Is BJP refusing disaster aid to states that didn’t vote for them?

December 3, 2018

After dragging their feet in releasing disaster funding, refusing foreign aid and ignoring the plight of survivors, the centre has now has now asked Kerala govt to pay Rs. 33 crore for services rendered during the worst deluge of the century. Why is BJP trying to overrule the constitutional provisions of federalism?

Thiruvananthapuram: Is BJP trying to overrule the constitutional principles of federalism? The recent news may make people believe so. The Kerala government has received a bill of over Rs. 33 crore to be paid to the Controller of Defence Accounts, and this includes the airlift services provided by the Indian Air Force during the massive deluge in August this year.

Kerala, which suffered a loss of Rs 31,000 crore during the floods in August, Thursday wanted the Centre to expedite the promised assistance to enable it to rebuild the state, a report said.

Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the state had received only Rs. 2,683.18 Crore in its Distress Relief Fund and was finding it difficult to gather resources for the ‘re-build Kerala initiative.’ He said the state has to pay Rs. 290 crore to the Centre towards the rations received and rescue assistance provided during the floods.

“Air Force have asked the state to pay over Rs. 33.79 crore as the charge incurred for the rescue efforts during the deluge,” Vijayan told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.

Kerala had sought assistance of Rs. 5,616 crore through two memorandums. And Rs. 2,000 crore as an emergency fund. But, the Centre has allocated only Rs. 600 crore as an emergency fund, the Chief Minister wrote.

Obvious bias
It is not the first time that the NDA has ignored the plight of natural disaster survivors. It even went ahead and refused the aid given by UAE and Thailand. Union minister K J Alphons had appealed for a “one-time exception” to the 14-year convention to allow overseas assistance, notably from the United Arab Emirates(UAE) in August.

“Kerala has contributed huge amounts of foreign exchange through remittance in the last 50 years. In fact, in the last year itself, it had brought Rs. 75,000 crore… For these reasons, as a junior minister I am appealing to my senior colleagues to make a special consideration for the state. I appeal to them to make a one-time exception to the policy,” Mr Alphons told PTI in Delhi.

The flood relief granted by the central government is still proving to be inadequate. The centre has sanctioned a paltry Rs 100 crore, a minuscule amount compared to what was given to Jammu and Kashmir (Rs 1000 crore in September 2014 and Rs 426.83 crore in February 2015), Bihar (Rs 500 crores in August 2017), and North East (Rs 2350 crores including Rs 300 crores and Rs 250 crores for Assam in 2017.)

There was a delayed response in the release of funds for rescue and relief operations in the state from the central government.

“The Centre is assisting the civilian administration in rescue work through the deployment of 52 rescue teams of central forces, including units of the Army and the Navy, and has pressed 339 motorised boats, 2,800 life jackets, 1,400 lifeboats, 27 light towers and 1,000 raincoats into service,” a report said.

The Rs 100 crore relief fund released by the Centre when the state asked for immediate assistance of Rs 1,220 crore was not enough when the first appeal for help was made.

Relief for Gujarat, Assam and Bihar but not for Kerala and Bengal
The same central government gave a better package to Gujarat, Assam and Bihar, all three where the BJP is a part of the government when they were struck by floods.

“Flood waters swept across several places in the country on July 25 last year, killing two in Rajasthan and forcing Gujarat to declare a high alert. A week later, the heavy deluge would kill another 222 people. Prime Minister’s reaction to the disaster in his home-state (Gujarat) was prompt. A day after the deaths, he announced an interim relief package of Rs. 500 crore and he undertook an aerial survey of the flood-hit areas with Chief Minister Vijay Rupani,” a report by News18 said.

“From June 13 to August 3 this year, Assam battled floods that came in two waves and killed 41 people. Nearly 11 lakh people in seven districts of the state were affected. Jitendra Singh, Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, PMO office, announced Rs 340.4 crore as an interim flood relief package for the state—Rs 239.40 crore by way of the first installment of central share of State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) and Rs 101 crore as the contribution from the Ministry of Northeast (DoNER),” the report said.

“In Bihar, flash floods in several rivers—Gandak, Burhi Gandak and Bagmati, Kamla, Kosi and Mahananda—killed as many as 514 people and affected another 1.71 crore people across 19 districts of North Bihar from August 12 to August 20 in 2017. The deluge was a result of torrential rains in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal and other adjoining areas in the catchment area of major rivers in the state. Prime Minister Narendra Modi conducted an aerial survey of four affected districts—Purnea, Katihar, Kisanganj and Araria—with the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and announced Rs 500 crore as immediate relief for the state besides Rs 2 lakh each to the kin of those who died in the flood,” the report said.

It only released less than 10 per cent of the estimated damage in Kerala. The flood was one of the worst since 1924 and the death toll in August had reach 370. 20,000 houses were damaged and 10,000 kms of roads destroyed. 15 bridges were reported to have collapsed and 211 landslides had occurred due to the heavy rain and floods according to a Sabrang India report from August.

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati accused the Modi government of giving a step-motherly treatment to flood-hit Kerala and demanded that the calamity be declared a “national disaster”. The centre also dragged its feet in declaring the floods a national disaster.

“The BSP leader said that Kerala was suffering huge losses, both of life and property, in the worst floods in nearly a century. But despite demands for more funds and help, the central government was turning a blind eye to the crisis. “The BSP condemns in the harshest words such petty politics by the central government and the BJP,” she said in a report.

Past strategies
In addition to Gujarat, Rajasthan, Assam and Odisha are among states badly hit by floods.

Leaders in several of these states have sought more funds, but central government sources said many are yet to use the money they already have.

The Trinamul Congress and the BJD separately accused the central government of giving preference to the BJP-ruled Gujarat and Assam in providing assistance for damage caused by floods while remaining apathetic to the case of Bengal and Odisha.

In a report by Sudhir Patnaik in Sabrang India in 2001, a super cyclone ravaged Odisha but was not provided aid equal to Bhuj, Gujarat after the earthquake there.

“The Orissa Disaster Mitigation Mission has estimated the total loss to be not less than Rs. 20,000 crore, the same as the officially estimated loss caused to Gujarat now. However, the Orissa government, while appealing to the Centre made a request for an assistance of Rs 7,000 crore only. How much did the Centre actually pay? So far, only Rs 828 crore and 15 lakh. It may sound unbelievable but that is the truth,” the report said.

“Prime Minister AB Vajpayee issued almost a blank cheque to Gujarat. At least this was the version the media carried. Immediate assistance of Rs 1,300 crore was released to Gujarat by the Centre. Besides, the Prime Minister made an appeal to FICCI, CII etc to adopt all affected villages in Gujarat,” the report added.

“The most significant initiatives of the Centre were the 2 percent surcharge on Income Tax and Corporate Tax and the temporary removal of Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) provisions by the home ministry to enable free inflow of foreign funds for earthquake relief. The other policy initiatives of the Centre included, the formation of a 39–member Central Disaster Mitigation Authority, (which does not include anyone from Orissa), steps towards a Disaster Mitigation Act and the formation of a Disaster Mitigation Commission on the lines of the Election Commission of India,” the report said.

“This brings into focus the point that the BJP leadership of the Centre has made a direct assault on the spirit of Indian federalism and democracy by behaving differentially in similar situations. Since the super cyclone of Orissa has become part of history for those who neither witnessed it nor experienced its painful aftermath, it may be useful to recollect what was it all about,” the report said.

Punishing states that didn’t vote BJP?
“Indian central government is inhumanely using this crisis as an occasion to settle political scores and boost the obscene propagandist agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They are explicitly punishing people of Kerala for not allowing their divisive and communal hate agenda to get hold in this small state,” Pramod Puzhankara wrote in Sabrang India.

To deny the people help in the time of their greatest need is cruelty.

Adivasi Organisations Demand Equality, Gender & Environmental Justice at Sabarimala

December 3, 2018

We the following Adivasi organisations hereby express our deep concern on the recent developments and controversies about the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. The social, political and economic interests of the upper caste communities on Sabarimala Temple are well noticed by us.We hereby wish to express our need to retain our following rights that have been denied for generations:

Many Adivasi spiritual places have been colonized by the upper castes replacing Adivasi spiritual leaders by Brahminical priests all over India. Sabarimala is only one such case. We demand that the ownership of such spiritual places of worship be returned to the Adivasis.
As per the Forest Rights Act, Adivasis have the community rights for their places of worship. The control of the Brahminical priests on Sabarimala has violated these rights of the Adivasis. We demand that Sabarimala Temple be returned to the Adivasis..
Historically, Sabarimala has been an Adivasi place of worship. It was only in the year 1902 that the Brahmin Tantris took control of this place of worship. Before that, as per the historical records, Adivasi priests were conducting the spiritual affairs in Sabarimala. We would like to bring to your notice that if anybody talks about the tradition of Sabarimala, the real tradition of Adivasis should be addressed. The tradition cannot be addressed from the date of colonising Sabarimala by the Brahminical forces.
As per the Adivasi traditions, we do not say that no woman can enter our places of worship. Not just women, people from all faiths and religions have also been allowed to express their worship to our Gods. Our Gods are not owned by any secluded sections with their own selfish economic, social and political interests. As far as gender equality is concerned, we are far superior to the mainstream caste ridden, middle class societies. We hereby support the demands of women in Kerala to enter Sabarimala temple.
We appeal to all sections of the civil society to see to it that narrow and selfish political gains in the name of God by the Sang Parivar forces and the soft Sang Parivarforces be isolated. Our Gods have been colonised by the mainstream for centuries. Now, we do not wish that the mainstream society create communal rifts and violence in the name of our Gods.
Spirituality is a right of every human being as per our tradition. Nobody should be restricted from his or her right to spirituality. We condemn all those interests who use our spirituality in its distorted form and then create communal tensions in the society.
We are the children of forests. Sabarimala Forests are already getting weakened. Forests create rivers. Pampa river created by the Western Ghats is already polluted. Forests and rivers should not be destroyed in the name of Gods. The Adivasis have not done such destructive actions. Today, the present controllers of Sabarimala temple must take this responsibility on their shoulders. Forests and rivers are sources of life for Adivasis. The sources of life provided by our Gods cannot be destroyed by the mainstream interests. We appeal to the Kerala State Government to undertake urgent measures to solve this burning problem.
We appeal to all those who believe in justice to support our call for the preservation of humanity, gender justice, protection of environment and equality of human beings without upper caste control.

National Adivasi Andolana(NAA)
Rajya Moola Adivasi Vedike
Budakattu Krishikara Sangha Kodagu
Budakattu Krishikara Sangha Mysore,
Budakkatu Krishikara Sangha Periyapatna Taluk Mysore
Budakattu Krishikara Sangha Chickmagalore
Rajya Soliga Abhivruddi Sangha
Hassan Jilla Adivasi Hasalara Sangha
Iruliga Kshemabhivruddi Sangha(IAKS)
Bettakurubara Paramparika Sangha.

SC dismisses petition challenging demolitions around Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi

December 3, 2018

Last Friday, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition praying for intervention in the rampant demolitions being carried out by various governmental agencies in the name of building a Kashi Vishwanath to Ganga corridor in Varanasi.

As Sabrang India has already reported, these demolitions have raised widespread fear of an impending attempt to demolish the seventeenth century Gyanvapi Mosque, located in the same compound as the temple. The petitioners in the case were Anjuman Intazamiya Masjid, the caretakers of Gyanvapi Mosque and Jitendranath Vyas of the Vyas family, which had managed the temple for centuries. As per a 1954 agreement between the two, drawn up by the administration to maintain communal harmony, any construction/ alteration in the shared premises needs their prior permission. The petition was dismissed by an SC bench of Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Vineet Saran.

But the fears expressed by the petitioners are shared by many on ground. Given the track record of the RSS-VHP-BJP, it is only natural that the idea of a grand corridor between Kashi Vishwanath Temple and the river Ganges seems suspect. On the other hand, the question everybody is asking is if the real target of the demolition drive is the centuries old Gyanvapi mosque. Besides, the demolitions around the Gyanvapi mosque for the ‘grand corridor’ are ominously similar (https://www.frontline.in/cover-story/article25545271.ece?homepage=true) to those undertaken in 1992 around the Babri Masjid, just before it was demolished, ostensibly for ‘beautification’ . And while we are at 1992, let us also remember the oft repeated Hindutva slogan ” abhi to sirf jhaanki hai, kaashi, mathura baaki hai’ . The ‘Kashi’ in that slogan refers to the Gyanvapi mosque. Protected for years by a maze of gullies of the kind Varanasi specializes in, the widening of the road and the area around the mosque, exposes it dangerously to the nefarious designs of those, who after four and a half years in power, have had to hark back to the politics of mandir-masjid for electoral benefits. Sadly, the SC bench, in dismissing the petition, seemed not to see what can potentially be a conspiracy with violent ramifications.

U.S. Groups Condemn PM Modi for Failure to Stop Attacks on Religious Minorities

December 3, 2018

Matthew Bulger, Legislative Director of the American Humanist Association, a U.S. organization promoting theism and agnosticism since 1941, said that compared to global religious freedom standards, “India is failing”.

Washington D.C.: Religious freedom activists from across the U.S. have criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his failure to stop the violence carried out by Hindutva groups against religious minorities, including Muslims and Christians.

At an event titled “Religious Freedom in India: A Briefing on Capitol Hill”, organized by the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) on the Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., the activists urged the Indian prime minister to condemn such violence against religious minorities as well as take all necessary measures to curb the rise of Hindutva extremism and punish the Hindutva groups involved in violence.

“The failure of Prime Minister Modi to definitively condemn and to definitively distance himself from the extreme elements of his party has played a substantial and significant role in bringing about the situation that we see today,” said Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, former Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent bipartisan federal commission tasked with defending religious freedom outside the U.S.

“Inflammatory rhetoric and a conception of India’s national identity increasingly based on religion have contributed to an atmosphere of intimidation, exclusion, and even violence directed at non-Hindus,” she added, saying Muslims and Christians are the “primary victims”.

Dr. Katrina Lantos speaking at the Religious Freedom In India Briefing at the Capitol Hill

CAPTION: Dr. Katrina Lantos speaking at the Religious Freedom In India Briefing at the Capitol Hill

Dr. Lantos Swett, who is the daughter of Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to have ever been elected to U.S. Congress and who founded the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, said India’s religious freedom violation had a “long-standing pattern of impunity and immunity”.

“We see it in the lack of accountability for large-scale communal violence such as the horrors we know took place in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, and in the more individualized crimes committed against members of minorities faiths,” she said.

The briefing was held in a Senate Building before an audience that also included Congressional staffs, officials from the Department of State and USCIRF, and civil society members.

Jeff King, President of International Christian Concern (ICC), quoted a survey saying 82% of Indian Christians were “very concerned” for their safety, 73% experienced discrimination “at least once” last year, 85% saw an “increase in aggression” by Hindu nationalists, and 84% said minorities were “less protected” under Modi.

“If the prime minister were to condemn acts of aggression and violence and push for prosecution, this [violence] would fairly quickly dry up,” King said. “But it’s not happening.” He asked Modi to “use the bully pulpit and condemn acts of aggression and violence.” King urged the Indian Government to allow a team of USCIRF to visit India on a fact-finding mission.

Matthew Bulger, Legislative Director of the American Humanist Association, a U.S. organization promoting theism and agnosticism since 1941, said that compared to global religious freedom standards, “India is failing”. Several Indian laws and policies “restrict religious freedom rights” and have led to arrests and prosecution of individuals, “which is just unacceptable”.

He criticized Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code as a “relic” of British colonial law and “essentially a blasphemy and anti-religious incitement law “inconsistent with the pluralistic and democratic values India publicly accepts. Laws which restrict religious freedom can serve as a catalyst for vigilante violence, such as that seen in India recently regarding the lynchings by Hindu nationalists of people, most often Muslims, suspected of smuggling or killing cows.”

Bulger noted that although Pehlu Khan, a Muslim dairy farmer murdered by cow vigilantes in April 2017, named six suspects in his “death-bed statement” criminal charges against them were dismissed. “Sadly, this is not an isolated case, as over a dozen similar murders have happened in the last two years alone.”

Rev. Sarah C. Anderson-Rajarigam, a Dalit Christian Lutheran church priest from Philadelphia, said the status of Dalits had worsened under the Modi government. “Modi’s government has deliberately and openly made violence against Dalits a non-issue by offering impunity.”

The perpetrators of violence against Dalits were not only free but “elevated to the status of a hero”, she said, adding: “The pattern of violence continues unabated… But there is no shame experienced either by the perpetrators or by Prime Minister Modi and other ministers.”

Pawan Singh, a Sikh representing the Organization for Minorities of India, said the “fascist ideology” of the RSS that “a small group of people are born superior to others… needs to be checked.” He said: “There is the curtain of democracy that they use, and then go on with their business of killing individuals of dissenting opinion, or because they do not like them.”

Singh said the “pseudo institutions” connected with the RSS, such as the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, the Bajrang Dal and the Hindu American Foundation “were a threat to our freedom”.

Citing the World Hindu Congress organized in Chicago in September, Singh said the spread of Hindutva was “not just India’s problem any more…That is what gives me the shivers: these right-wing saffron terrorists [are] roaming in the free world, threatening our free institutions.”

He criticized the U.S. government for giving a visa to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, who, he said, “should be tried for crimes against humanity”, and slammed Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamurthy for speaking at the Hindu Congress. “These people are wearing facades, while they carry big knives to kill us, to kill the dissenting opinion, to kill anybody and everybody who will speak for equality, for justice and freedom for all.”

Sunita Viswanath, Co-founder of Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus, a New York-based nonprofit, said the “chilling repression of open debate and political expression” in India and the violence against Muslims and Christians was alarming. “This repression and violence is taking place in the name of Hinduism, one that we do not recognize and cannot accept,” she said.

Viswanath noted that the police had named the Sanatan Sanstha, an extremist right-wing Hindutva organization, for the September 2017 killing of Gauri Lankesh, a Bangalore-based activist and journalist. “The Sanatan Sanstha was also involved in the killing of other activists,” she said. “Despite this, it has not yet been banned or classified as a terrorist organization.”

Vishavjit Singh, a cartoonist and performance artist from New York, and a survivor of the mass violence against Sikhs in the aftermath of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, said that violence targeting Sikhs “set the stage for the powers to be – doesn’t matter, BJP, Congress, anybody else – to know [that] you can kill with impunity, as many people as you like, in a democracy, and get away with it.”

Indian American Muslim Council is the largest advocacy organization of Indian Muslims in the United States with chapters across the nation.

COP24: climate protesters must get radical and challenge economic growth

December 3, 2018

At the COP24 conference in Poland, countries are aiming to finalise the implementation plan for the 2015 Paris Agreement. The task has extra gravity in the wake of the recent IPCC report declaring that we have just 12 years to take the action needed to limit global warming to that infamous 1.5ᵒC target.

What do we want … when do we want it? Now. Etienne Laurent/EPA

Although the conference itself is open to selected state representatives only, many see the week as an opportunity to influence and define the climate action agenda for the coming year, with protests planned outside the conference halls.

A crucial role of environmental activists is to shift the public discourse around climate change and to put pressure on state representatives to act boldly. COP24 offers a rare platform on which to drive a step change in the position of governments on climate change.

However, many environmental movements in Europe are not offering the critical analysis and radical narratives needed to achieve a halt to climate change.

Growing pains

By now most people agree that greenhouse gas emissions (including CO₂) are the proximate driver of climate change, and that climate change is not only a future problem, but is already causing significant environmental and social problems across the world. Further, the trend in global CO₂ emissions still appears to be increasing, driven largely by consumption in advanced and emerging economies.

Economic growth measures the increase in the amount of goods and services produced by an economy over time, and it has historically been tightly coupled to CO₂ emissions. Decoupling these two factors is not impossible, and indeed many leading academics argue that the power of human ingenuity will solve the climate crisis. However, this is certainly unlikely in the timescales needed to tackle climate change in a just and equitable way.

Economic growth and carbon emissions are closely linked. International Energy Agency

Practically, what this means is that as long as economic growth continues to expand rapidly and indefinitely, so too will the quantity of CO₂ in the atmosphere and the associated environmental and social impacts.

To address climate change, therefore, we must address the root cause of this planetary ailment: the ideology of growth first, growth always. By moving away from growth-oriented societies in Europe and other advanced economies, towards ones that prioritise environmental and social health, we stand the slimmest chance of solving our climate crisis, while still allowing the poorest economies globally to meet their economic needs.

From outrage to strategy

Recent environmental movements demanding action on climate change, like the Extinction Rebellion in the UK and the Ende Gelande Alliance in Germany, don’t seem to take a clear stance on the role of economic growth in driving climate change. They don’t identify our unwavering commitment to the dogma of infinite economic growth as the driving force behind climate change, and as the reason that our efforts thus far have been impotent to stop the growing tidal wave of CO₂ emissions.

In the UK, the Extinction Rebellion has captured the public’s attention and gathered widespread support and media coverage over the past few weeks, with their outraged cries for government action.

Extinction Rebellion made the news but are they asking for the world? Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

However, their demands are broad and unspecific, asking for “net zero [carbon emissions] by 2025”. They make no mention of how the UK government might achieve this, but link to other websites which offer potential routes for reaching this target.

The sites suggested by the Extinction Rebellion promote ideas such as green growth and a green new deal. These ideas are founded on the premise that we can achieve both continually high rates of economic growth and reduce our impact on the planet. Sadly, the evidence (and a dash of common sense) tells us that this is not yet happening, and is unlikely to be possible in the near future. So what should groups like Extinction Rebellion do?

The way forward

It would currently be considered political madness to advocate for policies that might unintentionally, or intentionally, limit economic growth. Unfortunately, however, without a wider critique of the toxic relationship between climate change and economic growth, governments will be almost powerless to achieve any net zero targets they set.

At COP24 environmental movements have an opportunity to use their platform to highlight the relationship between economic growth and environmental impact, and even to discuss radical alternative futures that are not dependent on a growth-based economy.
Importantly, this doesn’t have to be considered a sacrifice. The relationship between economic growth and happiness in wealthy economies is at best complicated, and at worst nonexistent. This demonstrates the possibility of finding paths to climate stability that do not diminish our quality of life.

By identifying the root cause of climate change, and our inability to address it, these groups can go further than demanding action. They can change public mindsets, put pressure on national governments and point to a shared way forward. Here, we have our best shot at limiting the damage of climate change in a meaningful and timely way.

Christine Corlet Walker, PhD Candidate, University of Surrey

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Israeli software helped Saudis spy on Khashoggi

December 3, 2018

Parallel lawsuits filed by dissident Omar Abdulaziz, Amnesty International,and others accuse the spyware company of illegally helping governments of Saudia Arabia, Mexico and the UAE

A symbolic funeral prayer for the murdered Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in November 2018 Reuters

A Saudi dissident has filed a lawsuit against Israeli software company NSO Group, accusing them of helping the royal court to spy on his smartphone about his communications with murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The lawsuit has put immense pressure on the company and the Israeli government, as Israel issues the company’s sales of spyware to foreign governments. The spyware is known as Pegasus, reports the New York Times.

The suit also drew new attention Israel’s alliance with Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf States.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have never recognized the Israeli state but they all are on the same side when it comes to opposing Iran. After the uprising of the Arab Spring, Israel and Arab monarchies are on common ground in defending the established Arab order.

Montreal-based Saudi dissident Omar Abdulaziz filed the lawsuit in Israel, which follows parallel suits by journalists, activists and others accusing that the NSO Group illegally helped the governments of Mexico and the UAEto spy on their smartphones even there were no criminal records against the individuals, with no posed threat of violence as well.

Israeli lawyer Alaa Mahajn filed the lawsuit with cooperation from Mazen Masri, a lecturer at the City University of London.

The lawyers intend to argue that the resulting exposure of the collaboration between Abdulaziz and Khashoggi “contributed in a significant manner to the decision to murder Khashoggi.”

Abdulazizis a 27 year old Saudi asylum seeker in Canada living in Montreal. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings, he became popular among Saudis for his online videos and social media speech criticizing the rulers of Saudi Arabia and their authoritarianism.

Over the last two months, Abdulaziz has gained international attention because of his friendship with Khashoggi.

In the lawsuit, Abdulaziz claimed that before the murder of Khashoggi, the royal court had access to Khashoggi’s communications about opposition projects with Abdulaziz because of the spyware.

Amnesty International has also accused the company of helping Saudi Arabia spy on a member of the organization’s staff. Amnesty willtake legal action after the Israeli Defence Ministry rejected a request to revoke NSO Group’s license to export its spyware.

“By continuing to approve of NSO Group, the Ministry of Defence is practically admitting to knowingly cooperating with NSO Group, as their software is used to commit human rights abuses,” said Molly Malekar, the programs director of Amnesty International’s Israeli office.

In a statement on Sunday, the NSO Group said its products were “licensed for the sole use of providing governments and law enforcement agencies the ability to lawfully fight terrorism and crime.”

Contracts for use of its software “are only provided after a full vetting and licensing by the Israeli government,” the company said, adding: “We do not tolerate misuse of our products. If there is suspicion of misuse, we investigate it and take the appropriate actions, including suspending or terminating a contract.”

In August, Abdulaziz was notified by a research group named Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, that studies online surveillance, that his phone was hacked. They later concluded that the Saudi government was behind the hacking.

Saudi security forces also carried out a raid with search dogs in Abdulaziz’s family home in Jeddah.His brothers were arrested and put in prison, where they were tortured.

Courtesy: Dhaka Tribune

Why Does a Play Rile Islamists in Kerala?

December 3, 2018

An innocent play performed as part of an annual school festival ended up offending a section of Kerala Muslims so much that they formally lodged a complaint against it.

The play features a young Muslim girl who is in constant debate with her father, a muezzin in a local mosque. With aspirations to touch the sky, this young girl questions many notions of Islam regarding the supposed inequality between men and women.

She questions why women are supposed to eat half as much as men. After being chastised by the father for her persistent questions, she asks if women really deserve half of what men get, then why is it that they (women) should not wear half the clothes as compared to men. The last straw is when she asks her father if she can make the call to prayer very much like he does in the mosque. Furious, the father locks her up saying that it is not allowed in Islam and that only men have the right to give a call for prayer. He reminds her that she will not reach heaven if she does anything like this. The daughter replies that she would not like to go in a heaven in which she cannot sing and dance. Fortunately, the play ends with the father relenting and allowing her to make the Azaan.

The play is about women’s right, dignity and gender justice. It is also certainly humanist in the sense that the father eventually relents and redeems his own humanity. Also, the play would have lent itself to the current Muslim women’s movement in Kerala which is demanding entry of women in mosques.

But then, all good things must come to an end. And in Muslim context, many a times it ends before it even starts. The SDPI (Social Democratic Party of India), which is the political front for Popular Front of India (PFI) raised a huge hue and cry and even took to the streets to protest against the proposed play. Raising the familiar cry of hurt religious feelings, they demanded that the school in which this play was to be performed pull it back and tender an apology. The SDPI said that the play was intended to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims. Had this been some other context, we would have seen debates about freedom of expression and the right to dissent but then we hardly hear about such things when there is a Muslim context.

Unable to bear the pressure from SDPI and with no support forthcoming from anyone, the school now has decided to change the play and have promised not to hurt the religious feelings of anyone.

So how should we understand the claim of SDPI when it says that the play hurt the feelings of Muslims? How can a school play, performed in some corner of the country, end up hurting the feelings of the followers of a religion which is fourteen hundred years old? But then that perhaps is not the point. The larger point that SDPI is trying to make is that there can be only one version of Islam which should be acceptable to all Muslims and that they (SDPI) are the representatives of that religion. This religion, which they claim to be the sole spokesman of, is understood to be anti-women to the core. Any talk of women’s agency and this kind of Islam immediately starts talking about hurt feelings.

On the other hand, this is also a clever way to stop any movement within the Muslim community which imagines a different relationship with God or a more equitable relationship between men and women. It is a serious affront to think that God will take offence because a child decides to question her father. What kind of Islam does the SDPI wants to project: one in which even the innocent questions of a child will be treated like a crime?

The argument of the SDPI, that the play was an insult to the Muslim way of life is equally unconvincing, to say the least. Like most organizations who have become the spokesman for Muslim culture, the SDPI is also ignorant about Muslim culture.

There is no one Muslim culture in India. What we call Muslim culture is contextualised by regions, languages and different historical trajectories. A Muslim considers it as part of his culture when he touches the feet of his mother in law in Bengal. A Muslim woman considers it part of her culture to wear the Sindoor post marriage in parts of Bihar, Bengal and Orissa. This would be simply an anathema in a different part of the country.

The point is that amidst this plethora of diverse Muslim cultures, which one should we believe is the standard towards which an average Muslim should look. The answer is that there is no standard and throughout centuries Muslims have believed that all cultures are equally valid.

But then, perhaps for the Islamist SDPI, Muslims must necessarily look towards the Arabian culture in order to become true Muslims. And that precisely is the problem. In trying to de-legitimize indigenous Muslim cultures of India, the SDPI wants to ingratiate Arabian Islam on the psyche of Indian Muslims. This trend is dangerous and it must be resisted by one and all, most importantly by the Muslims of Kerala themselves.

Arshad Alam is a NewAgeIslam.com columnist

Courtesy: New Age Islam

Father of Green Revolution in India Rejects GM Crops

December 3, 2018

Genetically modified (GM) cotton in India is a failure. India should reject GM mustard. And like the Green Revolution, GM agriculture poses risks and is unsustainable. Regulatory bodies are dogged by incompetency and conflicts of interest. GM crops should therefore be banned.You may have heard much of this before. But what is different this time is that the claims come from distinguished scientist P.C. Kesaven and his colleague M.S. Swaminathan, renowned agricultural scientist and geneticist and widely regarded as the father of the Green Revolution in India.

M.S. Swaminathan

Consider what campaigner and farmer Bhaskar Save wrote in his now famous open letter in 2006:
“You, M.S. Swaminathan, are considered the ‘father’ of India’s so-called ‘Green Revolution’ that flung open the floodgates of toxic ‘agro’ chemicals, ravaging the lands and lives of many millions of Indian farmers over the past 50 years. More than any other individual in our long history, it is you I hold responsible for the tragic condition of our soils and our debt-burdened farmers, driven to suicide in increasing numbers every year.”

Back in 2009, Swaminathan was saying that no scientific evidence had emerged to justify concerns about GM crops, often regarded as stage two of the Green Revolution. In light of mounting evidence, however, he now condemns GM crops as unsustainable and says they should be banned in India.

In a new peer-reviewed paper in the journal Current Science, Kesaven and Swaminathan state that Bt insecticidal cotton has been a failure in India and has not provided livelihood security for mainly resource-poor, small and marginal farmers. These findings agree with those of others, many of whom the authors cite, including Dr K.R. Kranthi, former Director of the Central Institute for Cotton Research in Nagpur and Professor Andrew Paul Gutierrez and his colleagues.

The two authors conclude that both Bt crops and herbicide-tolerant crops are unsustainable and have not decreased the need for toxic chemical pesticides, the reason for these GM crops in the first place. Attention is also drawn to evidence that indicates Bt toxins are toxic to all organisms.

Kesaven and Swaminathan note that glyphosate-based herbicides, used on most GM crops, and their active ingredient glyphosate are genotoxic, cause birth defects and are carcinogenic. They also note that GM crop yields are no better than that of non-GM crops and that India already has varieties of mustard that out-yield the GM version which is now being pushed for.

The authors criticise India’s GMO regulating bodies due to a lack of competency and endemic conflicts of interest and a lack of expertise in GMO risk assessment protocols, including food safety assessment and the assessment of environmental impacts. They also question regulators’ failure to carry out a socio-economic assessment of GMO impacts on resource-poor small and marginal farmers.

Indeed, they call for “able economists who are familiar with and will prioritize rural livelihoods, and the interests of resource-poor small and marginal farmers rather than serve corporate interests and their profits.”

In the paper, it is argued that genetic engineering technology is supplementary and must be need based. In more than 99% of cases, the authors argue that time-honoured conventional breeding is sufficient. In other words, GM is not needed.

Turning to the Green Revolution, the authors say it has not been sustainable largely because of adverse environmental and social impacts. Some have argued that a more ‘systems-based’ approach to agriculture would mark a move away from the simplistic output-yield paradigm that dominates much thinking and would properly address concerns about local food security and sovereignty as well as on-farm and off-farm social and ecological issues associated with the Green Revolution.

In fact, Kesaven and Swaminathan note that a sustainable ‘Evergreen Revolution’ based on a ‘systems approach’ and ‘ecoagriculture’ would guarantee equitable food security by ensuring access of rural communities to food.

There is a severe agrarian crisis in India and the publication of their paper (25 November) was very timely. It came just three days before tens of thousands of farmers from all over India gathered in Delhi to march to parliament to present their grievances and demands for justice to the Indian government.

According to the Charter of Indian Farmers, released to coincide with the farmers’ march in Delhi:
“Farmers are not just a residue from our past; farmers, agriculture and village India are integral to the future of India and the world.”

Successive administrations in India have however tended to view Indian farmers as a hindrance to the needs of foreign agricapital and have sought to run down smallholder-based agriculture – the backbone of Indian farming – to facilitate the interests of global agribusiness under the guise of ‘modernising’ the sector, thereby ridding it of its ‘residue’ farmers.

To push this along, we now have a combination of World Bank directives and policies; inappropriate commodity cropping; neoliberal trade and a subsequent influx of (subsidised) agricultural imports; and deregulation, privatisation and a withdrawal of government support within the farm sector, which are all making agriculture economically unviable for many farmers.

And that’s the point, to drive them out of agriculture towards the cities, to change the land laws, to usher in contract farming and to displace the existing system of smallholder cultivation and village-based food production with one suited to the needs of large-scale industrial agriculture and the interests of global seed, pesticide, food processing and retail corporations like Monsanto-Bayer, Cargill and Walmart. The aim is to lay the groundwork to fully incorporate India into a fundamentally flawed and wholly exploitative global capitalist food regime.

And integral to all of this is the ushering in of GM crops. But as Kesaven and Swaminathan imply, GM agriculture would only result in further hardship for farmers and more difficulties.

Of course, these two authors are not the first to have questioned the efficacy of GM crops or to have shown the science or underlying premises of GM technology to be flawed. Researchers whose views or findings have been unpalatable to the GMO industry in the past have been subjected to vicious smear campaigns.

Despite the distinguished nature of the two scientists (or more likely because they are so distinguished and influential) who have written this current paper, we may well witness similar attacks in the coming days and weeks by those who have a track record of cynically raising or lowering the bar of ‘credibility’ by employing ad hominem and misrepresentation to suit their pro-GMO agenda.

And that’s because so much is at stake. India presents a massive multi-billion-dollar market for the GMO industry which already has a range of GM crops from mustard and chickpea to wheat, maize and rice in the pipeline for Indian agriculture. The last thing the industry wants is eminent figures speaking out in this way.

And have no doubt, GM crops – and their associated chemical inputs – are huge money spinners. For example, in a 2017 article in the Journal of Peasant Studies, Glenn Stone and Andrew Flachs note that Indian farmers plant the world’s largest area to cotton and buy over USD 2.5 billion worth of insecticides yearly but spend only USD 350 million on herbicides. The potential for herbicide market growth is enormous and industry looks for sales to reach USD 800 million by 2019. Moreover, herbicide-tolerant GM traits are the biotechnology industry’s biggest money maker by far, with 86 per cent of the world’s GM acres in 2015 containing plants resistant to glyphosate or glufosinate. However, the only GM crop now sold in India is Bt cotton.

If we move beyond the cotton sector, the value capture potential for the GMO biotech sector is enormous. Clearly, there is much at stake for the industry.

The negative impacts of the Green Revolution can be reversed. But if commercial interests succeed in changing the genetic core of the world’s food supply, regardless of warnings about current failures of this technology and its unintended consequences at scientific, social and ecological levels, there may be no going back. Arrogance and ignorance passed off as ‘scientific’ certainty is not the way forward. That was a salient point when Bhaskar Save outlined his concerns about the impacts of the Green Revolution to Swaminathan back in 2006.

Scientists can and do change their views when presented with sufficient evidence about the flaws and negative impacts of technologies. This is how science and debate move forward, something which seems lost on the industry-backed scientists and ideologues who tout for GM.
It also seems lost on politicians who seem more intent on doing the bidding of foreign agricapital rather than listening to Indian farmers and following a more appropriate agroecologically-based route for rural development.

Colin Todhunter was named in August 2018 by Transcend Media Services as one of 400 Living Peace and Justice Leaders and Models in recognition of his journalism. Join him on Twitter.

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/

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Father of Green Revolution in India Rejects GM Crops

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