Viviane's Corner

edited by Aimee Kligman


Women in India take on Monsanto:“We do not buy seeds from the market because we suspect they may be contaminated with genetically engineered or terminator seeds,” says Pavamma, a Dalit woman in village Palarum, near the town of Zaheerabad, about 110 kms north-west of the high-tech city of Hyderabad.

George W Bush signed “Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture” [KIA] with Manmohan Singh [the Indian Prime Minister] in March 2006, cheered by representatives of Monsanto and Wal-Mart, in the same city. Pavamma does not know about KIA. .

Pavamma looks after a household of 14 members, from 2 year old infants to 80 year old grandparents. She owns nine acres of land in semi arid Deccan plateau. One acre, she says, is sufficient to feed her household highly nutritious three full meals every day all year round. The surplus from eight is sold or stored in the household food bank. I spent about two hours with her and learnt that she has a bank of fifty different seeds that she says she needs “to feed her household properly.”more>>

Pakistan responds to Indian dossier as Biden arrives: Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said on Friday Pakistan had sent India a response to evidence from the Mumbai attacks as U.S. vice president-elect Joe Biden arrived on a trip aimed at easing tension in South Asia.

Ties between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India deteriorated sharply after coordinated attacks by 10 gunmen on the Indian city of Mumbai in late November that killed 179 people.
India blamed Pakistani militants from the outset. But Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said this week for the first time that the assault must have had the support of "some official agencies" in Pakistan. Pakistan has denied involvement by state agencies and said Singh was ratcheting up tension.

Pakistan confirmed on Wednesday the lone surviving gunman from the attack was Pakistani, and Gilani said on Friday Pakistan's main security agency had sent India a response to a dossier of evidence from the attacks India presented this week.more>>

Liberian warlord's son gets 97 years in U.S. prison: The son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor was sentenced on Friday to 97 years in prison for mutilations and executions carried out in Liberia, in the first U.S. prosecution for torture committed abroad.

Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr., 31, was convicted in October on eight torture and conspiracy charges for killings, beatings and atrocities committed while he headed a paramilitary force in Liberia. The charges said he and his colleagues burned their victims with hot irons, molten wax and boiling water and applied electric shocks to their genitals.

Prosecutors wanted a sentence of 147 years, calling Taylor's actions a "flagrant and pernicious abuse of power." more>>

En Papouasie Nouvelle-Guinée, on continue de brûler les sorcières: Une femme suspectée de magie noire a été immolée par ses voisins mardi matin près de Mount Hagen, dans une zone rurale...

Elle n’avait pas 20 ans. Mardi, une jeune femme a été traînée de force hors de chez elle, déshabillée, ligotée, bâillonnée, attachée à un poteau et brûlée vive après qu’on ait enflammé une pile de pneus. Les habitants de son voisinage, près de Mount Hagen, dans une région montagneuse et reculée de Papouasie Nouvelle-Guinée, pensaient qu’elle était une sorcière.

Le décès de cette jeune femme vient s’ajouter sur une liste déjà longue. Celle des hommes et femmes accusées de magie noire dans cette nation du Pacifique Sud, torturés et tués selon des traditions ancestrales. Ces victimes sont souvent des boucs émissaires. Lorsque des décès inexpliqués frappent les communautés, des groupes d’hommes se forment et châtient quelqu’un pour ces supposés pouvoirs magiques. en savoir plus>>

Exécutions sommaires à Gaza, Khaled Abu Toameh: Pendant que la petite-fille du Grand Mufti Al Husseini, allié d'Hitler, Leïla Shahid se pavane à la télévision française en menaçant l'Europe d'une "guerre de civilisations" si on ne permet plus au Hamas de cibler des civils israéliens, son "ami" Ismaël Haniyeh réserve un sort tout autre aux membres du Fatah prisonniers dans Gaza :

Exécutions sommaires à Gaza, Khaled Abu Toameh

Le pouvoir du Hamas a placé des dizaines de membres du Fatah en garde à vue par peur qu'ils ne profitent de l'incursion israélienne et reprennent le contrôle de la bande de Gaza. ("Jerusalem Post" en français).en savoir plus>>

Synagogue incendiée: La synagogue de la rue Pige au Croly à Charleroi a fait l'objet d'un petit attentat, ce mardi après midi.Des vandales ont en effet lancé un pavé à travers une vitre avant de bouter le feu à la porte d'entrée.

Par chance, l'incendie n'a pas eu le temps de se propager et les dégâts sont donc très limités. Le musée des Justes, dédié à toutes les personnes venues au secours des juifs, n'a heureusement pas été touché. Avertie, la police locale de Charleroi est descendue sur place, de même que le labo. Vu le contexte actuel au Proche-Orient et les tensions palpables chez nous entre les communautés musulmane et juive, le ministère de l'Intérieur a été informé de la situation. en savoir plus>>

U.S. blocks U.N. statement on Gaza: UNITED NATIONS - The United States late Saturday blocked approval of a U.N. Security Council statement calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel and expressing concern at the escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas.

Khalil Hamra / AP

A wounded Palestinian man is wheeled into hospital after a missile strike on a mosque in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, on Saturday. Palestinian medical officials say an Israeli airstrike on the mosque in the Gaza Strip killed more than a dozen people and wounded dozens.

U.S. deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff said the United States saw no prospect of Hamas abiding by last week's council call for an immediate end to the violence. Therefore, he said, a new statement at this time "would not be adhered to and would have no underpinning for success, would not do credit to the council."

France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, the current council president, announced that there was no agreement among members on a statement. But he said there were "strong convergences" among the 15 members to express serious concern about the deteriorating situation in Gaza and the need for "an immediate, permanent and fully respected cease-fire."more>>

"It's Kristallnacht Two!" An Ethnic Cleansing in America: Call any Jewish friend across the few days and the degrees of separation from someone financially devastated by Bernie Madoff are often only one or two. One rich Jewish friend in New York volunteers that because of some intricate family dispute his own money hadn’t been parked at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. On the other hand his uncle had woken up the morning after Madoff’s arrest to discover that the $40 million he’d entrusted to Bernie was gone forever, along with the multi-million pension fund of his workforce, which he’d also entrusted to Madoff.

It’s not just ruined heiresses in the Palm Beach Country Club now faced with the prospect of dividing the contents of the Whiskas can into two equal portions for mistress and cat, it’s academics on Ivy League campuses, doctors in Santa Monica, rich people from Boston to San Francisco to the West Side of Los Angeles finding their retirement nest eggs or charitable trusts wiped out overnight.more>>

Column One: Hamas's march to victory: George Orwell once quipped, "The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it."

Slideshow: Gaza op, Day 7

Since Tuesday it has become clear that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government has decided to end the war with Iran's Hamas proxy army in Gaza as quickly as possible. That is, the government has decided to lose the war. Most Israelis are unaware of this state of affairs. In an obvious attempt to bolster the popularity of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak ahead of the February 10 general elections, the local media have spent the six days since the government launched Operation Cast Lead praising the government's competence and wisdom, and declaring victory over Hamas after every IAF sortie in Gaza.
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Banish Them to Their Beds and Scourge Them!: The status of women in the Arab world is a source of frequent criticism against Islam. Women in the West have fixed their gaze on the polygamy, veils, and other inequalities in Muslim countries and are concerned about the rapid spread of Islam. When Western critics charge that Islam teaches the inferiority of women, Muslims often argue that any disparity between men and women is the result of cultural differences, rather than of Islamic law:

The Qur’an enshrined a new status for women and gave them rights that they could have only dreamed of before in Arabia, so why the seeming disparity between what once was and what now appears to be? The answer lies in the deterioration of basic Islamic education that occurred in the Muslim world after the disasters of the Mongol invasions and the Crusades in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. Cultures that arose since that time have been characterized by customs and local cultural leanings more than genuine Islamic values.[1]

The treatment of women in the Muslim world, then, is the result of the Crusades and the Mongol invasions. If it weren’t for the Christians and the Mongols, Muslim women would still be enjoying the prominent status given to them by Muhammad.more>>