JK Alternative Viewpoint

Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Washington to drum up more direct NATO intervention in Syria’s conflict. The visit came in the wake of a twin car-bombing in the Turkish town of Reyhanli on 11 May in which more than 50 people were killed.

The background suggests that the Turkish government may have had a hand in that bombing in a desperate attempt to get NATO to extricate Ankara from a failed, and criminal, tactic of regime change in Damascus.

Within hours of the double car-bombing in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan laid the blame for the atrocity emphatically on Syrian state forces. In an angry tone of defiance, Erdogan vowed that his country would not be “dragged into the quagmire” of the war in Syria.

But the truth is that Turkey is already deeply embroiled in Syria’s more than two-year bloody conflict that by some estimates has claimed over 80,ooo lives.

In a forthright denial of any involvement in the Reyhanli massacre, the Syrian government pointed out with fair reason that the Turkish authorities should take responsibility for its belligerent foreign policy towards its southern neighbour.

The Erdogan government has indeed allowed its border crossings with Syria to become logistical hubs for NATO-backed militants to launch attacks against the Syrian army of President Bashar al-Assad.These militant groups, which comprise so-called jihadist mercenaries from several Arab and other countries, are also accused of targeting civilian populations with atrocious acts of terrorism, including no-warning car bombs in urban neighbourhoods.

Yes, it is true than hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled for sanctuary in Turkey, where the Ankara government is providing humanitarian relief. Some 400,000 Syrian refugees are estimated to be residing in Turkey since the conflict erupting in March 2011, in border towns like Reyhanli in Hatay Province, at a total cost of $50 million a month to Ankara.

Nevertheless, the Erdogan government has permitted porous borders for the free flow of weapons and fighters into Syria. Infuriatingly for Damascus, these militants are allowed to retreat back into Turkey by the Ankara authorities in order to regroup and re-arm.

Credible reports also say that the American CIA and other Western military intelligence agencies are providing the Syrian mercenaries with training and logistics from the NATO Incirlik base in Turkey’s Hatay Province…

In addition, Turkish military officers have been captured or killed in battles with the Syrian army over recent months, according to Syrian state media.

There are also claims that chemical weapons have been supplied from Turkish territory to the mercenaries in Syria. The latter claim, if proven, has a certain irony, since Turkey’s prime minister Erdogan has been one of the most vehement voices among NATO and regional allies accusing the Assad forces of deploying chemical weapons in March near the northern city of Aleppo.

In short, Turkey under Erdogan’s leadership is already bogged down in the Syrian quagmire. Moreover, Erdogan’s government has, through its policy choices and actions, largely created this appalling quagmire.

But the problem for the Turkish leader is that the evident NATO agenda of regime change in Damascus has not gone to plan. Instead of a relatively quick covert campaign of destabilization, as in Libya, the Assad regime has proven to be surprisingly recalcitrant. Indeed, the evidence is that the Syrian authorities are increasingly gaining the military upper hand against the NATO-backed mercenaries, despite the carnage and mayhem unleashed on that country.

This protracted regime-change operation has rebounded most harmfully for Turkey out all of the NATO protagonists. The refugee crisis is reckoned to have cost Ankara $1.5 billion so far; and with the numbers of refugees in Turkey alone projected to double by the end of the year that is placing an unsustainable burden on Turkey’s once bustling economy.

The mercurial Syrian conflict is also rebounding to destabilize Turkey’s internal security problems with the long-running Kurdish separatist insurgency in its southern regions.

And, ironically, the jihadist militants that Turkey has fomented have come back to bite the hand that feeds. Turkish border communities complain of banditry and criminality by these groups during their “rest-up” periods when they are not running amok inside Syria. Shop-keepers and other businesses in border areas of Turkey’s Hatay Province report of being harassed and looted by gun-wielding gangs who feel entitled to “spoils of war”.

The Erdogan government is paying a grievous political price for these various forms of blowback from its NATO intrigues in Syria. The three-times elected Erdogan has slumped in the polls among ordinary Turks. Public protests in Ankara and other Turkish cities have denounced his incitement of conflict in neighbouring Syria. Notably, even in the aftermath of the Reyhanli bombings, the Turkish public has directed its anger at Erdogan, not the alleged Syrian perpetrators. Regionally, too, Erdogan’s once-shining stature as an honest political broker has also taken a drubbing.

In recent days, while Erdogan was in Washington meeting President Barack Obama, the Turkish president Abdullah Gul visited the terror scene of Reyhanli. In a speech that bristled with exasperation, Gul denounced the international community for “symbolic rhetoric” and no action over Syria. By “international community” it was clear that Gul was referring obliquely to the US and other NATO partners, Britain and France.

Several analysts have said that what Erdogan was seeking from Obama was for the US to do more of the heavy lifting in the NATO regime-change operation in Syria. This would involve more direct US military supply to militants on the ground in Syria, the setting up of no-fly zones in Syria’s border areas, and for the US and its European allies to take in a share of the refugees. But, to the chagrin of Erdogan, the US seems to be playing a longer political game, placing its bets on the forthcoming political dialogue process being set up with Moscow next month in Geneva. That means no short-term relief for Turkey.

There is a discernible sense of frustration, if not desperation, in Ankara that it is being left to carry the can for NATO’s covert war on Syria. While Obama has demurred about evidence of the alleged Syrian chemical weapons, Erdogan blusters that the “red line has been crossed long ago”. One wonders why Turkey, if it feels so confident about its allegations of chemical weapons being used by Assad forces, it has not invoked NATO’s umbrella defence provisions? Perhaps, Erdogan knows that his senior NATO partners have no stomach for a messy full-blown intervention in Syria, and any NATO invocation by him would result in even more egg on his face.

The Erdogan government’s bind over Syria puts the Reyhanli bombing in significant context. Who has to gain from such an atrocity? Certainly not the Assad government in Damascus. It seems to be winning the war against the NATO-backed militants, and the notion that Damascus would sanction such a massacre, potentially triggering excruciating external repercussions, does not make sense.

However, ahead of Erdogan’s visit to Washington, that spectacular act of terrorism would strengthen his leverage to elicit more practical American support to alleviate Turkey’s acute strain. The hasty rush to point fingers at Damascus by Ankara within hours of the twin blasts suggests an unseemly desire to find a convenient culprit – regardless of incriminating evidence.

According to the Turkish daily, Hurriyet, the twin blasts in Reyhanli claimed 51 lives and destroyed more than 730 workplaces, 62 vehicles, eight public buildings and 120 homes. Yet within four days of this carnage, Hurriyet reported that the Turkish authorities were claiming that their criminal investigation into the explosions “was complete” – even though 10 of the victims had not been positively identified and 13 people were being held by Turkish police for questioning over the incident.

Poor Erdogan. Since his Justice and Development Party first assumed office in 2003, a leitmotif of his government’s foreign policy has been a vision of “neo-Ottomanism”. This was supposed to herald a strong Turkey across the Middle East to reclaim past glory and the regional influence of the once-mighty Ottoman Empire. It would seem that with his governing party’s vision of neo-Ottomanism, the Turkish prime minister was seduced by American-led plans for re-ordering the Middle East with regime change to fit Washington’s hegemonic interests, and with Ankara gaining a top place at the American geopolitical table.

It was no coincidence that one of Obama’s first foreign policy initiatives in 2009 was to nominate Erdogan’s Muslim Brotherhood-aligned government as its “interlocutor” in the Middle East.

Part of this grand strategic partnership between Washington and Ankara was evidently for Turkey to do the US bidding with regard to regime change in Syria and, by extension, to undermine Syria’s traditional allies, Iran, Russia and China.

The bitterly ironic upshot of this seduction is that not only is Erdogan’s Turkey in danger of damaging geopolitical relations with Iran and Russia over energy and other vital trade links, it now finds itself in an increasingly intractable conflict over Syria. That conflict is rebounding with incalculable human and economic costs.

And yet Turkey’s supposed American partner seems insouciant about letting Ankara slip further into that quagmire. No wonder Erdogan is suffering from that sinking feeling.

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2013/05/17/erdogan-calls-on-washington-for-a-lifeline-in-natos-syrian-quagmire.html

Forcades is a leading advocate of Spain’s “indignados” protest movement. Photograph: Lluis Gene/AFP/Getty Images
The speedometer on Teresa Forcades’ battered silver Peugeot saloon shows 130kmph, but Spain’s most famously radical nun is so busy talking she seems oblivious to the 80kmph speed limit signs above the motorway near her Sant Benet convent on the slopes of Montserrat — Catalonia’s sacred mountain.

The woman whose biting criticism of everything from banks to big pharmaceutical companies has shot her into the political limelight is in a rush to get to Barcelona’s train station so she can travel to Valencia to deliver a speech. Then she will fly on to the Canary Islands for the next appointment on her busy public speaking schedule.

She is on the campaign trail to promote a radical new manifesto for revolutionary political change (link in Spanish). In the black headdress of the Benedictine order, Forcades has emerged as one of the most outspoken – and atypical – leaders of southern Europe’s fragmented and confused far left.

As she floors the accelerator she praises Syriza, the leftwing Greek group that rose from the rubble of the country’s ruined economy and which is a reference point for her manifesto for a radical new approach to building an independent Catalonia.

“The economic crisis in Spain has got to a point where it threatens the fabric of society,” she says. “This is something that has happened in Greece. The precariousness of people’s lives is progressing at an accelerated pace and people cannot cope. The danger of violence and upheaval in some non-democratic way is a possibility.”

She and the economist Arcadi Oliveres co-wrote the manifesto calling for a refounding of the Spanish state, with an independent Catalonia, nationalised banks and energy companies and an exit from Nato. They hope to rekindle the spirit of the indignados who occupied Spanish squares in 2011, but focusing on more concrete aims.

“I and a group of people felt a need to intervene, in my case because of this popularity I’ve acquired. I thought it could be good to try to organise this discontent, this feeling of deep disappointment and growing tension,” she says.

“I am not starting a political party and I am not intending to run in any elections,” she adds. “That is not for a Benedictine and not for me.”

But although she is not running for office, Forcades is not shy of public debate, regularly appearing on local television. Her conversation includes references to liberation theology, Marx’s theories on surplus value, Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela and the Tobin tax, as well as the 12th-century figure Saint Hildegard of Bingen or the rule of Saint Benedict — precepts by which she attempts to live.

On a visit to Venezuela in 2009 she found a country she did not recognise from critical descriptions in most Spanish newspapers. “Marginalised people spoke as if what they thought and wanted was important in the politics of their country,” she says. “They had a sense of counting, which is essential in democracy.”

Her critique of neoliberal capitalism includes not just a Christian desire to protect the weak, but also an attack on the hypocrisy of a system that gives goods and capital the freedom to cross frontiers while workers cannot. “It is a version of capitalism where the rights and needs of people are pushed aside,” she says, pointing to how taxes are higher on selling bread than on financial speculation.

Her rise to fame stemmed from a polemical spat with the World Health Organisation and the pharmaceutical industry over swine flu vaccines in 2009. A video filmed at her convent, in which she talks to camera for one solid hour about what she claims are the dangers of the flu vaccine, went viral.

“What I found astonished me, the lack of scientific ground for any of the public policies and decisions,” she says. “The video was highly viewed, by more than one million people. And that was the start of my public presence.”

El País labelled her a “paranoid conspiracist” and “hoaxer-nun” who used half-truths and her religious status to spread fear. But Forcades, who trained as a doctor in the US and has a public health PhD, says she spent three months studying the science before making an hour-long YouTube video – one of just 95 that now sit on a special Forcades YouTube channel..

“The campaign was not based on scientific fact, but was orchestrated to favour the industrial interests of the big pharmaceutical companies,” she says. It was also an attempt to curtail rights, she claims. “That was the talk, to justify mandatory vaccination.”

At Barcelona’s Sants railway station a middle-aged man walks up to her and kisses her hand. A woman with blonde frizzy hair also greets her like an old friend. Does she know them? “No, I don’t.” Does this happen often? “Yes.”

A Barcelona vox pop gives mixed results. The young and working class do not know Forcades, or mumble vaguely about vaccines, but middle-aged, middle class Barcelonans know all about her and, mostly, approve. However, some question how she can be both a leftwing feminist and part of a misogynist church that bans contraception and backs punishment for abortion.

Before she took her vows in 1997, Forcades tested the other nuns by giving a talk on a group of gay Catholics who celebrated their sexuality as a gift from God. She was humbled by the nuns’ humane reaction and, so, joined them.

Having already studied medicine in Barcelona and New York and signed up for a masters in theology at Harvard, the nuns encouraged her to finish her studies and then join them as a resident public intellectual, eventually giving her a secretary and freedom to travel and study elsewhere.

Forcades does not find convent life oppressive. “The myth that women can’t fix a tap quickly disappears when there are no men,” she says, pointing out that, historically, women often enjoyed greater freedom behind convent walls than in the real world. But she does not bite her tongue on the church Pope Francis took over in March, arguing for women priests while leaving contraception and abortion to individuals’ consciences.

“The Roman Catholic church, which is my church, is misogynist and patriarchal in its structure. That needs to be changed as quickly as possible.”

Forcades has talked for an hour and could probably keep going for two more, but Spain’s indignant nun must catch her train. In recession-hit, austerity Spain, where unemployment is 27% and rising, new audiences await to lap up her words.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/17/teresa-forcades-nun-on-mission

A painter rests in front of a huge portrait of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on a wall near a university, 2012. (Morteza Nikoubazl / Courtesy Iran)

In normal presidential elections, it is only the candidates and their platforms that matter. Not so in Iran. There, the key player in the upcoming presidential elections is the septuagenarian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is constitutionally barred from running for the office. He recognizes that the election result will have a profound impact on his own rule and on the stability of the Islamic Republic. So behind the scenes, he has been doing everything in his power to make sure that the election serves his interests. But the eleventh-hour declarations of candidacy by Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran’s president between 1989 and 1997, and by Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff and close confidant, have made his task more difficult.

The first part of Khamenei’s four-pronged strategy is to conduct an orderly election. The nightmare scenario for Khamenei is a repeat of the June 2009 presidential election, in which allegations that Ahmadinejad had stolen victory from his challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, led to massive demonstrations and the birth of the popular reformist Green Movement.

Khamenei could have stayed above the fray, as elites expected him to do. Instead, he lost credibility as a neutral arbiter when he sided with Ahmadinejad, rejected all allegations of fraud, and blamed Ahmadinejad’s opponents for inciting violence. His offer of public support for the president opened a fissure among the elites that has never quite healed. It also preceded a massive crackdown on activists who were castigated as American stooges and arrested. Even more, the disputed election alienated millions who felt truly robbed of their voices.

Given that history, Khamenei has made a concerted effort this time around to discredit potential protesters before they take to the streets. The Revolutionary Guards and security forces have launched a propaganda campaign to link any interruption on election day or after to the United States and its purported plans to destabilize the regime. For example, Yadollah Javani, the head of the political bureau of the Revolutionary Guards, has warned that the slogan “free and fair election” is a U.S. code word for sedition.

All this comes at a time when the Revolutionary Guards and security forces have enjoyed even more impunity than usual as they arrest activists and bloggers and shutter hostile websites and newspapers. In March 2013, the government claimed that it discovered and shut down a network of some 600 anti-government journalists who were planning to disrupt the presidential election. In reality, they were placed under surveillance in order to cut off their links to journalists and activists outside of Iran. And although there has not yet been any increase of forces on the streets, one can be sure that in June, the police will be ready for action.

The second component of Khamenei’s electoral strategy is to encourage a high voter turnout, which, he believes, will give the Islamic Republic back its veneer of electoral legitimacy. If anything, 2009 taught many voters, especially urban ones, that voting was pointless. The government has real fears that they simply won’t show up this June. To make sure that doesn’t happen and that at least as many Iranians as usual (60 to 65 percent) turn out, the regime scheduled the presidential election to take place simultaneously with the elections for the local councils. In those, which occur at the city, town, and village level, hundreds of thousands of candidates from every corner of the country will compete for thousands of seats. And the candidates will be of all stripes, since they do not have to be vetted by the regime. As those in the past, these races will likely boost voter participation this time.

Khamenei’s third strategy is to dissuade candidates that he does not trust to be sufficiently subservient from running. To achieve this goal, his first line of attack is to rely on the media and his surrogates within the clerical establishment, such as Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, to defame unfriendly candidates. Khamenei used this strategy to good effect against former president Muhammad Khatami, who declared his intention to run this spring. After throwing his hat in the ring, Khatami was lambasted in the media for initiating reforms during his presidency that weakened the Islamic Republic. He was also criticized for supporting the Green Movement. In the end, he decided not to run.

Khamenei’s other option is to rely on the Guardian Council to disqualify any candidate with a questionable ideological commitment to the supreme leader. Khamenei appointed six of the 12 members of this powerful institution, which is tasked with interpreting and protecting Iran’s constitution and approving candidates for the Assembly of Experts, the presidency, and the Majlis. Khamenei will turn to that body to deal with Mashaei and Rafsanjani.

Mashaei is the easier case. Ahmadinejad dreams of using him to pull a Putin-Medvedev trick, in which the latter wins a term as president, lets the former rule from behind the scenes, and then supports Ahmadinejad’s return to power when the time is right. But things are unlikely to play out that way: Ahmadinejad has far too many enemies to stay around for long. He was a “useful idiot” for Khamenei, who, as parliamentarian Ali Motahari has said, was supported “as an effective instrument for eliminating Hashemi [Rafsanjani] and the reformists.” In addition, Mashaei is intensely disliked by conservatives and Khamenei. He has been vilified for propagating a “deviant current,” which supposedly rejects direct rule by the clerics and champions Iranian nationalism as opposed to Islamism. Khamenei issued a decree four years ago that prohibited Ahmadinejad from appointing Mashaei as first vice president.

Mashaei, undaunted by the odds, officially declared his candidacy over the weekend. If the Guardian Council disqualifies him, that would leave Mashaei with two options: ask Ahmadinejad to interrupt by postponing the elections or go down quietly, supporting his other, less known, supporters in the race. Given Khamenei’s stern warnings that he will tolerate no mischief, Ahmadinejad surely knows that he will be dealt with harshly if he foments trouble.

Khamenei also has to deal with the complex case of Rafsanjani. A seasoned statesman, the cunning 78-year-old Rafsanjani was close to Ayatollah Khomeini and has been a friend of Khamenei’s since the pre-revolutionary period, when both men where part of Khomeini’s secret network inside Iran. Khamenei and Rafsanjani engineered Khamenei’s selection as supreme leader after Khomeini died, and the two men worked closely together when Rafsanjani served as president in the 1990s.

Their relationship began to deteriorate after the 2005 election, when Ahmadinejad defeated Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani implied that the election had been fraudulent, but did not pursue the allegation. Ties were weakened further after the 2009 election, when Khamenei declared that he was ideologically closer to Ahmadinejad than to Rafsanjani; he then accused Rafsanjani of masterminding the Green Movement and barred him from delivering Friday prayer sermons. Rafsanjani also lost his position as Chairman of the Assembly of Experts for Leadership and two of his children were jailed.

As soon as Rafsanjani declared his intention to run in the upcoming election, he was pressured to back down. Khamenei is right to be worried about Rafsanjani: Rafsanjani is the only candidate with the prerequisite skills, vision, savvy, and popular support to pose a serious challenge should he win the election. He has a developed network of supporters inside the government, the Revolutionary Guards, and the clerical establishment. Khatami has endorsed him, and all major reformist organizations could be expected to support him as well. He has pledged to moderate Iranian foreign policy and resolve the nuclear impasse. He has also declared that Iran is “not at war with Israel,” but would join the Arabs if they declared war. Finally, he has stated that the legitimacy of the supreme leader emanates not just from God but also from the will of people.

As part of the smear campaign to discredit Rafsanjani, Khamenei’s older brother labeled the former president “the best individual for American conspiracy against the Islamic Republic.” To immunize himself against such attacks, Rafsanjani declared that he would run only if the supreme leader did not object — and, reportedly, he has not. It would be difficult (although not unfathomable) for the Guardian Council to now disqualify Rafsanjani. After all, he has consistently held the most sensitive positions in the Islamic Republic, ranging from acting Commander of the Armed Forces to Speaker of the Majlis to the presidency.

Facing a potential challenge from Rafsanjani, Khamenei must also push for his own preferred candidates without actually endorsing them or appearing partisan — the fourth and final part of his strategy. It is an open secret that Khamenei favors the conservatives. He seems to particularly support the Coalition of Three, which consists of Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, a former speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Baqir Ghalibaf, the mayor of Tehran and a former Revolutionary Guard, and Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister. The three have worked closely with him on a variety of issues over the past few years and are trusted by him. Velayati is the most seasoned among them and seems to be Khamenei’s favorite. He has been a member of Khamenei’s “kitchen cabinet” for a long time. This group faces the twin challenges of chosing their main candidate and then unifying all the conservatives behind that person. After the Guardian Council completes its review of all candidates within the next week or so, Khamenei can rely on the mass media and his surrogates to promote his pick.

Should Khamenei’s strategy succeed, leaving him with the president of his choice, he will further consolidate his control of the government. This will intensify the lingering tensions between the state and Iran’s vibrant civil society, which demands political reform, accountability, and freedom. With a pliant president, meanwhile, Khamenei could also indirectly influence the elections for the Assembly of Experts for Leadership, scheduled for 2014. This body has the power to remove Khamenei or, in the case of his death, select his successor. A trusted next president would also guarantee continuity in Khamenei’s nuclear strategy and unwavering support for Syria, his top two priorities.

If, however, Khamenei’s strategy does not succeed, and Rafsanjani wins the presidency, Khamenei’s further consolidation of power will become more difficult. Rafsanjani’s victory could help bridge the divide among the elites that was created after the disputed election of 2009 and that, in turn, could lead to a slight opening of the political process. It also could increase the chances for a peaceful resolution of Iran’s nuclear dispute with the West. To be effective, though, Rafsanjani, or whoever wins the presidency, must ultimately still collaborate with Khamenei. For the time being, then, Khamenei will remain Iran’s final decider, however the upcoming elections play out.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139383/mohsen-milani/the-ayatollahs-game-plan?page=show

American radical feminist Shulamith Firestone was a leading theorist of 70s feminism who died a lonely death last summer. Responding to Susan Faludi’s psychological profile of Firestone in The New Yorker last month, Kathleen B. Jones examines Firestone’s contribution to women’s liberation

Little more than a month ago in The New Yorker Susan Faludi profiled the 1970s radical feminist, Shulamith Firestone, an immensely influential writer and activist who had largely fallen off most people’s radar by the early 1980s. Faludi’s not unsympathetic portrait focused on Firestone’s battle with schizophrenia and her lonely death late last August–her body lay undiscovered in her small East Village, New York studio apartment until the landlord, noticing bills had lain undisturbed outside her door for several days, sent in the building superintendent to see what was going on. The essay circulated the web like wildfire, swiftly being shared thousands of times on social media and generating instant commentary on other web-based sites, such as Slate. Bloggers noted the poignancy of Firestone’s near anonymity at the time of her death. Isolated from both her family of origin and most of her feminist allies, the once iconic revolutionary seemed to have disappeared into oblivion.  

Yet, however sympathetic to Firestone’s “solitary demise” Faludi’s essay appeared, the tenor of her analysis amounted to pathologizing Firestone’s catalytic intensity and quixotic personality while extending her assessment to an entire generation of 70s feminists. At the New York memorial service for Firestone, Faludi noted, several other pioneering American feminists, such as Jo Freeman and Kate Millett, were in attendance. “It was hard to say,” Faludi wrote, “which moment the mourners were there to mark: the passing of Firestone or that of a whole generation of feminists who had been unable to thrive in the world they had done so much to create.” A whole generation of feminists…unable to thrive? As the philosopher Babette Babich commented on Facebook in response to the rapid circulation of Faludi’s essay, Faludi’s interpretation, combined with her extensive discussion of Firestone’s mental problems, came dangerously close to blaming women for failing the revolution, instead of holding society responsible for failing to change. Indeed, a full two-thirds of Fauldi’s essay is devoted to the in-fighting and “trashing” that divided many in the women’s liberation movement from each other. By contrast, her analysis of Firestone’s major theoretical contribution to feminist theory—The Dialectic of Sex—is contained in a mere four or five cursory paragraphs.

It is time to give Firestone her due. Rereading her today, more than forty years after her work made its best-selling debut, I am struck (again) by the visceral power of her argument and the urgency with which she proffered her case for feminist revolution. It’s no wonder that many women, myself included, credit this book with changing their lives. Even if we disagreed with some of her most imaginative musings, she opened our eyes to the deep-rootedness of women’s oppression.

Since the mid-1980s and until fairly recently, feminist theory, both in the U.S. and beyond, has been dominated by a particularly cerebral form of poststructuralist theory. Now that interest has re-emerged in the potentiality of materialist analysis to explain how social and natural structures of power can both reproduce and transform gender systems it seems timely to reconsider the significance of Firestone’s contributions to this tradition. The brilliance of her classic, The Dialectic of Sex, was its innovative interpretation of Marx and Freud to identify a “sexual class system” rooted in biology itself. “Sex class is so deep as to be invisible…[F]eminists are talking about changing a fundamental biological condition…[S]o profound a change cannot be fit into traditional categories of thought…because they are not big enough: radical feminism bursts through them.” 

Firestone aimed at nothing less than to “develop a materialist view of history based on sex itself.” She postulated what might be called a nascent socio-biological theory of women’s oppression, identifying women’s inequality with a sexual dimorphism rooted in biology itself. Yet, Firestone contended, biology was not immutable. “Unlike economic class, sex class sprang directly from a biological reality: men and women were created different, and not equally privileged…But to grant that the sexual imbalance of power is biologically based is not to lose our case. We are no longer just animals. And the Kingdom of Nature does not reign absolute…Humanity has begun to outgrow nature: we can no longer justify the maintenance of a discriminatory sex class system on the grounds of its origins in nature. Indeed, for pragmatic reasons alone [population control and ecology] we must get rid of it.” ( emphasis original).

While calling for a technological revolution that could free women from their biology and alter the human relationship to work, Firestone recognized that the existence of such technologies alone was an insufficient guarantee of women’s freedom. She demanded a political revolution because “though man is increasingly capable of freeing himself from the biological conditions that created his tyranny over women and children, he has little reason to want to give this tyranny up.” Just as the proletariat needed to take control of the means of production, to “assure the elimination of sexual classes requires the revolt of the underclass (women) and the seizure of control of reproduction.” (emphasis original) Such a revolution entailed not only the elimination of male privilege; it also required the elimination of the sex distinction itself. Yet, her imagined world was not a one-size-fits-all humanist vision. She imagined the elimination of the sex distinction to be the precursor to the elimination of all artificially imposed limits—of age, race, sexuality—allowing truly individual distinctiveness to flourish.

The central tenets of her revolutionary program were these: replace the reproduction of the species by “one sex for the benefit of both” with “(at least the option of) artificial reproduction”; substitute for the dependence of the child on the mother a “greatly shortened dependence on a small group of others,” which would end the “tyranny of the biological family”; and eliminate the division of labor by eliminating labor altogether through cybernation. Related to these tenets, Firestone articulated four structural imperatives for her “alternative system”: Free women from the “tyranny of reproductive biology” and diffuse childbearing and childrearing throughout society; create conditions for the full self-determination, including economic independence, of women and children; integrate women and children totally into all aspects of society; and enable all forms of sexuality without restriction.

Among the more controversial of her imperatives was Firestone’s call for a fully liberated sexuality, not only for adults, but also for children. Most critics dismissed this aspect of her argument as preposterous. And many considered her contentions that biology was the source of women’s inequality and artificial reproduction was the foundation for liberation to be reductionist; perhaps even misogynist. Firestone anticipated the reception of her “dangerously utopian” ideas would range from “mild balking….to hysteria.”  She contended that images of Brave New World, of 1984, combined with the failed social experiments of the past, undermined any serious consideration of the concerns that lay behind her propositions. What were these concerns?

Two primary and interrelated concerns motivated her critique: the oppression of women and the oppression of children. Both, she argued, were rooted in the culturally reinforced economic and physical dependence of women and children on a system of patronage structured around adult male dominance in a nuclear family whose reproductive and economic functions were being rendered obsolete by ecological and technological developments. Ecologically, Firestone thought the nuclear family was at the root of a wasteful economy, perpetuated by what she called “family chauvinism” that, globally speaking, created a population explosion she feared was threatening the survival of the human race. Technologically, if taken out of the “hands of the present powers,” Firestone believed that fertility control and cybernation possessed the potential to fundamentally alter “humanity’s basic relationships to both its production and reproduction” ushering in a “new culture based on a radical redefinition of human relationships and leisure for the masses.”

It’s perhaps too easy to criticize Firestone’s faith in a democratically controlled technology to create the conditions for “paradise on earth anew.”  Not only does control of technology and new media seem even more in the hands of the present powers, serving the interest of dominant classes, but also the image of  a cybernetic socialism of mechanized production generating a leisure-based society does not strike everyone as humanly possible, much less fulfilling. Equally easy is it to criticize as impractical or unstable Firestone’s vision of the reorganization of social life away from private families and toward a program of “multiple options” an individual could choose among and change over the course of the life cycle, including  “single professions,” “living together,” and “households” comprised of a large group of people of varying ages licensed to live together for short-term periods, subject to renewal. And most readily dismissed as dangerous is Firestone’s plea for childhood sexuality.

Yet, beyond such obvious criticisms lay the laudable principle that motivated Firestone’s project—to end a regime of possessiveness that led to favoring one child over another, instead of being loved for the child’s own sake, and equally led to one woman being favored over another, instead of being loved for her own sake. In fact, behind Firestone’s concerns lay a simple, wildly utopian ideal: that “all relationships would be based on love alone, uncorrupted by objective dependencies and the resulting class inequalities.”

Today, the still largely unacknowledged influence of Firestone’s thinking can be traced not only in feminist demands for women’s sexual freedom and equality, but also in the children’s rights movement, in radical efforts to reconfigure regional planning and development along more sustainable models, in critiques of age-segregation in housing and work environments, and even in the most contemporary of post-humanist theories re-imagining the relationship between humans and the non-human world, such as the writing of Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Vandana Shiva, and others. (See Further Adventures of The Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith Firestone, edited by Mandy Merck and Stella Sandford) Yet, The Dialectic of Sex, until recently long out-of-print, remains largely absent from the gender studies curriculum.

A decade ago in an essay in Dissent, recounting her effort to create new editions of feminist classics, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future co-author Jennifer Baumgardner described her initial reaction to Shulamith Firestone’s early refusal to cooperate with reissuing her book. “I couldn’t believe that I thought it was the patriarchal publishing industry keeping these books out of younger feminists’ hands when, in a way, it was the authors themselves.” But she ultimately drew another lesson from Firestone’s refusal:  “As I came to terms with the fact that my vision for a series of feminist classics wasn’t going to be realized, I started to see the lesson in Firestone’s actions. Her book was a challenge to the inevitability of the female role, especially that of the mother who has to forgo her own needs by constantly privileging the needs of her progeny.” In the end, Firestone called Baumgardner to say she wanted Dialectic of Sex included. “Every movement has its classic texts. We deserve access to ours,” wrote Baumgardner of the series published now by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. These classics deserve to be read. And their authors deserve to be treated less like madwomen in the attic and more like revolutionaries whose vision has yet to be fully realized.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/kathleen-b-jones/legacy-of-feminist-revolutionary

Afghan President Hamid Karzai Thursday revealed that Washington wants to maintain nine US military bases scattered across the country after the formal deadline for the withdrawal of US and NATO coalition forces at the end of 2014.

In a speech delivered at Kabul University, Karzai stressed that he was amenable to the US demand, indicating that he was willing to trade the bases for promises of a continued flow of economic aid from the West and security for his puppet government. Another likely condition is US support for the election of his handpicked successor in an election set for next year.

“If these conditions are met, we are ready to sign the contract with the United States,” he said. As to the continued presence of foreign troops on Afghan soil after more than a dozen years of war and occupation, Karzai stated, “We see their staying in Afghanistan beyond 2014 in the interests of Afghanistan as well as NATO.”

The statements represented an abrupt rhetorical shift by the US-backed president. In recent months, Karzai has accused Washington of colluding with the Taliban to increase violence and create a pretext for a continued US military presence. He has repeatedly demanded an end to US aerial bombardments and to night raids by US Special Forces, which have claimed civilian lives and increased hatred for both the foreign occupation and Karzai’s corrupt puppet government in Kabul.

In February, Karzai barred US special operations troops from operating in the entire province of Maidan Wardak, southwest of Kabul. These and other statements and gestures have been aimed at deflecting popular hostility and posturing as a nationalist leader, rather than Washington’s stooge.

Karzai’s casting himself now as a pragmatic deal maker, however, was by no means welcomed by the Obama administration, which appeared blindsided by the Afghan president’s remarks.

US officials refused to confirm the request for nine bases, which Afghan aides to Karzai said was contained in the latest American draft proposal submitted last month.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters in Washington, “The United States does not seek permanent military bases in Afghanistan, and any US presence after 2014 would only be at the invitation of the Afghanistan government and aimed at training the country’s forces and targeting the remnants of Al Qaeda.”

Carney stressed that Washington was negotiating a bilateral security agreement that “will address access to and use of Afghanistan facilities by US forces.” He reiterated three times in the course of his remarks the denial that the US was seeking any “permanent bases.”

The reality is that Washington is negotiating with its Afghan puppet regime the unrestricted use of bases that it will formally lease from Kabul for at least the next decade.

According to the Karzai regime, the bases sought include Kabul, Bagram, Mazar, Jalalabad, Gardez, Kandahar, Helmand, Shindand and Herat, placing US forces in virtually every corner of the country.

The Obama administration has said next to nothing publicly about its post-2014 plans for Afghanistan. It has no interest in placing before the American people its blueprint for continuing military operations in the country where the US has waged the longest war in its history—an intervention that is vastly unpopular with the American people. Recent polls have shown two-thirds of the US population agreeing that the war was not worth fighting.

The White House wants to maintain the myth, which it continuously promotes, that “the tide of war is receding,” and that all US forces are being brought home from Afghanistan.

Recent reports have indicated that the Pentagon brass want to keep at least 13,500 troops deployed in Afghanistan, with a large portion consisting of special operations units.

Still to be resolved is an agreement by the Afghanistan government to cede to US forces absolute immunity from Afghan law, assuring that none of them can be punished for war crimes against the country’s population. The measures are intensely unpopular among the Afghan people. Failure to secure a similar agreement in Iraq derailed plans by the Obama administration to maintain a residual US military force in that country.

And, while the formal mission laid out for the forces to remain in Afghanistan consists of training Afghan forces and continued operations against Al Qaeda—a euphemism for counterinsurgency operations against Afghanis resisting foreign occupation—there is another overriding motivation for the US to maintain its military presence.

Afghanistan provides US imperialism with a strategic foothold in Central and South Asia, placing its military forces on the borders of Iran and China, and in close proximity to the vast energy reserves of the Caspian Basin.

Within the region, this motivation is widely recognized. Iran, Russia, China and Pakistan all oppose a continued US military presence, seeing it as both a guarantee of continued warfare in Afghanistan itself and a direct threat to their own interests.

Karzai’s public exposure of Washington’s bases proposal was seen by Afghan analysts as a sort of trial balloon, testing both the reaction within the country as well as that of neighboring countries. Iran, for example, has a 600-mile-long border with Afghanistan and has provided the Karzai regime with aid while maintaining extensive influence in Afghanistan, particularly in its north and west.

The New York Times quoted unnamed US officials as indicating that Washington is prepared to meet Karzai’s demands in exchange for a bases deal. “Officials said that aid would continue, although amounts given were likely to be reduced over time,” the newspaper reported. “And the Afghan government would have to live up to its commitments to battle corruption and run a more open government for the aid to keep flowing.”

The pretense that Washington is holding Karzai’s feet to the fire over corruption is ludicrous, given recent reports that the Central Intelligence Agency regularly delivers shopping bags, backpacks and suitcases stuffed with cash to the presidential palace.

This CIA money, used to pay off warlords and fill up the foreign bank accounts of the president and his supporters, is only the tip of the iceberg of the massive corrupt enterprise fostered by more than a decade of US occupation. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured into this war of aggression, while Afghanistan has remained one of the poorest countries on the planet.

The Obama administration’s attempts to hide this dirty secret from the American people were underscored in a speech delivered Wednesday by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, John Sopko, who was appointed last summer.

“Over the last 10 months, I have been criticized by some bureaucrats for not pre-clearing my press releases with them, for not letting them edit the titles of my audits, for talking too much to Congress, for talking too much to the press…and, basically, for not being a ‘team player’ and undermining ‘our country’s mission in Afghanistan,’” Sopko said.

Sopko cited pressure from unnamed “senior officials” who he said believed that his “reports should be slipped in a sealed envelope in the dead of night under the door—never to see the light of day—because those reports could embarrass the administration, embarrass President Karzai, embarrass Afghanistan.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/karzai-reveals-us-plan-for-permanent-afghanistan-bases/5334680

The ideological shift to the right in the PPP was evident from the awarding of party tickets

The campaign for the elections held on May 11 was perhaps the worst ever from the viewpoint of Pakistan’s oppressed classes. There is hardly any mainstream party that addressed the most burning issue in society: class contradictions and exploitation. None claimed to be a ‘party of the poor’. The religious and right wing parties are overtly aggressive towards society with their reactionary crusades. This is scary in view of the fundamentalism terror chipping in through a reign of terror soaked in bloodshed to brutalise the political culture. In just three months, from January to April, the country has witnessed an average of 600 monthly casualties. The Jamaat-e-Islami chief, Munawar Hassan, issued a stark warning at a recent public meeting held at the Jinnah mausoleum in Karachi. He reportedly said those proclaiming to be liberals should enlist themselves as minorities. He was unambiguous about the Jamaat’s aims; all the citizens of this theoretic state should abide by medieval-era sharia in their social and personal lives.

The right-wing Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) peppers its propaganda with religious phrases and has covert links with the fundamentalist outfits. Although some of its leaders pretend to be ‘liberals’, their religious orthodoxy cannot be concealed by such pretentions. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by Imran Khan, has a soft corner for the Islamists in spite of the fact that it started as a liberal outfit mainly attracting middle class youth besides fashionable upper- and middle-class women. Ideologically and socially, the PTI is an amalgam of these contradictions, which lays bare its temporary and fragile existence. The Awami National Party, mainly a Pashtun nationalist party that was once leftish, has of late aligned itself with US imperialism. Hence, it is in a bloody conflict with the Taliban. Over the last five years these reactionary bigots mostly carried out terrorist attacks against its leaders and activists.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) formed on an ethnic basis has been in power for more than 20 years with all the governments since 1988, both military and civilian ones. With its neo-fascist tendencies, it has dominated Karachi and urban Sindh through its mafiosi violence. Intimidation and fear play a central role in maintaining MQM’s hold over Karachi with bloody consequences. The violent disputes in Karachi claimed 2,284 lives in 2012. While the MQM has lost its social base substantially, it has tried to retain its hold through state patronage and armed gangs. However, the Taliban, who are also involved in extortion, kidnappings, and other criminal activities with almost MQM-style methods and networks, has in the recent period challenged the MQM. Ironically, the MQM claims to be a secular party and portrays itself as a victim, rather than an aggressor, of the violence that has plagued Karachi since the 1980s.

The Islamist Jamiat-i-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) has been dilly-dallying between Islamic obscurantism and US imperialism. It has completely exposed itself by displaying open and excessive opportunist tendencies to share the plunder through state power. The innumerable adversary Taliban factions and sects drenched in internecine wars have also attacked the JUI election rallies. Then there are dozens of independent candidates who will sell their souls to the highest bidder once they are elected. The tycoons in the formal and the informal (black) economic sectors will rush to buy them for the parties in power who would facilitate their plunder and crime. In reality, all these liberal and religious right-wing parties represent the diverse sections of the ruling classes. None of these parties even claims to represent the working classes.

On the other hand, under Asif Ali Zardari and the capitalist clique over the last five years, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) — traditionally perceived as the party of the working classes — has succeeded in what the ruling classes and the two military dictatorships failed to do. It has alienated itself from the working masses. In the process, it is on the verge of losing its traditional base of the party of the oppressed masses. It has canvassed through commercial advertisements in the electronic and the print media, like other right-wing parties, spending billions of rupees dished out by supportive tycoons. The PPP media campaign did not address the miseries afflicting the oppressed classes. It has nothing to vaunt about its five-year rule except some superficial issues, a redundant charity programme or certain constitutional amendments. But such measures hardly matter in the lives of the masses. It has presided over a rapidly declining economy, security, law and order, price hike, unemployment, lack of education, and healthcare.

The ideological shift to the right in the PPP was evident from the awarding of party tickets. While it has forged unholy alliances with the right wing and conservative parties, some of the former petit bourgeois left candidates have allied with the Jamaat-e-Islami and terrorist outfits such as the Sipah-e-Sahaba. Meanwhile, a venomous campaign against the left in the party was conducted. Consequently, the party refused election tickets to Marxists who had stuck by the party’s founding socialist programme with bright chances to defeat the right-wing conservative outfits. The McCarthyism of the imposed clique in the leadership was so vicious that they preferred to lose seats to the religious right in an extremely tight election rather than the Marxists making it to parliament and getting crucial seats for the PPP by defeating the reactionary parties.

One such Marxist is Ghufran Ahad, a candidate for NA-35 Malakand. Others include Riaz Lund [NA-257 Malir, Karachi] and Ilyas Khan [NA-150, Multan]. Ahad was the district mayor of Malakand. He dared stand up to the Taliban and the military aggression in 2009 when most other politicians had fled from the region. He was pivotal in setting up camps for the internally displaced people. He enjoys huge support among the youth and the toilers of Malakand and Swat. Lund raised the PPP vote in this constituency in the proletarian heartland of Karachi, from 17,000 in the 2002 elections to almost 47,000 when he contested in 2008. Khan bagged 27,000 votes in the 1993 elections, when he contested for the provincial assembly in his home constituency. He was a favourite to win the NA-150 seat this time. There are several other such examples. A revolt is brewing against the right-wing leadership of the PPP amongst the ranks and its social base in the working classes.

These elections are not going to change anything. The social and economic crises will worsen in the coming period, escalating the misery and agony of the oppressed masses. When all paths are blocked, the oppressed classes will have no option but to tread onto the path of revolution.

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2013\05\12\story_12-5-2013_pg3_5

Irrespective of who wins today’s election, nothing except more insecurity awaits non-Muslim communities, Ahmedis and Shias in an increasingly intolerant country
Naya Pakistan is the new buzzword in the country. It is the campaign slogan of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, and it speaks to those who are seeking not only a new leadership but also new Pakistan. There is an expectation that with this election must come a Pakistani renewal that would be more in keeping with the original promise of Partition, instead of the present corruption, poor governance and the absence of any sense of security. Many see the country suffering from the burden of an inept leadership and an expensive partnership with the United States in its war on terror, and believe Pakistan has paid too high a price for this. In the past few years, the media seems to have put the burden of both internal mismanagement and skewed external relations on the ruling Pakistan People’s Party. With new leaders like Imran Khan on the horizon, it is believed that a positive change is in the offing. Although it is not clear that Mr. Khan will be the ultimate winner in the elections, it is taken for granted that the new 40 million votes added to the voters’ list, including those of the youth, will favour the cricketer-turned-politician.
Turnout uncertain
However, there is a lot of uncertainty underlying the change mantra. Given the fact that the voter turnout in past elections was low, it is still not certain how many will show up for the election today. In provinces like Balochistan, the voter turnout in the 2008 election was as low as 20 per cent. Countrywide voter demotivation could get compounded by the threats being issued by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has warned people, especially in the tribal areas and the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, against going anywhere near a voting booth. Thus far, there have been numerous murderous attacks by the TTP against the previous ruling combine of the Pakistan People’s Party, the Awami National Party, and the Muttahida Quami Movement, targeting its leaders, candidates and campaign rallies. The TTP has declared these parties liberal-secular and thus deserving of its ire. The irony of course is that none of the three parties challenged terrorism and radicalism in the country despite being in power for five years.
Even if voters overcome these challenges to come out and vote, there is no evidence yet that a Pakistan under a different leadership can bring about the sort of renewal that is required for the task of nation-building. Nowhere is this more evident than in the attitude of political parties to the religious minorities. There are 2.9 million non-Muslims in the country formally registered with the National Database and Registration Authority. Of this, the biggest number is of Hindus (approx 1.4 million), followed by Christians (1.2 million), and then others which include Ahmedis, Zorastrian, Bahai, Sikh, Buddhist and even a handful of Jews.
Pakistan, which opted for separate electorates for its minority communities at the time of Partition, took the decision to integrate these communities in the political mainstream by abolishing that system in 2002. But in other ways, the process of integration of the minorities has been non-existent and, thanks to the overall ideological-political climate in the country, the attitude towards them is one of violent intolerance.
After many such incidents of violence targeting them and their mosques, the Ahmedis, for instance, are feeling more ostracised and threatened than before by the growing latent-radicalism in the country. The community was declared non-Muslim by the Bhutto government in 1974. Mainly concentrated in Central Punjab, the Ahmedis have opted to boycott these elections as none of the political parties seems to heed their concerns.
Earlier in the campaign, Imran Khan, who spoke about changing Pakistan from his hospital bed after his fall this week, issued a formal press statement contradicting the video footage about the party’s plan to revisit the law declaring Ahmedis non-Muslims. The video clip had gone viral on social media and the ensuing controversy forced Imran Khan to make the statement that he believed in the finality of Prophet Muhammad. But shockingly, he went on to add that no one from his party had sought Ahmedi votes. More than anything else, that declaration raises worrying questions about a national party’s agenda. Notwithstanding differences on interpretation of faith, the right of Ahmedis to life and inclusion in politics has to be ensured. It is also interesting that Imran Khan used the term ‘Qadiyani,’ which the Ahmedis in Pakistan consider derogatory.
The situation in relation to other political parties is not encouraging either. Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N, which is trying to maintain control of the largest province of the country, is entrenched in an electoral partnership with the defunct militant Deobandi organisation, Sipha-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), that is contesting elections under the title of Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat (ASWJ). The party’s rabidly fundamentalist posturing in Punjab does not bode well for the Ahmedis, or for the Shia community. In these last few months, the Shia community has been violently targeted in different parts of the country, especially in Balochistan, by the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an offspring of the SSP. The Shias are not a minority, but their relentless targeting is a result of the mainstreaming of Deobandi and Wahabi discourse in society and politics in general.
Misuse of blasphemy law
The Christian community is not happy either. In the past five years, there was a noticeable increase in the number of attacks on Christians using the blasphemy law. The Zia-era legislation condemns anyone guilty of blaspheming against the Prophet of Islam to death. The law is frequently manipulated to settle personal scores and disputes over land, especially by land mafias that are spread across the country. Some ministers of the PML-N were allegedly behind some of the attacks.
A similar situation seems to prevail in Sindh where Hindus feel increasingly insecure and abandoned like everyone else by what was once Bhutto’s party. Many PPP candidates are wealthy land-owning wadheras; some of them have well-known links with criminal gangs and militant outfits. The Hindus of Sindh will probably vote pragmatically for the PPP in areas dominated by the party, not out of loyalty, but to safeguard their interests and buy security, seriously deficient in Sindh.
Unlike the Hindus in South Punjab who mainly consist of the scheduled castes, the Sindhi Hindus include castes that are more affluent. They dominate business and industry in rural Sindh but consider themselves a threatened species primarily due to the abysmal economic and security conditions in the province. In upper Sindh, they say that the banyas dare not even show off their wealth for fear of attracting unwelcome attention, usually in the form of kidnappings for ransom. The overall increase in poverty and poor governance in the province have raised ordinary people’s threshold as far as crimes against rich Hindus are concerned. No one is outraged if some of their wealth gets stolen or extorted.
A bigger concern for Sindhi Hindus in recent years pertains to forced conversion of upper caste Hindu girls to Islam. Their economic influence has not translated into sufficient political clout to generate support among the political elite of Sindh to solve this particular grievance.
Wadhera-mullah combine
The lack of political engagement does not help counter the influence of religious wadheras or the wadhera-mullah combine which is now increasingly behind the conversion issue. It was in 2012, for example, that the conversion scandal involving a pir of the Bharchundi shrine became public. Mian Mithu, as he was popularly known, was also a PPP member of the National Assembly. He was instrumental in converting a local Hindu girl, Rinkle Kumari, to Islam after one of his men facilitated her abduction and then married her off to a boy she allegedly had an affair with. As Rinkle’s Talraja caste has some influence in Ghotki and adjoining Dharki, where it even has a huge shrine of Sacho Satram Das, the PPP eventually abandoned Mian Mithu.
Pakistan’s renowned Sindhi playwright, Noor-ul-Huda Shah, believes that there is a tendency to treat conversions, especially of upper caste girls such as Rinkle Kumari, as a trophy. The pride in converting upper caste Hindu girls could also be linked with the gradual spread of militant organisations like the SSP, JeM and LeT in interior Sindh. Piggybacking on the shoulders of the religious party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, the various militant outfits are said to be engaged in several cases of violence including the killing of three Hindu boys in Khairpur who were suspected of involvement with Muslim girls.
The efforts made by some Hindus in the last couple of years to migrate to India caught media attention. Though most people in the community still consider Pakistan their country and would not leave, political parties have paid scant attention to their problems.
For the minorities in Pakistan, the biggest question is whether this election will help them negotiate their safety and security in a society and polity increasingly drifting towards the right wing. So far, no political party has had the courage to provide a reassuring answer.

(Ayesha Siddiqa is a commentator based in Islamabad and author of Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy)

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/minorities-in-a-naya-pakistan/article4703142.ece?homepage=true

For a while now, Scandinavian countries and the Baltic States have started to look like havens for terrorists. Its history stretches back to the time of the first Chechen campaign, when bandit underground organisations from the Caucasus found help and support in these countries. At that time, the leader of the Chechen separatists, Dzhokhar Dudayev, had turned into a hero of «the fight for national liberation», and his death caused Scandinavian and Baltic democrats to launch a series of violent attacks on Russia. Today, the memory of the first president of «Ichkeria» has been immortalised in all the Baltic capitals. There is an avenue named after Dzhokhar Dudayev in Riga, a square in Vilnius and a memorial plaque in the Estonian city of Tartu.

It is well-known that the post-Soviet Baltic countries, which are quickly being accepted into NATO, are guided by Scandinavia and Poland in their geopolitical conflict with Russia. Estonia, having established close military and political ties with Finland and Sweden, plays the most active role in the dialogue between the Baltic States and Scandinavia. Lithuania is guided more by Poland, but is always willing to maintain an alliance between Tallinn and Riga and Stockholm and Helsinki. Poland is also open to a military and political dialogue with the Baltic States and Scandinavia. In this regard, one of the streets in Warsaw was symbolically renamed the Dzhokhar Dudayev Street in 2005. As a result, a bloc of states has formed next to Russia’s north-western borders where terrorism rooted in the North Caucasus and squeezed out of Russia has found suitable refuge.

The extremist Internet site «Kavkaz-Center», which is once again being talked about in connection with the terrorist attacks in Boston, used to operate out of Sweden and at one time was located in Estonia and Lithuania, but has seriously become a mouthpiece for Chechen terrorists since moving to Finland. Here it has been taken under the wing of Mikael Storsjö, whose activities are regarded quite favourably by the Finnish authorities. Operating out of Finland, «Kavkaz-Center» successfully acts as an «information window» to the outside world for the «Caucasus Emirate» – an organisation classified as terrorist in Russia. Characteristically, the US authorities have also included the Caucasus Emirate on its list of terrorist organisations, but are doing nothing to neutralise it…

A unique mutual understanding has developed between Chechen separatists and the Finnish authorities. «Kavkaz-Center» has repeatedly attacked Russia for its demands that Helsinki stops supporting terrorist propaganda even indirectly. In turn, from the mouth of Finland’s Foreign Affairs Minister Erkki Tuomioja one can hear the argument that «the business of protecting democratic freedoms» does not recognise state borders, and the protection of human rights cannot be the internal affair of any one country. So by protecting the activities of «Kavkaz-Center», the Finnish authorities are defending democratic freedoms and protecting human rights. Such an interpretation of rights and freedoms has already backfired in Boston as well as elsewhere.

The Chechen immigrants that have fled Russia, many of whom are former militants, are using countries in the West as one of the instruments of their foreign policy. The size of the Chechen diaspora in France has reached 30,000 people, in Austria – 25,000, in Belgium – 17,000 and in Germany – 12,000. There are also a large amount of Chechens in Norway and Finland. As a rule, they are using the Baltic States, like Poland, as a transit corridor to Western Europe.

In the US, Boston is believed to be an area densely populated by Chechens. During the 1990s, Islamic cells in America gave their support to militants in Chechnya, while Boston became home to a local branch of the Islamic organisation «Al-Kifah». Later on, Al-Kifah members were found to have prepared a number of terrorist attacks in the US, including against the World Trade Center in 1993, and the majority of their cells were destroyed. The majority, but not all. The Boston cell continued to operate, lending its support to Islamic extremists in Bosnia and Chechnya. The FBI has not touched it.

The Chechen diaspora in Europe is essentially playing the role of an information battering ram. Whatever Chechens abroad say themselves, the Western media will only refer to their attacks on Russia and the Russian authorities. Often, even without the knowledge of these Chechens abroad, Western «political make-up artists» give them the appearance of anti-Russian forces and dig a deep divisive pit between Chechens in Russia and Chechens in the West, where all Chechens are divided into «good» Chechens – those who emigrated or escaped to the mountains and forests somewhere in Dagestan and are fighting with the federal authorities – and «bad» Chechens – those involved in Russia’s public and political life on an equal basis with others.

«Quiet» countries like Finland are not always noticeable in the shadow of more powerful Western powers. As a consequence, many know about Washington and London’s support of terrorist networks, but only a few know about Finland’s contribution. It is interesting how long Helsinki will be able to pretend that democratic Finland and support for international terrorism are completely unrelated.
 
 
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2013/05/03/a-finnish-haven-for-terrorists.html

On 1 May unions were joined by several political forces in protests across the country to press for a minimum wage and a new law guaranteeing the independence of labour unions.

As Al-Ahram Weekly went to press, workers were marching from Al-Sayeda Zeinab to the Shura Council to protest against recently issued legislation they say harms workers’ interests. The protests were organised by the Egyptian Union for Independent Syndicates, Egypt’s Workers Democratic Conference, the Trade Union’s Freedom and Rights Coordinating Committee and the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU).

President Mohamed Morsi met with workers’ leaders at Al-Qubba Presidential Palace rather than the International Conference Centre where Hosni Mubarak used to attend a ceremony to mark Labour Day.

According to the president’s office “workers’ leaders” were invited to attend the event along with a number of political figures. Labour rights activists announced that they would boycott the presidential ceremony.

“What can the president say to us? He has done nothing for workers since taking office,” says Kamal Abu Eitta, chairman of the EFITU. “Workers were at the forefront of the 2011 revolution. It is time for them to have rights restored that have been eroded over the past three decades.”

Yet the current “regime”, says Abu Eitta, is continuing with Mubarak-era policies that deprived over 20 million workers of their basic rights.

Youth for Freedom and Justice, No to Military Trials Movement, Drop Egypt’s Debts campaign and the Revolutionary Socialists Movement all took part in the demonstrations. Many opposition parties also announced they would participate in the protest, including the Socialist Popular Alliance, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, the Strong Egypt Party, the Egyptian Communist Party Al-Tagammu, Al-Karama and the Workers and Peasants Party.

“Egyptian workers were denied their rights by businessmen assisted by Mubarak, and now President Morsi is doing the same,” said a statement issued by the organisers.

The protesters’ demands include implementing a comprehensive strategy to reduce unemployment and the setting of minimum and maximum wage limits.

Last July a minimum wage was set but it applied only to permanent government workers.

Workers also demanded the implementation of court rulings restoring privatised companies to public ownership.

Over the last two years the Egyptian Centre for Social and Economic Rights (ECSER) has secured verdicts returning several companies such — the Steam Boilers Company, Omar Effendi, Ideal, Assiut Cement, Nile Cotton Ginningy, Shebin Al-Kom Textiles and Tanta for Flax and Oil — to the public sector. The government has so far refused to implement the court orders.

“The government prefers to protect the interests of corrupt businessmen who stole these companies and fired workers,” says Kamal Abbas, coordinator of the Egyptian Union for Independent Syndicates.

He added that the protests would serve as a reminder to the president and the Muslim Brotherhood not to “betray the revolution” which was ignited by the workers struggle.

In November Morsi amended Law 35/1976 which regulates workers unions. The controversial changes allowed the Ministry of Manpower and Migration to appoint the leaders of the state affiliated Egyptian Trade Union Federation.

Saoud Omar, an advisor to the Egyptian Union of Independent Syndicates, argues that the new constitution marginalises workers’ rights.

“The 1971 constitution respected the rights of workers, especially their political participation,” he says. “Now workers aren’t even invited to political and social dialogue sessions.”

In 1942 Egypt’s workers won the right to form unions. Following the revolution of 1952 Gamal Abdel-Nasser allowed the formation of larger federations in an attempt to enhance the legitimacy of his fledging government. Nasser’s successors, Anwar Al-Sadat and Mubarak, tended to limit the independence of labour unions, keeping them under tight control.

Approximately 28 per cent of the Egyptian workforce is unionised, with the majority of members employed in the public sector.

Wednesday’s protests follow thousands of strikes by workers across Egypt over the past two years. A report published by ECSER records 1,969 protests by workers in both the public and private sector in 2012. Thirty-six per cent of all industrial actions were for improved wages. The report listed 111 protests against corrupt or failed management.

Mohamed Abdel-Baky
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ABDEL-BAKY Mohamed
* Al-Ahram Weekly, 30-04-2013 10:23PM ET: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/News/242…

http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article28588

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s many as 28 million child labourers work in India every day, according to UNICEF [Ipsita Pati/Al Jazeera]
Thousands face death, alcoholism and rising crime while eking out a dangerous livelihood in eastern state of Jharkhand.
Jharkhand, India – Every morning at the crack of dawn, 13-year-old Sagar Kujur joins many others of his age and even younger to trudge towards the coal pits of Ramgarh in Jharkhand, a state in eastern India.

Armed with shovels and cane baskets, they tip-toe over the jagged surface, settle down in a corner and start digging a hole through rocks of solid coal. A few back-breaking hours later, their baskets fill up with pieces of coal that had been chipped away, and they hurry to the nearest market to sell their day’s treasure.

Children like Kujur, blackened with coal dust, serve as daily reminders to the dark secrets of the 15,000-odd coal mines in the state.

Jharkhand is mineral-rich, but a majority of its people is dirt poor. As in the rest of India where, according to UNICEF, some 28 million children work to supplement their families’ meagre income, 400,000 children aged between five and 14 work in Jharkhand. Given the proximity to mines, many children work in them.

It is dangerous to work in the mines, particularly those that are underground where fatal cave-ins are frequently reported. But their penury leaves the children with few choices. “I know there is danger in this work, but at the end of the day, it is the money that matters,” Kujur said.

Officially, the mines are leased to state-owned companies such as the Central Coalfield Limited (CCL), Bharat Cooking Coal Limited (BCCL) and Eastern Coalfield Limited (ECL).

Illegal mining

However, people venture into these mines to extract coal illegally. At times, they burrow into mines that have been abandoned, or poach into mines that are operational but not properly policed.

With thousands of mines and a large area to cover, it is often impossible for the companies to monitor every mine, allowing an illegal mining industry to flourish.

I used to study, but then who will earn for my family? There is no other option. All my family members have to work together all day so that we don’t starve.

Rakesh Kumar, 12, miner
 
Government figures also point to the deep-rooted scourge of illegal mining. According to the ministry of coal, 583 cases of illegal mining were reported in the state between 2006 and 2010. Strangely, however, not a single person was arrested for the trade. In the four years up to September 2009, 21,702 tonnes of illegally mined coal were seized by officials.

According to a report published by the Jamshedpur-based Xavier Labour Relation Institute in 2008, there are some 195 illegal mining sites under CCL’s purview, 49 under BCCL and 203 under ECL.

State-owned coal companies blamed the government for failing to curb illegal mining. “Inadequate infrastructure of law enforcement agencies offers scope for illegal extraction of coal from the area. We are working according to the Mines and Minerals Act, but it is not possible on our part to curb illegal mining from the area,” said R R Prasad, the public relations officer of BCCL.

Similarly, R B Sharma, the general manager of CCL in Ramgarh, said that although he is well-aware of the situation, “it’s a vast area and fencing the entire area is not possible. The state government never enforced sufficient force to monitor the area”.

ECL officials could not be reached for comment.

‘There is no other option’

Despite the 1952 Indian Mines Act that stipulates that no one under the age of 18 can be employed in the mines, many children do so anyway.

Rules mean little to the children who claw coal from the guts of the earth for a living. “I used to study, but then who will earn for my family? There is no other option. All my family members have to work together all day so that we don’t starve from hunger,” says Rakesh Kumar, 12, another child miner. “On a normal day, we earn 200 rupees ($3.60) by going into these mines.”

Their future looks as bleak as the dark mines they are forced to work in. Schools are scarce in the region, and education is often seen to be a luxury.

“We know that we are gambling with our lives, and our children’s lives, every day – but with no poverty alleviation projects or alternate forms of employment reaching this part of the state, we are forced to mine coal for our livelihood,” said Shanti Tete, a woman working in the mines.

Death plays “hide and seek” with the miners each day, says 34-year-old Komal Devi. Each year, the mines in this area kill around 20 workers including six or seven children, pointed out Sanjit Kumar of the non-governmental organisation SRIJAN.

Illegal mining also bleeds the government of revenue. “Because of unauthorised mining, coal companies bear a loss of $20m per year, and [the] state government suffers a loss of $6.2m every year,” says Radhe Ramen, the deputy director of the mining department.

Social activists also talk of the high toll the illegal trade exacts on children, ranging from alcoholism to rising juvenile crime.

The government, however, has failed to curb the illegal trade and all its attendant evils. “We tried to enroll people in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act work, but people do not want to get involved as they do not see enough money,” explains Santhosh Satpathy of Jharkhand’s rural development department.

As many as “10,000 families might be earning their livelihood by ‘rat-hole’ mining in the area”, he said. “As the area has a history of mining – both legal and illicit – one solution may be to legalise the unlawful mining, and provide workers with sufficient safety training.”

For children like Kujur, though, the debate is of little consequence. What matters is going out every day to chip the coal and cart them to the market for some money. It’s no child’s play, but many of Jharkhand’s children are left without any choice.
 
 
Source: Al Jazeera 
 
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/05/20135582251240200.html