Monthly Archives: July 2021

Express News Service

Last week a remark made by the Chief Justice of India, NV Ramana, elections no guarantee against tyranny, went viral. This was said by the Chief Justice while delivering a memorial lecture in the national capital and the qualifying lines of this expression are very relevant to illuminate on the pattern of governance in the national capital, which some also consider to be a microcosm of the Indian political system.

Chief Justice Ramana said, The idea that people are the ultimate sovereign is also to be found in the notions of human dignity and autonomy. A public discourse, that is both reasoned and reasonable, is to be seen as an inherent aspect of human dignity and hence essential to a properly functioning democracy. In the current context of administrative chaos, to use the expression of Chief Justice Ramana, in the absence of reasoned and reasonable public discourse, governance has touched nadir and dignity gone abegging while seeking accountability of the rulers.

The gruesome crime of stealing, hoarding and black-marketing life-saving oxygen goes unregistered by police and other law-enforcing agencies as political rivals bury hatchet and decide to work together what they call the betterment of people. Governance today, and Delhi being a role-model, has come to depend much on the social media energy. A very well-documented news report in The Morning Standard on how Delhi government has frittered away tax-payers money in the name of cleaning Yamuna doesnt trend on thesocial media but a speculative story on Mamata Banerjee being in trouble because Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat couldnt get elected to Assembly becomes viral.

To this too, the Chief Justice had a take, The new media tools that have enormous amplifying ability are incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, good and bad and the real and fake. So, the social media-obsessed governance has left people in a state of phantasm. They are increasingly losing the ability to sift between the right and wrong.

The Chief Justice specifically mentioned the role of social media and cautioned brother judges against getting swayed by the emotional pitch of public opinion either, which is getting amplified through social media platforms. Judges have to be mindful of the fact that the noise thus amplified is not necessarily reflective of what is right and what majority believes in.

Coming to the oppression of elections, a phrase used by the learned judge, it gets reflected best in the manifesto of the political parties, who try to outdo each-other on promising whats free that they could give it to voters. For the people driven by easy returns on investments, as in the case of lottery, are unable to distinguish between the right or wrong and they mostly end up voting for the freebies.

No wonder, for the past few days there has been a skirmish between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress as to who subsidises power tariff more Delhi (ruled by AAP) or Punjab (ruled by Congress). And when the question of taking credit for free vaccines arises, can the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) be far behind.

A senior Delhi BJP functionary recently put up a hoarding taunting on Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwals media campaign captioned Have you got vaccinated? The BJP leader claimed that the free vaccines for inoculation were made available courtesy benevolence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The middle-school texts justify taxation saying the money is used for building infrastructure and extending welfare activities. Delhi has been nada in the matters of adding to existing infrastructure in the past seven years, and electoral bribery has been tom-tommed as welfare schemes. In the absence of health infrastructure people died of Covid-19, and now the victims next of kin are being monetarily compensated, a more palatable expression for rank bribery.

This can only happen when the political class comes to treat people as cipher, that is a group of people without power but used by others for their own purposes. That should explain Justice Ramanas erudition on tyranny of elections.

Sidharth MishraAuthor and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice

See the article here:

Tyranny of elections manifested in agenda of political parties - The New Indian Express

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 2

To counter the protests organised across the state over the prevailing power crisis, the leaders of the ruling Congress today attempted to negate it by holding agitations on fuel price hike.

The Congress leaders held protests in almost every Assembly constituency. The women wing of the Congress, too, raised their voices riding on a cart from Tehsil Complex Chowk to BMC Chowk as a symbolic protest against the rising prices of cooking oils, petrol, diesel and the LPG. While Mahila Morcha chief Dr Jasleen Sethi rode the cart, her team members walked along carrying banners, placards and raising slogans against the Centre on a mike.

The women then sat on a dharna at BMC Chowk and alleged that the uncontrolled fuel price hike had shaken the monthly budget of all families that too in the pandemic times when incomes had fallen to an all-time low. They blamed the PM Narendra Modi-led government for benefiting the big corporates and not paying a hoot about the average families across the country.

Phagwara: Congress leaders led by former minister and chairman Punjab Agro Industries Corporation Joginder Singh Mann on Friday rode a horse cart to oppose the frequent hike in petroleum products by the Centre.

Regressive policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government aims at taking back people to medieval times by stalling economic growth and breaking the backbone of residents, said Mann.

He said unprecedented hike in petroleum products has put an extra burden on the pocket of a common man. He said instead of reducing or controlling the prices, the Centre has been on a continuous spree to enhance prices just to corner the benefit to their blue-eyed private petroleum firms.

Mann said hike in petrol, diesel and LPG has escalated cost of every essential commodity thereby ruining a common man.

The chairman of the Punjab Agro Industries Corporation said the Congress would oppose this draconian move of the Central Government tooth and nail. He said this was open loot of general public and the Congress would not remain a mute spectator.

Mann also urged people to support the Congress in this fight against the Modi governments oppression so that unprecedented hike could be rolled back. If this is acche din of Modi sahib, then I wonder what will be the situation otherwise, he said.

Congress district coordinator Daljeet Singh Raju and youth wing leader Harji Mann also slammed the Centre for putting tremendous burden on the pocket of masses.

Phillaur: Former Punjab Youth Congress president and Phillaur Assembly constituency in charge Vikramjit Singh Chaudhary on Friday organised a protest against the Central Government over the rising prices of essential commodities here.

He said the people of the country are suffering from GDP contraction in last one year, and on the other, the prices of petrol, diesel, edible oils, LPG cylinders, pulses, milk, etc have increased significantly severely impacting the budget of every household.

Referring to the RBIs recent notification allowing banks to raise charges on using ATMs, the Congress leader said under Modi government, not only the burden on peoples wallets has increased, but now they would have to pay more to keep their own money in banks.

Here is the original post:

Congress ups the ante against fuel price hike to counter power crisis protests in Jalandhar - The Tribune India

Ken Endo. (Kyodo)

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A good interference is hard to come by. A government might be able to properly deal with issues in its own country, but there are only limited options for what it can do when carnage and oppression are taking place in remote nations.

Does that mean we should just ignore them? What is happening in Myanmar imposes that question on us.

Since the Myanmar military's coup in February, over 800 people have been killed in crackdowns by the military and hundreds have gone missing. Security forces have been arbitrarily detaining and torturing people.

It is abnormal in the first place for a military, existing to defend the country, to slaughter its own people. Besides, what those citizens demand are just fundamental rights, such as the right to take part in free and fair elections, as well as freedom of assembly and speech, which the military has taken away through the coup. Their reckless actions are inexcusable and unjustifiable.

That said, Japan has been weak to show its diplomatic presence against what is going on there and even worse, seems to be lending a hand to the military. The situation is nearly identical to its response to the Tiananmen Square incident that occurred more than 30 years ago in Beijing.

It is already known from disclosed diplomatic records that the Japanese government systematically supported right after the incident China's Communist-Party ruled government, which was responsible for the massacre of its own people, and later lifted sanctions ahead of others so that it would not fall into a predicament.

The action by the Japanese government greatly helped the Communist Party-ruled Chinese government and spoiled it as a result.

The Japanese government boasts of its "own channel of communication" with the Myanmar military, but it is not willing to stop atrocities by using this channel.

Japan, as one of the leading donor countries to the Southeast Asian nation, is supposed to exercise its influence through actions such as a total suspension of aid.

But Japan is anxious about pushing Myanmar closer to China and ruining its positive bilateral relations, if it imposes sanctions together with the United States and European nations.

The military regime appears to take advantage of Japan's concern.

China is not the only concern of the Japanese government. Japan's hands seem to be tied over Japanese companies' rights and interests developed in partnership with the Myanmar military.

The Myanmar military is also an industrial conglomerate and a major recipient of aid from Japan, with senior officers making personal profit out of it.

The post of the Japan Myanmar Association chairman is currently filled by former Posts and Telecommunications Minister Hideo Watanabe. His son Yusuke, secretary general of the association and vice president of Japan Myanmar Development Institution Inc., is an enthusiastic supporter of the military.

In addition to the institution, many Japanese firms including general contractor Kajima Corp. and trading house Marubeni Corp. are involved in massive projects related to aid to Myanmar.

That is how Japan's political business circles and the Myanmar military have turned into a politico-economic complex that shares the same interests.

In early May, I took part in a support rally for the democratization of Myanmar in Sapporo, northern Japan, on the urge of an acquaintance.

I was amazed that participants at the rally were predominantly young people. Many of about 900 Myanmar residents in Hokkaido are technical interns under the government-sponsored training program, and I believe at least one third of them must have been there.

While protests are suppressed in their home country, those young people denounced the clampdown by the military. They sought the release of democratic leaders and called on the Japanese government to intensify pressure on the military regime by clearly showing their desire for democracy. Such demonstrations were carried out across Japan.

In the world of diplomacy, it must be impossible to reflect such voices in policies as they are. There is a wide range of national interests that should be protected, including interests of Japanese companies.

There is always criticism of arbitrariness in human rights diplomacy, such as questioning the reason for choosing to tackle the human rights issue in Myanmar while human rights are violated in a vast area from Russia to Sierra Leone.

However, we must at least avoid lending a hand to injustice when economic profits are produced through inhumane massacres.

Japanese taxpayers very much lack awareness (over how their tax money is spent). Japan has provided over 100 billion yen ($900 million) a year in assistance to brutal military-ruled Myanmar, while their loans are often written off.

Although new loans have been suspended, projects which are already under way are continuing.

I also believe we should list up companies which maintain relations with the Myanmar regime and put them under surveillance.

Kirin Holdings Co. cut its joint-venture partnership with a Myanmar firm, which provides welfare fund management for the military. The Japanese government should press other companies to follow suit as well.

Lastly, as technical interns from Myanmar accepted by the Japanese government are in effect turning into asylum seekers who are likely to face persecution if they go back home, the government has to secure their living and places for them to stay.

The government can do many things right now in addition to extending their visas, such as finding temporary accommodation for them and mediating their re-employment.

Authoritarianism is rampant across the globe. What is happening in Myanmar will serve as a touchstone for Japan, a country seeking to maintain freedom and democracy, with respect to how the country can progress from now on.

(Ken Endo is a professor at Hokkaido University's Graduate School of Public Policy. Born in Tokyo in 1966, he earned a doctorate in politics at the University of Oxford and was a researcher at Harvard Law School, and a visiting professor at Institut d'etudes politiques de Paris as well as at National Chengchi University in Taipei. He is also the author of numerous books, including "Togo No Shuen" (The End of Integration), and a commissioning editor of eight volumes on Japan's security.)

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OPINION: Japan lends hand to injustice in Myanmar - The Mainichi - The Mainichi

The calamity and carnival of fascist oppression, corruption, decadence and degeneration under Hasina are of catastrophic proportions.

They are so devastatingly widespread, ubiquitous and overwhelming that one can only describe the nations plight the way English Romantic poet Coleridge describes that of his ancient mariner:

And now there came both mist and snow,

And it grew wondrous cold:

And ice, mast-high, came floating by,

As green as emerald.

And through the drifts the snowy cliffs

Did send a dismal sheen:

Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken

The ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there,

The ice was all around:

It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,

Like noises in a swound!

The entire nation of Muslim Bangladesh is held hostage by the kulangar pro-Hindu Hasina regime as the ancient mariner and his entire crew were by ice, mist and snow in the open seas. It is also held hostage as the black sheep of the old nursery rhyme, Ba Ba Black Sheep. Though fun to recite with children, the rhyme, as do many other childrens literature materials, does not have so pleasant a political and economic background. Its origin lies in the 13th century King Edward Is painful exploitation of the poor sheep growers by imposing unjust wool trade taxes upon them. In todays context, the whole country of Bangladesh is made to capitulate to the Awami regimes terror, torture, and tyranny. Only one example of how it continues to hack the nation to annihilation is its cutthroat method of repression in the illegal and unelected Awami parliament, which provides a glimpse into the regimes chokehold oppression outside the parliament, in the rest of the country. Take the case of only one of the great and glorious opposition speeches made in that Awami parliament by no other than the heroic, patriotic and nationalist DeshKonnya Barrister Rumin Farhana (www.facebook.com/108991054079710/posts/191822665796548/?sfnsn=mo). In a blatant suppression of freedom of speech, which, like the suppression of votes and opposition programs (meetings, assemblies, processions, demonstrations, and all other activities), is a characteristic hallmark of this hellish and Hecatine Hasina regime, the loyalist and cowardly Deputy Speaker expunged Barrister Farhanas golden speech from the proceedings. But who cares for the mean and myopic Awami buffooneries, shallow and superficial, false and frivolous, petty and paltry as they are? The excellent speech by Rumin Farhana, one of the finest and greatest Daughters of the Land, has gone viral on social media reaching out to millions across the world for their lasting record and reference.

What follows is that, from the Mujib period of 1972-1975 to the fetid and fascist Hasina times since 2009 it is like out of the frying pan into the fire, from one party rule to one person rule, from an autocrat on the rise to an awfully brutish autocrat dug in with the help of the police and RAB. Critics have compared the police-dependent Hasina regime by saying that without the force of the politically Awamicized and unpatriotic police/RAB, it is like men without genitals. There are tons of writings and documentaries, including thousands on social media outlets, on the misdeeds and mischiefs committed by both the father-daughter duo, along with their, particularly the daughter Hasinas shameful support base in the neighboring, yet foreign country India of hegemonic designs.

Socially, politically, and culturally, the weary and weird Hasina era is full of choking, parching, and suffocating smoke on the ground, with the sky of Bangladesh overcast with the darkest clouds ever. In just one example, its increasing authoritarian behavior [] deaf to domestic cries and international shame, as the author of the piece, Is Bangladeshs Deepening Political Crisis Sinking into Totalitarianism? suggests, is manifest in the degradation of freedom of the press in Bangladesh is blatant, with prominent journalists being brutally attacked, murdered, imprisoned, or mysteriously disappearing. The enduring political repression has caused the republic to take to the streets crying for reform, driving the current state of Bangladeshs self-proclaimed democracy to extreme volatility.Similarly, Dr Ali Riaz puts it this way, very mildly though: in Bangladesh, [] legal and extralegal measures are used rampantly to curtail freedom of speech and [] the democratic space is shrinking fast. The overall political environment has created a situation where the pattern of media ownership facilitates ongoing democratic backsliding.

The degraded and degenerated Hasina and her crooked cohorts have been threatening and throttling the countrys freedom and independence, not only from within but also from without, with the communal Hindu nationalist and Hindu fundamentalist India exercising its strangulating RAW influence to the fullest extent to fast gobble up Bangladesh with no let up in sight. The doll dance of Indias puppet Hasina to the tune of the Muslim killer Narendra Modi is like the way Kazi Lhendup Dorji also danced only to have his small kingdom of Sikkim taken away by India in 1975.

The case of the present-day Bangladesh under Hasina, whose role is analogous to that of the evil Ghoseti Begum, is also very similar to what happened when the great Bengal, through a series of inside-and-outside palace conspiracies and betrayals, lost its independence to the British East India Companys Robert Clive and William Watts in 1757. During those fateful years, there were many unfaithful Hindus who, like todays high density of Hindus under Hasina, held key influential positions in the Nawabs Government, side by side with many unfaithful Muslim relatives. Those Hindus were all rich bankers, merchants, political advisers, royals, and high-ranking military commanders. Mention may be made of Swarupchand Jagatsheth (who was the main betrayer), his brother Mahtab Chand, Umichand, Raja Rajballav (Chief Manikchand, Deputy Chief Raidurlov), Nandakumar, Krishnachandra Rai Chowdhury of Nadia, Rani Bhabani of Natore, Maharaja of Kashimbazar, Dewan Ramjibon, and Bhikhanlal Pandey of Dhaka and Narayanganj. Except a few, most of these leading Hindu beneficiaries of Muslim administration turned against the Nawab and conspired with the British against him. It is they who betrayed the Nawab the most. Without their treachery, others such as Mir Jafar, Miron, Mir Qasim, Yar Lutuf Khan, Mohammadi Beg, and Danesh Fakir could not succeed the way they did.

Using the all-enveloping and all-devastating support of the Hindu Zionist India, which has taken control of all the key affairs of Bangladesh, Hasina has deformed and demonized herself into a small but brutal dictator and ruthless tyrant tearing up the nation and all its institutions into their decomposing rags and pieces, particularly since 2009. Described by talk show participants as a Matarani Mafia Queen, Hasina has taken the country backward into the infamous Tower of London, Gitmo, and Abu Ghraib torture cells and execution chambers. The country has become a Soviet-style gulag labor camp used against her popular democratic opponents. Like the post French Revolution violence under Robespierre, there is a reign of Awami guillotine terror going on in Hasinas police and prison state. There is an ongoing bloody Awami Khmer Rouge cultural revolution of massacres and killing fields, as was the case with the ideological cleansing purges in China and Indochina in 1960s and 1970s. Hasinas Bangladesh is a fertile ground where secret police, death squads and disappearances flourish as they did in Reza Shahs Iran during those times (1960s and 1970s), and Leopoldo Galtieris Argentina in early 1980s.

The regressive and retrograde Hasina has imposed divisive and detrimental Berlin walls across the country, instead of building the wonderfully protective and patriotic Wall of China to safeguard Bangladeshs sovereignty from the despoiling Indian elephant. A treacherous tigress like Shakespeares Goneril and Regan (in King Lear), the hyena in Hasina has left no institution, be it state, business, political, educational, or cultural, free from being diminished, distorted, and demented. The I in Hasina and the we/us in her heinous Awami gangs have otherized the country into the you and they of the 170 million-strong population. Despite being vastly popular, the other is helpless and useless to encounter the fascist onslaughts of the regime, which is as utterlycorrupt, fascist, despotic, autocratic, authoritarian, bloody, beastly, vindictive, venomous, poisonous and deadly as what beggars description, above and beyond delineation and demonstration.

The horribly ruling Hasina is already more than an age into her mafia-style reign, which is also colonial permanent settlement style, pharaonic dynasty style, and medieval manorial style. In her monstrous misdeeds and mischiefs and the dystopian disasters she has caused to the country, Hasina is worse and more dangerous thanNorth Koreas Kim, Nicaraguas Daniel Ortega, Cambodias Hun Sen. Syrias Bashar Al-Assad, Iraqs Saddam, Libyas Gaddafi, Egypts Hosni Mubarak and Al-Sisi, Tunisias Zein Al-Abedin, Sudans Omar-al Bashir, Zimbabwes Robert Mugabe, Ethiopias Mengistu Haile Selassie, former East Germanys Erick Honecker, Rumanias Nicolai Ceausescu, Cambodias Pol Pot, and the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda Marcos. A concentrated dose of evil incarnate in the form of Awami Nazism, pretentious and petulant Hasina has been committing Awami racism and Awami holocaust to her political opponents, who are facing gas chamber remands, detentions, disappearances, and imprisonments, many of them dying in custody of inhuman physical torture, isolation, loneliness, privation, and deprivation. The awfully Modi-fied and Hindutva-indoctrinated Hasina has created an Awami personality cult resulting in hundreds of totem figures in the likes of Mujib, Fazilatunnesa Mujib, and herself. She has been involved in carrying out an Awami Baksali RakkhiBahini ethnic cleansing the way the Serbians were doing in Bosnia in 1990s.

A spate of recent publications (see the authors bio at the end of this book) bears evidence that Bangladesh, under Awami terror and tyranny, has become a safe haven for corruption, oppression, repression, persecution, bribery, extortion, rape, casino, crazy drug Yaba, and prostitution (physical, moral, political, intellectual, cultural, educational, academic, police, military, judicial, so on) all widespread, rampant and reckless. The publications provide a reliable and authentic narrative of the political situation in Bangladesh under the iron curtain of the heavy handed fascist Awami regime led by the horrific and horrendous Hasina. The mean and monolithic Hasina has imposed a horribly burdensome rule upon the nation with the instrument of her most hated and feared Gestapo-and-SAVAK-type police force consisting of Panama Papers elements (such as the Hasina lackey Benzir Ahmad) from her greater Gopalganj and other Hindu Gopals. In her cruelties she is also aided by a docile and passive army, which under the anti-state influence of India and business corporation-like mercantilism, has lost all its military character now buried under the bunker.

Apart from the police and the military, all other state organs, entities, institutions and organizations alsoparliament/legislature, cabinet of ministers, bureaucracy, election commission, public service commission, judiciary, planning commission, banks and businesses, directorates and stock exchanges, office of the President, office of the Speaker, and office of the Prime Minister all have been politicalized into a set of crude and coarse Awami gopals and buffoons, who, in the manner of former Awam-BAKSALi-MujibBahini-RakkhiBahini outfits and outlets, accompany Hasina the way the fools, though in a way wise, do their kings and dukes in Shakespeares plays.

With billions stolen, elections rigged, hundreds of thousands of people remanded, imprisoned, abducted, and killed. freedom of speech and expression in all forms, including creative arts like cartoons, snatched away (as do the extortionists with money, wallet, and handbag from the people on the streets of Dhaka), no words, however loaded and laden with protest they may be, can adequately describe the malicious misdeeds and mischiefs committed by the hellish Hasina in her gulag state of Bangladesh.No criticism (as done by many great fighters for freedom and democracy such as late Dr KMA Malik, Mahmudur Rahman, veteran actor Ariful Haque, Dr Taj Hashmi, Col Shahid Uddin Khan, Cap Shahid Islam, Maj Delwar, Dr Kanak Sarwar, Elias Hussain, Nayeb Ali, Oliullah Noman, Minar Rashid, Monir Haider, Tito Rahman, Nazmus Sakib and many more) is strong and scathing enough to describe the fascist Hasina bent upon destroying Bangladesh in whatever values and ideals it has had, and whatever democratic politics, human rights, and Muslim culture it was cultivating. It is only very welcome that many international organizations are holding the security forces of Bangladesh accountable for their continuing murderous and inhuman acts of cruelties meted out to the innocent people of the country. Urging the UN to take action and making specific recommendations, they have extensively documented crimes of torture, extrajudicial killing, and enforced disappearances, in particular by the Detective Branch of police and the RAB, a paramilitary force notorious for committing acts of torture, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances, and have called for RAB to be disbanded.

As has been pointed out by the author of, Bangladesh: Political and Literary Reflections on a Divided Country (p. 162), Hasina has had many young men and women unjustly locked up, as it happens in a totalitarian regime, for their fun and freedom of posting creative and expressive comments and pictures of her and her father. Is she a royal Sultana or a Queen or an Empress or a Tsarina that she cannot be criticized? Is she the Supreme Ayatollah of Bangladesh, or like the Emperor of Japan, Agong of Malaysia, or the King of Thailand that she cannot be criticized by any means, including artistic sketches and expressions? Only God/Allah the Almighty and His prophets are above criticism. In fact, even an emperor like Napoleon used to be a common and constant target of criticism through satirical drawings and caricatures by the famous artists of the time, such as James Gillray of England. Napoleon said that caricaturist Gillray contributed more to his downfall in 1815 than all the armies of Europe. In his more than 1,000 etchings of caustic humor, Gillray courageously caricatured monarchs, politicians, and warlords, including the Prince of Wales (later King George IV of the UK) and the young British Prime Minister William Pitt, apart from his most famous subject, which was of course the young French emperor.

So, the thinking, reflective, observing, and rationally oriented people say, hell with the horrible and horrendous Hasina regime. They double down saying, down with the Awami regime, which is corrupt to the core, fascist to the extreme, tyrannical from top to bottom. The hyena in Hasina is a Modi-fied Indian stooge, Hinduized puppet, vote dakat (dacoit/robber), illegal occupier of the stateseat and power grabber by force turning the country into both an omnivorous and a carnivorous Awami carnival, unleashing state terrorism right and left, and having billions looted, plundered, smuggled and unaccounted for. Hasina must be held responsible for every penny stolen, every vote rigged, every person disappeared, every opposition or innocent person imprisoned, every act of political suppression, every person beaten/hacked/slashed to death, every person dead in police custody, ever person killed at home or outside with the killer still at large, every massacre committed with national and international conspiracies, every anti-state step taken at home, and every anti-state agreement made with the communal and sectarian India.

Awami fascists led by their sole supremo Hasina have been forcibly and illegally holding on to power since 2009 as they have been stealing elections as massively as their lootings of state monies are humongous. Beastly brutes of the Awami axis or otherwise under the Awami shelter and support have been killing, torturing, and abducting innocent people; and raping women of all ages day in and day out as much as they rape their own country by destroying all its institutions and its entire moral fabric for 13 years now. Fascist Hasina has been reigning supreme as she has been politically and economically devouring and scavenging Bangladesh with her jungle rule for the last 12-13 years.

The ongoing Hasina fascism. her state terrorism, her swooping down on the popular and patriotic but awfully weak and miserable opposition (in the same way as does the fox on the lamb at any excuse however remote or improbable that excuse may be), her bending and bowing to Indian hegemony, and her daily age-old abhorrent and abominable atrocities as far as oppression, persecution, discrimination, and corruption are concerned know no limits. Under Hasina, Bangladesh has become a fertile ground for all democratic and freedom loving writers to write their bitter protests, satires and dystopias about Hasina the tyrant and her all-out tyranny: let there be a Jonathan Swift to write another Gullivers Travels (with the Awami Hasina men as small and small-minded as the Lilliputians and the Zia-Khaleda men as big and broad-minded as the Brobdingnagians); a Shelley to write another A Mask of Anarchy; a Nazrul to write another Bidrohi; an Arthur Koestler to write another Darkness at Noon; a George Orwell to write another Animal Farm and another 1984; an Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to write another Gulag Archipelago; and a Margaret Atwood to write another Handmaids Tale, for example.

[Here one must hasten to note that, apart from the Indianized and Modi-fied Hasina police horror and terror (worse and deadlier than Covid-19, SARS, and Chikungunya viruses) to rein in the BNP, the BNP leadership itself, suffering from severe political arthritis, is responsible for its knee-broken weaknesses and drawbacks. For instance, it is difficult for the people of Bangladesh to comprehend what Tarique Rahmans stand is. Who or what is greater and more important to himhimself, his family, his mother, his party, or his country? Whatever it may be, it seems he is weak and cowardly from within, exacerbated by his own intense and excruciating physical suffering caused to him back in 2006/2007 by the Moinuddin Masududdin gang. He seems to be idling away his time in a London bower. But he needs to be more forthcoming with his anti-Indian and pro-Nationalist patriotic action program. At the same time, he needs to fight the disinformation spread against him by the Awami propaganda machine. His worthless and unimpressive Mirzas and Fakhruls, dumb and dry and drab as they are, need to come out of their state of passivity in their cozy and compromising cocoon to forge ahead with only one demand:

Things went straight downhill in an extremely unexpected manner for the worst since 2009, to the extent that the situation now seems to be totally beyond Tarique Rahmans control or repair. He got his backbone broken and his old and ailing mother thrown into jail, confined to her office or home, or ousted from her home by the Hasina orchestrations. He got his party leaders shrunken to the point of being reduced to non-existence, totally obliterated into nothing less than oblivion (like the Jamaat and the Hefazat) by the macabre Hasina manipulations. He saw how the Caretaker government system got scrapped and how elections after elections got rigged. The most negative factor is the state of complete inaction, cowardice, and passivity of the BNP leaders who have all proved to be absolutely useless and ineffectual in the face of Hasinas rollercoaster whirlpool. For 13 years they could not organize even a mega million-man march in Dhaka, despite the fact that they are the largest party. Dozens of chances and opportunities threw themselves on their way only to get missed without being seized upon by the lost BNP men in the front suffering from suicidal lack of leadership. Many of them are allegedly on Awami payroll, as many of them are on the big buck nomination business during elections, letting year after year pass by and Hasina grow into the horrible and horrendous size of Frankensteins hideous monster.

Tarique Rahmans own immediate family too his wife and daughter seems to be a discouragement, a stumbling block. They may be thinking they are fine the way they are. Like the useless and unimpressive Mirza Fakhrul and the rest of the so-called Standing Committee, they are also weak and cold and passive and useless sitting home idle with no public relations drive and no public relations network built. Since Tarique Rahman is politically #1 person of Bangladesh today, neither he nor his family members should remain inert and inactive. Their medical or legal education is not worthwhile if they live in a bower or a cocoon. They should come forward to direct the party from abroad with courage, resistance and resilience with the intention of taking the country back from Hasina. From their highest and most popular political position, their love and risk for the country should take precedence over their personal family relationships, of which they have had enough already.

The idea of the local commander on the ground in Bangladesh itself as suggested by somebody is a lame and loose one. Tarique Rahman cannot afford to go back to hurl himself into the mouth of the horrible RAW hyena in the Hasina regime. If he goes back, he is between the jaws of the crocodile and, when he is, his party becomes divided into many factions. He should never jump into the mouth of the Indian-propelled tigress. However, he needs to overcome all his drawbacks and deficiencies as best as possible (as Prince Hal did only to become the great Henry V of England), distance and dissociate himself from Hindu fundamentalist India only to nationalistically side with the people of Bangladesh, as his great father and great mother did. It is the Bangladesh masses who are his main support base.

All he needs to do is to fire the entire standing-cum-sitting-cum-shitting-cum-snoring committee and replace them with a broad alliance of those who are daring, dynamic and charismatic such as (Salahuddin Ahmad, a leader of fantastic caliber and courage, but, alas, exiled in India due to Hasina machinations), Major Hafizuddin Ahmad, Dr Col Oli Ahmad, Dr Engr Mahmudur Rahman of Amar Desh, ASM Abdur Rob, Shaukat Mahmud, M H Alal, Barrister Rumin Farhana, Ashrafi Papia, Nipun Roy Chowdhury, Nagorik Manna, Barrister Andalive Partho, Junaid Saki, VP Noor, Reza Kibria, Barrister Boby Hajjaj, Shama Obaid, Nilufar Chowdhury Moni, and many Islamic leaders from Jamaat, Hefazat, and Chor Monai. There are many more out there like them with commitment and determination. In that case, Tarique Rahman can lead and direct the re-energized and rejuvenated party from where he is.

The problem is, Tarique himself seems to be too weak without much steam, let alone esteem. Maybe he has become too old and scared even before he is going to turn 60. However. he can still directly call for another November 7 of people-army uprising, but only after he fires the dull and drab Mirza Fakhrul and all other useless and ineffectual guys, all of them embodying the spirit of one no better than the late Mannan Bhuiyan and, so, being in the likes and reincarnations of him. Tarique Rahman, still the best hope for the unified opposition alliance in Bangladesh, needs to kick them out and put new and notable faces of dignity, integrity, courage and charisma, as mentioned above, in the front.]

There are many alternatives to this strangulating Awami police/RAB ferocity, totalitarian tyranny and choking and suffocating fascism. Either a powerful movement led by the opposition alliance to topple the regime, or a patriotic military take over towards a peaceful return to democracy, or a direct free and fair election under a neutral national or international body for the people to decide without fear or favor, without outside influence, hindrance or interference. Very simple.

The Awamis are the only stumbling blocks; they are a bunch of rapacious crooks and thugs; they are a past master in thuggery, racketeering, and in persecuting people in a pharaonic manner. The only solution is a direct, clean, impartial, and participatory election for the people to decide freely and widely. Hasina the fascist must go as the first order of business towards the restoration of democracy, normalcy, freedom, dignity and decency. The entire nation should join together in combating fascism and state terrorism unleashed by Hasina with the help of her lord and master and savior and protector Hindutva India which, like the Zionist Israel, has turned Bangladesh into a slavish and servile vassal state. Bangladesh must, therefore, be rescued from the Indianized and Hinduized Awami crooks and clowns.

As just been said, the main stumblingblock to Bangladeshs return to sense and sanity and balance and stability is the nuisance that is the Awami fascism destroying the country in all its institutions for years now. Regardless of whoever comes to power, the country needs to be brought back on track for which it needs a free and fair and credible election in the first place. Let the political parties or alliances come to power by turns for a forward-looking balance and reckoning. Let everyone have a chance to contribute to the building of the nation, let the Awami-led corruption and repression be stopped once and for all and lets have honesty, sincerity, integrity and patriotism back in place to play their part functioning well and ensuring accountability and transparency at every level. The horribly Indianized and Hinduized Hasina, baneful and belligerent and malicious and malevolent as she is, has completely destroyed the nation and the society. Her fascist course of action needs to be reversed in no time and the country must be taken back from under her yoke. The whole nation must shoulder a responsibility to do so. The people cannot just idly watch the country of their birth go down the drain like that under the clutches of crippling Awami control. They must do their part and get united tobuild a greater future together

Every government, democratic or dictatorial, does something good in terms of development and general welfare during its rule for whatever period, with the fascist governments like Hasinas lasting longer, the worst and most fascist, since 2009.That toadish and tawdry development by her should not count or compensate for the totalitarian destruction of values, systems, and institutions committed by her in a fascist way. Hers is a government that is bent upon hoodwinking people, legitimizing its humongous corruption by allowing the corrupt to whiten their black money by a token sum in taxes, engaging in widespread smuggling, massive election rigging, and overwhelmingthuggery. It is an autocratic government committed to its course of full and complete annihilation of the entire social, moral and political fabric of the country. As if she is licking her own wounds, dry and drab Hasina the fascist is wallowing in the sea of her persecution, oppression, tyranny, torture, strangulation, abduction and imprisonment of the people of Bangladesh for years. All the devilish, dastardly, shitty and sluttish means by which the monstrous dictator Hasina brought all branches of the government to their knees are absolutely repugnant and reprehensible, abhorrent and abominable. Longevity of a government, especially when it is fascist and corruption-ridden, cannot be a factor for the cause of development, which under such an illegal and illegitimate government is already tainted, defective, dented and demented.

The so-called development scheme under Hasina is as scheming as she herself is. It means a floodgate open for her awfully autocratic government to resort to corruption, which has been as corrosive and calamitous as it has been massive and mischievous under her all along. In the Western and Asian democracies, governments last for four to eight years at a time, then to be replaced by another democratically elected newgovernment, and they are still the most highly developed nations of the world ineverysense oftheterm. They enjoy peace, freedom, liberty, education, equality, human rights, social justice and harmonious development as best as humanly possible, all of which are largely free from violence and vitriol. While corruption and repressionare the main negative factors (an abundance of which fantastically populate the political and economic landscape under the horribly ruling Hasina), honesty, transparency, accountability, and the rule of law are the main positive criteria for the overall upwardmobility of a nation. These ever-sought-after goals and ideals are conspicuous by their utter absence in Bangladesh under the rogue Hasina regime,which, therefore, needs to be toppled in no time in the permanent interest of the country. The country needs to be on the necessary reversegear to curb and control the Hasina hooliganism and be put back on track to be a member of the responsible and respectable family of nations in the civilized world.

People of Bangladesh are in 2021 when anything that is applicable to the West can also be applicable to them. They are a part of the globalvillage, where there is no dearth of money, men, education and modern technologyfrom the smartest mobile phones to Mercedes-Benz to Mitsubishi Pajero to BMWs to all kinds of SUVs to 5-star hotels and high-rise buildings with many in possession of their (black and corrupt) mega millions to billowing billions. So, why shouldnt there be a culture and tradition of democratic freedom, fairness, transparency and accountability and rule of law? Why cant the monstrouslymassive corruption and election rigging and oppression and repression under the naughty Hasina and her nasty regime be brought to book? Our children born on the cutting edge of technology, fromthe late 1980s/1990s onwards, know amazingly better than we did in our time (when we were their age). Similarly, Bangladesh born in the modern times of fantastic political progress should have been ahead of many old democracies, instead of being far behind with the ugly head of horrible hyena Hasina fascism creeping and crawling and climbing to the top, to the point of destroying the country morally and politically and economically. Let there be a drastic change to bring Bangladesh back from below-zero-minus to zero to above-zero-plus.

In London, one of his best-known short poems about corruption, suffering, protest, resistance and empowerment in the 1800s, English Romantic poet William Blake says:

I wander thro each charterd street,

Near where the charterd Thames does flow.

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infants cry of fear,

In every voice: in every ban,

The mind-forgd manacles I hear.

The same applies to todays Bangladesh under the control of India through Sheikh Hasina, who is the worst woman in the history of Bangladesh. Everything is going abysmally bad under her hissing hood and that of her regime. People of Bangladesh got to fight her back as hard as possible by demolishing the big and baseless myths she is propagating in all fields, from politics to parliament to economy to development to education to elections to the number of the war dead to the Awami creation of a cult hero. The diseased body politic of the nation under her needs to be duly vaccinated and administered antibiotic through a mass movement of millions getting out and taking control of Dhaka streets and marching on to Gonobhabon that has been defiled and desecrated by the monster Grendel and the giant goliath in Hasina. Her coal black rule will not take any other hue. It is beyond description in terms of all kinds of social and political misdeeds and mischiefs that are countless and boundless with no end in sight.

As fascistically dictated and determined, the Hasina years are replete with daily occurrences of dirty works and incidents. They are both topless and bottomless in terms of rape, corruption, repression, discrimination, persecution, terror, tyranny, election rigging, enforced disappearances, loot, plunder, and smuggling, absence of rule of law and lack of social justiceall recklessly let loose with no bounds and barriers, to the total and complete destruction and demolition of the entire moral, social and political fabric of Bangladesh that was in the making, through error and trial though, during the period of 1975-2006.

One of the means to fight Hasina is to start a campaign through a Radio Free Bangladesh organization (in the manner of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that used to be directed at the Soviet iron curtain over Eastern Europe and that are still directed at countries with no free press and free flow of information). The program may broadcast strongly worded hard hitting Chorom Patro (extreme/radical letters), in the manner of M R Akhtar Mukul in 1971, with the intention of toppling the fascist Hasina and directly calling upon the military to descend on the seat of her fascist power and the masses to take to the streets in millions, in a repetition of what was 7 November 1975.

Bangladesh needs to ensure equal social and economic justice for all, including the minorities, and still be officially and practically a great Muslim country. Secularism is grossly abused by promoting other religions and anti-Islamic forces/elements and demoting and suppressing Islamic culture and values in Bangladesh. Like the Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, and Jewish countries all over the world, Bangladesh should become a mainly Islamic/Muslim country in its ethos and spirit and orientation. Without diluting its Islamic tradition and culture, Bangladesh can at the same time properly take care of the minority interests. Why should the wrong notion of secularism and its widespread abuses replace, displace, substitute, efface, occlude, and erase the Islamic environment in a Muslim majority country? After all, religion is the deepest bond and impulse in the human beings, as the English Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold once said. (Although Arnold himself was kind of agnostic suffering his ownreligiousdoubts, he sought to capture the true essence of Christianity in much of his work and admired the Catholic John Henry Newman for his spirituality). Majority of Bangladeshis are Muslim first, then only Bangladeshi. Therefore, Bangladesh needs an Islamically oriented democratic tradition to be established before the close of day with a farewell to bogus secularism as it is in practice in what has now become a totally Hinduized country under the Awami BAKSAL Hasina.

Any party, political or military, who would declare Bangladesh to be a just and fair Islamic Republic, with equal rights for all, under a presidential form of government (not parliamentary, which is a joke under Hasina) and reverse all slavish and servile anti-state agreements with India (Tajuddins infamous 7-point agreement in 1971 and Mujibs unequal 12-point agreement the next year and Hasinas over a hundred nefarious, notorious and nihilistic agreements) can rest assured that they will secure an immediate and spontaneous overwhelming support from the people of Bangladesh overnight. Tarique Rahman cannot afford to lose the chance of being politically pragmatic, expedient, and, at the same time, farsighted.

*Q M Jalal Khan is the author of Bangladesh: Political and Literary Reflections on a Divided Country and Bangladesh Divided: Political and Literary Reflections on a Corrupt Police and Prison State. Due out in March 2020 is his Sheikh Hasinas Brutal BNP-Phobia and Her Scandalous Midnight Power Grab Through Vampire Vote Dacoity and Villainous S/Election Rigging With an All-Time High Record of Humongous White-Collar Corruption.

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The Calamity And Carnival Of Fascist Oppression And Corruption Under Sheikh Hasina OpEd - Eurasia Review

By Bisi Oladele, Ibadan

Apex Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, has described the attack on the Ibadan residence of Yoruba Nation agitator Chief Sunday Adeyemo (aka Sunday Igboho) as an indicator of Nigerias return to the dark days of government oppression of voice of opposition.

The organisation, in a statement by its Acting Leader Chief Ayo Adebanjo and National Publicity Secretary Mr Jare Ajayi, accused government forces of being behind the attack.

This, it said, was because the attackers bore insignia of the Nigerian Army and the Department of State Security (DSS).

The statement reads in part: The news of fatal attack on the residence of Mr. Sunday Adeyemo popularly known as Sunday Igboho in the early hours of Thursday, July 1, 2021 is a sad indicator that we are fast returning to the era of late Sani Abacha when anyone who expressed opinions contrary to governments position would be fatally attacked.

Nigerians woke up this morning to the unsavoury news of an attack on the residence of the Yoruba activist, Igboho, in Soka area of Ibadan by armed men reportedly in army and DSS uniforms. DSS is the Directorate of State Security Services, one of the federal governments security agencies.

Reports have it that the invaders came in 15 vehicles with army identity while some of the men wore DSS uniforms.

It was also reported that at least seven people were killed while yet unidentified number, including the wife of Sunday Igboho, were abducted and taken away by the invaders. They also destroyed properties running into several millions.

The attack came less than 72 hours to the plan by Igboho and others to hold a rally in Lagos to further canvass for a Yoruba nation this week Saturday.

The manner of attack indicated culpability on the part of those in authority.

We are forced into this deduction for a number of reasons. Firstly, eye witness accounts indicated that vehicles and uniforms of the attackers were that of the security agencies.

Secondly, the failure of security agencies to confront the attackers further implicated the government.

It was reported that the attack lasted for more than three hours. Igbohos residence is in a highly populated area within minutes reach to surrounding police stations.

That no rescue team came from any of the police units including the DSS office in Ibadan for the several hours that the attack lasted makes it difficult not to believe that the government is complicit in the attack.

Afenifere regretted the incident was a sad reminder of what Nigerians went through under the inglorious regime of late General Sani Abacha.

The pan-Yoruba organisation said it was forced to make this deduction because Sunday Igboho is known to be in the forefront of agitations to have a Yoruba nation.

What is wrong in canvassing for self-determination so long as such agitation is devoid of violence?

The Constitution the country is running guarantees the right of every Nigerian to express opinion and even carry out rallies as long as such are done without violence.

To the best of our knowledge, none of the rallies that Sunday Igboho has led in his campaign for a Yoruba nation could be said to be violent nor was he implicated in illegal activities.

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Attack on Sunday Igbohos house sign of dark cloud Afenifere - The Nation Newspaper

FOR the last 60 years at least I have been aware of the carve-up that was and continues to be the Union, and I passionately wish to see it dissolved in my lifetime. So I support any and every agency that promotes our independence, with the SNP patently being the prime mover. However I do not agree with some things that the SNP does, and more particularly with things that the SNP government doesnt do.

One example is its seeming lack of effort or ability in securing the ferry infrastructure of this country. Scotlands island residents of some 90,000 or so depend on reliable ferries, and regrettably they havent had them for lots of years. With its geography and its history of shipbuilding, Scotland should have a modern ferry fleet, built in Scottish yards, but what it has is an ageing fleet and an apparent lack of competence to replace it, if Ferguson Marine is taken as example.

And thus viewers of the STV evening news a couple of nights back had to suffer the skin-crawling experience of slithy-tove Gove in Stornoway, offering levelling-up funds as a UK solution to an observed Scottish Government problem. We need urgently to get a grip and thus avoid setting up obvious targets for a corrupt, devious and dishonest UK (ie English) Government, one that we have had to thole for far too long. Please, for all our sanities, not much longer!Ken GowBanchory

THE new Pietistic argument against independence seems to be that because the UK departure from the EU was so chaotic, shambolic and disorganised this means independence will be as well.

What this preposterous argument implies is that the fraudulent extreme right-wing clowns in charge of that process (Boris Johnson and his Ghouls) should continue to rule Scotland.

Brexit was presided over by Boris Johnson a man so bone idle he could not be bothered to go to five Cobra meetings during the worst pandemic for 100 years.

This was the imbecile whose government wasted 150 million on unusable masks, 10 billion on a test and trace system that did neither, 16m on Covid tests that did not work, yet got his plane rebranded at a cost of 900k. And the Unionists laughably claim independence is the problem.

It was these same British nationalist wingnuts who applauded while 1.5m EU citizens were denied a vote in the 2016 EU referendum. They have done a volte-face and are now saying that Scots living outside Scotland should get to vote in any future referendum in order to rig it.

This wretched Unionist hypocrisy has the nauseating reek of a putrid corpse.

Another absurd ludicrous insulting fairytale is that in 2014 the Yes side agreed this would be a once in a generation event. There is no evidence for this as it never happened. Yet Unionists think if they lie about it long enough then it will become reality.

British Unionists are similar in outlook to followers of the fascist Trump-loving Qanon conspiracy theory. Both are ludicrous and have an aversion to reality. Yet they are both followed slavishly by mindless fanatics.Alan HinnrichsDundee

THE Spanish government has granted a pardon to the nine Catalan political prisoners and it pains me that internationally they attribute good intentions to this farce. The pardons have been given in a forced manner, because of the recent Council of Europe report, which equates Spain with Turkey, and because of the imminent, presumably condemnatory judgement of the EU Court of Human Rights. But these are Spanish-style pardons: reversible pardons.

They are not pardons but conditional release and, if at some point they consider that they are not behaving correctly, they will put them back in prison. Furthermore, in Catalonia, there are 3300 pro-independence supporters with open criminal proceedings for holding peaceful demonstrations. For them there will be no pardons, but fines and imprisonment. Like the recent five-year prison sentence for the young Marcel Vivet. Convicted without evidence, only on the accusation of a policeman (who, moreover, we have now discovered that he had blamed another demonstrator for the same action!)

And there will be no pardon for the exiles (in Belgium and Switzerland), who will still not be able to return home because the Spanish police will arrest them against the criteria of the Council of Europe and against the immunity they enjoy as members of the European Parliament. But not only that, the Court of Auditors is also involved in the operation against independence.

It is a court that audits the accounts of public administrations (although it has not prosecuted the corruption of Spanish governments). It is linked to Francos dictatorship, made up of non-judges appointed mostly by the Spanish right wing, not very transparent and outside any democratic control. The Court of Auditors accuses the Catalan government of having incurred undue expenses and holds 41 people allegedly responsible who, although not yet sentenced as guilty, will have to pay bail per person of 3.8m, 3.3m, 2.95m, 2.2m ... or have their salaries, bank accounts and family assets seized. These amounts now demanded by the Court of Auditors are in addition to the 5.2m and 4.1m previously demanded and paid.

The state is prevaricating in order to ruin them and try to scare the independence movement. Is this the forgiveness and concord offered by the Spanish State? We will not be satisfied with nine reversible pardons while the repression continues.

However, we do know that, neither this farce nor your repression you will manage to make us more Spanish. On the contrary, you have made us pro-independence: too many grievances, too much violence.

We are and will be Catalans, inhabitants of a nation with over a thousand years of history. We have survived centuries of Spanish oppression and deserve to be free.

If a region of Spain, not the richest, but the most enterprising and hard-working, is economically sustaining the state, what you should do is respect and care for this region. The will for independence is growing and will continue to grow in Catalonia, and it will not be because of the serious economic plundering it suffers, but because of mistreatment, lies and ferocious repression that never ends. Freedom for Catalonia!Montse Molas VerdaguerBarcelona, Catalonia

I WAS interested in your article (More Research Needed on Virtual Abortion Care. National, June 28). But is more research needed on the telemedical process of carrying out abortions?

The German makers of the two drugs used to effect abortions have specifically and publicly stated that they should never be administered without real-life medical supervision. Germany and France have debated the issue of telemedical abortions for ten years and have decided against them. You go on to say that a pro-life campaign may have skewed the Scottish consultation result because a Right to Life group used standardised responses, more than 3000 of them.

If all printed voting papers were labelled standardised responses, and therefore discounted, would that mean all our past elections should have been invalidated, and all our future elections too? What value can be placed on surveys on Scottish independence if printed cards are used and then dismissed?

If I tell you that a leading British Tory MP has invested an immense amount of money in the pharmaceutical company which makes these abortion-inducing drugs, which in fact he has done, does this not tell you which way the wind is blowing?

Moreover, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, Marie Stopes, indeed all the abortion providers are funded and heavily subsidised by the British Government. But the British Medical Association (Scotland) must now be seeking possible ways of saving money by not having to pay doctors and nurses to care for young women seeking abortions. Are these things not likely to skew the consultation in the other direction?

I am not personally acquainted with the Right to Life group, but it seems that votes freely and rationally given, on whatever the paper, are not standardised responses and should be respected and counted.Lesley FindlayFort Augustus

IN Kirsteen Patersons article titled, OBON isnt fascist but it gives me the shivers, she explains why One Britain One Nation must not be conflated with fascism.

But consideration of verse two is blatantly false and promotes a racist ideology when it states: So many different races, standing in the same place.

Although purportedly conveying an image of unity, the sentence in fact reflects historical racism by referring to many different races. As modern science reveals based on empirical evidence there is only one human race.

This point is also encapsulated in law as in the Equality Act 2010, Section 9, race is not used to denote either a racial ground or group. Indeed, race can be viewed as an outmoded and discredited concept to distinguish biological differences.

By teaching children whose minds are malleable distorted ideological perspectives, this serves as a good example of institutionalised discrimination, in this case racism.

Further, the song does not acknowledge the reality that people from specific national or ethnic groups, including black people, are not in the same place when considering levels of economic disadvantage and social oppression that they experience.

An innocent little ditty ... methinks not!Dr Stewart MontgomeryGlasgow

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Ageing Calmac fleet is an affront to islanders - The National

The inclusion of someone called King Mswati III in the SADC troika is an insult to the intelligence of the people of the region and has made the SADC a laughing stock. Photo: Elmond Jiyane/GCIS

VOICES

The entirety of the African continent must be democratised so that all people can benefit from the economic fruits that accompany democracy. It is therefore disgraceful that we still have in our midst, the barbaric and oppressive system of Eswatinis tinkhundla (administrative area) system.

The inclusion of someone called King Mswati III in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) troika is an insult to the intelligence of the people of the region and has made the SADC a laughing stock.

Africa has suffered enough due to colonialism and its manifestations. In this century, aptly declared as the African century by leading Afro-optimists such as former presidents Thabo Mbeki, Olusegun Obasanjo, Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Abdoulaye Wade, the archaic tinkhundla system should no longer be a negotiable matter, but must be toppled through mass rebellion, general civil disobedience and revolution.

I find it hypocritical of the international community to make vociferous objections and express disgust against Robert Mugabe and the ousted Taliban rule in Afghanistan but keep mum on the barbarism of the tinkhundla system which is responsible for the plundering of Eswatinis economic resources and widespread suppression and oppression of the impoverished majority.

It is very disturbing that police and prison officials in Eswatini do not have any rights whatsoever; instead, they are being used as knobkerries and pangas to legitimise this stinking and archaic tinkhundla system. All public service workers should stand up.

READ:Amabutho ready to defend king

The controversy of King Mswati IIIs wife, Zena Mahlangu, was just the tip of the iceberg, for there are more objectionable things that happen behind the closed doors of the so-called royal family.

The tinkhundla system is self-discreditable for it enriches the few at the expense of the majority. The system is outdated in the sense that it entrenches docility, feebleness and mediocrity in women, thus perpetuating the fallacious notion that women are inferior beings not deserving of human dignity.

The 1973 decree is a despicable political tool used by the monarch to silence free political activity. Through this decree, Eswatini has become a police and military state similar to the apartheid state that maimed and murdered thousands of freedom fighters during the struggle for liberation in South Africa.

The system is outdated in the sense that it entrenches docility, feebleness and mediocrity in women

It must be argued that the monarch should no longer be engaged in political dialogue to transform the political and economic landscape in Eswatini, but the only solution is a revolution that should elect a democratic government for the people of the land.

The royal family has been abusing the absolute power afforded them by the tinkhundla system, all in the name of culture. They abuse women and oppress the entire populace in the holy name of culture. It must be mentioned that, if culture supports the barbarism that is going on in Eswatini, then war unto this culture.

The inclusion of someone called King Mswati III in the SADC troika is an insult to the intelligence of the people of the region and has made the SADC a laughing stock. Photo: Elmond Jiyane, GCIS

The so-called King Mswati should be tried for crimes against humanity for subjecting the people to a blood-dripping illegal military dictatorship. He should also account for the deaths resulting from forced hunger, malnutrition and the scourge of HIV/Aids that continues to ravage the Swazi people.

Ka-Soko is an independent political analyst

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The oppressive Eswatini regime should be toppled by revolution - News24

A couple of weeks before the Israel-Palestinian conflict in May, Human Rights Watch released a report accusing Israel of pursuing a policy of apartheid and persecution that favors Israeli Jews over Palestinians in both Israel and the occupied territories.

The report argued that Israel has created a two-tier system, with Palestinians living under military rule and Israeli settlers under a civil legal system with greater freedoms. It claims that these inequities amount to the systematic oppression required for apartheid.

I argue that this is incorrect and, in fact, contributes to the growing global disdain for the Jewish movement for self-determination: Zionism.

I often hear my peers say that they believe Jews have the right to to self-determination in Israel, but that they are not a Zionist. In fact, I recently had a conversation with a Jewish friend of mine who, despite believing in Jewish self-determination in Israel, didnt identify as a Zionist. I told her that this very belief was, in fact, a Zionist one, and I asked her why she chose not to identify as such. She told me, without hesitation and perhaps without a second thought, that she did not identify with Zionism because of how it is perceived.

Hearing this (while not surprising) made me sad, because it showed me just how much the world has dampened the spirit of people who support the existence of a Jewish homeland.

However, I cant say I blame her. I completely understand her hesitation. Its scary to feel like you have a target on your back, and its easy to avoid expressing certain parts of your identity for fear of ruining your social life.

I know this from personal experience. I lost friends in college because I chose to be open about my Zionist identity. In recent years, anti-Zionism has been in vogue on college campuses, and its because the word Zionism has become defamatory. Zionism a movement for Jewish self-determination is now likened to white supremacy, colonialism and racism in an attempt to target the worlds lone Jewish state.

Movements like boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace oppose and outright reject the movement for Jewish self-determination. They believe it is a settler-colonial movement supporting an apartheid state.

Lets take a look at the definition of colonialism. It is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another where the arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance to their country of origin.

Many Jews fled to Israel following the decimation of European Jewry during the Holocaust, just as Iraqi Jews migrated there to escape violence and killing at the hands of an oppressive regime. Unsurprisingly, these Jewish refugees in Israel did not maintain political allegiance an integral characteristic of colonialism to these countries.

Additionally, settler-colonialism requires that the colonizer be foreign to the land. Jewish presence in Israel in antiquity is well-documented (e.g., the Dead Sea Scrolls). To claim that the Jewish people do not have ancestry in this land is to disregard a long-standing history and connection that the Jewish people have with Israel.

Lets be clear: To be a Zionist is to believe in the right of the Jewish people to return to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. Zionism, in its purest form, has existed since Jews lived under Babylonian occupation about 2,500 years ago. The concept of returning to Eretz Yisrael is integral to Jewish practice: When we step on the glass at weddings, it is to symbolize and commemorate the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem; when we sit down for our Pesach seders, we say lshana habaah bYerushalayim (next year in Jerusalem); we even face toward Jerusalem when we pray in synagogues (or even on the side of the road, as my friends family does on road trips).

For many myself included Zionism and Judaism are intertwined.

That being said, it is vital to note that being a Zionist does not mean you cannot also believe in the right to Palestinian self-determination.

Knowing, then, that to be a Zionist is simply to believe in Jewish self-determination in Israel, there is no other conclusion than that to be anti-Zionist is to deny the Jewish people that international right.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliances working definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted by 31 countries (and 27 student governments), clearly states that denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination is a manifestation of antisemitism. Most people who claim to be anti-Zionist dont realize this, and believe that anti-Zionism is simply a movement to support the Palestinian people.

It is easy to shy away from identifying as a Zionist when you have been trained to believe that doing so means you are anti-Palestinian, or aligned with oppressive movements like settler-colonialism and apartheid.

However, support of Jewish self-determination and Palestinian self-determination are not mutually exclusive.

It is possible, and quite common, actually, to both support the existence of a Jewish state in Israel and criticize its policies and government officials. As is the case in most governments, very few Zionists, or Jews, agree with every policy decision made by the Israeli government.

The actions and policy decisions of the Israeli government do not define Israelis or Jews or Zionists, just as the actions and policy decisions of the U.S. government do not define Americans and their beliefs.

College students must begin to think critically about the meaning of the word Zionism, and consider why it is that the Jewish people are the only group whose right to self-determination is questioned and demonized. It is entirely possible that upon doing so, many will find that they do, in fact, identify as a Zionist.

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So you think you're not a Zionist? Think again. J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

The intense violence in Israel and Palestine in May resembled similar episodes in recent decades. But it also had several distinct features, chief among them the newfound unity of Palestinians everywhere. Palestinians rose up together in the face of the divisions that Israel has imposed on them and those created by the shortsighted partisanship of their leaders. They mounted demonstrations throughout the country in response to Israels heavy-handed repression in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and its bombardments of Gaza that killed over 250 people. Israel tried to squash these protests, leading to eruptions of mob violence mainly directed against Palestinians in cities inside Israel such as Acre, Haifa, and Jaffa. Israeli forces killed dozens of Palestinian protesters in the West Bank. Then on May 18, Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, inside Israel, and in diaspora communities in Lebanon, Jordan, and elsewhere mounted a general strike, the first to encompass all of historic Palestine since the six-month general strike of 1936.

The deck remains stacked against the Palestinians, however, and a new Israeli government seems no more likely than its predecessor to cease its abuses and the policies that have made remote any prospect of a just and acceptable political settlement. But the stirring of a new generation of Palestinians offers some grounds for hope. A revivified Palestinian national movement can dispense with the assumptions and failures of previous generations and, through its actions and messaging, make clear the untenability of the status quo.

For years, pundits and politicians have declared that the Palestinians were defeated and demoralized and that their cause had lost its salience. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump translated this view into policies even more stridently anti-Palestinian than those that preceded them. This understanding that the Palestinians could safely be forgotten was also the basis of the normalization of relations between Israel and four Arab countries in 2020. But the uprising in the West Bank, the countrywide general strike, and the solidarity of the Palestinian diaspora delivered a clear message: the Palestinians cannot be ignored.

Western media coverage of events in May also departed from the norm. For once, broadcasters and newspapers did not blindly repeat Israeli talking points about indiscriminate Palestinian terrorist rocket fire against Israeli civiliansa claim of Palestinian instigation and culpability that such outlets ritually invoke as soon as the first Hamas rocket is fired, in the process effacing 54 years of Israeli military occupation and 73 years of Palestinian dispossession. Instead, these chronic patterns of injustice and abuse appeared prominently in both mainstream and social media. For example, many reports explained that the Sheikh Jarrah families slated for eviction by Jewish settlers with the support of Israeli security forces were refugees displaced from the cities of Acre and Haifa in 1948. Media accounts also noted that although Israeli Jews are allowed to make claims to property in occupied Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestinians are barred from making analogous claims to any of their extensive properties confiscated by Israel all over the country in the past seven decades.

Alongside this media awakening, people in the West seemed more understanding of the real politics at work in Palestine. Israels apologists in Washington, London, and Berlin naturally trotted out the standard clichs about Israels right to self-defense, but they could not mask the changing tone both in the political arena and in the large demonstrations in support of Palestinians in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere. For perhaps the first time, public discourse in all four of those countries (which share legacies of dispossessing indigenous peoples) featured discussion of the settler colonialist nature of generations of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Activists reinforced parallels to the oppression highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement, and many young Americans now connect the injustice they have seen in places such as Ferguson, Missouri, to what they saw in Sheikh Jarrah and other locales where security forces use the same U.S.-manufactured tear gas and the same militarized policing tactics.

Of course, changes in media coverage and public opinion have seemed to swing in favor of the Palestinians before, and they do not necessarily presage any meaningful political change. Such shifts occurred at the time of Israels siege of Beirut in 1982, during its fierce suppression of the unarmed first intifada starting in 1987, and during its three wars on the trapped residents of the Gaza Strip from 2008 to 2014 (the latter of which killed over 2,200 people). Each time, assiduous public relations work by the Israeli government and its friends mostly repaired the tattered screen that protects Israeli practices from real scrutiny. A frantic effort to do the same thing is underway at this moment. But there are reasons to believe that things might turn out differently this time.

The recent upheaval has brought about a unique moment, with both the growing shift in international public opinion and the nascent reunification of the Palestinian people at the grassroots level. The Palestinians have an opportunity to reestablish their frayed national movement, unify their ranks, and agree on a strategic agenda that they can clearly communicate globally. To achieve this uphill task, they will have to supersede existing political structures notably the framework put in place by the Oslo accords, including the creation of the Palestinian Authoritythat have produced only a generation of failed leaders, repressive governance, patronage-based corruption, popular demobilization, and no strategy for liberation. The two political parties that have long dominated Palestinian politicsFatah and Hamasseem structurally weaker and less popular than ever before, notwithstanding the considerable external support they receive. This is true even of a currently buoyant Hamas, whose own internal polling predicted it would lose in the elections that were scheduled for May but which were postponed by the president of the Palestinian Authority, whose legal term in office ended over a decade ago.

A new generation of young Palestinian activists has no time for the slogans, politics, and leaders of the past. These activists are operating on the same wavelength throughout Palestine and in the diaspora. Young people are taking the political initiative today, sparking a new phase of the effort for Palestinian liberation, as they have done repeatedly in the pastfor example, by launching the 1936 general strike and the 1987 intifada. They will face a hard task in overthrowing the older generation of leaders and the extensive security and financial structures that protect them. But the tide is turning, as evident in the recent popular anger directed against the Palestinian leadership. Nizar Banat, a stern critic of the Palestinian Authority, died in its custody in June, sparking widespread unrest that has underlined the extreme fragility of these leaders hold on power.

The willingness of many Americans to take a deeper and more searching look at Israel and Palestine is also encouraging. Young people, including many in the Jewish community, are more critical than their elders were of the myths that have long shielded Israel from scrutinythe notions that God gave this land to Israelis; that before the creation of the Israeli state, Palestine was a land without a people; that only Israel made the desert bloom; and that Israel is the only Middle Eastern democracy. Social media are far ahead of the mainstream media in this respect, spreading indelible video images of Israeli forces firing tear gas and stun grenades into the al Aqsa mosque, the most sacred Muslim shrine in Palestine, as worshipers were at prayer during the holy month of Ramadan; the destruction of entire multistory buildings in Gaza; Jewish lynch mobs roaming Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and in cities within Israel; and Palestinian demonstrators in the West Bank shot down with live ammunition. Such things cannot be unseen.

These vivid images have helped to pierce the cocoon that the medias coverage has faithfully maintained around the 54 years of temporary military occupation and the refined system of domination in place both inside Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories. Terms that were never employed in the past about Israel, such as systemic racism, Jewish supremacy, settler colonialism, and apartheid, are being debated and becoming part of U.S. and left-wing Israeli public conversations. This remains the case despite the increasingly desperate attempt of Israels defenders to paint support for Palestinian rights or criticism of the policies of a foreign state as anti-Semitic. These changes in discourse in the United States and Europe could have powerful political consequences, even if no immediate change in policy seems likely. Ultimately, they could lead to a decline in the immense military, diplomatic, and financial support that Israel enjoys from its allies in the West.

If all of this seems to be new, and may constitute a turning point, much has not changed. Both in the United States and globally, there remains an almost irrational attachment to the pretense of a two-state solution, the notion that the only way to bring lasting peace to the region is through the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. Proponents of the two-state solution refuse to recognize its essential prerequisite: the demolition of the formidable structural impediments, both physical and administrative, that Israeli leaders of all stripes have erected since 1967 to prevent the creation of a sovereign, contiguous Palestinian state. These methodical efforts involved the effective annexation of most of the occupied territories and the illegal transfer of nearly 750,000 colonists (over ten percent of Israels Jewish population) into these territories, in the context of the massive construction of colonial settlements, exclusive roads, and water and communication systemsthe largest infrastructure project in the countrys post-1967 history.

Without the reversal of the creeping incorporation of what is left of Palestine into the greater land of Israelthe core objective of most Israeli political parties, including those that account for perhaps 100 of 120 members of the Knessetthe invocation of a two-state solution is just a fig leaf for the unending dispossession of the Palestinian people. There is currently no prospect of an international effort to undo the facts on the ground that Israel has created to make a viable Palestinian state impossible. Nevertheless, the stubborn resistance of the Palestinian people to the efforts to dispossess and efface them from history may have forced a turning point. A new paradigm is taking shape, based on equal rights for all in Palestine and Israel, both collectively and individually, whether via an increasingly improbable two-state solution, a single state or binational entity, or a federal, cantonal, or other framework. Growing numbers of Palestinians and Israelis understand the high odds against the implementation of a two-state solution and are exploring some of these alternatives. Advocates of such schemes must offer a comprehensive exposition of how these options would work in practice before they can gain real traction. But Israels persistent opposition to a truly independent Palestinian state paradoxically makes the need for these alternatives all the more urgent.

This emerging new paradigm will probably not have a short-term impact on U.S. policies or those of other powerful countries. U.S. politicians and foreign policy mandarins, liberal Zionists, and most international actors are too invested in the two-state solution for that approach to be supplanted anytime soon. Meanwhile, major international actors, the United States foremost among them, have shown little interest in preventing Israel from blocking the path toward a two-state solution. This acquiescence permits Israel to continue its brutal management of its Palestinian problem while refusing any movement toward a real resolution, an approach that former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu perfected during his many years in office.

The new government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will likely follow the course set by its predecessor, as its ruling coalition is so disparate that no new consensus on the Palestinian issue is possible. There remains a solid right-wing Knesset majority on both sides of the aisle in support of the ongoing colonization of the occupied territories and the denial of national and other rights to the Palestinian people. This hard-line position is among the greatest obstacles to change. A new paradigmeven when more fully developedis unlikely to have much immediate effect in persuading Jewish Israelis to abandon a status quo so unfavorable to the Palestinians.

The Palestinians have the capability to change this situation, however. A revivified Palestinian national movement could challenge and ultimately transform the current untenable status quo. Such a movement would require extremely difficult political shifts and a cold reevaluation of Palestinian strategy and aimshopefully driven by the election of new and younger leaders who can chart a fresh approach. This would involve several major efforts. Palestinians must show forcefully, and ideally nonviolently, the unsustainability of the status quo, which they successfully did during the unarmed first intifada from 1987 to 1991. And they must either revive the moribund possibilities of Palestinian national independence alongside Israel or, more likely, chart a vision of a future course for the Palestinians in a new postcolonial political structure shared with their Israeli neighbors. External actors who cherish their influence over their favored Palestinian clients and allies may resist such changes, but the Palestinians have in the past shown the ability to transcend such external interventionas they did under Yasir Arafats leadership from the late 1960s through the 1980sand could do so again.

The positive change already witnessed in global discourse on Palestine is in large part due to the effectiveness of Palestinian civil society initiatives and on-the-ground youth activism in the occupied Palestinian territories, the United States, and elsewhere. A rejuvenated, unified, democratic Palestinian national movement led by a new generation and built around a robust set of political goals would multiply that impact on Israeli, U.S., and international public opinion. The communication of an authoritatively presented Palestinian political message rooted in the principle of equality and backed by political, diplomatic, and mass action would decisively prove the unsustainability of Israels continued oppression of the Palestinians.

These transformations in Palestinian society and politics may be slow to come, or could arrive rapidly, or may not happen at all. Without them, the frozen confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians will continue to thaw, only much more slowly. In any case, it is already manifestly clear that an outmoded colonial system such as Israels, based on the supremacy of one ethnic group and the subordination of another, is incompatible with the values of democracy and equality. Although they are fiercely contested, these remain the leading values of the twenty-first century. An evolving Palestinian national movement with these values at its heart can only have positive effects locally and globally.

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The Palestinians Will Notand CannotBe Ignored - Foreign Affairs Magazine

One of a number of statements that stood out during the recent court hearing regarding the conservatorship of pop star Britney Spears was the singers testimony that she was being forced to remain on birth control against her will.

I have (an) IUD inside of (me) right now, so I dont get pregnant. I wanted to take the IUD out, so I can start trying to have another baby, but this so-called team wont let me go to the doctor to take it out because they dont want me to have any more children, she said, according to a story from Variety, which notes that a live audio stream of the hearing was shut down by the judge, after learning that it was being broadcast online.

That revelation was surprising, if not shocking, to many because of the reproductive rights and justice issues it raises, especially for advocates and experts who work to ensure that individuals are able to choose to reproduce and obtain access to reproductive health services.

Rachel Johnson-Farias, executive director of the Center on Reproductive Rights & Justice (CRRJ) at Berkeley Law School; Debra Mollen, professor of counseling psychology at Texas Womans University and a licensed psychologist and certified sexuality educator with the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT); and Sonja Goetsch-Avila, the California state senior organizer at URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity (URGE), a national reproductive justice organization that centers the voices and leadership of young people, share some of the history of the reproductive justice movement and their professional perspectives on the violation of reproductive rights that Spears has testified to experiencing. (This email interview has been edited for length and clarity. )

Q: Multiple news outlets have reported that pop star Britney Spears has said that shes been forced to remain on birth control (through an intrauterine device, or IUD) against her will, as part of her testimony in court proceedings to end the conservatorship shes been under since 2008. What were some of your initial thoughts or concerns when you first learned of this detail in her testimony?

Rachel Johnson-Farias: I entered the reproductive justice movement via my work in Californias womens prisons. A common human rights and reproductive abuse that I saw in prisons is incarceration during reproductive years. Even if the state did not intervene to sterilize someone inside, earlier contact with the prison system and longer and longer sentences have normalized such that people are incarcerated at younger ages and long enough to inhibit chances of reproducing upon release. In Britney Spears case, an IUD can be removed, but the fact that she is not allowed to choose when that happens in combination with the amount of time that the IUD has already been in place (13 years) means that Spears has been stripped of making reproductive choices, and, the longer it persists, the more her case looks like forced sterilization.

Debra Mollen: My initial reaction was one of concern about the potential for harm, particularly around issues of reproductive coercion, which are common and often associated with other patterns of relationship violence, trauma and abuse.

Sonja Goetsch-Avila: I was disgusted but, sadly, not shocked after reading more about the situation. Forcing anyone to remain on birth control against their will is an explicit form of reproductive coercion. Our country has a dark history of racist, sexist, classist and ableist laws and practices that have targeted people through forced sterilization and coercion of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) methods, like IUDs and implants, to prevent wanted pregnancy in certain populations. Its unfortunate that many people are only learning more about how forced birth control and sterilization are still legal and in practice today when it happens to someone as famous as Britney Spears.

Q: Can you help us understand a bit about the basics of reproductive rights and how this particular issue fits into that understanding?

Rachel Johnson-Farias: Reproductive justice maintains that all people have the right to have a family, not have a family, and the ability to raise the families we do choose in safety and with dignity and respect. Reproductive rights forms the legal-focused arm of the reproductive justice movement and focuses on challenging laws and policies that impugn someones human right to choose whether, when, and how to have a family. Because Britney Spears right to have a child is impugned by the forced use of contraceptives, the current conservatorship case calls her reproductive rights into question. Reproductive justice is intersectional by definition, such that the historic conflation of disability and reproductive oppression should be a factor if the court reviewing Spears conservatorship employs a reproductive justice lens.

Debra Mollen: Reproductive rights are grounded in ideas that undergird personal and bodily autonomy. In the same way that no one can force you to be an organ donor, reproductive rights activists are committed to allowing each person the ability to access reproductive care and make decisions about our reproductive lives. Reproductive justice, a broader idea that was coined in 1994 by a group of Black women who recognized the need for organizations that centered the rights of indigenous women, women of color and transgender people, asserts that people should have the ability to control how, when, and if they have children and be able to raise their children safely in supportive communities.

Sonja Goetsch-Avila: Reproductive justice is defined as the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. It was first officially coined by a group of Black women in 1994 in Chicago, right before attending the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. The mainstream reproductive rights movement in the U.S. was primarily focused on the needs of middle to upper-class white women and didnt address the intersecting reproductive injustices that Black women, other women of color, queer, trans, low-income, disabled and other marginalized communities had faced for generations.

The reproductive justice framework not only demands access to reproductive health care, birth control, abortion and sex education, but also freedom from abusive and coercive powers preventing ones ability to get pregnant on their own terms. Britney Spears situation directly links to one of the key tenets of reproductive justice people deserve the right to determine if, when, and how they want to have children. In her own words, Britney Spears referenced her conservatorship as abuse. Under this abuse of power and control, its clear that Spears does not currently have the freedom and autonomy to make her own reproductive decisions.

Q: Can you also talk a bit about the history of forcing birth control or sterilization on people in this country? I understand that theres a 1927 U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled in favor of this practice? How does this relate to what someone like Spears has testified to experiencing?

Rachel Johnson-Farias: Buck v. Bell (1927) was a textbook case of reproductive oppression in which the Supreme Court authorized the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck after she was raped by her foster parents nephew and, subsequently, became pregnant. The foster family, eager to hide their shame, had Carrie Buck committed to a mental institution and sterilized under a state sterilization law rooted in eugenics that legalized sterilization of feebleminded people. Several states, including California, had similar laws on the books and, together, these laws reflected a broader societal normalization of eugenics: a White supremacist pseudoscience that holds that humans can be bred to privilege desirable traits. These laws were red herrings for genocidal efforts to eliminate all deviations from a White supremacist standard and would inform the Nazi Partys antisemitic efforts.

Buck v. Bell provided the legal grounds for the sterilization of thousands of people who did not conform to arbitrary racist, ableist, classist and sexist standards and were deemed mentally and/or physically unfit. This case also serves as a foundation for much of the ongoing sterilizations that happen in prisons today. Because more than half of Black people with disabilities in the United States will be arrested before their late 20s, our jail and prison system is ground zero for reproductive oppression at the intersection of race, class, gender and ability.

Like Carrie Buck, Spears was deemed unfit to make choices for her life as a result of her disability, including reproductive choices. If the court is not careful, it stands to replicate the reproductively oppressive outcomes that eugenics laws like the one that informed Buck procure.

Debra Mollen: Forced sterilization became popularized and widely practiced at the beginning of the 20th century. Its linked to ideas rooted in eugenics (which literally means to be well born) about who should be able and encouraged to reproduce, and who should be prevented from having children. Chillingly, the Nazis borrowed extensively from U.S.-based eugenicists in both their justification and practice of genocide of 6 million Jews. Though its tempting to see these ideas as antiquated, there have been documented cases of forced sterilization through 2013 in the California prison system.

By her account, Britney Spears is experiencing reproductive coercion, denied the ability to exercise her reproductive rights by being compelled to keep her IUD inserted against her will. Reproductive coercion includes pregnancy coercion, birth control sabotage and abortion coercion. Though it is more common that people are deceived or coerced into pregnancy and to have their birth control use impeded, another example of pregnancy and birth control coercion is to prevent people from getting pregnant and compel them to use contraception against their wishes. While it is most common for men to perpetrate reproductive coercion against women, people of any gender can experience reproductive coercion.

Sonja Goetsch-Avila: Forced sterilization has been going on in this country for centuries and has particularly harmed Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, immigrant communities, poor and disabled folks.

Yes, the Buck v. Bell case you mentioned set a precedent for the continued targeted sterilization of people in U.S. institutions, and Spears experience is certainly connected to that legacy, particularly for those with mental health conditions.

State-supported control of reproductive decisions is still widespread. Dorothy Roberts writes at length about the forced sterilization of poor and incarcerated Black women in her book, Killing the Black Body, and refers to horrific trends of requiring specific birth control to reduce sentences or even to qualify for certain benefits. And most recently, we have seen forced hysterectomies in ICE facilities in the United States.

While California is known for its progressive policies toward advancing reproductive freedom and access to healthcare, its also important to recognize Californias own egregious history with forced sterilization and reproductive coercion. California was the most aggressive state in the country throughout its 70-plus years of eugenics laws, sterilizing over 20,000 people in our state-regulated institutions.

Q: In some of the discourse around this story, there have been arguments made that the choice to have, or not have, children is a fundamental right. Why is this so? What makes this a fundamental right?

Debra Mollen: Having or not having children is a fundamental right as it allows us the ability to make our own decisions about vital aspects of our health and reproductive lives. Interfering with and violating these rights has profound implications for our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Historically and currently, White, middle and upper-class cisgender heterosexual women have been encouraged to have, and celebrated for having, children; while those from marginalized groups (women of color, poor women, people with disabilities, transgender people, incarcerated people) have been discouraged, prevented from, and shamed for exercising their reproductive decisions across the spectrum. Consider, for example, the ability to access treatment for infertility and the distinct lack of controversy or obstacles to those who most commonly pursue fertility treatments, generally class-privileged White people, that regularly result in the abandonment or destruction of hundreds of thousands of embryos. On the other hand, marginalized people, especially women of color, poor women, and trans people, have been systematically denied access to abortion, forcibly sterilized, and experienced reproductive coercion with much greater frequency.

In the case of Britney Spears, we are reminded that no amount of fame, celebrity or wealth is adequate protection against reproductive coercion.

Sonja Goetsch-Avila: Everyone should be able to determine if, when, and how to parent on their own terms. Over the years, the Supreme Court has recognized reproductive rights as fundamental human rights including having children, contraception, abortion, family relationships and child-rearing. Reproductive justice allows us the freedom to make decisions about our own bodies without interference from politicians and to decide what is best for ourselves and how to best build our families and communities.

Q: What is the denial of this right of allowing people to make their own choice about having children or not having children typically rooted in? What is it historically rooted in?

Rachel Johnson-Farias: As to historical roots in the United States, reproductive oppression has deep roots in slavery. As an institution, slavery was legal at the countrys founding and repeatedly codified in law. Slavery mandated the separation of African families and necessarily required the removal of any reproductive rights for an entire class of enslaved people. This disregard for human rights based on race and class provided a broad foundation for the legal denial of basic human rights based on identity. It is not a coincidence that prisons continue to be hotbeds of reproductive oppression as the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery except in cases of conviction for a crime. If slavery can persist via jails and prisons, so too do attacks on reproductive choice and freedom.

The law is nothing else if not an iterative instrument that holds legal precedent in the highest regard. The precedent established during slavery, and later during Buck v. Bell when the eugenics movement was even more mainstream, continues to inform our reproductive rights today. Buck v. Bell was never overturned and cases like Britney Spears highlight the ways that precedent rooted in human rights abuses echoes throughout our legal systems.

Debra Mollen: The denial is rooted in eugenics, Nazism, ableism, sexism, classism, antisemitism, and racism. Of course, there are powerful implications for the intersection of these systems, which lead not only to oppressive practices but, exercised to their logical, albeit terrifying conclusion, to genocide. When the government makes decisions about who is deemed worthy and fit to reproduce, the results undermine our individual rights about one of the most vital decisions we ought to be able to make freely and with informed consent.

Sonja Goetsch-Avila: Policies that seek to control whether and how people give birth are rooted in White supremacy and forced upon our communities to maintain power and control.

Policies requiring forced birth control and sterilization very often go hand in hand with anti-abortion legislation and attempts to restrict access to birth control, with these laws usually pushed by the same elected officials and political movements. All of these laws have racist, sexist, classist and ablest roots and are intended to strip away the dignity and autonomy of poor people, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ people, disabled people and young people who already face the greatest barriers to accessing care, and more stigma when they seek support as survivors of violence. Everyone should have access to reproductive healthcare in their own communities and on their own terms. This includes survivors of violence and those who have experienced domestic or family violence.

Q: What kind of mental, emotional, and physical impact do you think the denial of this right to have an IUD removed/discontinue birth control can have on a person?

Rachel Johnson-Farias: Immense. People are quick to look to the third world for the impact of human rights abuses, but what we are witnessing in the Spears case, and the many cases like hers, is nothing short of abusive and inhumane. Unfortunately, what is happening to Britney Spears is legal and it highlights a central failing in our legal system: that which is morally bankrupt, abusive and inhumane is not necessarily illegal.

Debra Mollen: There is an established relationship between reproductive coercion and intimate partner violence. Women of color, poor women, single women and women younger than 30 are at higher risk of interpersonal violence, reproductive coercion and unintended pregnancy. Interpersonal violence and reproductive coercion are associated with increased risk for adverse psychological, physical and reproductive outcomes such as depression, anxiety, inconsistent condom use, sexually transmitted infections, impaired physical health and substance use. Unplanned pregnancy is associated with a range of adverse outcomes, including increased rates of depression and anxiety, delayed prenatal care, poorer relationship quality and less social support.

Sonja Goetsch-Avila: The reality is people should not have the right to decide if they want to be on birth control and the type of birth control they use taken away from them, as Spears has. Taking away someones right to discontinue birth control, or any personal decision about their own health care and body, for that matter, has serious emotional, mental and physical impacts. When bodily autonomy and reproductive control is compromised, other aspects of ones life, sense of safety, stability, freedom and self-determination are impacted.

We can never undo the harm survivors of reproductive coercion have faced, but there are a few ways we can acknowledge them. In particular, URGE is supporting state legislation that would establish a Forced Sterilization Compensation Program to provide reparations to survivors of forced sterilization under Californias eugenics law from 1909 to 1979, or who were subjected to coerced or involuntary sterilizations in womens state prisons after 1979. People can follow California Latinas for Reproductive Justice (CLRJ), California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), Back to the Basics Community Empowerment (B2B) and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) for updates and advocacy opportunities.

Excerpt from:

Experts say alleged forced birth control of Britney Spears is clear reproductive justice violation - The San Diego Union-Tribune