SACW - 31 May 2011 | Pakistan's Bomb / India: End of the Left ? / Sri Lanka 2 years after the war

Harsh Kapoor aiindex at gmail.com
Mon May 30 20:26:01 EDT 2011


South Asia Citizens Wire - 31 May 2011 - No. 2715

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Contents:
1. Meet the World’s Largest Weapons Importer (Yasmin Qureshi)
2. What if Pakistan did not have the bomb? (Pervez Hoodbhoy)
3. Pakistan: National Conference on ’Labour Rights as Citizen Rights:
Realising Constitutional Reforms’ - Press release
4. The Mukhtar Mai case will silence many women in Pakistan (Razeshta Sethna)
5. India: Hindutva offensive against the proposed communal violence
bill (John Dayal)
6. Afghanistan: Dialogue with the Taliban will be fruitless (Dr Hussain Yasa)
7. Accidental gay pride in homophobic Afghanistan (Nushin Arbabzadah)
8. End of the Left in India? - A statement (Jairus Banaji, Dilip Simeon, et.al)
9. Lila Azam Zanganeh interviews Amitav Ghosh - Guernica, May 2011
10. India: Formation of Committee for the Defence of Teesta Setalvad
and Justice in Gujarat - Press Release
11. India: Prominent human rights activist Gautam Navlakha denied
entry in Kashmir
12. Illegal and outrageous: Gautam Navlakha’s arrest, debarring his
entry [into Kashmir]
13. Book Review: 'Maoist and Other Armed Conflicts by Anuradha M.
Chenoy and Kamal A. Mitra Chenoy' (review by Achin Vanaik)
14. Sri Lanka: Two years after the war: justice, reconciliation and
the UN Panel Report (Editorial, Dissenting Dialogues)
15. The Tragic Situation of Sri Lanka (Rajindar Sachar)
16. India: People’s Tribunal on the Safety, Viability and Cost
Efficiency of Nuclear Energy (19 - 21 May 2011, Mumbai) - Tribunal
Blurb and Media reports
17. To push nuclear plants after Fukushima is pure insanity (Vandana Shiva)
18. India: Challenging the community councils that order honour
killings and punitive rapes (Nilanjana S. Roy)
19. The Lancet: Trends in selective abortions of girls in India
20. Regressive custom of dowry in Tamil Nadu in service of global
garment industry (Kalpana Sharma)
21. India’s growth rate cannot be made a national objective (Prabhat Patnaik)
22. Mending the Food Security Act (Jean Dreze)
23. Karamat Ali speaking at a tribute to Faiz and Majaaz on Feb 24,
2011, New Delhi [excerpt from video recordings by Harsh Kapoor]

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Meet the World’s Largest Weapons Importer
India is today the world’s largest importer of arms. These include
fighter jet planes, missiles and radar systems for strategic
partnerships and geo-political power. India is also investing in
security and surveillance to combat foreign threats and resistance
from its own people in places like (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2121.html

What if Pakistan did not have the bomb?
Given that 30,000 nuclear weapons failed to save the Soviet Union from
decay, defeat and collapse, could the Bomb really have saved Pakistan
in 1971? Can it do so now?
http://www.sacw.net/article2110.html

Pakistan: National Conference on ’Labour Rights as Citizen Rights:
Realising Constitutional Reforms’
28 May, 2011: The two-day conference on ’Labour Rights as Citizen
Rights: Realising Constitutional Reforms’ concluded here in Islamabad.
The Conference was organised by the Pakistan Institute of Labour
Education and Research, Sungi Development Foundation, and Muttahida
Labour Federation. The (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2120.html

The Mukhtar Mai case will silence many women in Pakistan
Going by the charged reaction to the Mukhtar Mai verdict, it is clear
that loopholes in the investigation mechanism and the law need to be
fixed. Women victims of violence in Pakistan do not find redress
whether through the courts or the country’s policing and investigation
(...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2117.html

India: Hindutva offensive against the proposed communal violence bill
The Bharatiya Janata Party, the political wing of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh, has held formal press conferences, and its
spokesmen have dominated the TV channels in tailor-made debates
attacking the proposed bill against communal violence. Sangh think
tanks have called for consultations on (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2118.html

Afghanistan: Dialogue with the Taliban will be fruitless
Classifying the Taliban between Pakistani and Afghan or that of
moderate, innocent and hardliner will only be followed by confusion
and disappointment.
http://www.sacw.net/article2111.html

Accidental gay pride in homophobic Afghanistan
The rainbow stickers had first arrived on secondhand cars imported
from Canada. Afghans had simply assumed that the colour combination
was the latest fashion fad in the west, and duly adopted it. The
confusion that had allowed for the gay-pride car accessories to become
coveted goods in Afghan (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2107.html

End of the Left in India?
In a minor replay of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Indian
media have been gloating at the defeat of the Left Front in West
Bengal especially and have repeatedly suggested that this signals the
’end of the Left in India’. Even at the best of times our news
channels tend to avoid (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2095.html

Lila Azam Zanganeh interviews Amitav Ghosh - Guernica, May 2011
Excavation Lila Azam Zanganeh interviews Amitav Ghosh May 2011 The
author Amitav Ghosh discusses the link between anthropology and
writing, The New Yorker’s edit of his essay on the Iraq war, and John
Updike’s worst book.
http://www.sacw.net/article2115.html

Formation of Committee for the Defence of Teesta Setalvad and Justice
in Gujarat - Press Release
Over 200 citizens located all over the country and abroad have come
forward to form a Committee forward to establish a Committee for the
Defence of Teesta Setalvad and Justice in Gujarat (see Press Statement
Below)
http://www.sacw.net/article2113.html

India: Prominent human rights activist Gautam Navlakha denied entry in Kashmir
Mr. Gautam Navlakha, Convener, International People’s Tribunal on
Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir (IPTK) and Editorial Consultant,
Economic and Political Weekly, was stopped at Srinagar airport on his
arrival from New Delhi, and asked to go back. Officials invoked
Section 144 of the Code of (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2114.html

Illegal and outrageous: Gautam Navlakha’s arrest, debarring his entry
[into Kashmir]
The arrest of the noted human rights and peace activist and senior
journalist, Gautam Navlakha, at Srinagar airport, debarring his entry
into Kashmir is not only outrageous and attack on the people’s human
rights but also a lawless act that needs to be condemned unequivocally
by all those who (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2119.html

Book Review: Maoist and Other Armed Conflicts
Anuradha M. Chenoy and Kamal A. Mitra Chenoy, Maoist and Other Armed
Conflicts, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2011. This is a high impact low
fuss book. Within its covers the authors provide a remarkably
comprehensive and lucidly written survey of the three geographical
zones where armed conflicts (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2112.html

The Tragic Situation of Sri Lanka
The tragic situation of Sri Lankan Tamils continues to shock the
nations on surface. But nothing concrete is being done by U.N.O or by
India which has a special responsibility in the matter.
http://www.sacw.net/article2109.html

Two years after the war: justice, reconciliation and the UN Panel Report
Even as the government of Sri Lanka protests vociferously about “The
Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability
in Sri Lanka” on grounds of state sovereignty, its protests are not
having the desired effect. In fact, quite the opposite. The more the
government tries to (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2108.html

India: People’s Tribunal on the Safety, Viability and Cost Efficiency
of Nuclear Energy (19 - 21 May 2011, Mumbai) - Tribunal Blurb and News
coverage
People’s Tribunal on the Safety, Viability and Cost Efficiency of
Nuclear Energy met for three days in Mumbai between May 19-21, 2011
and recorded depositions of experts, scientists, doctors and project
affected persons from the Konkan and other regions of the country.
Officials and senior (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2101.html

To push nuclear plants after Fukushima is pure insanity
The focus on fossil fuels, CO2 emissions and climate change suddenly
allowed nuclear energy to be offered as “clean” and “safe”. But as a
technology, nuclear power consumes more energy than it generates if
the energy for cooling spent fuel for thousands of years is taken into
account. In India, the (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2106.html

Challenging the community councils that order honour killings and punitive rapes
. . . over the past decade, an ugly pattern of so-called honor
killings and punitive rapes ordered by various community councils has
emerged, as the Indian Supreme Court recently noted with alarm.
http://www.sacw.net/article2105.html

The Lancet: Trends in selective abortions of girls in India
Selective abortion of girls, especially for pregnancies after a
firstborn girl, has increased substantially in India. Most of India’s
population now live in states where selective abortion of girls is
common.
http://www.sacw.net/article2104.html

Regressive custom of dowry in Tamil Nadu in service of global garment industry
dowry is being used as a bait to tempt poor families to surrender
their daughters in the belief that they will return with a dowry.
Extraordinary as this might sound, this is precisely what has been
happening in the readymade garment industry in Tamil Nadu for over a
(...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2116.html

India’s growth rate cannot be made a national objective
No less a person than the prime minister, while speaking to
probationers of the Indian police service in the capital the other
day, invoked a curious argument against the Maoists. He did not just
make the usual criticism — that Maoists were attempting to overthrow
the constitutional order by (...)
http://www.sacw.net/article2103.html

Mending the Food Security Act
The National Advisory Council has proposed a framework for the
National Food Security Act. But its potential could be wasted by a
flawed approach to the PDS.
http://www.sacw.net/article2102.html

Karamat Ali speaking at a tribute to Faiz and Majaaz on Feb 24, 2011,
New Delhi (Excerpted from video recordings by Harsh Kapoor)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh-2xclODUM

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South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
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