HSD1

Should have sued for a lot more. Sounds like a really sh*te place to work.

• Adil Rashid admitted travelling to Nottingham and having sex with the girl
• He met the 13-year-old on Facebook and they communicated by texts and phone for two months before they met
• He was educated in a madrassa and 'had little experience of women'
• Said he had been taught 'women are no more worthy than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground'
• Added he was reluctant to have sex but that he was 'tempted by [the girl]'

A muslim who raped a 13-year-old girl he groomed on Facebook has been spared a prison sentence after a judge heard he went to an Islamic faith school where he was taught that women are worthless.

Adil Rashid, 18, claimed he was not aware that it was illegal for him to have sex with the girl because his education left him ignorant of British law.

Yesterday Judge Michael Stokes handed Rashid a suspended sentence, saying: ‘Although chronologically 18, it is quite clear from the reports that you are very naive and immature when it comes to sexual matters.’

Earlier Nottingham Crown Court heard that such crimes usually result in a four to seven-year prison sentence.

But the judge said that because Rashid was ‘passive’ and ‘lacking assertiveness’, sending him to jail might cause him ‘more damage than good’.

Rashid, from Birmingham, admitted he had sex with the girl, saying he had been ‘tempted by her’ after they met online.

They initially exchanged messages on Facebook before sending texts and chatting on the phone over a two-month period.

They then met up in Nottingham, where Rashid had booked a room at a Premier Inn.

The girl told police they stayed at the hotel for two hours and had sex after Rashid went to the bathroom and emerged wearing a condom.

Rashid then returned home and went straight to a mosque to pray. He was arrested the following week after the girl confessed what had happened to a school friend, who informed one of her teachers.

He told police he knew the girl was 13 but said he was initially reluctant to have sex before relenting after being seduced.

Encounter: Rashid and the girl had met randomly on Facebook and had also communicated by phone and text messages for two months before they met

Earlier the court heard how Rashid had ‘little experience of women’ due to his education at an Islamic school in the UK, which cannot be named for legal reasons.

After his arrest, he told a psychologist that he did not know having sex with a 13-year-old was against the law. The court heard he found it was illegal only when he was informed by a family member.

In other interviews with psychologists, Rashid claimed he had been taught in his school that ‘women are no more worthy than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground’.

When Judge Stokes said Rashid ‘must have known it was illegal, unless he was going round with his eyes shut’, defence lawyer Laban Leake said reports suggested Rashid had a ‘degree of sexual naivety’.

‘The school he attended, it is not going too far to say, can be described as a closed community and on this occasion this was perpetuated by his home life.

Rashid had pre-booked a family room at the Premier Hotel in Goldsmith Street, Nottingham where he took his victim

Sentenced: Rashid admitted at Nottingham Crown Court (pictured) that he had sex with a 13-year-old after she 'tempted' him

‘It is not too far to say that he may not have known that having sex with a 13-year-old girl was illegal.’ Judge Stokes sentenced Rashid to nine months youth custody, suspended for two years, along with a two-year probation supervision order.

Describing Rashid, the judge said: ‘He’s had an unusual education, certainly in terms of the sexual education provided. Comparing women to lollipops is a very curious way of teaching young men about sex.’

But he said that Rashid knew what he was doing was wrong.

‘It was made clear to you at the school you attended that having sexual relations with a woman before marriage was contrary to the precepts of Islam,’ he said.

Addressing Rashid, the judge said: ‘I accept this was a case where the girl was quite willing to have sexual activity with you. But the law is there to protect young girls, even though they are perfectly happy to engage in sexual activity.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2268395/Adil-Rashid-Paedophile-claimed-Muslim-upbringing-meant-didnt-know-illegal-sex-girl-13.html

The British empire, George Orwell wrote, was "despotism with theft as its final object". So what has made imperialism an intellectual fashion in our own time, reopening hoary disputes about whether it was good or bad? After five years as a colonial policeman in Burma, where he found himself shooting an elephant to affirm the white man's right to rule, Orwell was convinced that the imperial relationship was that of "slave and master". Was the master good or bad? "Let us simply say," Orwell wrote, "that this control is despotic and, to put it plainly, self-interested." And "if Burma derives some incidental benefit from the English, she must pay dearly for it."

Orwell's hard-won insights were commonplace truisms for millions of Asians and Africans struggling to end western control of their lands. Their descendants can only be bewildered by the righteous nostalgia for imperialism that has recently seized many prominent Anglo-American politicians and opinion-makers, who continue to see Asia through the narrow perspective of western interests, leaving unexamined and unimagined the collective experiences of Asian peoples.

Certainly, as Joseph Conrad wrote in 1902, "the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much." Two years after Conrad published Heart of Darkness, Roger Casement, then a British diplomat, revealed in a report that half of the population of Belgian-ruled Congo – nearly 10 million people – had perished under a brutal regime where beheadings, rape and genital mutilation of African labourers had become the norm. Such overt violence and terror is only a small part of the story of European domination of Asia and Africa, which includes the slow-motion slaughter of tens of million in famines caused by unfettered experiments in free trade – and plain callousness (Indians, after all, would go on breeding "like rabbits", Winston Churchill argued when asked to send relief during the Bengal famine of 1943-44).

The unctuous belief that British imperialists, compared to their Belgian and French counterparts, were exponents of fair play has been dented most recently by revelations about mass murder and torture during the British suppression of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 1950s. Nevertheless, in one of the weirdest episodes of recent history, a Kipling-esque rhetoric about bringing free trade and humane governance to "lesser breeds outside the law" has resonated again in the Anglo-American public sphere. Even before 9/11, Tony Blair was ready to tend, with military means if necessary, to, as he put it, "the starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant" around the world. His apparently more intellectual rival Gordon Brown urged his compatriots to be "proud" of their imperial past. Sensing a sharper rightward shift after 9/11, many pith-helmet-and-jodhpurs fetishists boisterously outed themselves, exhorting politicians to recreate a new western imperium through old-style military conquest and occupation of native lands.

Embracing such fantasies of "full-spectrum dominance", American and European policymakers failed to ask themselves a simple question: whether, as Jonathan Schell put it, "the people of the world, having overthrown the territorial empires, are ready to bend the knee to an American overlord in the 21st"? After two unwinnable wars and horribly botched nation-building efforts, and many unconscionable human losses (between 600,000 and one million in Iraq alone), the "neo-imperialists" offering seductive fantasies of the west's potency look as reliable as the peddlers of fake Viagra. Yet, armour-plated against actuality by think tanks, academic sinecures and TV gigs, they continue to find eager customers. Of course, as the historian Richard Drayton points out, the writing of British imperial history, has long been a "patriotic enterprise". Wishing to "celebrate" empire, Michael Gove plans to entrust the task of rewriting the history syllabus to Niall Ferguson, one of the "neo-imperialist" cheerleaders of the assault on Iraq, who now craves "creative destruction" in Iran and whose "skilful revision of history" the Guardian's Jeevan Vasagar asserted last month, "will reverberate for years to come".

Clearly, it would help if no Asian or African voices interrupt this intellectual and moral onanism. Astonishing as it may seem, there is next to nothing in the new revisionist histories of empire, or even the insidious accounts of India and China catching up with the west, about how writers, thinkers and activists in one Asian country after another attested to the ravages of western imperialism in Asia: the immiseration of peasants and artisans, the collapse of living standards and the devastation of local cultures. We learn even less about how these early Asian leaders diagnosed from their special perspective the political and economic ideals of Europe and America, and accordingly defined their own tasks of self-strengthening.

Asian intellectuals couldn't help but notice that Europe's much-vaunted liberal traditions didn't travel well to its colonies. Mohammed Abduh, the founder of Islamic modernism, summed up a widespread sentiment when, after successive disillusionments, he confessed in 1895 that: "We Egyptians believed once in English liberalism and English sympathy; but we believe no longer, for facts are stronger than words. Your liberalness we see plainly is only for yourselves, and your sympathy with us is that of the wolf for the lamb which he deigns to eat."

In 1900, British atrocities during the Boer war and the brutal western suppression of the Boxer rising in China had provoked the pacifist poet Rabindranath Tagore to compare, in one unusually violent image, such bards of imperialism as Kipling to mangy dogs. "Awakening fear, the poet-mobs howl round / A chant of quarrelling curs on the burning-ground." Writing in 1907, the Indian nationalist Aurobindo Ghose was even harsher on lachrymose claims about the white man's burden. As Ghose saw it, previous conquerors, including the English in Ireland, had been serenely convinced that might is always right. But in the 19th century, the age of democratic nationalism, imperialism had to pretend "to be a trustee of liberty … These Pharisaic pretensions were especially necessary to British imperialism because in England the puritanic middle class had risen to power and imparted to the English temperament a sanctimonious self-righteousness which refused to indulge in injustice and selfish spoliation except under a cloak of virtue, benevolence and unselfish altruism."

There is something to Ghose's tirade. Free-traders and freebooters may have found merely convenient the idea that Asia was full of unenlightened people, who had to be saved from themselves. But many European and American intellectuals brought to it a solemn sincerity. Even John Stuart Mill, the patron saint of modern liberalism, claimed that "despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, if the end be their improvement." By 1900, such views had hardened into propaganda, and a mania for imperial expansion, drummed up by the press and politicians, had become part of the political life of European societies.

Scrambling to catch up with Europe, even the United States embraced the classic imperialism of conquest and occupation, expelling Spain from its Caribbean backyard and flexing its muscles in east Asia. In 1903, Liang Qichao, China's foremost modern intellectual and a major early influence on Mao Zedong, was visiting America when Washington manipulated its way into control of Panama and its crucial canal. It reminded Liang of how the British had compromised Egypt's independence over the Suez canal. Liang feared that original meaning of the Monroe doctrine – "the Americas belong to the people of the Americas" – was being transformed into "the Americas belong to the people of the United States". "And who knows," Liang added in a book he wrote about his travels, "if this will not continue to change, day after day from now on, into 'the world belongs to the United States'".

"In the world," Liang concluded bleakly, "there is only power – there is no other force … Hence, if we wish to attain liberty, there is no other road: we can only seek first to be strong." A whole generation of Chinese leaders and intellectuals grew up sharing Liang's social Darwinist belief "in the present-day international struggles in which the whole citizenry participate (and compete) for their very lives and properties, people are united as if they have one mind". No less a "westerniser" than Deng Xiaoping would uphold the primary imperative of national self-strengthening even as he broke with Maoism in the late 1970s and supervised China's transition to a market economy: "Our country must develop," Deng declared, using words emblazoned on billboards across China and still guiding the Communist party's politburo. "If we do not develop then we will be bullied. Development is the only hard truth."

Liang described the endless struggle between peoples enjoined by global capitalism as extremely dangerous. The first world war, which almost all European nations entered with great jingoistic fervour, following a period of hectic expansion, confirmed these anxieties. The poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, who had spent three rewarding years as a student in Europe in the first decade of the 20th century, now wrote satirically of his old inspiration: "The West develops wonderful new skills / In this as in so many other fields / Its submarines are crocodiles / Its bombers rain destruction from the skies / Its gasses so obscure the sky / They blind the sun's world-seeing eye. / Dispatch this old fool to the West / To learn the art of killing fast – and best."

"European imperialism, which does not disdain to raise the absurd cry of the Yellow Peril," the Japanese art historian Kakuzo Okakura had written in 1906, "fails to realise that Asia may also awaken to the cruel sense of the White Disaster." In the wake of the first world war and the Paris peace conference, which inflicted cruel disappointments on India, China, Turkey, Egypt and Iran, many thinkers and activists in the east began to reconsider their earlier dalliance with western political ideals. Modernisation still seemed absolutely imperative, but it did not seem the same as westernisation, or to demand a comprehensive rejection of tradition or an equally complete imitation of the west. Freshly minted movements such as revolutionary communism and Islamic fundamentalism, which promised to immunise Asian countries against western imperialism, began to look attractive.

Europe's capacity and willingness for overseas expansion would be further diminished by an empire manqué – Germany – gone mad in its midst. Hitler turned out to be lethally envious of the British venture in India – what he called "the capitalist exploitation of the 350 million Indian slaves" – and hoped that Germany would impose a similarly kleptocratic despotism on the peoples and territories it conquered in Europe, while avoiding what he saw as Britain's lax racial segregation in India. "Nazism," Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, shrewdly diagnosed in 1940, anticipating Hannah Arendt and other analysts of 20th-century European politics, was the "twin brother" of western imperialism, the latter functioning "abroad in colonies and dependencies, while fascism and Nazism functioned in the same way" within Europe.

For many people in Asia, the two world wars were essentially conflicts between Europe's rival empires rather than great moral struggles, as they were presented to European publics, between democracy and fascism – indeed, the long experience of imperialism made Asians experience the 20th century radically differently from their European overlords. Chafing at their degraded status in the white man's world, they were uniformly thrilled – Mohandas Gandhi, then an unknown lawyer in South Africa, as well as a young Ottoman soldier called Mustafa Kemal (later, Atatürk) – when in 1905 Japan defeated Russia. For the first time since the middle ages, a non-European country had vanquished a European power in a major war. And Japan's victory sparked a hundred fantasies – of national freedom, racial dignity, or simple vengefulness – in the minds of those who had sullenly endured European authority over their lands.

Gandhi correctly predicted that "so far and wide have the roots of Japanese victory spread that we cannot now visualise all the fruit it will put forth." Thirty-six years later, Japan struck the decisive blow to European power in Asia. In about 90 days beginning on 8 December 1941, Japan overran the possessions of Britain, the US and the Netherlands in east and south-east Asia, taking the Philippines, Singapore, Malaya, Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies, much of Siam and French Indochina, and Burma with bewildering swiftness to stand poised at the borders of India by early 1942.

Shortly before Singapore fell to the Japanese in early 1942, the Dutch prime minister-in-exile, Pieter Gerbrandy, confided his anxiety to Churchill and other Allied leaders that "Japanese injuries and insults to the White population … would irreparably damage white prestige unless severely punished within a short time". After a long, hard struggle, the Japanese were finally "punished", fire- and nuclear-bombed into submission. The Japanese themselves behaved extremely brutally in many of the Asian countries they occupied. And yet, in the eyes of many Asians, the Japanese completely destroyed the aura of European power that had kept the natives in a permanent state of fear and political apathy.

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding father, recalled the lessons learnt by his generation of Asians: "that no one – neither the Japanese nor the British – had the right to push and kick us around". Accustomed to deferential natives, European powers mostly underestimated the post-war nationalism that the Japanese had both unwittingly and deliberately unleashed. They also misjudged their own staying power among populations unremittingly hostile to them. This led to many disastrously futile counter-insurgency operations and full-scale wars, especially in Indochina, which still scar large parts of Asia. Nevertheless, the speed of decolonisation was extraordinary.

Burma, which barely had a nationalist movement before 1935, became free in 1948. The Dutch in Indonesia resisted, but Indonesian nationalists led by Sukarno finally threw them out in 1953. Postwar chaos plunged Malaya, Singapore and Vietnam into prolonged insurgencies and wars, but the European withdrawal was never in doubt. A calamitous partition of the Indian subcontinent, which condemned two new nation-states to endless conflict, marked Britain's half-panicked departure in 1947; the following year, a similar combination of skulduggery and dereliction of duty in Palestine radically shrank the prospects for peace and stability in the Middle East.

Still, formal decolonisation, often accompanied by revolutions, transformed much of Asia and Africa in the 1950s and early 60s. Such leaders as Nehru, Mao, Nasser and Sukarno initially enjoyed great popularity and prestige, ostensibly engaged in the gigantic task of postcolonial consolidation – in Nehru's words, "What Europe did in 100 or 150 years, we must do in 10 or 15 years."

In contrast, "Europe," as Jean-Paul Sartre claimed in his strident preface to Franz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, seemed to be "springing leaks everywhere". "In the past we made history," Sartre asserted, "and now it is being made of us." Watching Churchill's funeral in 1965, VS Pritchett felt an "undertone of grim self-pity" and premonitions of a "mean" future in which Britain would become to the larger world "one more irrelevant folk culture". But by the late 1960s, the massacre of communists in Indonesia, the intensified American assault on Vietnam, the overthrow of Nkrumah in Ghana and, finally, the election of Richard Nixon had made Hannah Arendt conclude that the "imperialist era", which seemed "half-forgotten", was "back, on an enormously enlarged scale".

The cold war, in which whoever was not with us was against us, had already distorted western views of Asia and Africa. The press of the "free world" was usually eager to assist the cold warriors define new enemies and allies. As Conor Cruise O'Brien described it, anti-communist liberals who dealt with the "sparse" news of brutal western puppets in Asia with "calm agnosticism" were prone to get very worked up over any signs of independent thinking among Asians. Indeed, as early as 1951, the New York Times had written off, in an editorial titled "The Lost Leader", the non-aligned Nehru as one of the "great disappointments to the post-war era".

In his book The Myth of Independence (1969), the Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto warned his postcolonial compatriots that their "power to make decisions radically affecting the lives of our peoples" was being "curtailed by the cannons of neo-colonialism". Overthrown and murdered by a pro-American military despot, Bhutto was himself to exemplify what Ryszard Kapuscinski described as the tragic "drama" of many well-intentioned Asian and African leaders. Kapuscinski focused on the "terrible material resistance that each [leader] encounters on taking his first, second and third steps up the summit of power. Each one wants to do something good and begins to do it and then sees, after a month, after a year, after three years, that it just isn't happening, that it is slipping away, that it is bogged down in the sand. Everything is in the way: the centuries of backwardness, the primitive economy, the illiteracy, the religious fanaticism, the tribal blindness, the chronic hunger, the colonial past with its practice of debasing and dulling the conquered, the blackmail by the imperialists, the greed of the corrupt, the unemployment, the red ink. Progress comes with great difficulty along such a road. The politician begins to push too hard. He looks for a way out through dictatorship. The dictatorship then fathers an opposition. The opposition organises a coup. And the cycle begins anew."

The incompetence, corruption and brutality of many postcolonial leaders had become apparent by the end of the 1960s. Exhorting China to catch up with Britain's industrial output in less than a decade, Mao Zedong exposed tens of millions to a catastrophic famine, and then forced its exhausted survivors into a "cultural revolution". The extensive disorder of the postcolonial world, in which coups and civil wars became commonplace, made the age of European empires, when the unpoliticised natives knew their place, look peaceful in comparison.

Recoiling from absurd infatuations with third-worldism, even Maoism, on the left, many writers and intellectuals in Anglo-America began moving to the greener grass on the political right. A bien-pensant reaction to the 1960s also gathered strength (it was to culminate in our time in Sarkozy's and Blair's assaults on the decade's evidently dangerous "radical" consensus). In one sign of the reactionary climate of the 70s and 80s, Conor Cruise O'Brien, originally known for his exposé of western neo-colonialism in Africa, turned into a near-hysterical defender of apartheid in South Africa and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. It was also during these decades that VS Naipaul's withering accounts of "half-made" postcolonial societies came to be hugely influential.

Tracing Conrad's journey through the Congo, Naipaul claimed to see little difference between the imperialist and post-colonial eras. As he described it, the nihilism of Kurtz had been supplanted by "African nihilism, the rage of primitive men coming to themselves and finding that they have been fooled and affronted". Naipaul ignored cold-war machinations in the Congo just as he would later scant the brutal rule of Iran's shah in exchange for broad musings on the innate defects of Islam. Though quickly credited with ethnographic as well as literary authority, Naipaul offered mostly culturalist and pseudo-psychological generalisations – "Islam", for instance, was to blame for the incorrigible backwardness of Muslim countries, India was a "Wounded Civilisation" and of course "African nihilism" had done Africa in. These reductive accounts actually helped entrench, among even liberals, an ahistorical outlook on the non-west while confirming the western supremacist disdain for it. Speaking in 1990 to a rightwing think tank in New York, Naipaul evoked a widespread post-cold-war triumphalism by hailing the "universal civilisation" created by the west, which he claimed would blow away all rival ideologies and values.

Such was the aggressively self-congratulatory mood between the end of the cold war and 9/11: western-style democracy and capitalism stood poised not only to abolish the particularities of religion and culture but also to terminate history itself. Not surprisingly, al-Qaeda's attacks provoked yet more minatory readings of Islam as the irreconcilable foe of benign western liberalism rather than the long-delayed reckoning with the history of the west in the non-west and the divergent political and economic journeys of postcolonial countries.

As the Arab spring and its troubled aftermath shows, the long-delayed release from illusion and falsehoods in that part of the world will proceed from within; and it will be a long and arduous process. However, a similar effort to cleanse the west of imperial-age dogmas and attitudes has barely begun, as the recrudescence of a bellicose neo-imperialism in our time shows.

Could it be that Europe's abandonment of formal empire failed to provoke a cathartic revision of grandiose old notions of national and racial superiority? Certainly, projecting military force deep into Asia and Africa, Blair and Sarkozy seemed overly eager to borrow macho postures from the 19th century. Public nostalgia for the imperial era in Britain also continues to be tickled by patriotic historians, and "may appear", Drayton warns, "to be an innocent kind of solitary vice".

But the last decade of neo-imperialist "creative destruction" ruined, almost invisibly to its perpetrators and cheerleaders, millions of lives in remote lands. It is now obvious, as Drayton writes, that the intellectual "narcissism which orders the past to please the present" can also find "violent external expression in war and in an indifference towards the destruction, suffering and death of others".

Moreover, a narcissistic history – one obsessed with western ideals, achievements, failures and challenges – can only retard a useful understanding of the world today. For most people in Europe and America, the history of the present is still largely defined by victories in the second world war and the long standoff with Soviet communism, even though the central event of the modern era, for a majority of the world's population, is the intellectual and political awakening of Asia and its emergence, still incomplete, from the ruins of both Asian and European empires. The much-heralded shift of power from the west to the east may or may not happen. But only neo-imperialist dead-enders will deny that we have edged closer to the cosmopolitan future the first generation of modern Asian thinkers, writers and leaders dreamed of – in which people from different parts of the world meet as equals rather than as masters and slaves, and no one needs to shoot elephants to confirm their supremacy.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jul/27/ruins-of-empire-pankaj-mishra?INTCMP=SRCH

An official and classified Saudi Arabian document reveals that the government of Saudi Arabia releases its most dangerous prisoners who are sentenced to death under the condition that they take part in the attempted subversion in Syria. The practice constitutes a serious war crime. Earlier in 2012 PRESS TV and Al Alam journalist Maya Naser was assassinated shortly after he began investigating the same crime being committed by Turkish authorities.

The official, classified document shows that the authorities of Saudi Arabia have ordered the release of a group of the most dangerous criminals who have been sentenced to death in exchange for going to fight in Syria. Prior to their deployment to Syria the convicts are to be trained in unconventional warfare, terrorism, or in what is euphemistically described as Jihad.

The group of convicts includes 105 Yemeni, 21 Palestinian, 212 Saudi, 96 Sudanese, 254 Syrian, 82 Jordanian, 68 Somali, 32 Afghan, 194 Egyptian, 203 Pakistani, 23 Iraqi and 44 Kuwaiti citizens. It is unlikely that this group is the only such group that is going to be deployed from Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia´s release of convicts with death sentences and their forced use as insurgents is a gross violation of the Geneva Conventions which among other regulate the wartime rights of civilian and military prisoners. Their deployment to Syria is likely to constitute forced use of prisoners and could potentially lead to a prosecution of the Saudi government at the International Criminal Court in The Haag.

According to the US Special Forces Training Circular TC 18-01 the US military will for the foreseeable future be predominantly involved in irregular warfare. (1) Post 25th NATO Summit NATO doctrine, which describes the illegal war on Libya as teachable moment and model for future interventions has underpinned this tendency. (2) It is thus not surprising that Saudi Arabia is not the sole country within the anti-Syria alliance that deploys convicts.

In September 2012 PRESS TV and AL Alam journalist Maya Naser was killed by snipers in Damascus when he reported from the scene of two bomb blasts in Damascus. According to reliable sources the snipers have been positioned two hours before the blasts. It is highly probable that the targetting of Maya Naser and the timing was no coincidence.

During the week prior to his assassination, Maya Naser was investigating Turkey´s forced use of prisoners. Naser began his investigation after it transpired that several of the killed or captured insurgents in Syria were convicts who according to their sentences should be incarcerated in Turkish prisons. (3) Naser had copies of several passports to substantiate the claim.

Some of the killed or captured Turkish convicts had ties to Al Qaeda associated organizations. One of the more prominent among these convict insurgents was the brother of the leader of the 2003 HSBC bombers. The bombing of the HSBC bank in Istanbul in 2003 killed 67 and wounded more than 700 people. The Saudi document indicates that the forced use of prisoners in Saudi Arabia and Turkey is part of a GCC-NATO strategy rather than isolated incidents.

The evidence provided by Maya Naser and the Saudi Arabian document warrant an investigation and prosecution of Turkey, Saudi Arabia as well as against NATO at the International Criminal Court, ICC.

Whether any of the war crimes will be investigated or prosecuted however, is more than just uncertain. For one it is unlikely that any of the western nations will demand an investigation or prosecution. For the other, both Russia and China are most likely considering the already very tense bilateral and multilateral relations between respectively Russia, China and the USA, UK and France. Iran which is currently chairing the Non Aligned Movement is under sustained pressure from the USA, Canada, the EU and its Gulf-Arab neighbors. The Tehran government is likely to think twice before it risks worsening diplomatic relations to the west.

In other words, Turkey´s, Saudi Arabia´s and NATO´s blatant violations of the Geneva Conventions, their forced use of prisoners and state sponsored terrorism is likely not to be noticed by the ICC, which ten years after the Rome Statute has exclusively prosecuted, imprisoned and sentenced heads of state and government officials who dared to oppose US, EU and NATO hegemony.

If the document ever makes it into western mainstream media, which also is highly doubtful, it may cause a half-baked scandal and it may be used for scapegoating and positioning the one or the other with the implicit purpose of justifying or covering up ones own crimes. It will hardly result in an investigation, prosecution, or a cessation of state sponsored terrorism and forced use of prisoners.

http://nsnbc.me/2012/12/10/saudi-arabia-commits-war-crime-by-forced-use-of-prisoners-in-syria-insurgency/

Definitely sounds like something that could help. I guess it could also be explained to him that with any kind of addictive behaviour, people will always fall off the wagon. It matters more that he doesnt feel its acceptable or that he doesnt go too far the other way and hates himself for his lapses either. Getting him to do stuff that keeps him from spending too much time near the internet might help too.

The intent of U.S. [unconventional Warfare] UW efforts is to exploit a hostile power’s political, military, economic, and psychological vulnerabilities by developing and sustaining resistance forces to accomplish U.S. strategic objectives…For the foreseeable future, U.S. forces will predominantly engage in irregular warfare (IW) operations.

So begins the 2010 Unconventional Warfare (UW) Manual of the US Military’s Special Forces. The manual attached here (TC 18-01) is an interim publication, developed to address the definition of Unconventional Warfare and some other inconsistencies in UW Doctrine. The new UW document (ATP 3-05.1) is in the initial draft and not yet available, though sources tell me it is unlikely to differ much from TC 18-01.

But most of us have not had the pleasure of leafing through this truly revelatory blueprint that shows how America wages its dirty wars. These are the secret wars that have neither been approved by Congress, nor by the inhabitants of nations whose lives – if not bodies – are mauled by the directives on these pages.

A quote from President John F. Kennedy in 1962 opens the document. These few lines illustrate a core Washington belief that US forces have the right to destabilize, infiltrate, assassinate, subvert – all in service of questionable foreign policy objectives, with no evident consideration of a sovereign state’s preparedness or desire for change:

There is another type of warfare—new in its intensity, ancient in its origin—war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins; war by ambush instead of by combat, by infiltration instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It preys on unrest.

Target: Middle East

The Bush Doctrine paved the way for the mainstreaming of unconventional warfare by establishing the principle of pre-emptive actions against a state that may one day pose a threat to American interests. It didn’t offer any specific criteria to gauge those threats, nor did it attempt to explain why anyone outside the United States should be held accountable for US “interests” – be they commercial, security or political.

The doctrine went largely unchallenged, and has been played out with disastrous results throughout the Middle East in the past decade. The prime targets of UW have traditionally been nations and groups that oppose US primacy in the region – mainly the Resistance Axis consisting of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas – but UW has been carried out to some degree in virtually any nation where this Axis carries some influence.

The most nefarious aspect of UW - aside from the obvious violations of international law pertaining to sovereignty, territorial integrity and loss of human life/property, etc – is the proactive and aggressive effort to psychologically sway a population against its government. It is at this entry point where UW fails every American test of “values.”

The Arab Intifadas of 2011 provided a unique opportunity – amidst regional and sometimes domestic chaos – to ramp up UW activities in “hostile” states, whether or not populations sought regime change. Prime examples are Iran, Syria and Libya – all of which have been UW targets in the past year, at different levels of infiltration and with markedly different results.

Here is a chart from the Special Forces UW manual that demonstrates the scope of activity at the early stages:

February 14 was supposed to be the kick-off in Iran, but the Islamic Republic was already on guard, having gained experience with UW subversion in the aftermath of the 2009 Iranian presidential elections.

The use of social media to coordinate protests and widely disseminate anti-regime narratives in Iran’s post-election period marked a new era in the internet revolution globally. The Pentagon lost no time in claiming cyberspace as an “operational domain” and in the past year has substantially increased its budgetary allocation to subversion activities on the web.

Last July – as I wrote in this article - the technology arm of the Department of Defense, DARPA, announced a $42 million program to enable the U.S. military to “detect, classify, measure and track the formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes)” within social media.

Wired magazine calls the project the Pentagon’s “social media propaganda machine” because of its plans for “counter messaging of detected adversary influence operations.”

In order to “allow more agile use of information in support of [military] operations” and “defend” against “adverse outcomes,” the project will enable the automation of processes to “identify participants and intent, measure effects of persuasion campaigns,” and ultimately, infiltrate and redirect social media-based campaigns overseas, when deemed necessary.

The UW campaign in Iran appears to more or less have faltered at technology sabotage, social media infiltration and assassinations. Libya is at the other extreme – and the following chart gives a bird’s eye view of the UW manual’s playbook for operations of that magnitude:

The Libyan scenario of course was slightly different in that it was conducted under NATO cover, with the US military “leading from behind.” In addition, the large-scale UW operation’s success relied less on ground combat than on air cover and intelligence-sharing for attacks conducted largely by Libyan rebels.

Target: Regime Change in Syria

In Syria, the UW task would have been a mix of the two. Because of the domestic popularity and strength of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad revealed here in a 2006 Wikileaks Cable, UW activities would necessarily need to start with some subversion of the population before graduating to a Libyan-style scenario.

Just as the Wikileaks cable recommends identifying “opportunities” to expose “vulnerabilities” in the Syrian regime and cause sectarian/ethnic division, discord within the military/security apparatus and economic hardship, the UW manual also instructs special forces to “exploit a hostile power’s political, military, economic, and psychological vulnerabilities.”

The Syrian demographic landscape is reflected in the UW manual: “In almost every scenario, resistance movements face a population with an active minority supporting the government and an equally small militant faction supporting the resistance movement. For the resistance to succeed, it must convince the uncommitted middle population…to accept it as a legitimate entity. A passive population is sometimes all a well-supported insurgency needs to seize political power.”

To turn the “uncommitted middle population” into supporting insurgency, UW recommends the “creation of atmosphere of wider discontent through propaganda and political and psychological efforts to discredit the government.”

As conflict escalates, so should the “intensification of propaganda; psychological preparation of the population for rebellion.”

First, there should be local and national “agitation” – the organization of boycotts, strikes, and other efforts to suggest public discontent. Then, the “infiltration of foreign organizers and advisors and foreign propaganda, material, money, weapons and equipment.”

The next level of operations would be to establish “national front organizations [i.e. the Syrian National Council] and liberation movements [i.e. the Free Syrian Army]” that would move larger segments of the population toward accepting “increased political violence and sabotage” – and encourage the mentoring of “individuals or groups that conduct acts of sabotage in urban centers.”

Now, how and why would an uncommitted – and ostensibly peaceful - majority of the population respond to the introduction of violence by opposition groups? The UW manual tells us there is an easy way to spin this one:

If retaliation [by the target government] occurs, the resistance can exploit the negative consequences to garner more sympathy and support from the population by emphasizing the sacrifices and hardship the resistance is enduring on behalf of “the people.” If retaliation is ineffective or does not occur, the resistance can use this as proof of its ability to wage effect combat against the enemy. In addition, the resistance can portray the inability or reluctance of the enemy to retaliate as a weakness, which will demoralize enemy forces and instill a belief in their eventual defeat.

And so on, and so forth.

The Bush Doctrine today has morphed under President Barack Obama into new “packaging.” Whether under the guidance of the recently-created "Atrocity Prevention Board" or trussed up as “humanitarian intervention,” the goals remain the same – destabilization of lives and nations in the service of political and economic domination, i.e., “American interests.”

When Arab governments yell "foreign conspiracy," whether or not they are popular leaders they are surely right. There are virtually no domains left in key Arab countries - from the innocuous-sounding "civil society" filled to the brim with US-funded NGOs to the military/intelligence apparatuses of these nations to the Facebook pages of ordinary citizens - that are untouched by American "interests."

The Ugly American just got uglier. And within these intifadas raging in the region, any Arab population that does not shut itself off from this foreign infiltration risks becoming a foot soldier in an unconventional war against themselves.

http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/sandbox/going-rogue-americas-unconventional-warfare-mideast

'I'm not racist, my missus is Asian' is becoming the new 'some of my friends are Black'.

Official sparks new row as he describes British-born Asian journalist as being from ‘ethnic extraction’

The UK Independence Party is facing a race row tonight after a senior official referred to a journalist as “of some form of ethnic extraction”.

Gawain Towler, who handles press for Nigel Farage, provoked anger when he used the phrase in a text referring to Kiran Randhawa of the London Evening Standard.

The episode proved an unwelcome distraction for the Ukip leader as he made several appearances at the Conservative conference in Manchester.

Mr Towler, who will be a Ukip candidate in next year’s European elections, mistakenly sent the text to a photographer instead of a party colleague.

It read: “My fault but I told the Standard that Nigel would be arriving at approx 10.30 this morning. They have called and I expect a snapper and a female journalist (of some form of ethnic extraction) at Piccadilly. Am sorry. Possible more than one snapper as they hunt in packs.”

The Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi said: “Nobody in 2013 should use language like this — especially if you want to be seen as fit to run the country.”

Mr Towler, who later apologised to Ms Randhawa, strongly denied racism when confronted by journalists, telling them that his partner was Indian.

During his conference visit, in which he addressed three fringe meetings, Mr Farage claimed more than 20 hardline Tory Eurosceptics could be sympathetic to striking local deals with Ukip at the general election.

He seized on calls from a number of Tory MPs for pacts with Ukip, as well as a survey which found more than one-fifth of Conservative chairman supported the move.

He said: “There are a couple of dozen Tory MPs who hold a range of views on several issues, not just Europe, that are very close to our own. We have had informal discussions with a handful, no more than that.”

Mr Farage clashed angrily with the Conservative Eurosceptic Bill Cash at a meeting of the right-wing Bruges Group where the Ukip leader was cheered as he arrived.

Mr Cash argued that a strong showing by the anti-EU party at the next election could deprive the Tories of 60 seats.

But Mr Farage retorted: “I’m sorry, Bill, the world has moved on. The best way to change British politics is from without, not within.”

The continuing loss of support from the Conservatives to Ukip was underlined last night by a YouGov poll for the Labour Uncut blog.

It found 22 per cent of people who voted Tory at the last general election had swapped allegiance, with 60 per cent of them intending to support Ukip. Switching on that level would cost the Conservatives dozens of seats.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservative-party-conference-press-officers-text-leaves-ukip-facing-fresh-racism-allegations-8849113.html

Amazon is at the centre of a deepening scandal in Germany as the online shopping giant faced claims that it employed security guards with neo-Nazi connections to intimidate its foreign workers.

Germany’s ARD television channel made the allegations in a documentary about Amazon’s treatment of more than 5,000 temporary staff from across Europe to work at its German packing and distribution centres.

The film showed omnipresent guards from a company named HESS Security wearing black uniforms, boots and with military haircuts. They were employed to keep order at hostels and budget hotels where foreign workers stayed. “Many of the workers are afraid,” the programme-makers said.

The documentary provided photographic evidence showing that guards regularly searched the bedrooms and kitchens of foreign staff. “They tell us they are the police here,” a Spanish woman complained. Workers were allegedly frisked to check they had not walked away with breakfast rolls.

Another worker called Maria said she was thrown out of the cramped chalet she shared with five others because she had dried her wet clothes on a wall heater. She said she was confronted by a muscular, tattooed security man and told to leave. The guards then shone car headlights at her in her chalet while she packed in an apparent attempt to intimidate her.

Several guards were shown wearing Thor Steinar clothing – a Berlin-based designer brand synonymous with the far-right in Germany. The Bundesliga football association and the federal parliament have both banned the label because of its neo-Nazi associations. Ironically, Amazon stopped selling the clothing for the same reasons in 2009.

ARD suggested that the name “HESS Security” was an allusion to Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. It alleged that its director was a man, named only as Uwe L, who associated with football hooligans and convicted neo-Nazis who were known to police. The programme-makers, who booked in at one of the budget hotels where Amazon staff were housed, said they were arrested by HESS Security guards after being caught using cameras. They were ordered to hand over their film and, when they refused, were held for nearly an hour before police arrived and freed them. The film showed HESS guards scuffling with the camera crew and trying to cover their lenses.

ARD said Amazon’s temporary staff worked eight-hour shifts packing goods at the company’s logistics centres in Bad Hersfeld, Konstanz and Augsburg. Many walked up to 17 kilometres per shift and all those taken on could be fired at will. On arrival in Germany, most were told their pay had been cut to below the rate promised when they applied for jobs at Amazon. “They don’t see any way of complaining,” said Heiner Reimann, a spokesman for the United Services Union (Ver.di). “They are all too frightened of being sent home without a job.”

Silvina, a Spanish mother of three in her 50s, who lost her job as an art teacher, was featured in the film. She applied for three months’ work with Amazon to earn some badly needed cash. “It’s like being in a machine and we are just a small part in this machine,” she told the programme.

HESS Security did not respond to the allegations made by ARD.

Amazon employs 7,700 full-time staff at seven distrubution centres in Germany. The accusations led to the company’s Facebook site being inundated with angry complaints.

The company said: “Although the security firm was not contracted by Amazon we are, of course, currently examining the allegations concerning the behaviour of security guards and will take the appropriate measures immediately. We do not tolerate discrimination or intimidation.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amazon-used-neonazi-guards-to-keep-immigrant-workforce-under-control-in-germany-8495843.html

Foucault may not be rolling endlessly in his grave quite yet, but the day could be close. Just look at DARPA's latest aerial spy venture, the titanically-named ARGUS, a camera system toting 1.8 gigapixels worth of sensors capable of 5-megapixel resolution and of scooping up one million terrabytes--that's 5,000 hours--of high-definition surveillance every day. If indeed we are approaching a day when even the new anti-drone stealth wear just isn't enough, what's left for those peaceable non-militants across the Middle East who'd rather not continue living under an unmanned gaze? Or at the very least, who'd stand to gain a little dignity and comfort by turning the robo-gaze on their watchers?

Take the drone-proof burqa, law student Asher Kohn says, and stretch it over an entire community. At least that's the idea behind Shura City, a conceptual drone-proof town laid out in Kohn's capstone project. With nods to Orientalism and an emphasis on communal living, Shura is clad with various spoofing features that in theory could add up to a clever, inverted sort of consensual non-surveillance that's wildly greater than the sum of its parts.

Drones exploit patterns--a worker's daily walk to and from the fields, a child's playful front-yard romp or, increasignly, a suspected militant groups' late night caravan. Disrupt or confuse these pattern-seeking capabilites, the thinking goes, and you're on your way to architectural cloaking. If you can't rid the world of invasive aerial spy ware (because let's be real), in other words, why not flip "technology, reorder, and arrogance"--the combination of which Kohn considers the empire's greatest, most troublesome power--against the man?

"It is at best expensive and at worst impossible to build armor that can deflect any American bomb," Kohn writes. "Shura City instead uses inscrutability as its armor."

It's as elegant as it is impenetrable--again, this all in theory. Shura is a so-called 'black box' that locks out data miners and military personnel. Yet "it is not a prison," Kohn adds. Rather, it's a gated community that just so happens to afford its citizenry with ample sunshine and safety from the prying eyes of the outside (Western) world.

Here's how it would work.

Window Jammers

Chill. Shura is not a windowless warren. The city's windows are one-way--being clad with computerized mashrabiyas "that blink and recombine into various QR codes" to scramble prying spy drones, residents will still be able to look from within at, say, the watchers.

LED-Backlit Latticework

To cloak Shura's expanive commons, latticework backlit by color-shifting LED windows would create the sort of changing color blocks and shadows that are able to throw off a lot of facial-detection software. "The zebras know each others’ names," Kohn says, "but the lion only sees stripes." And the windows, of course, would still allow natural lighting "for children and stars for young lovers."

Temperature Swings and Signal Spires

The "gate" in Kohn's gated community comprises 11 badgirs and three minarets, similiar to that seen above. The badgirs (windcatchers) help snuff out any individual's heat signal--paydirt for infrared imagers--by widly fluctuating Shura's termperatures. The minarets here would serve to disguise high-wattage radio towers that beam out intense signals in hopes of interfering with the drone's wireless communications.

Mobile Inner Walls

But it's not all specs and reserved optimism. Shura's outer wall would be fixed, yes. But the city's inner walls would be able to be moved around as residents see fit--"to provide for growing families," Kohn says, "heated feuds, or just for the change of it when Farah Abla decides she wants to be an interior designer."

Kohn assures us he is no architect. Neither am I. I'm also not an engineer, or a physicist. Whether or not Shura City could prove a feasible working model for the coming architecture of confusion is hard to say. But it's certainly a start.

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/to-drone-proof-a-city

With poor access to clean water, giving up breastfeeding is a serious health risk in this part of the world - but milk formula companies continue to sign up midwives.

To get to the baby immunisation clinic in North Jakarta, the mothers of the slum pick through rubble and muck and the stagnant remains of the January floods. Towers of water-damaged mattresses and mildewed plastic sofas flank the main thoroughfare; it looks like Hell's Ikea. If gastrointestinal disease had its own smell, this would be it.

Fifi, who is 20, lives in a wooden room the size of a bathroom, with her husband and six-month-old daughter, Riska. We met her at the clinic, but only found out later that she wasn't there for jabs, she was there because her daughter was already sick.

She started feeding Riska formula, rather than breastfeeding her, when her daughter was two months old; she was on contraceptives, and thought it was interfering with her milk supply. The midwife agreed, and gave her a free sample of formula milk. Now she spends 400,000 rupiah (about £26) a month on formula, which is half of her husband's monthly salary. She seemed to be a pretty good example of one of the main problems of formula feeding in Indonesia. Even the cheapest brands punch a huge hole in a poor family's budget, and they end up over-diluting it, which leaves the babies malnourished.

But at Fifi's home, it became obvious that the sanitation problem towers over this one – 45% of Indonesians have no access to clean water. There are only two places in the capital where anyone can drink from a tap, and that's the American embassy and Jakarta international school. But Fifi can't afford gas to boil water either. She has no kitchen. She has to pay every time she goes to the loo, which is shared between 26 people, and sometimes she cuts a deal with a neighbour where one of them goes to the loo while another has a shower, to save money.

Clean hands, clean utensils, clean bottles, clean anything, it's all a total pipe dream. A paediatrician in a separate Jakartan clinic, Dr Asti Praborini, said: "Selling formula is like the killing fields, in my opinion. The babies will die of diarrhoea and they will die of malnutrition."

Here, all the statements about breastfeeding, which in the developed world are made hyperbolically – how it's the only safe choice for a baby – are true. Indonesia's child mortality rates, at 35 per 1,000, are high anyway, but in the lowest wealth quintile, mortality is nearly five times higher than in the wealthiest.

Some mothers formula feed because they're not eating enough themselves, and don't feel confident that they're producing enough milk. A Save the Children report due out on Monday will give details of breastfeeding rates and child nutrition across the developing world. Wahdini Hakim, senior programme manager, says that persuading mothers to breastfeed is a more effective intervention than efforts to improve sanitation.

But there is a looming influence, far greater than personal choice: that of the formula companies. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has codes on corporate selling of formula that go back to 1981. But this is big business for big companies – two thirds of their growth comes from Asia-Pacific. The Indonesia market is worth $1.1bn (£708m).

This is an example of how it works. Sari Husada, a subsidiary of Danone, has sales reps that build relationships with midwives. Up until 2011, it was purely financial – they would get a village midwife to sign up to a contract, which would involve selling a certain number of boxes of formula per month. Their rewards were pretty small – between 1m(£65) and 3m rupiah a year, depending on the number of deliveries the midwife's practice had, and how much formula they sold. This is in manifest breach of the WHO codes, as well as Indonesian regulations, which expressly ban free samples, as well as direct marketing to healthcare workers or new mothers.

According to Danone, this no longer happens, and has been replaced by a scheme which runs training for midwives. As Usman Tasya, who worked for a subcontractor to whom Sari Husada outsourced its sales, explained: "Basically, what changed was the price. Previously, they were given cash. Post 2012, they were given gifts in kind, once they'd signed a contract."

Paperwork seen by the Guardian detailing these contracts specifies the change from cash to gifts. Sometimes they'll get a gift, apparently for personal use, like a television or a laptop, but very often, it's something they need for their practice, such as an oxygen canister, a TENS machine or a nebuliser.

The spokesperson for Danone insists that there is no connection between these events – the gifts are just that, an act of beneficence to the midwife, to help her set up her practice, they are unconditional upon the sales of any formula. Asked why that would include a television, he said: "They use them in waiting rooms. To make them places where people would want to go, where they'd feel comfortable going." Asked about why sales reps have a relationship with midwives at all, the spokesman said: "We are permitted to have contacts with healthcare professionals, to tell them what's good about our products. Separate to that, we support midwives in setting up their practices. They're not necessarily separate people. But these are two separate activities."

Formula companies are not allowed to contact new mothers or pregnant women directly and yet, according to Usman, this is rife: "We get details of the mothers who are giving birth, pregnant women, through the midwife." But why would a midwife give out that information? "Midwives, when they get the samples, they really like it. They really like the gimmicks, even the small things. The patient data, they give it to Sari Husada because they think it's part of the programme they've agreed to."

The Guardian has seen a spreadsheet detailing the number of new mothers contacted, the amount of 0-6 months formula sold, and the proportion of their target this represents. Danone commented: "That may still be happening, that's something we need to address."

Sari Husada has legitimate links all the way up the chain. Doctors running seminars for midwives are in its pay. It sponsors professional bodies, conferences and midwifery awards (which are then bestowed by the minister for women's empowerment and the protection of children). The sponsorship element sounds innocuous, and is allowed under Indonesian law; but you can forgive the midwives, who do the grunt work for the company and get the smallest rewards, for thinking that everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn't they?

One young midwife in West Java, who didn't want to be named, insisted she would never sign a formula contract. "Recently, the health officer came to the houses of mothers and found out that some mothers purchased formula from the midwives. They called the midwives all one by one, and questioned them. They are all afraid. Then they were made to sign an agreement with local government that they wouldn't sell it any more. But senior midwives don't like being told what to do." The other midwives in the area disputed this, saying she had to be on a contract; she'd had more education than she could possibly have afforded on her own. Her bachelors degree would have cost her 25m rupiah, which is well over a year's salary.

It may sound counter-intuitive that Indonesia has the strictest breastfeeding law in the world – since 2010, all babies have had to be breastfed exclusively for six months, unless there were compelling medical grounds not to. Anyone hampering this could be fined 100m rupiah or spend a year in prison. But nobody has been jailed for misdemeanours and it is noticeable that only civil charges could be brought against the formula companies, while individuals could face criminal charges.

Nia Umar, who set up the breastfeeding activist group AIMI in 2007, said: "It's absurd that we would regulate something that we would do so naturally. It's like regulating, you, yes, you – you have to eat rice. The formula industry is a stakeholder in the law that tells women to breastfeed."

One of AIMI's more recent successes was to scotch a research project at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Indonesia that would have taken newborns from the slums and fed them free formula for a year, to see how well they fared.

No provision was made for covering their medical bills if they fell ill. One of the many problems that AIMI had with the study was that there was no transparency about who was funding it – but that bit was rectified when someone accidentally copied them in on the consignment form from FrieslandCampina, a Dutch formula company that is a big seller in Indonesia.

More pressingly, though, the study was unethical in a number of ways, with big questions about using the poor as a testbed for the general population, not to mention generating conditions which are unsafe for a cohort of babies.

Wadhini, from Save the Children, is tactful – but not completely reticent – about the role of corporations: "I guess promoting breastfeeding is important, but behaviour change needs support at every level, the family, the community, the government … especially where we see that formula companies are a competitor to breastfeeding. That's what we are trying to emphasise, it's not merely about the mother and the baby, it's about engaging with the family, the community, the local government, the central government."

However, being a charity, it can't say what many activists think, which is that this is an outrage; public health networks, not hugely well established in this country, are just well established enough to act as capillaries for an industry whose profit motive runs directly counter to the interests of public health.

Inevitably, the story ends back in the slum, where Riska has diarrhoea, a rash and a fever. She's seen the clinic midwives. This story is crying out for a line like: "Riska is fine, for now. The next slum baby might not be so lucky." But none of us knows what will happen. She seemed pretty sick.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/15/babies-health-formula-indonesia-breastfeeding

http://www.mapleleafsikh.com/

Came across this blog with some interesting videos that are worth checking out.

The boy addicted to porn; the girl who endured sexual assault to get her BlackBerry back… In Beeban Kidron's sobering documentary British teenagers open up about how they use and feel about their smartphones and the internet.

When Beeban Kidron makes a film, she says, she always tends to start on the street. InRealLife, which is a film no parent and no teenager should miss, began in exactly that way. She went out with her camera and started talking to a group of lads in London. "What is the best thing about the internet?" Kidron wondered. One of the boys, a 15-year-old called Ryan, answered her without hesitation. "Porn," he said. The following day Kidron – who began her film-making career more than 30 years ago when she took a camera with her to Greenham Common – phoned Ryan to see if he might want to talk further about his answer; she talked, too, to his mother, and eventually she was invited into the great terra incognita of contemporary life, the teenage bedroom.

Ryan proved articulate and unembarrassable enough to give Kidron, and her camera, a guided tour of his world. It was a place dominated by his anytime free access to hardcore pornography, via one screen or another, a place he and his friends appeared to know just as intimately as their own neighbourhood. What Ryan knew of relationships, and of women, he had mostly learned from his daily immersion in adult videos, picked from a menu to suit all conceivable tastes, none of which any longer held much curiosity for him. He acknowledged a sadness in himself about all this, but he was addicted all the same; it appeared abnormal not to want to watch. When Kidron followed Ryan back out on to the street, and on to the tube, he appeared to carry everything he had seen with him. "I've ruined the sense of love," he tells Kidron at one point. He approaches potential girlfriends in the same manner he surfs his favourite websites, always restless, always looking for the excitement of the perfect transaction, always vaguely disappointed.

It is, I say to her, quite hard to watch Ryan's confessional, particularly as you have the sense that in speaking about these things to a stranger, he for the first time realises something of the extent of his lost innocence, a place he can't get back to. Kidron, who carries lightly the title Baroness for her pioneering work not just in making such films as the BBC's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit but in spreading the narrative wonder of great movies to schoolkids across the country through her FilmClub, says that many of her friends have said the same thing. "A few people find it too difficult, that first scene, because I ask questions about sex, and about coming and everything, but that is exactly where I think the moral conversation goes weird and wrong. I mean kids are watching these things all the time. We know they are. So why are we so keen to withhold the questions about it?"

Kidron is talking in the garden of her weekend home deep in the Suffolk countryside. Sitting under an ancient spreading tree, she tells the stories of her film with an urgency that is part alarmed adult, part relentless journalist. Though she dwelt on many stories like Ryan's her quest into the often disturbing, sometimes life-affirming realities of teenagers and the internet, is concentrated in five or six real lives. In one, a girl who does not reveal her identity, talks with heartbreaking candour about how she would do anything for her BlackBerry; when a gang of boys takes it from her she recounts how she endured sexual assault in order to have it back. In another chapter an older teenager describes how he lost his place at Oxford University because of an addiction to gaming, the only thing he had ever cared for. Elsewhere Kidron's camera confronts the uncomprehending grief of parents whose son took his own life after being threatened in a chatroom, and unravels the long-distance romance between two gay 15-year-olds, who text and message each other thousands of times without ever meeting. The stories are extreme, but in each case they point to elements of a culture that has become all but universal. Kidron's aim is to provoke the grown-up debate about the implications of that culture that is long overdue.

Tobin, 19, was forced to give up his place at Oxford University, as his obsession with gaming had taken precedence over his studies.

"I think my biggest fear," she says, "was that people would see these five kids as 'kids with an issue'. But actually there is a generation of children affected in different ways. Ryan's life is not extraordinary." Even before taking her camera out on the street Kidron kept on hearing about blowjob parties among teenagers, about pictures of girls having sex being messaged around their schools. "It's true to say that there are certain parts of the population where this is all accepted," she says. "But the culture is also pervasive. One of the motivators for me making the film was that a friend of my daughter came round to talk to me about a boy she had her eye on and he said she could be his girlfriend if she gave him a blowjob. She's a very bright middle-class girl, now at a great unversity, and so on. But she was not immune or even surprised by that sort of transaction culture."

Kidron's stories of the teenagers in the film are punctuated by interviews with some of the stronger intellectual voices engaged with the limits and possibilities of the world wide web, commentators ranging from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to the prophetic Cassandra of the digital age, Sherry Turkle, to Julian Assange, preaching libertarian freedom from his prison of the Ecuadorean embassy. She was anxious not to appear either a luddite or an over-anxious parent. A lot of what she discovered about the teenagers' lives challenged her own liberal instincts.

"I come from the school who thought the internet could be the great democratising force," she says, "that getting rid of the gatekeepers was a positive move. But equally I believe we shouldn't ever duck problems. The thing I have come to find astonishing is that people from all political sides routinely say that the internet has to be the model of free speech and freedom. I wonder where else the level of freedom these kids are faced with exists? Why on the internet and only on the internet?"

Since that libertarian rhetoric comes most forcefully from individuals who made billions of dollars on the strength of those freedoms in their 20s, I suggest, and from academics whose lucrative careers depend on it, perhaps we should all be a tiny bit more critical?

"Exactly. Why is it that Eric Schmidt [executive chairman of Google] has a catflap into the White House or Downing Street? Why can you film anywhere in California if you pay a small fee apart from around Google HQ? How come my stuff is available to them, but they are off-limits to me?"

In the course of making her film Kidron was kicked out of a lot of places that preach liberty and openness. She had been struck, in talking to the children she met, that they had no idea at all how the internet actually functioned. They had bought the ethereal idea of "the cloud", that benign mystical repository of all knowledge and data; when she asked them where they thought it was, they all looked heavenwards. Part of her mission then becomes to follow the cables back to the out-of-town data centres that capture all our secret thoughts and desires (and sell them on to advertisers). She succeeds eventually in filming inside such a place, the great hardwired nerve centre of digital capitalism.

It seemed to me watching the film that the concept of the cloud was another great piece of airy obfuscation on the part of the internet corporations, who like to peddle the childlike and the playful in the way that banks used to flog you credit cards called Smile and Egg and Marbles and Goldfish, to encourage you not to think too hard about the small print (what could possibly go wrong?). The language of the internet seemed to set Kidron's alarm bells ringing too.

"Yes of course, all that "cloud" and "like" and "friend" and "google" and "twitter". The nursery language makes it seem a safe Teletubby land where nothing bad could happen. I wanted to make it clear to the kids who bought into that that actually this is real, it is all mappable like an empire. Are we all comfortable with this? Shouldn't we demand not only that it sound safe for our children to explore, but that it is safe? When you make such arguments you get the response from the billionaires that they just own the pipes that stuff comes through. That is completely at odds with the knowledge that these companies – Google and Facebook and the rest – routinely take our data and sell it on to advertisers. Their business is clearly content, data. We have to start asking why they are not being made responsible for it."

Kidron is 52. Like me she is therefore of one of the last generations that can still recall a pre-digital adolescence. The time when phone calls were limited to 10 minutes at the foot of the stairs. One of the interesting things about her film is the way it reveals that even the first generation evangelists for the liberating possibilities of the new technology, like Jimmy Wales or Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody) have slightly shifted in some of their rhetoric. Wales, she discovers, does not use a smartphone, just an old text and voice handset; he likes the old idea of the internet as something you do at your desk, and leave behind to have dinner. Shirky, the charismatic guru of New York University, told her that he viewed the smartphone as an explosive device that can get at you at any time. "Clay described with horror the way it is sent to you with every possible interruption and alert already built into it and set to intrude on your life in any way it can," she recalls. "Eighty per cent of people never change those factory settings. It owns you from the start. It comes to you rather than you going to it."

Luis von Ahn, creator of CAPTCHA technology describes, neutrally, at one point in the film the ways in which everything about the internet is increasingly designed to be addictive, using the ongoing trillion-clicks of data to analyse what keeps people coming back, checking for updates, exploiting our highly evolved need to touch, to respond, to feel, for commercial ends. "We are entrapping our young people in this world," Kidron says.

Does she think politicians get all the implications of this?

"Well, when politicians say, 'Oh, parents should supervise their kids' internet use' it drives me crazy. This is like the new world order, we have never seen anything like it and our children are carrying it around with them in their pockets. Parents cannot be in the same physical space as their children at all times. We have to have some shared policy on it all."

Proving that not all teens are content with being part of a purely digital community, Adele Mayr attended a YouTube meet-up in London’s Hyde Park.

Regulation might be part of the answer, she believes, but also some kind of shift in cultural attitudes, of the kind that has lately attended smoking. That it is not OK to be constantly checking your phone in front of your children (many of the teenagers Kidron spoke to felt they had been abandoned by parents in favour of iPhones and BlackBerrys). That there should be certain situations where phones are unacceptable – at mealtimes; in some public spaces, and so on.

Most of the responsibility has to lie, however, she thinks, with the corporations. As the recent changes to policy from Twitter and Ask.fm show, internet companies are quick to cave in when their commercial interests appear to be threatened by public outrage. "I think it is up to the providers of any service to deliver safe goods," Kidron says, "and we need to let them know that. The idea that these people cannot put their resources to uncover the source of child pornography, or cannot work out the ways to pursue bullies who send death and rape threats is patently absurd. They can afford it and and we should demand it of them."

She is bleakly amused by the fact that to make a film like hers she had to spend half her time with lawyers or getting permissions, had to spend £250 an hour in an editing suite blurring the nipples of people in shots of pornographic films, whereas you can film pretty much anyting on your iPhone and stick it on the internet and no one bats an eye. Why is that different? she wonders.

It is interesting that the two positive stories in her film both observe young people making the transition from their virtual worlds to real life, contemporary rites of passage. In the first a large-scale meet-up is organised through social networks on the occasion of the arrival in London of a star blogger. Kidron's footage of the event has the appearance of a 60s peace festival, shiny happy people holding hands, playing Twister in the park, dancing and singing and laughing together. It comes as a joyful, sunlit contrast to the shut-in world of the bedroom that preceded it, pale faces illuminated by screens. The second love story ends her film when she encourages the young gay teenagers who have exchanged a million texts and dreamed of getting married on Skype to journey the length of the country to see each other in person. It is a remarkably intimate scene, including their spontaneous laughter as, hugging, they hold their phones together as they both have an app that allows them to share all their data.

The scenes remind you of the imagined utopias in which the internet was first conceived, as a peer-to-peer community exchange, a way of finding like-minded people ("if you are a gay adolescent in Morecambe," Kidron suggests, "I can obviously see that it might be quite a wonderful thing…").

When we talk, the stories about the Twitter abuse of Stella Creasy MP and Caroline Criado-Perez have been much in the news. I wonder if Kidron, with her background in feminist protest, sees an inbuilt gender imbalance in some of the tone of social media. Does the medium itself work to encourage misogyny, in her view?

She is unsure, though it is clear that "much of it – the anonymity and so on – is very polarising. There is no doubt girls get more judgmental and sexualised comments – let's not forget that Facebook was invented to give 'hot or not' ratings to women on campus. That thought is in its DNA. The ubiquity of porn has led to the 'pornification' of society as a whole. The fact that what used to be called soft porn is now called advertising is very problematic for young women."

In the course of making her film Kidron spent a lot of time on pro-anorexia sites and self-harming sites, but again even the less extreme incarnations of teenage social media seemed inflected with some of the same issues. All the research she read showed that the more you use social media as a young woman the unhappier you are. "The reason seems to be that people are forever posting pictures that are happy pictures. When you are alone and you look at everyone at the party pouting for the camera you tend to think: all those people are happy – why aren't I? There is a clear link between that feeling and the other depressive behaviours and eating disorders."

For all this, the most disturbing line in her film, "the shark fin moment", she suggests, comes when Luis van Ahn reveals what all app designers know – that the aggregate effect of the addictive, restless, consumer-led habits of how young people look at screens now means that "they cannot concentrate on more than one sentence on a page". It is that moment that really links this film to Kidron's ongoing efforts to engage children in longer narratives through her FilmClub, created in 2006 with co-founder Lindsay Mackie, which now involves 7,000 schools across the country. If there is a real casualty of the digital world it is children's ability to engage with extended narrative, Kidron believes. FilmClub is one antidote to that.

"You know," she says, "I left school when I was 16. I did not understand school and it did not understand me. But I did grow up in a world of books and a world of stories and there was a lot of conversation around the dinner table. We are still fed this idea that children are either feral or self-absorbed. It seems to me we have failed children in that as a culture we hardly even try to give them shared stories any more. We don't go to church or synagogue or wherever. We don't even always sit and talk at the end of the domestic day. Every culture has always told its story verbally. So that was how FilmClub came about, as a place where children could sit together and share a two-hour narrative and talk about it. They often say that they see themselves reflected in ways they could not imagine..."

Kidron tells me she hopes that at least some children will be able to watch this film: despite its frank opening scenes she is hoping for it to be released as a 12A (it since has been certified as such). When we speak she has done one screening for teenagers in Oxford. It was, she says, extraordinary the way they queued up afterwards to ask her questions: "Do you think we should cancel Facebook?" or "You know we really hate our phones, the influence they have over us, but how can we do without them?"

Her film does not pretend to have the answers to such questions, but it makes an excellent place to begin to look for them.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/08/beeban-kidron-inreallife-interview-teenagers

Of the thousands of “Avatar” screenings held during the film’s record global release wave, none tethered the animated allegory to reality like a rainy day matinee in Quito, Ecuador.

It was late January 2010 when a non-governmental organization bused Indian chiefs from the Ecuadorean Amazon to a multiplex in the capital. The surprise decampment of the tribal congress triggered a smattering of cheers, but mostly drew stares of apprehension from urban Ecuadoreans who attribute a legendary savagery to their indigenous compatriots, whose violent land disputes in the jungle are as alien as events on “Avatar’s” Pandora.

The chiefs — who watched the film through plastic 3-D glasses perched beneath feathered headdress — saw something else in the film: a reflection. The only fantastical touches they noticed in the sci-fi struggle were the blue beanstalk bodies and the Hollywood gringo savior. “As in the film, the government here has closed the dialogue,” a Shuar chief told a reporter after the screening. “Does this mean that we do something similar to the film? We are ready.”

Three years after “Avatar’s” Quito premiere, declarations of martial readiness are multiplying and gaining volume throughout the tribal territories of Ecuador’s mountainous southeast. The warnings bare sharpest teeth in the Shuar country of the Cordillera del Condor, the rain forest mountain range targeted by President Rafael Correa for the introduction of mega-mining.

In recent years, the quickening arrival of drills and trenchers from China and Canada has provoked a militant resistance that unites the local indigenous and campesino populations. The stakes declared and the violence endured by this battle-scarred coalition is little-known even in Ecuador, where Correa has made muscular use of state security forces in arresting activists and intimidating journalists who threaten his image as an ecologically minded man-of-the-people. This repression has only intensified in the run-up to Correa’s expected reelection on Feb. 17.

Domingo Ankwash, a Shuar leader and president of the Asociacion Bomboiza, is leading the fight against proposed large scale mines in the Cordillera del Condor.

My guide to this simmering “Avatar” in the Amazon was a 57-year-old Shuar chief named Domingo Ankuash. Like many elder Shuar, Ankuash does not appear to be blustering when he says he will die defending his ancestral lands in the province of Morona-Santiago, which borders Peru. Early in my month traveling the Condor, he took me deep into the country for which he is prepared to lay down his life. After a steep two hours’ hike from his village, we arrived at a forest clearing of densely packed earth. Through the trees and hanging vines, a 40-foot waterfall replenished a deep rock-strewn lagoon. The cascade is one of thousands in the Condor cordillera, a rolling buffer between the cliffs of the eastern Andes and the continental flatness of the Amazon basin.

“We have been coming to these sacred cascades since before the time of Christ,” said Ankuash, preparing a palm-leaf spread of melon and mango. “The government has given away land that is not theirs to give, and we have a duty to protect it. Where there is industrial mining, the rivers die and we lose our way of life. They want us to give up our traditions, work in the mines, and let them pollute our land. But we will give our lives to defend the land, because the end is the same for us either way.”

Beside the bright melons, Ankuash unfolds a frail map of the Condor to come. The industrial future overlays the natural present in a dense geometric circuitry that blots out the region’s rivers and mountains with a patchwork of oddly patterned boxes, as if some madcap Aguirre had gerrymandered the jungle. Rafael Correa’s PAIS Alliance was elected in 2007 with heavy indigenous support, but the map’s vision is the president’s own. His economic development plan, enshrined in a series of controversial laws and strategic declarations, centers on prying Ecuador’s southern rain forests of their rich placer deposits of base and precious metals, which fleck the Condor’s soils and loams like the stars of the universe. Ecuador, Correa has declared, can no longer be “a beggar sitting atop a sack of gold.”

To help him grab these shiny metals, Correa has invited foreign mining firms to deforest and drill much of the country’s remaining pristine forests. Not far from where Ankuash and I are sitting, a Chinese joint venture led by the China Railway Corp. is building infrastructure for an open-sky copper mine with the “Lord of the Rings”-sounding name of Mirador. To the north and east of the Chinese concession, the Canadian gold giant Kinross is prepping its 39 lots, including the envy of the industry, Fruta del Norte, believed to be Latin America’s largest deposit of high-grade gold. These projects are merely the first wave; others wait in the wings. Together they threaten more than the Shuar way of life and the sustainable agricultural and tourist economies of Ecuador’s southern provinces. The Condor is a hot spot of singular ecological wealth and a major source of water for the wider Amazon watershed to the east. What happens there is of global consequence.

Shuar leader Patricio Tiwiram sits below a waterfall along the Rio Kupiamias. This is a sacred spot for the Shuar and one threatened by nearby mining concessions.

But there’s no international outcry on the horizon to concern Rafael Correa and his commercial partners abroad. What they face is a local security problem. It is the same security problem known to regional colonial powers dating back to the Inca. As Correa has always known, and as the Chinese are learning, the Condor is ancestral home to 8,000 Shuar, the most storied warrior tribe in the annals of colonialism in the New World.

“The strategy is to unite the Shuar like the fingers of a fist,” Ankuash tells me as I prepare to dive into the icy waters of the lagoon below. “The forest has always given us everything we need, and we are planning to defend it, as our ancestors would, with the strength of the spear. To get the gold, they will have to kill every one of us first.”

Among the tribes of the Amazon, only the Shuar successfully revolted against Inca and Spanish occupation. The Incan emperor Huayana Capac led the first attempted conquest of Shuar territory in 1527, an adventure that ended with his rump army bestowing gifts in retreat. The first European to follow Capac’s footsteps, Hernando de Benavente, ran briskly ahead of Shuar arrows back to Lima, where he complained to the Royal Court of “the most insolent [tribe] that I have seen in all the time that I have traveled in the Indies and engaged in their conquest.” Years of gift-bearing Spanish peace missions eventually won Shuar acceptance of trading posts at Maca and Sevilla del Oro. But these were never tranquil. “The Shuar are a very warlike people [and] are killing Spaniards every day,” observed a visitor to the outposts in 1582. “It is a very rough land, having many rivers and canyons, all of which in general have gold in such quantity that the Spaniards are obliged to forget the danger.” Some Shuar, he noted, worked the mines in exchange for goods, but did so “with much reluctance.”

The most famous case of Shuar “insolence” occurred in 1599, when the Spanish governor of Maca demanded a gold tax from local Indians to fund a celebration of the coronation of Philip III. The night before the tax was due, Shuar armies slaughtered every adult male in the Spanish hamlets and surrounded the governor’s home. They tied the governor to his bed and used a bone to push freshly melted gold down his throat, laughing and demanding to know if he had finally sated his thirst. According to the Jesuit priest and historian Juan de Velasco, the “the horrendous catastrophe” at Maca caused “insolences and destructions” by the “barbaric nations” up and down the Andean spine of New Spain. For the next 250 years, the Spanish mostly stayed away. Occasional attempts by Jesuit missionaries to reestablish contact were met with a welcome basket of skulls pulled from the shrunken heads of gold-hungry Spaniards.

Most people have heard of the Shuar, even if they don’t realize it. They are the storied Amazonian “head shrinking” tribe. Each of a long succession of enemies have learned firsthand of their tzantza ritual, in which the heads of slain invaders are removed at the collarbone, relieved of their skulls, and shrunk by seasoned boiling in a multi-day ceremony. Tzantza is just one of many rituals rooted in a cosmology of animist spirits. Collectively, these spirits are known as Arutam, a shape-shifting pantheistic godhead whose name loosely translates as “soul power.” Atop a bridge leading to Shuar territory in the southern province of Zamora-Chinchipe, I encountered an oversize statue of Arutam in human form wielding a staff astride a giant toucan, redolent of the dragon-like beasts of “Avatar.”

If James Cameron’s fictional Na’vi of “Avatar” reflect the essence and predicament of one real-world tribe, it’s the Shuar. While they do not expect an action-hero savior to fall from the sky, they recognize that avoiding further bloodshed and protecting the Condor ultimately depends on getting the attention of the wider world, and quickly.

“The world needs to know what is happening in Ecuador, because the destruction of the Condor will have effects for the Amazon, and what affects the Amazon affects the planet as a whole,” said Ankuash. “The world must understand the Condor is not an ordinary patch of jungle.”

The biologist Alfredo Luna walks with a limp and a cane, the legacy of a plane crash in the Condor that killed two of his colleagues nearly 20 years ago. The plane was carrying a team assembled by Conservation International to conduct the first and only systematic study of the Condor’s hydrological system and the abundant flora and fauna it supports. The team’s findings catapulted the Condor into the elite ranks of global hot spots as ranked by conservation significance. A synopsis of these findings is the subject of a slideshow Luna gives around the world in an attempt to catalyze the conservation community. “The Condor combines the diversity of the Andes and the Amazon in the middle of cloud forest,” Luna said one evening at an NGO office in Quito, pausing his presentation on the image of a marsupial species recently discovered in the Condor. “There is more diversity of life in one hectare of the Condor than all of North America combined.”

Luna stresses that his slideshow only hints at the majesty of the Condor’s biodiversity. “Researchers have just scratched the surface,” he said. What is known is that the Condor breathes with more than 2,000 vascular plants and flowers, including 40 unique varieties of orchid. It is home to hundreds of endemic species of birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals, dozens of which were new to science when first cataloged by Luna’s team. “Unleashing industrial-scale mining in the region is a catastrophe equal to using the Galapagos Islands as a bombing range,” said the biologist. “Its flora has enormous potential to benefit man. So much of it, we’ve only seen from helicopters. Before we even know what’s there, they’re going to destroy it.”

Rain clouds and a rainbow hang over forested slopes along the Rio Zamora and near the site of the proposed Mirador Mine site.

The Condor’s ecological riches are a consequence of unusual wetness. The mountains of the Condor sit on massive aquifers containing a fair chunk of the continent’s fresh water. This water trickles out of innumerable crevices and pours forth from countless cascades. The streams feed famous rains. The volume of rain produced in the Condor’s water cycle is enormous, says Luna, thanks to a unique commixture of altitudes, endemic soils, and solar and wind patterns. The heavy rainwater feeds dozens of small rivers that wind east into the Rios Zamora and Santiago, which sustain the region’s agricultural economy. These eventually merge with Peru’s Marañón River, a major tributary of the continental Amazonian watershed.

The amount of water pulsing through the Condor, says Luna, makes laughable government and industry claims that large stores of toxic mining waste can be contained in tailing ponds, and that samples of the region’s wildlife can be preserved in greenhouse Arks for future replanting. “The Condor cycle is supported by at least two dozen kinds of fragile soils and vegetation cover,” he said. “This web of microclimates will not survive the violence of major mining. It all begins with the rain and the rivers, and the mining will affect rainfall, drying up and contaminating important hinges in the larger Amazon River system. The fools don’t understand that disturbing one part disturbs the whole.”

Shuar life in the Condor remained largely unchanged until well into the last century. Regular contact with the modern Ecuadorean state began at mid-century, when the government began a settlement program in what it called tierra baldia — “no man’s land.” Thousands of mestizo farmers were moved into the mountains and given plots of land. With them came state schools, paved roads, cattle ranching, artisanal miners and frontier towns. Beginning in the 1960s, a new character began appearing in these frontier towns: the wildcat geologist seeking El Dorado. Drawn by the old myths and encouraged by the new infrastructure, they surveyed the mountains, broke rock, sifted soils and bagged samples. “They always said they were studying the flowers,” remembers an old Shuar woman who served many first-wave geologists at her roadside grill, where she sells fish baked in leaves that sweeten the meat. “They walked around with maps and little axes. They came from many countries.”

A Shuar boy plays in canoes along the Numbkataime River. Shuar communities depend on rivers and fresh water as sources of food, drink, transportation and spiritual renewal and strength.

The samples they took revived the legend of Condor gold. In the 1990s, the first mining concessions were handed to politically connected firms. The World Bank funded a geological survey of the region that turned up traces of more than 300 minerals. International mining juniors were lining up to find the biggest deposits in 1995 when the country went to war with Peru for the third time in half a century, suspending exploration. The Shuar lived along the disputed border and played an important role in the war, reinvigorating their reputation as the Gurkhas of the Amazon. In multiple Shuar villages, veterans of the war spoke of decapitating Peruvian soldiers they killed in jungle firefights and carrying the heads back home for skinning and shrinking. “The tzantza ceremony protects against us from further invasion and shows that we do not kill lightly,” explained a Shuar veteran named Patricio Taishtiwiram. With a twinkle in his eye, he added, “It also makes us feel like we are winning.”

The foreign mining firms who set up exploratory bases in the Condor after the war probably did not know the tzantza is a living tradition. But they knew enough about the local population to stay low and mask their purpose. “They came in very quiet, always changing names as they grew,” said Tarcisio Juep, a 50-year-old Shuar from a village near the proposed Mirador site. “First it was Gemsa, then Billington, then the Canadian ECSA, and now it’s the Chinese ECSA. They never asked permission. They never explained their plans. Then some years ago they told us they had bought the land, that mining was coming, that they’d give us jobs, that they would be the only jobs. It was a crime in pieces.”

In 2005, Corriente went public with the scale of the Mirador project. The Canadian firm announced it would build an open-pit copper mine dwarfing anything in Ecuador’s history. The mine required hollowing out one of the region’s largest mountains and clear-cutting several others. A massive tailing pond would hold the 200-plus million tons of toxic effluvia generated over the mine’s 18-year lifespan. The site designated for the waste sits half a mile from the Rio Quimi, a tributary of the Rio Zamora, whose waters support the local agricultural economy on their way into the Amazon basin. Roads and bridges are being built for 18-wheel truck traffic to carry hundreds of tons of copper concentrate on a daily nonstop loop between the mine and a port on Ecuador’s Pacific coast. (Such projects receive much of President Correa’s “populist” infrastructure spending.)

Men shovel gold-bearing earth into a cart at a medium-scale mining operation near the proposed Fruta del Norte Mine, Cordillera del Condor.

Corriente announced its plan coated in absurd assurances that the mine and the waste pool were nothing to fear. The company even claimed that after the mine had closed, the tailing pond could be converted into a “resort lake” for swimming and water sports. Corriente printed up leaflets showing people swimming in the crystal waters of this man-made lake that once contained millions of tons of cancer soup. “They think we are stupid and will believe their children’s stories,” said Ankuash, the Shuar chief. “But even our children can see through them. We know what oil drilling has done in the north of Ecuador. We know what industrial mining does. We are in contact with our indigenous friends in Chile and Peru and have learned from them. We know the companies will come in and take all the minerals, leaving devastation behind. Wherever companies are most active, the communities are weakest. Where people used to help each other, they begin to think only of themselves. Families are not as strong. Correa’s mining policy will be the end of everything. Already the exploratory drills are polluting the water.”

In Tundayme, the community closest to the Mirador site, the old agricultural economy has withered. “The exploratory machines create dirty runoff by drilling huge 7-foot holes,” said Angel Arebelo, a farmer who last year moved to the nearest frontier town to drive a cab. “You can taste it in the rivers of the Quimi Valley. It is just beginning. Eventually everyone here will die from the chemicals.”

“We used to grow our own food, corn and yucca, and sell the rest in Pangui. Now they come here to sell,” said Eva Correa, a young Shuar mother in Tundayme. “Everything is upside down. They took our land away and now we need money, but the company pay is not enough and the work is dangerous. The new model is not working.”

One afternoon, I stopped by ECSA’s two-story mirrored-glass corporate office, which sits at the end of El Pangui’s short and dusty commercial strip. In the lobby, a poster showed Chinese managers and local employees in hard hats working together. Another poster featuring bright green frogs advertised the company’s sponsorship of an environmental-photography contest. I was directed to the office of Ruth Salinas, ECSA’s garrulous light-skinned communications officer. She dismissed the idea that mining would undermine local agricultural and tourism and launched into a rant against the Shuar. “The Indians can’t lecture anyone on the environment!” she huffed. “They hunt, you know? They fish with poison leaves that ruin the rivers. They cut down trees. They only want money from us, but they are not responsible enough to use it. They don’t do anything but grow yucca and drink chichi beer.”

As I got up to leave, she reached into a box and handed me some ECSA literature. One of the pamphlets had on its cover a pretty indigenous girl in traditional dress, squatting by a stream. Above her it said, “Copper: A New Era for the Nation.”

In October 2006, mestizo and Shuar leaders organized the first action against the introduction of mining in the south: a peaceful march to the Mirador site. The protesters didn’t get far before trucks blocked their path and unloaded dozens of ski-masked men armed with rifles, machetes, sticks, and knives. The organizers of the march were badly beaten. “That was the turning point,” said Ricardo Aucay, a local farmer and leading figure in the local resistance. “The company started the chaos, the mess, the vengeance and the hatred.”

A group of Shuar communities next declared a “mining sweep” of their territory. They gave a Corriente subcontractor until November 1 to vacate the village of Warints, where it had set up a base. When the deadline passed, hundreds of Shuar swept into the camp from the forest side at dawn. They trapped company managers inside while the women and children used long spears of chonta wood to block rescue helicopters from landing. The mining staff was only allowed to leave the following day with their equipment. The Shuar army continued by foot to a site near the main Mirador complex, where they slipped past a military guard and took over the buildings. After a three-day standoff, all of the company’s machines were hauled away on military trucks. The state responded by militarizing the other mining camps. Throughout the area, road protests erupted that blocked mining traffic with burning tires, boulders, and bodies. The protests escalated in response to news that a massive dam and power lines were being built near Macas to provide Mirador with cheap energy. Spreading beyond rural hamlets, a general strike was called throughout the southern provinces.

On November 12, the government of Alfredo Palacio announced a suspension of Corriente’s mining activities and agreed to discuss turning the Condor region into an ecological and tourism reserve. Corriente and its subcontractors simply ignored the decree. On December 1, after the state made clear it was with the company, hundreds of protestors again marched to the Mirador site. While attempting to cut razor wire that had been placed in their path across a narrow bridge, police and private security units attacked. The tear-gas-beclouded battle lasted one hour. Bullets rubber and real ripped through several protestors amid Indian war whoops, chants of “Ecuador!” and old mestizo women crying, “Teach them with your blood, Oh Lord!”

Among the dozens of protestors arrested and beaten was the anti-mining prefect of Zamora-Chinchipe, a Suraguro indian named Salvador Quishpe. Six years later, Quishpe remains in office and organizes with the seven-party alliance contesting Correa in February’s election. “Quito has slowed down payments to the province as punishment for my position on mining,” he told me one afternoon in his home on the outskirts of Zamora. “But money isn’t all. They don’t have enough to pay off the conscience of the entire country. More conflict is coming.”

A Shuar woman, Mercedes Samarent, holds a machete, which she says will be the “women’s weapon” in the case of conflict over proposed mines, in a community of Arutam along the Rio Zamora.

Those who fought alongside Qichspe echo his conclusion. Vinicio Tibiron was shot through the chest at the bridge protests and expects to be shot at again. “It will be wars throughout the region,” Tibiron told me over a bowl of yucca beer at his remote Shuar village of Ayantaz. “They will send police and military, and we will gather our weapons. Outsiders have always called us savages because they could not conquer us. If they continue, their actions will compel us to show them savagery, to act like the Indians we are.”

Sitting near and observing us is a thick middle-aged woman named Mercedes Samarent, herself a veteran of several violent clashes. “They will be fighting all of us,” she said, holding up a machete. “The men have their weapons, and we have ours.”

Rafael Correa was elected president in the weeks following the bloody bridge protest. Upon taking his oath, his left-wing PAIS Alliance fulfilled a campaign promise and convened an assembly to draft a new constitution, Ecuador’s twentieth. Burning questions of indigenous rights and environmental protection, it seemed, would be addressed democratically before the entire nation.

The constituent assembly gathered in the western town of Montecristi toward the end of Correa’s first year in office and ratified 500 articles. Among them were reforms allowing the president to run for a second term and dissolve Congress. But the bits that made international news, and promised a resolution to the mining conflict in the south, was the surprise enshrining of the Indian concept of sumak kawsay, or “good living in harmony with nature.” Ecuador’s new constitution also formalized the rights of nature itself. It was with nature’s new constitutional rights in mind that the assembly temporarily suspended all mining activity until the passage of a new mining law, which the president promised soon.

Correa, meanwhile, had pivoted away from the indigenous rights rhetoric of his presidential campaign. In televised speeches, he dismissed Indians as backward “donkey-riders” who were blocking access to the country’s “pot of gold.” Fatal road protests from Zamora to Quito flared back up as it became clear that Correa’s forthcoming mining and water bills would ratify and expand industrial mining and water privatization. After running clashes with police in which a Shuar schoolteacher was killed, the government attempted and failed to shut down the Shuar radio station, Arutam.

In January 2009, Correa reactivated hundreds of mining permits and granted foreign companies access to indigenous territory and resources in any projects he deemed “in the national interest.” All of this occurred just before the start of the Mining World Fair in Ontario, where Correa administration officials told the gathered, “In Ecuador, large-scale exploration has begun.”

The primary target for this message was and remains China. Ecuador is a serial defaulter with a radioactive credit rating, and Correa’s entire economic program is dependent on loans from China in return for wide access to its minerals. As in Venezuela and Bolivia, China has become a happy lender of last resort, offering Quito a credit line of up to $10 billion in long-term, low-interest loans collateralized with the stuff in the ground. Where Western development banks once attached strings of political, economic and regulatory reform, the China Development Bank wants the resources. Toward this end, China has become Latin America’s biggest banker with $75 billion loaned since 2005 — which is more than the World Bank, the IDB and the U.S. Export-Import Bank combined. Beijing’s top regional borrowers are Ecuador and Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez has described his nation’s oil as “at the service of China.” As of this writing, Ecuador’s debt to China approaches a quarter of its GDP.

Mirador is just one of a number of recent Chinese strategic investments in Latin American mineral reserves. The firms Zijin, Minmetals and Chinalco have snatched up the largest copper mines in Chile, Peru and Mexico. But Mirador is the prize. The concession is estimated to hold up to 11 billion tons of copper, with a large secondary store of gold. Adding another layer of strategic depth to the holding, the contract includes rights to the waste rock, possibly a signal of Chinese expectations that the site contains uranium and even molybdenum, a coveted rare earth suggestive of Avatar’s unobtainium. Even before estimates had been made of Mirador’s bounty, Chinese gentlemen are said to have lurked among Zamora’s dirt-floor provincial gold markets, examining bags of rock and sand brought in by small-scale miners in rubber boots, who understood the Chinese had interests beyond their ken.

On the morning of my return north to Quito, I attended an environmentally themed panel discussion in a swank downtown hotel. Vandana Shiva, the globetrotting Indian anti-GMO and water-rights activist, was the star. Shiva had just returned from an official tour of Rafael Correa’s showcase conservation project, Yusani National Park. Flanked by the leaders of Ecuador’s largest indigenous groups, Shiva praised the president for his vision and happily announced her acceptance of a post as “goodwill ambassador” to Yasuni. Her comments were more suited to an international audience than an Ecuadorean one. She seemed taken aback when local activists challenged her on Correa’s mining policy and an emerging corporate police state in the southern provinces. Shiva isn’t alone in praising Correa without knowing much about his policies. John Perkins, author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” penned a column for CommonDreams.com gushing about a “new consciousness” in Correa’s Ecuador that “honors the dream of the people of the forests.”

The indigenous groups that supported Correa in 2007 do not share Perkins’ enthusiasm. Nor does the seven-party left-wing alliance campaigning against him. The leading figure of this alliance is Alberto Acosta, Correa’s former minister of mines and the first president of the 2008 constitutional assembly. “There is nothing new in Correa’s development plan for the next century. He has simply replaced Uncle Sam with Uncle Chen,” Acosta told me after a campaign stop in Zamora. “He cites the dependency school theorists, but his idea is the same center-periphery economic model of exporting raw materials. The government is thinking short-term about sustaining its social programs and political position at the expense of long-term sustainable industries. There’s a modern parallel to the Conquistadors, who gave the indigenous mirrors for gold. It’s happening again.”

A coalition of leftist candidates, including Alberto Acosta (left) and Salvador Quishpe (third from left), campaign for president and against large-scale mining, in the town of Zamora.

Those who have organized against Correa’s policies have not fared well. If they’re lucky, they are merely harassed. More than 200 other non-violent activists end up in court and face serious jail time. “Like a dictator, everyone in government repeats his pro-development themes and slogans: Responsible mining, man over nature, Indians versus progress,” said Fernanda Solis, a weary-eyed campaign coordinator for the Quito group Clinica Ambiental. “There is no independent judiciary. The three powers of government are acting with Correa and everyone knows it. Because Correa represents the left, opposing him opens you up to the charge of supporting the U.S., or the old right that bankrupted everyone. He’s betrayed the new constitution and proven himself a neoliberal with redistributive touches. He’s avoided pacts with the U.S. but has sold the country to China.”

Last March, Solis helped organize a 370-mile march from Zamora to Quito under the banner, “For water, for life, for the dignity of the people.” Seven thousand people walked boisterously under enormous flags of indigenous rainbows and Popular Front red. Correa’s government issued the permit request only after he organized a counter-protest to meet the marchers in Quito. In a radio address that described anti-mining Indians as tools of “the old right,” Correa mobilized his supporters against what he warned was an indigenous-led coup attempt.

Amid stacks of reports in her cluttered office, I asked Solis about the upcoming election, as well as the narrowing political route open to the opposition through international forums such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

“Correa will win reelection and nothing will change,” she said. “Like the Mapuches in Chile, it is going to get violent.”

When I last saw Domingo Ankuash, he was celebrating the birth of his latest grandson, whose name is Espada, or sword, but which he defined with a flourish as lanza de Guerra. He was also organizing two summits of anti-mining forces, including a meeting of Shuar and their ancestral enemies, the Achuar, living on both sides of the Peru-Ecuador border. The first summit concluded with a statement citing the 2008 Constitution and urging the world to take notice: “We warn the country and the world that the government intends to militarize the Amazon region to promote the interests of mining and oil companies. The Cordillera del Condor and the rest of our territories are inalienable, indefeasible, and we state our decision to defend them to the end.” Similar declarations continue to emerge like smoke signals from across the Condor. A recent statement of the Yaupi village declares, “We will not take a step backward in defending our territories. Interlopers will be submitted to the punishment of our ancestors. Any such bloodshed will be on the Government’s hands.”

Patricio Tiwiram, the leader of the Shuar community of Kupiamais, and his wife display traditional spears used in raids on Ecuacorriente mining camps.

The hour of renewed escalation may be near. Last month, Ecuador’s indigenous organizations filed legal action in Ecuadorean courts; they are currently preparing another suit for international bodies citing conventions on indigenous consultation. Both are seen as acts of desperation, final attempts at a peaceful solution few expect. The state, meanwhile, is already spending China’s money, and developing budgets on the expectation of more to come. Other international mining firms, having been told Ecuador’s south is open for business, are lining up on the door.

The Shuar are not without an alternative plan. They say they can develop the region sustainably with agriculture, small-scale ranching, dairy, and regulated small-scale traditional mining. “Industrial mining is not sustainable,” said Ankuash. “The gold and the copper will be gone in a few years, leaving behind nothing but poisoned earth for our people. We can have an economy here without destroying nature and the culture. We are open to the world. Let the people come here and see the native way — the bears, the monkeys, the trees, the cascades.”

And the visions. Some Shuar villages have taken advantage of growing Western interest in ayahuasca, the potent hallucinogen and healing plant used throughout the Amazon. As we walked back from the waterfall to Domingo’s village, I saw what looked like an apparition: a young blonde woman in a white cotton dress sitting by the river directly under a beam of sunshine. She had traveled from Berlin for a week-long ayahuasca regimen under the guidance of a local Shuar shaman named Miguel Chiriap. She pointed me down a nearby path, at the end of which I found to a large open-air structure of wood and thatch. Sitting on one of a dozen pillows arranged in a circle was a young herbalist from Hull, England, named David. One of several westerners at the retreat, he was paying hundreds of dollars a week to work with Chiriap, he glowed with the kind of serenity earned from drinking ayahuasca 15 consecutive nights. He was surprised and saddened to learn he was sitting in the middle of a soon-to-be exploited mining concession. “It would be a shame to see all this ruined,” he said. “It’s paradise, isn’t it?”

The government continues to exploit the promise of paradise even as it prepares to annihilate the reality. Police cars and tourism posters in Los Encuentros, the company town of Kinross Gold, display scenes of nature above the slogan “Jewel of the Amazon.” When I met with the mayor of El Pangui, a nervous little yes-man from Correa’s ruling alliance, he dutifully muttered industry lies while sitting beneath yellowing tourism posters touting the area’s pristine forests, roaring cascades, dew-kissed orchids, and smiling Indians.

The dissonance between Ecuador’s tourism pitch and the imminent destruction of the south followed me back to Mariscal, Quito’s hostel district. There, a Jumbotron lords above the clubs and cafes day and night, beckoning backpackers south with high-definition images of happy natives and brightly plumed birds of paradise. “This,” declares the a slogan on continuous loop, “is Ecuador.”

The Rio Kupiamais, a sacred river for the Shuar, flows through rain forest vegetation. The river is threatened by mining concessions near its source.

I spent much of my last day in Ecuador drinking coffee at a café with a good view of this Jumbotron. After a month in the south, the slick nature montage appeared to me as the billboards in dystopian science fiction, a sunny, high-tech tourism version of “War Is Peace,” or Latin versions of the electronic messages projected into the dark, rainy worlds of “Blade Runner” and “Children of Men.” I was pulled out of this reverie by the appearance on the screen of a giant pixilated toucan. With wings spread wide, the bird reminded me of the Arutam statue above the bridge in Zamora-Chinchipe. As told to me by a Shuar shaman named Julio Tiwiram, the image of Arutam and the toucan comes from a bit of tribal folklore dating to first-contact with the Conquistadors.

Arutam, who lives in the rivers, the trees, the fish and the flowers, would also like to recline, Zeus-like, on a golden throne high above the mountaintop mists. One day, foreigners “with beards and large eyes” came into the area seeking food. But what they really coveted was Arutam’s golden throne. After eating their fill, the strangers searched for Arutam’s treasure. To thwart them, the spirit hid the throne deep inside the mountains. He told the Shuar to stay vigilant, that the strangers must be kept out, by force if necessary. The bearded men could not be trusted, he said. They would take everything and leave them nothing with which to live. He warned them that though he hid the gold, they would one day return. Arutam then mounted a giant toucan, looked in the direction of the Condor’s highest peak, and flew away.

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/10/to_get_the_gold_they_will_have_to_kill_every_one_of_us/

For over two decades, Dr. Narendra Dabholkar worked to overcome superstition in India. And it cost him his life.

A great skeptical leader has been assassinated.

This didn’t happen in a tyrannical theocracy. This happened in a modern, supposedly secular nation, with no state religion, and with first-class programs of science and medicine. And still, for the crime of criticizing religious beliefs, questioning them, and subjecting them to scientific scrutiny, a great skeptical leader was gunned down on the street in broad daylight.

For over two decades, Dr. Narendra Dabholkardedicated his life to overcoming superstition in India. Originally a medical doctor, Dabholkar spent years exposing religious charlatans, quacks, frauds, purveyors of “miracle cures,” and other con artists preying on gullibility, desperation, and trust. An activist against caste discrimination in India, and an advocate for women’s rights and environmentalism, Dabholkar’s commitment to social justice was expansive and enduring. But it was his work against superstition that earned him his fame.

India is a huge, hugely diverse country, and much of it — particularly the south — is thoroughly modern, urban, and largely secular. But much of the country — particularly the north — is saturated with self-proclaimed sorcerers, faith healers, fortune tellers, psychics, gurus, godmen, and other spiritual profiteers. In parts of the country, people are beaten, mutilated or murdered for being suspected of witchcraft, and there are even rare cases of human sacrifice – including thesacrifice of children – in rituals meant to appease the gods.

Throughout this country, Dabholkar traveled to towns and villages, investigating claims of miracles and magic, revealing the physical reality behind the tricks — and organizing travelling troops of activists to do the same. He didn’t try to persuade people out of the very idea of religious belief, but he was an open atheist, proud and unapologetic. He was the founder of the Committee for Eradication of Superstition in Maharashtra (Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti). He fought for years for the passage of a controversial anti-black-magic bill in India.

And it was his work against superstition that almost certainly cost him his life. On August 20, at seven in the morning during his morning walk, two men ran up to him on the street, shot him four times, and drove off on motorbikes that had been parked nearby. He was 67. As of this writing, there has been one arrest made in the case — Sandeep Shinde, a member of the hard-line right-wing Hindu organization Sanatan Sanstha.

A little background on Sanatan Sanstha. They are repeatedly referred to by the Times of India as “right-wing Hindu organization, Sanatan Sanstha.” In 2011, two of its members were convicted of the 2008 bombings of two theaters — bombings that were committed ”because the movie and the play showed Hindu gods in a bad light.” (Four other group members were also arrested for the bombings, but were not convicted.) Their literature speaks of converting India into a divine kingdom ruled by themselves, and of “destroying evil by all means, even by laying down one’s life.” Sanal Edamaruku, another experienced debunker of superstition in India (and a longtime friend and colleague of Dr. Dabholkar), described them to me as “a fanatic (or rightly, fundamentalist) Hindu group.”

The organization is a strange blend: a fringe extremist group that nevertheless wields significant cultural influence, like a mashup of Operation Rescue and the Catholic League. As atheist/ skeptical activist and blogger Avicenna (from the A Million Gods blog) commented, “Sanatan are basically one of the many organisations of ‘Hindu Supremacy.’ They are generally called Saffron Terror in India.” At the same time, Avicenna noted, “they often shut down any movie considered progressive” — with the result being that “Indian movies have actually gotten more and more conservative.” But despite the influence that they wield, a campaign to ban the group has been seriously considered by the Indian government — despite the strong religious sentiment in the country, and despite the country’s commitment to freedom of religion, even at the cost of giving religious charlatans free rein.

And when Dabholkar was murdered, Sanatan Sanstha responded by saying that his murder was deserved: that “everybody gets the fruit of their karma,” and that “instead of dying bedridden through illness, or after some surgery, such a death for Dabholkar is a blessing of the almighty.” (Note: As of this writing, the Sanatan Sanstha website has been “shut down for some days” – supposedly due to “technical problems.”)

A member of Sanatan Sanstha has been arrested for Dabholkar’s murder. But an arrest is not a conviction: the investigation is still in its early stages. And Dabholkar had many enemies. Faith healing, fortune-telling, miracle potions, the promise of intercession with the gods, and the sale of charms, amulets, and other supposedly magical trinkets are all Indian Mythbusters are hardcore.“) He hadreceived threats from multiple right-wing Hindu groups, and had even been beaten by followers of gurus whose “work” he had debunked.

It would be easy to dismiss the assassination of Dabholkar as an anomaly, a freakish act of a freakish fringe group, with no more cultural or political significance than any other senseless murder. But this incident is not a random outlier, and it does not come out of thin air. Overt hostility to any questioning of religious and spiritual belief is all too common in India — to the point where it even gets enforced by the law. Popular skeptical debunker Sanal Edamaruku has beenin exile from India for over a year – charged, literally, with the crime of blasphemy. Author and translator Matcha Laxmaiah (Krantikar) was arrested several years ago, under the same blasphemy law, for translating some of the works of Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasreen, and other critics of Islam. And in November of 2012, Shaheen Dhada and Renu Srinivasan were arrested, again under this same blasphemy law, for criticizing the shutdown of Mumbai during a Hindu leader’s funeral.

This is not an anomaly. Yes, it is an extreme act, and it is being widely condemned around India. But it is not an insignificant anomaly — any more than the murder of abortion doctors in the United States.

And if you’re in the United States, and you’re thinking this could never happen here? Think again. The parallels between India and the United States are eerie. Both are modern states, world leaders in science and medicine. Both are secular states — in theory. In practice, both have serious problems with separation between government and religion, and government endorsement of religion on both small and large scales are commonplace. Both are large, hugely diverse countries, with cultural divides showing up along geographic ones: both have regions that are more prosperous, technological, educated, and secular… and regions that are more steeped in poverty, more rural, less educated, and more religious. Both have cultures deeply entrenched in religious and spiritual belief… cultures which, much of the time, are actively hostile to established scientific thought, and indeed to the very idea of science and the scientific examination of religious or spiritual claims. Yet at the same time — and probably not coincidentally — both have rapidly rising rates of religious non-belief, with active, vibrant skeptical and atheist communities that are growing more visible by leaps and bounds.

So it’s not surprising to find both countries deeply involved in a culture war about religion. Not a war between competing religions, but between religion and the lack thereof: between religion and those willing to criticize it, question it, scrutinize it, demand that it show evidence for its claims, and expose its more blatant frauds to the cold light of day.

Narendra Dabholkar is not the first martyr of atheism, skepticism or secularism. In 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for arguing, among other things, that the sun was just one star among many; in 1697, Thomas Aikenhead was hanged in public in Scotland for stating privately to friends that he thought the Bible stories were fables. Dabholkar is not even the first martyr of the modern-era atheist and skeptical movement: earlier this year, four people were killed and over 200 injured in anti-atheist riots in Bangladesh, and atheist blogger Rajib Haider was brutally murdered in Bangladesh for criticizing Islam and advocating secular government. But he is almost certainly, by far, the most prominent public figure in the modern skeptical movement to be assassinated.

Narendra Dabholkar is not the first, but let us hope he is the last. And we should not simply hope for this — or pray, or consult fortune tellers, or purchase amulets that we’re told will ward off assassination. We need to work to create a world where this will never happen again.

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/18/the_assassination_of_an_atheist_partner/singleton/

Following a recent argument over a kite string, two people burnt alive the 12-year-old son of a kite seller at Malerkotla in Sangrur district on Monday morning.

Vidhu Jain, a resident of Chota Chowk, received 100% burns and succumbed to them on his way to a private hospital in Ludhiana.

The incident took place around 11.30 am when Vidhu, a student of Class 7 at AS Jain School, was reportedly going to hand over the lunch box to his younger brother at Basant Valley School.

SSP Mandeep Singh Sidhu said shopkeepers saw Vidhu, who was ablaze, running down the market lane and screaming in Nawab Da Bagh area and doused the fire.

"The boy was in a serious condition when the police reached the spot. In the presence of the police and his father Naveen Jain, Vidhu said two persons forcibly took him to an under-construction colony and set him ablaze," Sidhu said, adding that one of the assailants was "purportedly minor".

"According to the boy's statement, he could not identify the two but could recognise them as he had had a heated argument with them over the kite string three days ago," the SSP said.

"The boy told his father that the argument had taken place in the presence of their servant who was present at the shop, Sidhu said, adding that the police were trying to locate the servant who was missing after the incident.

The shopkeepers rushed the boy to a local hospital, where he was referred to the Ludhiana hospital, where doctors declared him brought dead.

As the word spread, people from all communities gathered and blocked the Ludhiana-Malerkotla and Patiala-Malerkotla roads. They also ransacked five buses and damaged a few two-wheelers. The police resorted to a mild lathicharge to disperse the protesters, who demanded the immediate arrest of the accused.

Ruling out the possibility of it being a communal attack, the SSP said they hoped to arrest the accused at the earliest. "Though a few people are trying to give it a communal colour, there was nothing of the sort," he said.

Meanwhile, shopkeepers at Malerkotla and Dhuri observed a complete shutdown after the incident and joined the protest. Heavy police force from Barnala and Patiala districts was called in to avoid any untoward incident.

"The situation is tense but under control," the SSP said.

http://www.yespunjab.com/punjab/item/31097-brutality-12-year-old-malerkotla-boy-burnt-alive-after-argument

Do a lot of physical activity (not of the sexual kind) so he isnt just sitting around idle with spare energy and try to get him to focus his mind on other thoughts/issues/hobbies. Or if he's old enough, just get him married off.

The director of a gap-year charity appears in a UK court charged with sexual offences against children in Kenya, after police acted on information handed to them by Channel 4 News.

Simon Harris, 54, of Leominster, Herefordshire, was arrested on Sunday at his home by officers acting on the Channel 4 News information.

He appeared at Birmingham magistrates' court on Monday charged with three offences against two children between 2003 and 2013.

The charges are:

• attempted rape between May 2004 and December 2004 and non-penetrative sex in May 2013 on a boy aged between 13 and 15

• attempted rape on boy under age of 16 between 2003 and 2004

Mr Harris was denied bail, and will next appear at Birmingham crown court on 21 October.

The allegations against Mr Harris centre on time he spent in Gilgil, Kenya. There he is the director of a charity called VAE which places gap year students and post-graduates from the UK in schools in poor, rural areas.

He also runs an organisation called the Gilgil Trust which aims to help young street children in Kenya.

Mr Harris divides his time between his home in Gilgil, known as the "Green House", and his Herefordshire home.

Channel 4 News began investigations earlier this year after being alerted to allegations against Mr Harris in Kenya. Channel 4 News teams conducted two separate trips to Kenya, and attempted to interview him at his home in Gilgil and at his home in Herefordshire.

Information obtained from these trips was passed to Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP).

CEOP and West Mercia police then mounted an overseas operation, which involved a team of British police officers travelling to Kenya to gather evidence and working in conjunction with the Kenyan authorities and police.

CEOP Deputy Chief Executive Andy Baker told Channel 4 News: "We're grateful that Channel 4 brought this to our attention."

The operation took place under section 72 of the Sexual Offenders Act 2003:

Section 72, Sexual Offenders Act 2003, extract

If,

1) a person does an act in a country outside the United Kingdom at a time when the person was not a United Kingdom national or a United Kingdom resident,

2) the act constituted an offence under the law in force in that country,

3) the act, if done in England and Wales, would have constituted a sexual offence to which this section applies,

4) and the person meets the residence or nationality condition at the relevant time, 

proceedings may be brought against the person in England and Wales for that sexual offence as if the person had done the act there.

On Sunday, officers then made the arrest of Mr Harris. Police have employed rarely used legislation, which allows a UK national to be prosecuted on UK soil for offences committed abroad, to charge Mr Harris.

In the 10 years since the Sexual Offences Act came into being, there have been two successful prosecutions against other individuals. This investigation is the first time the relevant section has been applied to a case in Africa.

In a statement West Mercia police said: "The operation came about as a direct result of information given to CEOP by a team from Channel 4 News. The team alerted authorities in the UK to a number of allegations which came to light during a visit to Kenya earlier this year."

Speaking to Channel 4 News in general terms, Andy Baker said: "We're using powers that give us extra-territorial powers beyond the UK.

"So if a UK citizen goes abroad and offends in this way against children - sexual offences - then we have the power to deal with them in this country.

"However, we do feel that it's better if that justice is dealt with in that country ... but we will not shirk from bringing people back to the UK and dealing with them in this way."

http://www.channel4.com/news/kenya-sex-offences-simon-harris-court-channel-4-news

Panesar, 31, is considered to be a sufficiently reformed character, after he was fined by police for a nightclub incident in Brighton last month and released by Sussex, for England’s selectors to gamble on picking him for the tour of Australia.

England captain Alastair Cook said after the drink-related incident that Panesar “has that side of his life that he definitely needs to get right” and had to return to bowling his best before he could be recalled.

Since then Panesar has joined Cook’s county Essex, bowled well in five championship games to take 12 wickets, and has impressed the county coach, Paul Grayson, with what he has done on and off the field.

“He has fitted in very well,” Grayson said. “He’s back in Luton with his family and stays at a hotel in Chelmsford when he’s playing at home for us.”

Panesar has already been given an official stamp of approval. Since leaving Sussex he has worked with Peter Such, the England and Wales Cricket Board’s head spin bowling coach.

Panesar’s case was also strengthened by the awful debut of Simon Kerrigan in the Oval Test, and by the mauling given to James Tredwell’s off-spin in the one-day series against Australia.

Tim Bresnan is now the major concern for England’s selectors as the Yorkshire seamer struggles to recover from a stress fracture in his back. Bresnan is cycling as part of his rehab after his operation.

Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann meanwhile proved their fitness in the last 40-over county cup final at Lord’s on Saturday. Broad took three for 29, while Swann hit an unbeaten 29, as Nottinghamshire beat Glamorgan by 87 runs.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/10326007/England-spinner-Monty-Panesar-poised-for-Ashes-recall.html

The British government cant even achieve half of those things in the UK that they are promising to give to East Punjab. Bet Sikhs will end up paying through the nose for these 'services' too.

British Deputy High Commissioner Mr. David Lelliott today called on Punjab Chief Minister Mr. Parkash Singh Badal here at Chief Minister's residence this morning and evinced keen interest in setting up joint ventures in Education, Skill development training, Retail, Transport and agro-sector activities.

Mr. David who was accompanied by Senior Trade & Investment Adviser to British Trade Office at Chandigarh Ms. Tanisha Thiara, offered to start collaborative ventures with the state Government of Mutual interests and benefits. He informed the Chief Minister that various universities in the United Kingdom had signed several MoUs with IIT Ropar for partnership in research works and teaching programe and now they were looking to initiate skill development training program for generating skilled work force for the various trades. He also informed that British Council would initiate joint venture with two Community Colleges of the state at Jalandhar and Bathinda.

The Chief Minister desired for a serious and meaningful cooperation with UK, especially in Education and Skill development training. Mr. Badal apprised the British Deputy High Commissioner that their Government had launched a health care program to combat cancer by establishing a network of well-equipped Cancer Treatment Hospitals in the state and asked the UK government to provide technical support in this regard which would be a great service towards the people inflicted with cancer. Likewise in the field of Education the state government had initiated special program to provide quality education free of cost to the brilliant rural students with poor background. He impressed upon Mr. David to plan teacher exchange program under which the state government would make arrangements for the boarding and lodging of the interested retire teachers from UK to visit Punjab to impart training to our teachers.

To address the issues related IT, Mr. Badal also accepted the offer to initiate joint efforts to redress the issues related to IT sector and Cyber crime. He directed the Police and IT departments to work out a meaningful action program in this regard.

Prominent amongst those who were present on the occasion included Principal Secretary to the CM Mr. SK Sandhu, Special Principal Secretaries to CM Mr. KJS Cheema and Mr. Gaggandip Singh Brar.

http://www.yespunjab.com/punjab/item/25291-british-high-commissioner-david-lelliott-calls-on-badal-cm-for-joint-ventures-and-efforts

20 African students of Lovely Professional University (LPU) who were booked and arrested for indulging in rioting and theft were remanded to judicial custody for 14 days by a local court here.

The Nigerian students were arrested Saturday evening after they snatched purse from one Naveen Kumar, a resident of Una in Himachal Pradesh on Garha Road, near General Bus Stand here.

The students after being cornered by Naveen and the general public on the road had created a scene there. They had not only clashed with Naveen and other people but also challenged and threatened the police at the Bus Stand police post under the jurisdiction of police division no.7.

Taking law into their hands, the Nigerian students had also caught hold of a photo-journalist who was clicking their photographs. His camera was also snatched.

The students became so aggressive, that the police of PS division no. 7 had a tough time controlling them as they refused to be put in the lock-up at police station.

Assistant commissioner of police (ACP) Sarabjit Singh, narratting the sequence of events had told the media on Saturday that two African students had a heated argument with a car owner, after the water from a puddle in the road near Garha railway crossing splashed on to them as the car passed them by. People gathered on the scene even as the car owner left the place. The African students were later joined by another group of six colleagues.

As reported by HT, the agitated students caught hold of one Naveen Kumar of Himachal Pradesh, who was commuting by a cycle rickshaw, mistaking him for a friend of the car owner and beat him up badly in full public view. They even snatched his bag while Naveen continued to plead innocence. The Africans fled from the spot after people assembled there and gave them a chase.

The situation took an ugly turn as the running African students started pelting the public with stones, who also responded in the same manner, Singh said. "Police reached there to save Naveen from these students. The Africans paid scant respect to the law by trying to pull Naveen down from the police jeep. This was the height of their hooliganism. We took them to the bus stand police post, where they called some of their other colleagues. Even inside the police post, they snatched the camera from a press photographer and threatened him. Later, SHO Somnath recovered the camera from them," the ACP said.

Word soon spread and the members of the media fraternity reached the police post. The Africans used derogatory gestures to attack the freedom of the press, the journalists alleged. The Africans were also allegedly seen using derogatory language and gestures against the police.

Later, a case under section 382 (theft), 160 (committing affray), 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapons), 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed with common object) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the IPC.

http://www.yespunjab.com/punjab/item/24165-20-african-students-held-for-rioting-remanded-to-14-days-judicial-custody/24165-20-african-students-held-for-rioting-remanded-to-14-days-judicial-custody

I dont think I agree with the example in the article as some of the recent immigrants from places like Poland tend to be smart and well motivated. But the theory about the issue of low end immigration is pertinent to the situation in East Punjab.

When Mark Carney went to Nottingham last week to make his first speech as Governor of the Bank of England, media attention focused, naturally enough, on his reference to Jake Bugg, who we are told is a pop singer of some sort. Amazingly, Mr Carney had been to one of his gigs.

Yet Mr Carney’s more serious point was that UK productivity, which has been trailing other major advanced economies for decades, is no higher today than it was in 2005, when Mr Bugg got his first guitar. This appears to be the longest period of stagnation in UK productivity growth on record. Economists have widely described this phenomenon as a “puzzle”, a word they tend to use for any trend that breaks with past norms.

To most of us, however, it doesn’t seem in the least bit mysterious – it’s basically about the triumph in public policy of demand management over serious supply side reform. Unfortunately, this has got worse since the financial crisis began, not better.

Demand stimulus through monetary and fiscal policy is the politically easy option when an economy hits the buffers and perhaps vital in preventing a contraction turning into a depression but, as Britain’s nascent recovery gathers pace, it is worth reiterating that it doesn’t of itself lead to sustainable long-term growth or to rising living standards. These require more difficult choices.

An OECD assessment of the UK economy earlier this year attributed Britain’s poor productivity record since the crisis began to a number of factors, all of which are no doubt part of the explanation. To an extent, it’s plainly linked to the UK’s still impaired banking system, which, as Ben Broadbent, a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, has argued, hampers the reallocation of capital across sectors.

Recessions normally weed out weaker companies and industries, allowing stronger, more productive ones to thrive more effectively. Reluctance to recognise bad debts, for fear of what this might do to banking solvency, has got in the way of this process. Easy monetary policy has also supported the overstretched, which again disrupts the Darwinian disciplines of market forces.

As we now know, trend growth ahead of the crisis wasn’t in any case as good as Labour made out; a lot of it was down simply to financial and housing market froth, now blown away by the banking implosion.

Hoarding of skilled labour, declines in North Sea oil production and statistical omissions in capturing the growth in Britain’s digital economy, may also have played their part.

Yet none of these things adequately explains Britain’s dismal long-term productivity performance.

In the search for answers, I want to highlight two other aspects of the problem – the negative impact of mass immigration on productivity and the failure to address simple supply side deficiencies in planning, education, infrastructure, public sector efficiency, the tax system and a perennially weak export performance.

On the whole, business leaders tend to support an open door immigration policy, which helps address skills shortages in key industries. But, more particularly, it also puts downward pressure on wage costs. The effect is similar to having permanently high levels of unemployment, since it creates an inexhaustible supply of cheap labour.

This may or may not be good for corporate profits but it is certainly not good either for productivity or for living standards among low and middle income earners. By making labour cheap, it removes a powerful incentive to productivity gain.

To see why this is the case, look at what’s happened since the crisis began six years ago. During this period, more than 1m private sector jobs have been created, a remarkable achievement given the collapse in output. This has helped keep unemployment much lower than it would otherwise be, which is plainly to be applauded, but it has come at the expense of real incomes.

Much of the job creation has been in low-income or part-time employment. Real incomes have experienced their worst squeeze since the 1920s. Yet this is not just a recent phenomenon. The squeeze on real incomes, particularly at the lower end of the scale, pre-dates the crisis.

Foreign competition, both in the form of immigration and imported goods and services, has been a big constraint on wage growth. This, in turn, has limited the incentive for efficiency gain. Cheap labour has become a substitute for investment in plant, machinery, training and research and development.

When the last administration boasted of the umpteenth successive quarter of successive growth, it neglected to say that this was largely the result of population growth. Income per head was becoming progressively becalmed.

Britain is an open economy that certainly needs to be in the market for top international talent. Yet high levels of low-end immigration have been, at best, a zero sum game and, by holding back necessary investment in the future, possibly quite a negative economic influence.

No free market liberal would argue the case for preventing employers from hiring foreign labour but there are other forms of state intervention that might indeed be appropriate were it not for the fact that the European Union makes them unlawful – for instance, imposing levies on use of cheap foreign labour.

By making low skill employment more expensive, the levy system would provide a powerful incentive for productivity gain in construction, retail, social care and other largely domestically bound industries. These levies could then be channelled back into tax incentives for training and other forms of business investment.

In any case, if living standards are to start growing again, employers must relearn the virtues of doing more with fewer workers. Productivity gain can only properly occur if more efficient and innovative companies are allowed to put poorly performing ones out of business. Relying on population growth, and the falling unit labour costs it brings about, to stay competitive is a road to nowhere.

The second issue with productivity is that of an economy which has become unduly reliant on domestic demand. Why chase foreign markets, which require world class levels of competitiveness, when there is the easy option of credit-fuelled domestic demand to fall back on?

Time and again, the UK has ducked difficult supply side reform in favour of the palliative of demand stimulus. Such measures were plainly important in the early stages of the crisis, when they helped prevent a depression from becoming entrenched, but their continuation five years after the event is now very likely doing more harm than good.

The Juncker curse (after the Luxembourg prime minister) has it that Western politicians know what needs to be done, they just don’t know how to get re-elected after doing it.

By the same token, everyone knows that productivity-led growth is the only form of growth worth having, they just can’t seem to make the long term decisions necessary to achieve it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/10282028/Mass-immigration-has-made-Britain-a-less-competitive-economy.html

Evolution does not favour selfish people, according to new research.

This challenges a previous theory which suggested it was preferable to put yourself first.

Instead, it pays to be co-operative, shown in a model of "the prisoner's dilemma", a scenario of game theory - the study of strategic decision-making.

Published in Nature Communications, the team says their work shows that exhibiting only selfish traits would have made us become extinct.

Game theory involves devising "games" to simulate situations of conflict or co-operation. It allows researchers to unravel complex decision-making strategies and to establish why certain types of behaviour among individuals emerge.

It's almost like what we had in the cold war, an arms race - but these arms races occur all the time in evolutionary biology”

Dr Christoph Adami Michigan State University

The selfish gene?

In 1974, Richard Dawkins published a gene-centred view of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.

He argued that it was not groups or organisms that adapt and evolve, but individual genes and each living organism's body was a survival machine for its genes.

Prof Andrew Coleman from Leicester University explains that this new work suggests that co-operation helps a group evolve, but does not argue against the selfish gene theory of evolution.

Rather, he adds, it helps selfish genes survive as they reap the awards of inhabiting co-operative groups.

Freedom or prison

A team from Michigan State University, US, used a model of the prisoner's dilemma game, where two suspects who are interrogated in separate prison cells must decide whether or not to inform on each other.

In the model, each person is offered a deal for freedom if they inform on the other, putting their opponent in jail for six months. However, this scenario will only be played out if the opponent chooses not to inform.

If both "prisoners" choose to inform (defection) they will both get three months in prison, but if they both stay silent (co-operation) they will both only get a jail term of one month.

The eminent mathematician John Nash showed that the optimum strategy was not to co-operate in the prisoner's dilemma game.

Co-operating is key for evolution

"For many years, people have asked that if he [Nash] is right, then why do we see co-operation in the animal kingdom, in the microbial world and in humans," said lead author Christoph Adami of Michigan State University.

Mean extinction

The answer, he explained, was that communication was not previously taken into account.

"The two prisoners that are interrogated are not allowed to talk to each other. If they did they would make a pact and be free within a month. But if they were not talking to each other, the temptation would be to rat the other out.

"Being mean can give you an advantage on a short timescale but certainly not in the long run - you would go extinct."

These latest findings contradict a 2012 study where it was found that selfish people could get ahead of more co-operative partners, which would create a world full of selfish beings.

This was dubbed a "mean and selfish" strategy and depended on a participant knowing their opponent's previous decision and adapting their strategy accordingly.

Crucially, in an evolutionary environment, knowing your opponent's decision would not be advantageous for long because your opponent would evolve the same recognition mechanism to also know you, Dr Adami explained.

This is exactly what his team found, that any advantage from defecting was short-lived. They used a powerful computer model to run hundreds of thousands of games, simulating a simple exchange of actions that took previous communication into account.

A previous study found that selfish strategies were favourable

"What we modelled in the computer were very general things, namely decisions between two different behaviours. We call them co-operation and defection. But in the animal world there are all kinds of behaviours that are binary, for example to flee or to fight," Dr Adami told BBC News.

"It's almost like what we had in the cold war, an arms race - but these arms races occur all the time in evolutionary biology."

Social insects

Prof Andrew Coleman of Leicester University, UK, said this new work "put a brake on over-zealous interpretations" of the previous strategy, which proposed that manipulative, selfish strategies would evolve.

"Darwin himself was puzzled about the co-operation you observe in nature. He was particularly struck by social insects," he explained.

"You might think that natural selection should favour individuals that are exploitative and selfish, but in fact we now know after decades of research that this is an oversimplified view of things, particularly if you take into account the selfish gene feature of evolution.

"It's not individuals that have to survive, its genes, and genes just use individual organisms - animals or humans - as vehicles to propagate themselves."

"Selfish genes" therefore benefit from having co-operative organisms.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23529849