promoted the idea of the rights of the child within the broader framework of progressive, child-centered education. Child welfare has always been a prime example of cooperative efforts among governments, scholars highlighting the conditions of children, and NGOs working actively in the field.
The efforts continued after the Second World War. The Geneva Declaration served as the basis for the UN General Assembly resolution on the Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1959. The 1959 Declaration was followed with more specific provisions: the Declaration on Social and Legal Principles relating to the Protection and Welfare of Children, the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice, the Declaration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergency and Armed Conflict.
In 1978, some representatives of both governments and NGOs in the UN human rights circles in Geneva felt that it was time to bring together these different declarations and provisions into a single text which would have the legal force of a UN convention. The Polish delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights took the lead in this effort, but some governments felt that the different declarations needed to be closely reviewed and measured against changing realities. Thus a Special Working Group on the Rights of the Child was created in 1979 under the chairmanship of the Polish representative, the legal specialist Adam Lopatka. Government and NGO representatives worked together from 1979 to 1988 for a week each year. There was a core group, including the Association of World Citizens, which worked steadily and which represented a wide range of different beliefs, values and traditions, as well as a wide range of socio-economic realities.
The Working Group managed to come to a consensus on the final version in time for the General Assembly to adopt it on 20 November 1989, the anniversary of the Geneva Declaration. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is meant to provide guidance for governments to review national legislation and policies in their child-related initiatives. The Convention also provides a framework of goals for the vital activities of NGOs. NGO work on two lines simultaneously: to remind governments of their obligations through approaches to ministries, elected officials, and the media, and to undertake their own operational efforts.
By creating a common legal framework of world law, the Convention on the Rights of the Child has increased levels of government accountability, bringing about legislative and institutional reforms, and increasing international cooperation. As James P. Grant, then UNICEF Executive Director said “Transcending the detailed provisions, the Convention on the Rights of the Child embodies the fundamental principle that the lives and the normal development of children should have first call on society’s concerns and capacities and that children should be able to depend upon the commitment in good times and in bad, in normal times and in times of emergency, in times of peace and in times of war, in times of prosperity and in times of recession.”
The introduction of the concept of harmony has been an important addition to the discussion of child welfare, building on concepts of harmony in both Asian and Western societies.
More recently the welfare of children has somewhat fallen off the “world agenda” of governments with financial issues, trade, and sustainable development becoming the negotiating focus. However, children as a priority remains a constant concern of non-governmental organizations and we need to continue our cooperative efforts.
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Rene Wadlow
Rene Wadlow
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
18 May has been designated by UNESCO as the International Day of Museums to highlight the role that museums play in preserving beauty, culture, and history. Museums come in all sizes and are often related to institutions of learning and libraries. Increasingly, churches and centers of worship have taken on the character of museums as people visit them for their artistic value even if they do not share the faith of those who built them.
Museums are important agents of intellectual growth and of cultural understanding. They are part of the common heritage of humanity, and thus require special protection in times of armed conflict. Many were horrified at the looting of the National Museum of Baghdad when some of the oldest objects of civilization were stolen or destroyed. Fortunately many items were later found and restored, but the American forces had provided inadequate protection at a time when wide-spread looting was predicted and, in fact, was going on. More recently, we have seen the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in the museum of Mosul by ISIS factions. Today, there is deep concern for Palmyra as ISIS and government troops battle near Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Conserving a cultural heritage is always difficult. Weak institutional capabilities, lack of appropriate resources and isolation of many culturally essential sites are compounded by a lack of awareness of the value of cultural heritage conservation. On the other hand, the dynamism of local initiatives and community solidarity systems are impressive assets. These forces should be enlisted, enlarged, and empowered to preserve and protect a heritage. Involving people in cultural heritage conservation both increases the efficiency of cultural heritage conservation and raises awareness of the importance of the past for people facing rapid changes in their environment and values.
Knowledge and understanding of a people’s past can help current inhabitants to develop and sustain identity and to appreciate the value of their own culture and heritage. This knowledge and understanding enriches their lives and enables them to manage contemporary problems more successfully. It is important to retain the best of traditional self-reliance and skills of rural life and economics as people adapt to change.
Traditional systems of knowledge are rarely written down; they are implicit, continued by practice and example, rarely codified or even articulated by the spoken word. They continue to exist as long as they are useful, as long as they are not supplanted by new techniques. They are far too easily lost. Thus is is the objects that come into being through these systems of knowledge that ultimately become critically important.
Thus, museums must become key institutions at the local level . They should function as a place of learning. The objects that bear witness to systems of knowledge must be accessible to those who would visit and learn from them. Culture must be seen in its entirety: how women and men live in the world, how they use it, preserve and enjoy it for a better life. Museums allow objects to speak, to bear witness to past experiences and future possibilities and thus to reflect on how things are and how things might otherwise be.
Early efforts for the protection of educational and cultural institutions were undertaken by Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947) a Russian and world citizen. Nicholas Roerich had lived through the First World War and the Russian Revolution and saw how armed conflicts can destroy works of art and cultural and educational institutions. For Roerich, such institutions were irreplaceable and their destructions was a permanent loss for all humanity. Thus, he worked for the protection of works of art and institutions of culture in times of armed conflict. Thus he envisaged a universally-accepted symbol that could be placed on educational institutions in the way that a red cross had become a widely-recognized symbol to protect medical institutions and medical workers. Roerich proposed a “Banner of Peace” − three red circles representing the past, present and future − that could be placed upon institutions and sites of culture and education to protect them in times of conflict.
Roerich mobilized artists and intellectuals in the 1920s for the establishment of this Banner of Peace. Henry A. Wallace, then the US Secretary of Agriculture and later Vice-President was an admirer of Roerich and helped to have an official treaty introducing the Banner of Peace − the Roerich Peace Pact − signed at the White House on 15 April 1935 by 21 States in a Pan-American Union ceremony. At the signing, Henry Wallace on behalf of the USA said “At no time has such an ideal been more needed. It is high time for the idealists who make the reality of tomorrow, to rally around such a symbol of international cultural unity. It is time that we appeal to that appreciation of beauty, science, education which runs across all national boundaries to strengthen all that we hold dear in our particular governments and customs. Its acceptance signifies the approach of a time when those who truly love their own nation will appreciate in additions the unique contributions of other nations and also do reverence to that common spiritual enterprise which draws together in one fellowship all artists, scientists, educators and truly religious of whatever faith.”
As Nicholas Roerich said in a presentation of his Pact “The world is striving toward peace in many ways, and everyone realizes in his heart that this constructive work is a true prophesy of the New Era. We deplore the loss of libraries of Lou vain and Overdo and the irreplaceable beauty of the Cathedral of Rheims. We remember the beautiful treasures of private collections which were lost during world calamities. But we do not want to inscribe on these deeps any worlds of hatred. Let us simply say : Destroyed by human ignorance − rebuilt by human hope.”
After the Second World War, UNESCO has continued the effort, and there have been additional conventions on the protection of cultural and educational bodies in times of armed conflicts. The most important is the 1954 Hague Connection for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
Museums help to build new bridges between nations, ethnic groups and communities through values such as beauty and harmony, that may serve a common references. Museums also build bridges between generations, between the past, the present and the future.
Therefore, on this International Museum Day, let us consider together how we may advance the impact of beauty upon the world.
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Rene Wadlow
Rene Wadlow
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
Hindu Rashtra is the goal of Hindu nationalist politics, which is also called as Hindutva. In contrast to Hinduism, Hindutva is a politics of in the name of Hinduism with Brahmanism as the core of the same. In nutshell Hindutva is a politics based on Brahmanical values of caste and gender hierarchy. The concept of Hindutva-Hindu nation is a modern one, which developed as a parallel to Islamic nationalism, and in opposition to the concept of Indian Nationalism. Indian nationalism developed during colonial period as the inclusive nationalism of people of all religions, different castes, languages and regions based on values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
Hindu nationalism developed from the section of Hindu landlords and kings with associated clergy on their side. As Indian nationalism was arguing for equalityof all the people, the previous ruling classes, felt threatened socially. Now their social privileges were under threat and so they gave a war cry of ‘Hinduism in danger’. This was a cry which was similar to the slogan of Muslim landlords and nawabs, who when their social status started declining; shouted ‘Islam in danger’.
Hindu Nationalism harped on the ancient glory of the times of Manusmriti and Vedas where the caste system was deeply entrenched in society. While national movement was articulating the need for land reforms, though they could never be properly implemented, Hindu nationalism harped on the earlier systems and was hiding its agenda of social inequality. It called for revival of a glorious period, despite the fact that the condition of women and dalits in those times were abysmal.
The needs of majority of Hindus were expressed in the national movement, which strove for democratic norms and its values got enshrined in Indian Constitution in the form of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The Hindu nationalists were opposed to these values and also the formation of Indian Constitution, which not only stands for liberation of all people from feudal bondages, it is a path of liberation of large sections of Hindus, barring of course the upper caste ones’, who stand to lose their primacy. Most of the Hindus participated in the freedom struggle while a handful of them wedded to ideology of Hindu Rashtra kept aloof from this massive process which was to pave the path of liberation of all the people including majority of Hindus.
Those standing for cause of majority of Hindus opposed the idea of Hindu Rashtra. Ambedkar points out, “It is a pity that Mr. Jinnah should have become a votary and champion of Muslim Nationalism at a time when the whole world is decrying against the evils of nationalism… But isn’t there enough that is common to both Hindus and Musalmans, which if developed, is capable of moulding them into one people?… If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country…’ Compare the Sangh Parivar’s view of nationalism with these two conceptions and draw your own conclusions. (https://www.kractivist.org/tag/history/)
Gandhi the greatest Hindu of his times pointed out, “In India, for whose fashioning I have worked all my life, every man enjoys equality of status, whatever his religion is. The state is bound to be wholly secular”, and, “religion is not the test of nationality but is a personal matter between man and God, and,” religion is a personal affair of each individual, it must not be mixed up with politics or national affairs” (Harijan August 31, 1947)
After Independence, the followers of Hindu nationalists were very small and they kept working for breaking the core pillar of Indian nationalism, Fraternity. They kept spreading hatred against religious minorities. This hatred became the foundation of communal violence in times to come. While majority Hindus were going along with the national policies for building modern India through modern education and modern industries, the Hindu nationalists were criticizing and opposing these policies all through. While the majority of Hindus are faced with the problems of bread butter shelter employment and dignity, Hindu nationalists have been raising the emotive issues to divide the society along religious lines. The result is that in the din of hysteria, in the name of Hinduism and Hindus; they have been sidetracking the real issues of Hindus and substituting them with identity issues.
When BJP led NDA came to power it opened the path of restoring blind faith by introducing courses like Paurohitya (priesthood) and Karmakand (ritualism). Hindus need to be liberated from the clutches of blind faith while these policies are intensifying the retrograde, obscurantist values and undermining the real needs of average Hindus as well.
Last three years (since 2014) Modi-BJP-RSS government has come to power; the identity issues have been hiked up. Attempts have been made to undermine and bypass the issues related to Rights for food, education and health. The attempt was made to grab farmer’s land in the name of land reforms; somehow they could not succeed in that. The attempt to bring in land reform legislation was against interests of Hindus so to say. The labor reforms brought by Hindu nationalists have ruined the lives of workers at large. De-monitisation was propagated as a blow to black money holders, but its real victims have been average Hindus, who have suffered in silence. A series of emotive issues are dominating the social scene, Ram Temple, Bharat mata ki jia, Vande matram, Cow protection, Love Jihad and Ghar vapasi among other. The vigilante culture is getting promoted due to Hindu nationalist agenda. The beneficiaries of these policies have been affluent corporate sector, section of upper and middle classes while average Hindus are suffering the pain and anguish.
The society is suffering as age old values of love and amity are being demolished; the issues of poverty, illiteracy, hunger and health are being relegated to the margins of policy making. All this is against the interests of Hindus at large. Average Hindus are a big victim of this agenda.
[themify_box]The demolition of Babri Masjid will be completing 25 years on 6th December. Indian Journal of Secularism will be publishing a special issue on the occasion carrying articles based on memories of the event 25 years ago and will be guest edited by Dr. Sameena Dalwai and Ramu Ramanathan. Kindly refer to the concept note attached. You are welcome to contribute to the special issue. Please send your abstract by 5th June.[/themify_box]
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[themify_quote]“The act of thinking is a totality of memory, knowledge and experience.” – Jiddu Krishnamurthy (Philosopher/ Writer, 1895-1986)[/themify_quote]
The Babri Masjid demolition and the communal riots thereafter changed the course of history and politics in India. Looking back to the events of December 1992 to January 1993, we realise, once again, how the trajectory of India was defined in that one political moment 25 years back. We remember and re-live it now – in the continued victory of the Right Wing in elections plus the formation of discourse, in beating down of the spirit of minority, in humiliation and degradation of Muslims and Dalits, in branding dissenting voices as anti-national and in sculpting of women’s bodies and personas as the honour of the Hindu Nation.
Memory is said to be an important weapon while speaking truth to power, and in this context, we would like to record, showcase and archive the lived experiences and memories of the times and atmosphere when the Babri Masjid was destroyed in Ayodhya and the tremors that shook India.
History, after all, is a collective memory.
In this special volume of Indian Journal of Secularism we endeavour to gather, compile and present the narratives of people who lived through those times: the stories of violence and despair, hope and resistance, tales of how the community, city changed its colours and how it affected the soul of India. Much analysis has been done of the divisive politics of violence but here, we invite, political analysis woven with and narrated through the personal accounts. As we know, the grand narrative of the Nation can be poignantly curated through our individual unique anecdotes.
Please do visit the memory lanes.
Do you have something to share? Maybe you were a restless child stuck at home in Curfew. What did you hear at home / in the neighbourhood, what did you think was happening? May be you were a college student cruising your city – how did you respond to communalisation around? Maybe you were an activist, trying to organise against threats and violence – how did it affect you?
Do share your stories. We are listening.
We intend to publish your memories in a special volume of the Indian Journal of Secularism, which was started by Dr Asghar Ali Engineer, a crusader for communal harmony, a renowned Islamic scholar and a reformist. Besides initiating discussions at the academic level on growing communalism, intolerance, ethnic conflicts etc. the journal serves as a forum for activists to air their views and aims at creating alternative discourses. It has completed 24 years of uninterrupted publication and is currently edited by Irfan Engineer, the Director of Centre for Society and Secularism.
The Special Volume of December 2017 will be Guest Edited by Dr Sameena Dalwai (legal academic, based in Jindal global University, Sonipat) and Ramu Ramanathan (Mumbai-based playwright and journalist).
It will be titled “Babri Masjid – 25 years on” and will carry pieces of 3000 to 5000 words in length. Abstract deadline is 1st June 2017 (an outline of your piece, the main points of what you plan to write can be sent in 300 to 500 words).
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The Timeline:
Abstract and outline: 1st June 2017
Notification of Acceptance: 15th June 2017
Submission of final essay: 15th July 2017
Editorial review: 15 August 2017
Final draft: 1 September 2017
Publication Date: 1 December 2017
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Submission guidelines: please send a tentative title for your piece, outline and a small 100-150 word note describing yourself to babri25years@gmail.com with a CC to sdalwai@jgu.edu.in
Launch of Pacific Guide to Statistical Indicators for Human Rights Reporting
The Pacific Community (SPC) has this week launched a practical guide that will assist Pacific governments in their human rights treaties reporting.
This is the first such document of its kind on human rights reporting under the core human rights treaties in the Pacific.
The Pacific Guide to Statistical Indicators for Human Rights Reporting proposes a set of indicators that are contextually relevant and meaningful for the region, acknowledging the unique challenges and opportunities that Pacific Island countries experience in data collection, national institutions and resources.
Produced by SPC’s Regional Rights Resources Team (RRRT) with funding support from the European Union and the Government of Australia, the guide emerged from, and is informed by two regional workshops held in Nadi, Fiji in 2014 and 2016, with statisticians from the national statistics offices and government focal points on human rights and gender.
The first workshop shared good practices and lessons learned on human rights and gender statistics, and reflected the reality of challenges the region faces in collecting adequate and reliable data, as well as in interpreting available data. It was held in partnership between UN Statistics Division from New York, SPC Statistics Division, SPC Gender Division and SPC RRRT.
Based on these discussions, a set of core indicators were identified and the guide developed. The second workshop validated the indicators contained in the guide, identified any gaps and suggested improvements.
The guide sets out practical information on feasible and aspirational human rights indicators, based on reliable data that can be systematically collected. It also shows how to interpret the data collected under each indicator for reporting.
“The Pacific Guide to Statistical Indicators for Human Rights Reporting is a crucial tool that will assist our governments in addressing the specific articles under the core treaties they are reporting on,” RRRT Senior Human Rights Adviser, Romulo Nayacalevu, said.
“This tool is the result of SPC working with our governments for many years around human rights reporting and responding both to the governments on the need for such tools to guide the reporting exercise as well as the treaty body committee’s recommendations and concerns around lack of crucial information or data around the various articles,” Mr Nayacalevu said.
The guide will assist coordinating bodies within Pacific Island governments responsible for preparing initial and periodic reports on the country’s progress on implementation of ratified treaties, as well as those overseeing the implementation of national human rights action plans.
Human rights and gender focal persons will have a reference point for determining the key data they will need to work with national statistics offices in collecting and analysing for these purposes.
It will also help national statistics offices to better understand how the statistical data they collect, analyse and provide feeds into human rights reporting.
“Partition, Indo-Pak Relations and Kashmir is a book that says, the only solution to the Kashmir imbroglio can be and has to be peaceful. Looking at the issue in the context of the subcontinent’s partition, it notes how Indo-Pak relations are held hostage to Kashmir and the vice-versa.
The book says, in the 21st century, the process of secularisation has remained incomplete in India, Pakistan (and Bangladesh) and fundamentalism and communalism are rampant in all of these nations.
The first major war between these uncomfortable neighbours took place on the issue of Kashmir, resulting in one third of Kashmir becoming ‘Azad Kashmir’ in the military-mullah ruled Pakistan, with lakhs of soldiers breathing down the neck of Kashmiri civilians in democratic India.
Dwelling on this unhappy situation, the book also talks of one remarkable nonagenarian communist from Kerala, BM Kutty, who has made Karachi his home for the last 70 years; how Indo-Pak cricket matches are seen more as India-Pakistan war; how legendary film star Dilip Kumar (Yusuf Khan), and the modern ones like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan are humiliated time and time just because of their religion. The book sets its readers thinking. ”
Contents
Preface
Trip to Pakistan
Introduction
Partition Jinnah, Nehru and the Ghost of Indias Partition
The Backdrop
Indo-Pak Relations A Tale of Two Neighbours
Pakistan: Democracy Besieged
The Kashmir Imbroglio For a Peaceful Solution of the Kashmir Question
Politics over Paradise
The most recent violent arrest of protestors and local journalists by security forces is a direct challenge to Indonesia’s international standing as a vibrant democracy, a champion of human rights and a defender of media freedom.
The Youngsolwarans say the Indonesian Government continues to deny the situation in West Papua, accusing social movements and support from Pacific states as having an unfortunate misunderstanding of the history of Indonesia and its current progressive developments in West Papua.
In 2015, Pacific leaders expressed concerns about the ongoing human rights violations in West Papua and Papua, and requested for dialogue to discuss the situation in Papua and the need for a fact finding mission to Indonesia. Unfortunately there’s been little to no progress as Indonesia claims it is an internal sovereign matter.
Luisa Tuilau
“If Indonesia claims it is indeed progressively addressing human rights violence then it must open up the region to a fact-finding mission,” said Youngsolwara spokesperson, Luisa Tuilau.
“As a young peoples movement that stands in solidarity with West Papuans in their struggle for self-determination, we are always criticized for lacking evidence of the situation on ground…and apart from what is leaked on social media and the youth groups we work with in West Papua, there is a greater need for media freedom and access for journalists to provide the facts of what is happening on the ground,” said Ms Tuilau.
She said Indonesia claims to be a vibrant national democracy, coupled with the highest commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights at all levels, thus, it is “equally important that Indonesia respects the role of an independent media to counter its rhetoric”.
“As much as Indonesia wants to fanfare its progress in West Papua, it must be responsible for the lack of freedom of expression of West Papuans and local media.”
West Papuans have the right to gather and express themselves freely without fear of violence, and the Indonesian government must respect their rights and not to discriminate against West Papuans, who are always stigmatized as part of their cry to be self-determined.
Indonesian President, Joko Widodo, had lifted the ban on foreign journalists into West Papua in 2015, but less than 15 international media crews have been permitted access into West Papua with limited freedom to report on issues in area.
According to the Reporters Without Boarders 2017 Press Freedom Index, Indonesia is ranked 124 out of 180 countries. There are growing cases of abuse and violence against local media in West Papua, and some go unreported. The Alliance of Independent Journalists of Jayapura Municipality recorded 63 cases of violence against journalists in West Papua from 2012-2016.
World Press Freedom Day was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly as an encouragement to the independence of journalists and the media, to be celebrated each 3 May. The overall theme proposed for this year is ” Critical Minds for Critical Times: The Media’s role in advancing peaceful, just and inclusive societies.”
The Association of World Citizens has always stressed the need for an independent media as an important avenue for the creation of a cosmopolitan, humanist world society. Many of the great changes in the world society have been promoted by publications of books and newspapers – the Protestant Reformation, and the American and French Revolutions.Today, we see the great ideological wave of world citizenship as the core of a new world philosophy. Thus, world citizens have a strong commitment to freedom of expression through both public assemblies and through a free press.
Today, after decades of conflict when the emphasis of State leaders and the media they controlled was upon competition, conflict, and individual enrichment, world citizens place an emphasis on harmony, cooperation, mutual respect, and working for the welfare of the community. We know that there are an increasing number of people who realize that harmony is the key to our ascent to the next higher level of evolutioin: harmony between intellect and heart, mind and body, male and female, being and doing. We are fortunate to be able to participate in this crucial moment in world history when there is a passage of consciousness focused on the individual State to a consciousness focused on the unity of humanity and a new relationship of respect for Nature.
What is needed is a vision which inspires us to come together across over different points of view to create a process of healing and social transformation.
We are well aware that the media and the new digital technology and social media can be used for negative currents of hatred, racism, and narrow nationalism. Media can also be used to spread rumours or false information. Moreover, in a large number of countries, the media is under the control of the government or a small number of financial interests.
However, there is also a strong tradition of investigative journalism which has highlighted political and economic corruption.
Only a well-informed population can take its destiny in hand. We know that the problems confronting humanity are daunting in their depth and complexity. Yet we also know that the human spirit is endowed with the ability to transform even the most difficult challenges through cooperation for positive change. Today, we move into the New Age of cooperation and spiritual growth.
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Rene Wadlow
Rene Wadlow
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
World Press Freedom Day was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly as an encouragement to the independence of journalists and the media, to be celebrated each 3 May. The overall theme proposed for this year is ” Critical Minds for Critical Times: The Media’s role in advancing peaceful, just and inclusive societies.”
The Association of World Citizens has always stressed the need for an independent media as an important avenue for the creation of a cosmopolitan, humanist world society. Many of the great changes in the world society have been promoted by publications of books and newspapers – the Protestant Reformation, and the American and French Revolutions.Today, we see the great ideological wave of world citizenship as the core of a new world philosophy. Thus, world citizens have a strong commitment to freedom of expression through both public assemblies and through a free press.
Today, after decades of conflict when the emphasis of State leaders and the media they controlled was upon competition, conflict, and individual enrichment, world citizens place an emphasis on harmony, cooperation, mutual respect, and working for the welfare of the community. We know that there are an increasing number of people who realize that harmony is the key to our ascent to the next higher level of evolutioin: harmony between intellect and heart, mind and body, male and female, being and doing. We are fortunate to be able to participate in this crucial moment in world history when there is a passage of consciousness focused on the individual State to a consciousness focused on the unity of humanity and a new relationship of respect for Nature.
What is needed is a vision which inspires us to come together across over different points of view to create a process of healing and social transformation.
We are well aware that the media and the new digital technology and social media can be used for negative currents of hatred, racism, and narrow nationalism. Media can also be used to spread rumours or false information. Moreover, in a large number of countries, the media is under the control of the government or a small number of financial interests.
However, there is also a strong tradition of investigative journalism which has highlighted political and economic corruption.
Only a well-informed population can take its destiny in hand. We know that the problems confronting humanity are daunting in their depth and complexity. Yet we also know that the human spirit is endowed with the ability to transform even the most difficult challenges through cooperation for positive change. Today, we move into the New Age of cooperation and spiritual growth.
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[themify_box]
Rene Wadlow
Rene Wadlow
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
The turmoil in Kashmir, which got intensified after the fake encounter of Burhan Wani (July 2016), does not seem to abet. It has been worsening as reflected in the ongoing violence leading to low turnout of voters in the by poll (April 2017). Shockingly there was a turn out only of 7.14 percent of voters. The by-polls were also marred by violence in which, many a civilians and security force person also died and lately one witnessed with great horror a Kashmir youth being tied to the military truck to prevent stone pelters from throwing stones on the vehicle.
Farooq Abdullah
Those pelting stones don’t seem to be stopping despite the lapse of period of time. These young men are being looked at in various ways. Farooq Abdullah had stated on the eve of elections that those young men throwing stones are doing so for their nation. This statement of his came under scathing criticism from various quarters and section of media and was dismissed by many as a pre election statement.
Maqbool Butt
Another way of looking at those pelting stones; as gleaned from section of media; is that these are pro-Pakistan elements. They are being instigated by Pakistan and that they are doing this for money. As such stone pelting has been used as a method of protest in Kashmir since ages but has become glaringly obvious from last
Afzal Guru
few years. Intimidated by the terrorists-militants on one side and the security forces on the other these young men have been resorting to pelting stones as a form of protest and anguish. One can see the clear pattern in worsening repression and an increase in their activities. As such after every major act of hanging-murder the protests have become more intense e.g. after the hanging of Maqbool Butt (1984), then after the hanging of Afzal Guru (2013) and now after the killing of Burhan Wani (2016).
Who are these boys who pelt stones? Are these merely Pakistan inspired and funded youth? In the aftermath of state crackdown; hundreds have died, thousands have been wounded and many more have lost eyesight! A section of TV and other media is going hammer and tongs about the role of Pakistan and the funding they receive. The question which needs to be introspected is that will young people risk their life, loss of eyesight or other harm to body just for someone’s bidding or some money? Many of them are teenagers, tech savvy and they are so much full of deep hatred that they are willing to risk their lives, not caring about their future. The degree of frustration among them must we horrific.
Only a small section of media has gone deeper into the issue and have interviewed some of them. The stories of their experiences and feelings shatter one’s perceptions about law and order in Kashmir. Many belong to families which have given up hope of any type. Most of these young boys have experienced torture, beating, harassments of sorts and often humiliation For many of them stone throwing comes as sort of catharsis, a feeling of having taken revenge of what has happened to them. It is the only strong way of protest they must be feeling is left for them. Many of them are Pro Pakistan for sure but the basic point remains political alienation which is seeping in deepening. This in turn is due to the suffering and pain to which Kashmir has been subjected due to the prolonged military presence in the area.
Mahbooba Mufti
Post Burhan Wani murder, the Kashmir based PDP, or even national Conference has been able to see the intensity of the situation. Mahbooba Mufti, the Chief Minister of the ruling coalition, wanted to go for a dialogue with the dissenters, but coalition partner and the party leading at center BJP shot down the idea. Mahbooba Mufti felt that dialogue is the only way out but BJP feels that dialogue is a way to befool the people. It seems the ruling BJP wants to take a hard line to deal with dissidence, regards that dissidence is there only due to Pakistan or ISIS and so repression should be intensified.
What have earlier efforts for peace which need to be recalled in the present damning times? In one of the most significant move UPA II had appointed a team of interlocutors to understand and suggest the way out. The eminent team suggested that the autonomy of Kashmir Assembly, which is part of treaty of accession, be restored, dialogue with dissidents to be initiated and also talks with Pakistan be undertaken along with repeal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act.
Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel
Today there can be two approaches one is to recall the treaty of accession and gravitate towards that and take the recommendations of Interlocutors seriously. Nearly seven decades after the accession of Kashmir to India, there is a need to recall that forcible merger; repression of dissent was never the idea of founders of Indian nation. Let’s see what Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had to say on the matter way back, Deputy Prime Minister Vallabhbhai Patel said at a public meeting in Bombay on October 30, 1948: “Some people consider that a Muslim majority area must necessarily belong to Pakistan. They wonder why we are in Kashmir. The answer is plain and simple. We are in Kashmir because the people of Kashmir want us to be there. The moment we realize that the people of Kashmir do not want us to be there, we shall not be there even for a minute… We shall not let the Kashmir down” (The Hindustan Times, October 31, 1948).
Sheikh Abdullah
The situation in Kashmir is critical, and worsening by the day due to the high handed dealings from the center. Even the Chief Minister of Kashmir and the people like Sheikh Abdulla need to be listened to, if we want peace in the green valley, peace which is crucial. The deeper peace can only be won through winning the hearts and minds of the people of Kashmir, ultranationalist formulations don’t work in the long run.
PEN International welcomes today’s acquittal of all defendants in the OdaTV case and calls on the Turkish authorities to immediately release all those held in prison for exercising their rights to freedom of opinion and expression, and to end the prosecutions and detention of journalists simply on the basis of the content of their journalism or alleged affiliations.
The OdaTV case dates back to 2011 when 13 individuals, including ten prominent journalists, one academic, one former police officer and one intelligence service officer (who died in prison in 2011) were accused of being the media arm of a secret extreme nationalist terrorist organisation known as “Ergenekon”. Many of the defendants were held in pre-trial detention, some for more than a year, during the course of the investigation.
It outrageously took the Turkish authorities six years to reach a verdict. PEN International calls for a thorough review into the criminal investigation and subsequent trials to ensure that those responsible for this miscarriage of justice are held accountable. Urgent steps must be taken to guarantee the independence of the police and judiciary to prevent the same miscarriage of justice in other cases.
Ahmet Sik
Award-winning investigative journalist Ahmet Şık, who was acquitted today, is in the unusual position of being tried in a separate and contradictory case for supporting the Fethullah Gülen Terrorist Organisation (FETÖ) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). He was arrested on 29 December 2016 and remains in pre-trial detention. PEN International calls for his immediate and unconditional release.
Background
In February 2017, PEN International and other human rights groups monitored the hearings of several criminal cases against journalists and human rights defenders in Turkey, including the OdaTV case. At the previous hearing on 14 December 2016, the prosecutor requested that all twelve defendants be acquitted, arguing that there was insufficient evidence of the existence of the “Ergenekon” organisation.
Since the failed coup attempt of 15 July 2016, the Turkish authorities have cracked down on freedom of expression, resulting in a near total silencing of critical voices. There are now at least 141 writers and journalists in prison, making Turkey the biggest jailer of journalists in the world.
[themify_quote]A Consumer Fraud Lawyer’s mini Primer[/themify_quote]
The U.S./NATO line
5 Feb 2017
If you try to follow events in the mainstream media, you may have noticed that they routinely refer to Syrian President Bashar al Assad as a “brutal dictator”. Assad is supposed to have responded to peaceful protests with repressive violence and by “killing his own people”. The U.S., UK, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar continue to maintain that “Assad must go”.
I disagree with all of that, as I’ll explain in this article. I spent 25 years prosecuting lies in commerce for the people of New York and Oregon. I prepared this primer to help you cut through the lies and get at the truth about Syria.
It’s still quite possible that a nuclear war could arise from careless U.S./NATO confrontations with Russia in Syria. President Trump has indicated he favors a cooperative relationship with Russia, but he faces continuing pressure from the Deep State, neocons, and apparently, Congress and the media, to continue the New Cold War that was initiated in Ukraine. And the demonization of Russian president Putin and of Russia itself has been going on for some time and shows no sign of letting up.1 So in addition to the suffering of the Syrian people, which has been horrific and continues as I write, the conflict in Syria also poses a serious threat to
all of us.
Apart from this introduction and some other brief statements of my own, most of this article is a string of excerpts from the excellent work of other people I find persuasive and citations or links to sources for further information and analysis. To insure you can access the sources, full URLs are provided for most of them.
Robert Roth’s Syria-Primer “what’s really happening” – (66 pages)
Robert Roth
is a retired public interest lawyer. He received his law degree from Yale in 1971 and prosecuted false advertising and consumer fraud as an assistant attorney general for New York (1981-1991) and Oregon (1993-2007).
[pullquote align=”normal”]Freeing up the rich to exploit the poor – that’s what Trump and Brexit are about. – George Monbiot [/pullquote]
Propaganda works by sanctifying a single value, such as faith, or patriotism. Anyone who questions it puts themselves outside the circle of respectable opinion. The sacred value is used to obscure the intentions of those who champion it. Today the value is freedom. Freedom is a word that powerful people use to shut down thought.
When thinktanks and the billionaire press call for freedom, they are careful not to specify whose freedoms they mean. Freedom for some, they suggest, means freedom for all. In certain cases, this is true. You can exercise freedom of thought and expression, for example, without harming other people. In other cases, one person’s freedom is another’s captivity.
When corporations free themselves from trade unions, they curtail the freedoms of their workers. When the very rich free themselves from tax, other people suffer through failing public services. When financiers are free to design exotic financial instruments, the rest of us pay for the crises they cause.
Above all, billionaires and the organisations they run demand freedom from something they call “red tape”. What they mean by red tape is public protection. An article in the Telegraph last week was headlined “Cut the EU red tape choking Britain after Brexit to set the country free from the shackles of Brussels”. Yes, we are choking, but not on red tape. We are choking because the government flouts European rules on air quality. The resulting air pollution frees thousands of souls from their bodies.
Ripping down such public protections means freedom for billionaires and corporations from the constraints of democracy. This is what Brexit – and Trump – are all about. The freedom we were promised is the freedom of the very rich to exploit us.
To be fair to the Telegraph, which is running a campaign to deregulate the entire economy once Britain has left the EU, it is, unusually, almost explicit about who the beneficiaries are. It explains that “the ultimate goal of this whole process should be to … to set the wealth creators free.” (Wealth creators is the code it uses for the very rich). Among the potential prizes it lists are changes to the banana grading system, allowing strongly curved bananas to be categorised as Class 1, a return to incandescent lightbulbs and the freedom to kill great crested newts.
I suspect that the Barclay brothers, the billionaires who own the Telegraph, couldn’t give a monkey’s about bananas. But as their business empire incorporates hotels, shipping, car sales, home shopping and deliveries, they might be intensely interested in the European working time directive and other aspects of employment law, tax directives, environmental impact assessments, the consumer rights directive, maritime safety laws and a host of similar public protections.
If the government agrees to the Telegraph’s proposed “bonfire of red tape”, we would win bent bananas and newt-squashing prerogatives. On the other hand, we could lose our rights to fair employment, an enduring living world, clean air, clean water, public safety, consumer protection, functioning public services and the other distinguishing features of civilisation. Tough choice, isn’t it?
As if to hammer the point home, the Sunday Telegraph interviewed Nick Varney, the chief executive of Merlin Entertainments, in an article claiming that the “red tape burden” was too heavy for listed companies. He described some of the public protections companies have to observe as “bloody baggage”. The article failed to connect these remarks to his company’s own bloody baggage, caused by its unilateral decision to cut red tape. As a result of overriding the safety mechanism on one of its rides at Alton Towers, which was operating, against the guidelines, during high winds, 16 people were injured, including two young women who had their legs amputated. That’s why we need public protections of the kind the Telegraph wants to destroy.
The same ethos, with the same justification, pervades the Trump administration. The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, is seeking to annul the rules protecting rivers from pollution, workers from exposure to pesticides and everyone from climate breakdown. It’s not as if the agency was over-zealous before: one of the reasons for the mass poisoning in Flint, Michigan was its catastrophic failure to protect people from the contamination of drinking water by lead: a failure that now afflicts 18 million Americans.
As well as trying to dismantle the government’s climate change programme, Trump is waging war on even the most obscure forms of protection. For example, he intends to defund the tiny US Chemical Safety Board, which investigates lethal incidents at chemical plants. Discovering what happened and why would be an impediment to freedom.
On neither side of the Atlantic are these efforts unopposed. Trump’s assault on public protections has already provoked dozens of lawsuits. The European Council has told the UK government that if it wants to trade with the EU on favourable terms after Brexit, companies here cannot cut their costs by dumping them on the rest of society.
This drives the leading Brexiters berserk. As a result of the Pollution Paradox (the dirtiest corporations have to spend the most money on politics, so the political system comes to be owned by them), politicians like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have an incentive to champion the freedom of irresponsible companies. But it also puts them in a bind. Their primary argument for deregulation is that it makes businesses more competitive. If it means those businesses can’t trade with the EU, the case falls apart.
They will try to light the bonfire anyway, as this is a question of power and culture as well as money. You don’t need to listen for long to the very rich to realise that many see themselves as the “independents” Friedrich Hayek celebrated in The Constitution of Liberty, or as John Galt, who led a millionaires’ strike against the government in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. Like Hayek, they regard freedom from democracy as an absolute right, regardless of the costs this may inflict on others, or even on themselves.
When we confront a system of propaganda, our first task is to decode it. This begins by interrogating its sacred value. Whenever we hear the word freedom, we should ask ourselves, “freedom for whom, at whose expense?”.
For over 40 years Anand Patwardhan’s documentary films have stood for freedom of expression. He faced censorship on numerous occasions, took the government to court, and won each time. Anand is not just a filmmaker but an activist in the cause of Indian democracy, clearly under threat today. In this candid conversation with Vidya Bhushan Rawat, Anand discusses his views on the challenges before us, and most importantly, how he perceives both Gandhi and Ambedkar as liberation theologists whose ideas are in danger of being revised by their enemies.
VB: As a freedom lover secularist what is the difference between today’s media and that which existed during the official Emergency in 1975.
AP: The Emergency of 1975 was visible to all. The world condemned it and in India some brave newspapers protested with blank editorials. Within a fairly short time a strong resistance movement grew. Today’s Emergency is largely invisible to the masses because Indian media houses have been corporatized and these corporates, both Indian and foreign, are direct beneficiaries of an economic system that has been surreptitiously imposed on the country not just by the present regime but by forces that were already moving in the same direction but at a slower pace. We have sold our sovereignty to USA and the global corporates and people have been told that this is for our own good. The invisible Emergency of today depends on what Chomsky called “manufactured consent”.
VB: Today we face the biggest challenge to Indian democracy since independence when our civil liberties are under the attack, when freedom of expression is under threat and when media is constructing the ‘news’. Is ‘free media’ now the biggest threat to democracy?
AP: The media is free in the sense that it now has the freedom to tell lies about both, the domestic economy and about national security – lies that parrot an American-Israeli-Saudi axis which created, nurtured and unleashed Al Qaeda and ISIS on the one hand and pretended to “fight terror” on the other.
VB: You have documented major events not only of communal violence but also of violence against Dalits in Maharashtra. After the death of Rohit Vemula, in HCU, JNU and other campuses, students of all ideological frames – from the Left, to Ambedkarites and other Bahujan groups, joined in a common struggle against the ABVP and its attempt to vitiate the climate in the universities. Today that unity appears to be crumbling and we are again at the cross roads. Why ?
AP: The fault lies as much with the Left (of all shades) which is still unclear about how to destroy the caste system within, as with Dalit groups that fall prey to red-baiting and exclusivist identity politics. On one side are traditional Marxists who were brought up to think that caste is part of a superstructure that will automatically wither away when the economic base becomes socialist. On the other side are those who think that the caste of your birth alone forever determines how you think and how you act. Not only is such thinking contrary to the teachings of Dr. Ambedkar, it mirrors the mindset of the worst Manuvadis who believe that caste determines everything.
Luckily reality is proving both positions wrong. I believe that the Left and Dalits are natural allies so it is a matter of time before a genuine, long-lasting unity is forged. People like Govind Pansare, Kanhaiya Kumar and Jignesh Mevani have shown us that this unity is possible. Into this mix I would add progressive Gandhians – people like Narendra Dabholkar and Medha Patkar. Together these forces represent the politics of Reason that this country so desperately needs.
VB: Your film Jai Bhim Comrade was an extraordinary work which brought us back the memories of the struggle for justice of the people of Ramabai Nagar in Mumbai. You screened the film in various places. What were the reactions?
AP: The film as you know took 14 years to make. In the winter of 2011 we screened it in the open air in Dalit bastis across urban Maharashtra. We bought a powerful video projector, made a huge foldable cloth screen, and in each basti erected bamboo scaffolding to mount it on. As the screen was being erected, we played progressive film songs and Dalit movement songs to alert and attract the audience. Often the crowd would swell to well over a 1000 people. As we could not afford so many chairs, people sat on the ground or stood at the back and on the sides for the three hour duration of the film. At the end of the screening we tried to organize a discussion but often instead of a back and forth question and answer session, people just grabbed the mike and poured their hearts out about what the film had meant to them. It was an overwhelming experience for me. Later I began to understand the reasons for this amazing response. Although in the bastis, little of the hardship shown in the film was unknown to people, the fact that the film presented its protagonists not as victims but as resisters, was a morale booster. The genre of music heard in the film was in danger of either dying out or getting commercialized, so the film, so full of these songs captured over decades, served as a valuable archive. Lastly the politics of the film was appreciated, as it did not pull punches. It called to task not only sections of the Left for not recognizing the primacy of caste, but also Dalit leaders who were being lured by Manuvadi Hindutva to betray the legacy of Dr. Ambedkar.
Much later I began to show the film in colleges and schools and other middle class and elite circles. Here the response was enthusiastic but very different from that in the bastis. Even though people generally appreciated the film, almost invariably someone would ask about the evils of “reservations”. It was as if the audience had been blind and deaf to what they had just seen. After 3000 years where manual scavenging has been reserved for one caste alone and education has been forbidden, was it not time to reserve education seats for the dispossessed? In the end after long discussions, we agreed that reservations could be done away with only when the children of the rich and the children of the poor start going to the same schools – from the primary to the college level. Such prolonged inter-caste, inter-class contact could also open the door for inter-caste marriages. Many generations of such mixed marriages could finally end the caste system. This sounds idealistic but in my view this is the only way to finally end caste – when bloodlines become so mixed that no one can clearly say what caste they come from.
VB: Do you think that as secular activists we have not been able to communicate to common people in the language they understand or have failed to use the great secular legacy of India which was radical and rational as well?
AP: In general this is true but in particular some people are genuinely trying to address this. Of course the task is huge and we are up against a fascist force in the Brahminist RSS that has created a hydra-headed, cadre based organization that indoctrinates people in the name of cultural and religious pride, as well as today, of fake nationalism. In the early days they attracted mainly Brahmins. Today they are drawing in all castes and tribes that can be mobilized against their stated three enemies – Muslims, Christians and Communists. Religious culture and right wing politics is a potent combination and we rationalists have so far failed to match the organizational genius that runs this fascist machine.
VB: This government has been in hyper-active mode to keep people busy but if we analyse their actions we find clear attempts to divide people and polarize the debate. It started with their favorite topics like ‘Gaay’, Ganga, Rastrawaad, beef, Jana Gana Mana and then to Kashmir. Things went horribly wrong in Kashmir and the last part was a surgical strike but that too was questioned. Then came demonetization which hurt the poorest of the poor but was dressed up to look like an attack on “black money” and the rich. Each act is commonly linked, in my opinion, to privatizing our national resources and creating business for crony capital.
AP: Yes there is a clear strategy. Nothing in the Hindutva Parivar happens ad hoc or without central planning. At the same time perhaps Modi and Amit Shah have surprised even their own cadre by their willingness to be brutal and dishonest. Demonetization is an example. Even the direct beneficiaries, like the crony capitalists who emptied the banks and refused to pay back their loans must have been surprised at how the poor were squeezed to fill the bank coffers up again and then sold the idea that this was a strike on the unscrupulous rich. Even when all the “black money” came back into the banks and became white money, no question was raised while thousands of jobs were lost across the nation. It may be the undoing of Modi in the long run but in the short term he is still fooling most of the people most of the time.
VB: Communalism or I would call it Brahminism has joined hands with capitalism here but the resistance too is stronger. Unfortunately, political parties are unable to join hands with their egos and brinkmanship for votes. Will people’s pressure bring them together?
AP: At the moment there is no visible peoples’ pressure. There is visible suffering but the anger is not yet visible. Let us see if it manifests later.
VB: Do you feel that the Indian way of secularism i.e. equal respect to all religions, or what we call Sarva Dharma Samabhava is damaging the cause of social change as it allows religious dogmatics to hijack the leadership of different communities? There is a virtual competition between the religious right taking place in the polity thereby denying common persons of all communities the means to counter them. How do we respond to it?
AP: All over the world rationalists have found that religion that has existed for centuries is hard to stamp out and some form of co-existence is the norm in most secular countries. After the Soviet Revolution, St. Petersburgh became Leningrad but in 1991 it became St. Petersburgh again.
In India, both Gandhi and Ambedkar recognized that this country was so steeped in the idiom of religion that atheism or pure rationality would not be easily accepted by the masses. I consider Gandhi and Ambedkar, each in their own right, to be liberation theologists. Of course, Gandhi unlike Ambedkar, did not choose his own religion, he inherited it. But to whatever he inherited, he applied post-Enlightenment ethical values that were essentially modern. When he began to do manual scavenging and began to advocate this (even force it) on to his followers, he actually destroyed the very basis of the Pollution/Purity dichotomy that is at the heart of the caste system. Theoretically he for a long time infamously clung to the concept of Varnashram Dharma, but in actual deed he destroyed it the day he took up manual scavenging, a job that had been hitherto reserved for the so-called ‘untouchables’. As time went on Gandhi became ever more radical. He clearly learned from Dr. Ambedkar as well as from his own intuitive understanding of the world he was witnessing. For instance, towards the latter stages of his life, Gandhi refused to attend any marriage that was not an inter-caste marriage. By the end of his life he had fashioned out of his inherited Hinduism, something entirely new. Only the idiom remained, and not the original hierarchical Sanatan dharma. Whether his reluctance to discard the idiom was a practical decision that stemmed from a desire to remain in touch with the vast Indian masses in a language they could easily follow, or from his own inner belief system, is something that can be debated, but is of no great interest to me. What is unmistakable is that Gandhi’s ethical code bears little resemblance to the hierarchical and vengeful structure of traditional Hinduism.
Dr. Ambedkar in some ways was more fortunate than Gandhi in that he clearly saw how oppressive the religion of his birth was, being as he was, a direct victim of it. So he discarded it and searched for the best alternative to it. After examining many religions he finally chose the religion that was closest to Reason. Buddhism is the one world religion that does not posit an external, all-knowing God. However it has a very strong ethical core that Dr. Ambedkar highlighted. At the same time he discarded irrational and unproveable Buddhist tenets like Reincarnation that many traditional Buddhists ardently follow. This is why I see both Ambedkar and Gandhi as liberation theologists. In the same way that Left wing priests like Ernesto Cardinale in Latin America, a minister in Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government, re-interpreted Jesus Christ as a revolutionary who fought and died for justice to the poor and powerless, Gandhi and Ambedkar gave new ethical meaning to the religions they adopted and adapted.
Make no mistake that I am equating the two. Their differences are obvious. One came from a privileged caste, the other from the most oppressed. One was educated in a limited sense and steeped in traditional religion in his formative years while the other came from a caste denied the right to education and rose to become the best-read and easily the greatest intellectual of modern India.
I am not at all blind to the things about Gandhi that are paradoxical and irrational like his life-long demonization of sexuality. Gandhi’s insistence on chastity puts him in the same irrational, patriarchal boat as the priests and monks and nuns of many world religions. To examine this aspect in depth would take a whole chapter. And yet this same sex-denying man, by introducing the Charkha as a weapon of non-violent resistance, brought thousands of women into the mainstream of the Indian freedom movement.
I realize that I have let my stream of consciousness diverge from your original question. To get back to the issue about whether Sarva Dharma Samabhava can take the place of constitutionally guaranteed secular democratic rights, I think it cannot. We need Dr. Ambedkar’s Constitution much more than we need holy books. And yet as many in our country are still hooked to holy books and unholy pretenders, we need liberation theologists who can help people to culturally discard the worst features of their inherited religious culture and replace these with ethical, just and non-exclusivist interpretations.
Waiting for everyone to become atheist or rationalist may take centuries. Ethics is the answer. Small wonder that Ambedkar and Gandhi, each in their own way, arrived at individual definitions of Ahimsa.
VB: In post-Mandal India communities are seeking their space in the polity. In the earlier phase of secularism the Indian elite always kept the marginalised communities like Dalits, OBCs, Muslims outside the gates of their decision making bodies and public platforms but things are changing now. Very unfortunately more than the seculars it is the communalists who are jumping into identity politics and social engineering. Meanwhile communist parties still retain their upper caste leadership. Will we be able to face the challenge in such a way?
AP: Actually identity politics is a double-edged weapon. As long as oppression of identifiable groups exists, it is perfectly legitimate for oppressed groups to unite according to their identity. “Black is beautiful’ was a necessary movement for Afro-Americans in the USA, just as pride in Dalit or Buddhist identity is necessary in India. The trouble begins when this turns into an exclusivist or separatist movement. Malcolm X went through a Black Muslim phase when he described all white people as “devils”. But in the latter stages of his life he completely rejected this theory for a much more inclusive critique of injustice and inequality. That is when the American deep State killed him. Similarly while a broad section of Dalits are inclusive and fully understand the distinction Dr. Ambedkar made between the ideology of Brahminism and individuals who happen to be born into one or the other “upper” castes, there is a tiny section of separatist Dalits today who see birth as the sole determining factor. The fact that Western post-modern academia encourages such identity politics in preference to class analysis has given this form of separatist politics international acceptance. Meanwhile in India Manuvadi forces feel obvious glee when Dalits attack the Left or Gandhi, as both have long been the enemies of Hindutva.
VB: Hindutva people are expert in appropriating icons who are secular. They used Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh, Vivekananda, Subhash Chandra Bose, Sri Narayan Guru etc for their purposes. Is this because an overdose of Gandhi and Nehru’s role in our freedom struggle minimized all other icons that a kind of resentment began against Nehru and Gandhi?
AP: Frankly I am not a fan of Subhash Chandra Bose. I cannot swallow his alliance with Hitler and Hirohito. Freedom could not be wrested at such a cost. Vivekanand is also very troubling because he advocated a kind of machismo that I think is deeply problematic. Also what is little known about him is that he was deeply casteist. In fact he seems perfectly suited as a BJP icon. The resentment against Gandhi lies at the heart of the project of Hindutva which is why they killed him first and then attempted to appropriate his glasses and broomstick later. Nehru is hated because his development paradigm goes against the grain of privatization. Ambedkar they do not dare criticize openly these days so the only option is to use his image, minus any content.
VB: Your uncle Achyut Patwardhan was an icon of the socialist movement in India. We heard a lot about his relationship with Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar. Was there any influence of him on your socio-political thoughts?
AP: Achyutkaka and Aruna Asaf Ali, according to British records, were amongst the most wanted underground leaders of 1942. He ran the underground radio and was a master of disguise amongst other things but in later years he ensured that history erased him. You hardly hear or read about him anywhere because soon after Independence he became disillusioned with mainstream politics. He did educational and social work but he would never discuss the past, even with me. He felt it had all been mostly an illusion. His elder brother, Purshottam (Raokaka to me) was also a freedom fighter and spent over 10 years in British jails. In the 1930’s while he was making an anti-communal speech, Madanlal Pahwa tried to assassinate him but was caught. Raokaka who was a Gandhian socialist, refused to file charges and Pahwa was let off. Later this same Pahwa threw a bomb at Gandhi and was part of the conspiracy that finally killed him.
To answer your next question, it is true that in the decade of the 1930’s Dr. Ambedkar spent several months living, writing and studying at our family farm home in Ahmednagar, but this again is a chapter of history that has been irretrievably lost. Raokaka like Achyut left active politics after Independence and both, by their own choice, were written out of history. I have heard that Dr. Ambedkar and Achyutkaka were friends and met when Achyutkaka was underground, but I have no documents about this. What I do know is that my family opposed the caste system and many married outside their own caste, including my parents.
VB: You have always tried to bring together not only left and Ambedkarites but also what you call ‘Progressive Gandhians’. Why are you using this term ? You have been critical of people who as you say ‘blow out of proportion’ the differences between Gandhi and Ambedkar. Many of the Ambedkarites feel it quite disturbing?
AP: I must speak the truth as I see it. I have always felt that the affinities between Gandhi and Ambedkar are greater than their differences. They were both egalitarian humanists at heart. It may not win me any popularity contest today but I think those who are ready to set prejudice aside and undertake a proper historical study will come around to this point of view. Take the act of “Satyagraha”, a term coined by Gandhi. Ambedkar used this very term and form of struggle to launch his Mahad Satyagraha to claim drinking water rights. There are many other examples of common ideas and action. I was pleasantly shocked to read what Dr. Ambedkar had to say in 1932 immediately after concluding the now infamous Poona Pact (where the idea of separate electorates for Dalits was abandoned in favour of reserved seats for Dalits). Popular theory is that Ambedkar was blackmailed by Gandhi’s fast-unto-death into accepting a bitter compromise. But Ambedkar’s statement in 1932 after signing the pact was totally different in tone. He had high praise for Gandhi and stated that the “Mahatma” (yes, contrary to popular belief, Ambedkar referred to Gandhi as “Mahatma” at this point in time) offered a much better deal for Dalits in terms of reserved seats than Ambedkar himself had asked or hoped for. There is no denying however that Ambedkar did get disgusted with the Congress in later years. How much of the blame for the failures of Congress are attributable to Gandhi is a matter of discussion and debate. We know that Gandhi’s writ did not work in preventing Partition or the bloodshed that preceded and followed it and that Gandhi did not attend the Independence Day flag hoisting at the Red Fort in Delhi. He was busy fighting the communal inferno in the countryside.
Gandhi had a lot of obscurantist ideas to start with but as time went on he was honest enough to keep evolving. In the end I see him as a great humanist who died for his belief in non-violence and religious universality. He was also an inventive anti-Imperialist (though in his earlier days he had supported the British Empire) and an organic naturalist that today’s madly consumerist, globally warmed world desperately needs. Are most of today’s Gandhians like that? Of course not. That is why I used the term ‘progressive Gandhians’. It describes dedicated non-violent fighters like Medha Patkar, Narendra Dabholkar, the whole Baba Amte family, Sandeep Pande, S.P Udaykumar, Teesta Setalvad, Aruna Roy, Admiral Ramdas, and so many others. It certainly does not include government-fed Gandhians and those Gandhians who jump onto the Hindutva bandwagon as soon as it gathers steam.
Today I believe that all humanists, rationalists and fighters for social and economic justice must unite to fight the usurpers of our democracy and our history.
On 5 April 2017, the European Union and the United Nations will hold a joint conference on the future of Syria and its region. “Civil Society” is invited to participate, but it is not clear in advance if the Brussels meeting will be a “fund raising” one, in which case most non-governmental organizations (NGO) in consultative status with the UN will have little to contribute or if there will be wider aims.
The EU-UN meeting is the third in a short space of time concerning Syria, a reflection of concern with the refugee flow and the continued violence and suffering in Syria and Iraq. The following is a text written on behalf of the Association of World Citizens (AWC) [http://www.worldcitizensunited.org, https://awcungeneva.com] that is being sent to governments in advance of the 5 April conference. The text notes earlier appeals and efforts of the AWC in the Syria-Iraq-Turkey conflicts.
Following the 23-25 January 2017 talks in Astana, Kazakhstan sponsored by the Russian Federation, Turkey, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, a new round of UN-sponsored talks, 23-31 March was held in Geneva (informally called Geneva 4). The UN Special Envoy for Syria, Mr Staffan de Mistura has led the UN, Geneva and Lausanne-based talks. Not all the parties involved in the Syria-Iraq conflicts are participants in the talks. ISIS and the Kurds were not present nor all segments of the opposition to the Government of President Bashar al-Assad have been formally present. What informal talks are held in Geneva hotels and restaurants during the negotiations are not officially reported. There is a large and active Kurdish community in the Geneva area and some may be spokespersons for the effort to create Rojava, a Kurdish autonomous zone in Northern Syria that might form some sort of association with the Kurdish autonomous area of Iraq.
The Geneva-based talks have concerned short-term issues such as a ceasefire, safety of Syrian civilians and humanitarian access. There have also been longer-range issues concerning political processes such as a transition administration, constitutional changes, and elections for a new, more broadly based government.
Parallel to the intra-Syrian talks mediated by Mr de Mistura, the United Nations has been concerned with the human rights issues having created an Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic as well as a joint UN-Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigative mechanism.
The Association of World Citizens,(AWC), a non-governmental organization in consultative status with the UN, active on issues of the resolution of armed conflicts and the promotion of human rights, had welcome a 20 July 2011 call of then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for an inclusive dialogue to respond to pressing grievances and longer-term concerns of the Syrian people. The AWC, in a message to the Secretary-General encouraged broad participation of Syrian civil society in such a dialogue and indicated that AWC,knowing the possible usefulness of international NGOs in conflict resolution, would help facilitate such discussions in any way considered appropriate.
In December 2011, there was the start of a short-lived Observer Mission of the League of Arab States. In a 9 February 2012 message to the Secretary General of the League of Arab States, Ambassador Nabil el-Araby, the Association of World Citizens proposed a renewal of the Arab League Observer Mission with the inclusion of a greater number of non-governmental organization observers and a broadened mandate to go beyond fact-finding and thus to play an active conflict resolution role at the local level in the hope to halt the downward spiral of violence and killing.
On many occasions since, the AWC has indicated to the United Nations, the Government of Syria and opposition movement the potentially important role of non-governmental organizations, both Syrian and international, in facilitating armed conflict resolution measures.
The fighting in Syria, Iraq and parts of Turkey has led to a large number of displaced persons and refugees. The response of governments to the refugee flow has been very uneven, welcoming in a few cases, outright rejection in other cases. The AWC early on called for a UN-led conference on refugees and internally displaced persons. The AWC welcomed and participated in the UN conferences on refugees and humanitarian aid.
The armed conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan have led to serious violations of humanitarian international law: attacks of medical facilities and personnel, the execution of prisoners of war, the use of torture, the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage, the deliberate attacks on civilian populations, the use of weapons banned by international treaties. Therefore, the Association of World Citizens has stressed the need for a UN-led conference to reaffirm humanitarian international law. If strong support for international law is not manifested now, there is a danger that violations will become considered as “normal”, and thus will increase. Strong measures of support for humanitarian international law are needed to be undertaken now.
The structures of government, the authority, and the geographic limits of administrative regions, the rights and participation in national life of minorities have been issues in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon since the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. Appropriate forms of government which allow both for local autonomy and regional cooperation need to be developed. The search for an appropriate structure for those considering themselves to be Kurds has been a particularly difficult issue often leading to violence. The Association of World Citizens which has a decentralization, federalist tradition in the spirit of Alexandre Marc and Denis de Rougemont, has highlighted that federalism and decentralization are not steps toward the disintegration of a State but rather are efforts to find a more just structure of State organization and regional cooperation.
The Association of World Citizens welcomes the 5 April 2017 EU-UN conference on Syria and the region. The Association of World Citizens re-confirms its willingness to cooperate fully in the vast and critical effort for an end to the armed conflict and a development of an inclusive and just society.
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Rene Wadlow
Rene Wadlow
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
