Hard Times For Dreamers...

* (I guess as 2011 draws to a close I'm feeling a little jaded)

I miss being 21 and believing that anything was possible and that I could be the catalyst for any change I perceived . I miss  believing without a doubt that it was all there in my subconscious waiting to be written into reality by my actions. Believing in unlimited chances to fix and change and learn and do. Knowing that despite being human and fallible we are divine and beautiful. I miss knowing that despite incredible odds I could create the reality I desired.

I guess I will always remain an idealist about love and freedom but more and more the dreamer seems to accept that she resides only in my head.

'Tis The Season...

Sacred days from the  Abrahamic faiths are usually both  about  remembering  a special event  and a commitment  to social justice.

So whether it is Easter and you're commemorating the death of Christ and remembering what he strove to uphold or Eid–ul- Adhaa and remembering Abraham’s commitment to obey God’s command to slaughter his son and sharing your meat with the poor, It is safe to say that it is never just about a party.

However humans often forget the bigger picture (of course this  is not related to religious days specifically it seems to be a chronic behavioural pattern of  life in the time of Lady Gaga).

So this year as we kick back and enjoy the festive season let us think back to what Jesus stood for and since only dates, names and places change let us also think about what his teachings mean for life on earth 2000 years later and how we can implement his lessons to ensure that Christmas is more meaningful than crass consumerism and fake wishes.

Maa Tughe Salaam By A R Rahman

And Now For A Word From My Pedestal...

Libya has been liberated but I am not happy...

Yet another revolution betrayed by western interests how can I be happy?

 
I watched the young Libyans dancing in the jammed streets, their guns pointing towards the skies where NATO unleashed its terror and I wonder what there is to dance about?

 
The rebels have taken Tripoli, they proclaim, yet they remain quiet about the multi-state coalition that will take the oil. Should I be pleased? 

The African leaders are as impotent as their Arab brothers against the mighty west how can I sing with joy? 

The ummah embroiled in strife did nothing to help the fasting masses in Libya how can I feast at dusk? 

And the bombs? Well the bombs are not advanced enough to tell rebel from Gadaffi loyalist... or are they? 

Do I celebrate the no fly zones that gave the UK, US and France a  space to test their new toys? 

Or maybe I can feel joy at the grand names with which the war mongers have labelled the theft and disempowerment of a nation. If they were honest then NATO's Operation Unified Pacifier would be called: Protecting Libyan oil from Libyans and the US's Oddessy Dawn would be called: Ensuring a new base closer to the Middle-East and the AFPAK.  

And please warn France that one day the real Harmattan* will come. It will blow from Africa and it will not be bound by the AU or the UN or fear or a slave mentality. It will come with the vengence of the slaves who were taken from the West Coast of Africa and with the Fire of the Mau Mau. It will come from South Africa and Nigeria and Rwanda and Somalia. It will come from the Congo and Sierra Leone and the Sahara and it will destroy those greedy western delusions. It will reject all the dollars they pay it to stop. It will wreck their plans and it will force them out of our lands.

It will break all the chains and it will set us free. 

And that day my friends I will have something to celebrate! 

*The Harmattan is a dry, dusty easterly or northeasterly wind on the West African coast, occurring from December to February. It is also the name France has given to its intervention in Libya. 

*(This is a re-post from 0ctober when my friends at attempting unison used to blog) 

Portrait Of A Rajasthani Man

(Pranit Patil)

No Place for 'I'...

Makkay gayaan, gal mukdee naheen

Pawain sow sow jummay parrh aaeey
Going to Makkah is not the ultimate
Even if hundreds of prayers are offered.

Ganga gayaan, gal mukdee naheen

Pawain sow sow gotay khaeeay

Going to River Ganges is not the ultimate

Even if hundreds of cleansing (Baptisms) are done

Gaya gayaan gal mukdee naheen

Pawain sow sow pand parrhaeeay
Going to Gaya is not the ultimate
Even if hundreds of worships are done.

Bulleh Shah gal taeeyon mukdee

Jadon May nu dillon gawaeeay

Bulleh Shah the ultimate is

When the “I” is removed from the heart!

(Bulleh Shah, 1680–1757)

Save The Dugong...

..

What Goes Around...

A dirty deal coming down in Durban

What, now, are the prospects for a climate deal by Friday?

The biggest problem is obvious: COP17 saboteurs from the US State Department joined by Canada, Russia and Japan, want to bury the legally-binding Kyoto Protocol treaty. Instead of relaxing intellectual property rules on climate technology and providing a fair flow of finance, Washington offers only a non-binding ‘pledge and review’ system.

This is unenforceable and at current pledge rates – with Washington lagging everyone – is certain to raise world temperatures to four degrees centigrade, and in Africa much higher. Estimates of the resulting deaths of Africans this century are now in excess of 150 million. As former Bolivian Ambassadar to the UN, Pablo Solon said at last week’s Wolpe Memorial Lecture, “The COP17 will be remembered as a place of premeditated genocide and ecocide.”

Within the International Convention Centre, everyone in their right mind should resist this. First, it is patently obvious, after the 1997 Kyoto negotiations where Al Gore promised US support in exchange for carbon trading, and after Hillary Clinton’s 2009 promise of a $100 billion Green Climate Fund – both reneged upon – that Washington cannot be trusted. Lead negotiators Todd Stern and Jonathan Pershing should be isolated, an international climate court should be established, and preparations made for comprehensive sanctions against US goods and services.

Second, it appears that the European Union, South Africa and the Climate Action Network – the latter representing big international NGOs mostly without any commitment to climate justice – are pushing what is called a ‘new mandate’. And not surprisingly, Pretoria’s team and the biased pro-Northern chair, SA foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, appear ready to sell out the African continent.

Some countries, led by Mali and Egypt, are holding firm on demands by the African Group, the Group of Least Developed Countries and the Latin American ‘Alba’ countries for binding northern emissions cuts of 50% by 2020 and 95% by 2050. These are critical targets to get the overall climate change to below 1.5 degrees. At 2 degrees, the UN estimates, ninety percent of current African agricultural output will cease.

If African countries fold in coming hours, even the traditional leaders of science-based demands – Bolivia, Tuvalu and a few others – probably cannot block a sleazy Durban deal.

Unfortunately, the SA and EU delegations are behind-the-scenes managers devoted to bringing emissions trading markets into this new mandate, largely because of the vast investment that Europeans have made in now-failing carbon markets. Jacob Zuma’s endorsement of the World Bank’s ‘Climate Smart Agriculture’ scheme last week is a return to nakedly neoliberal management of society and nature – an approach that over the last decade proved so disastrous in water privatization and carbon trading.

Explains Anne Maina of the African Biodiversity Network, “Climate Smart Agriculture comes packaged with carbon offsets. Soil carbon markets could open the door to offsets for genetically-modified crops and large-scale biochar land grabs, which would be a disaster for Africa. Africa is already suffering from a land grab epidemic – the race to control soils for carbon trading could only make this worse.”

Zuma is not well advised by is climate team, for the carbon markets upon which the strategy rests are dying. The Union Bank of Switzerland, Europe’s largest, last month estimated the price per tonne collapsing to just 3 euros in 2013, down from a peak of over 30 euros five years ago and around eight euros at present. If forest credits are also sold into the markets, as proponents hope, it will swamp supply and crash the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme to the level of Chicago’s: around zero.

By all accounts we need prices of at least 50 euros/tonne for market incentives to begin substantively switching us out of carbon and into renewable energy and public transport. Can we trust maniac bankers to deliver the planet’s salvation?

Face it, the neoliberal strategy is failing on its own terms. As a result, Trevor Manuel’s idea that half the Green Climate Fund should be drawn from carbon markets instead of stingy Northern governments and corporations is fatally flawed.

There is a tiny remaining hope for COP17, but only if we soon see a 1999 Seattle-style move by African delegates who know their constituents will be fried if the rich countries and SA have their way. Exactly twelve years ago, the African delegates refused to let the World Trade Organisation do a deal against Africa’s interests. SA’s trade minister at the time, Alec Erwin, tried but was unable to prevent this sensible obstructionist approach.

This time it will be harder, not only because Nkoana-Mashabane presides over COP17, but also because of Ethiopia’s tyrant ruler Meles Zenawi, a top African Union negotiator who ‘sold out’ the continent in 2009-10 by halving finance demands and endorsing the Copenhagen Accord, according to Mthika Mwenda of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance.

Since the African Group represents 53 countries, the Group of Least Developed Countries represents 48, and there are a half-dozen more in the Alba block, it is not impossible that this shifting alliance can overcome the rich countries’ power and the tendency of the four leading middle-income countries – Brazil, China, India and SA – to represent their own national interests.

As German NGO activist Rebecca Sommer of Ecoterra sums up, “Developed nations are trying to shift their responsibilities for drastic emissions cuts onto developing countries that have done the least to cause the problem. Rich industrialized countries are busy trying to carve out new business opportunities for multinational corporations and their financial elites. It would be disastrous if the internationally binding emission reduction commitments would lapse or end altogether in Durban.”

Most likely, our city will go down in infamy as the site that the temperature was dialed up on Africa. Against that, a spirited march on Saturday passed the ICC but its impact was tempered by what climate justice activists called the ‘Green Bombers’ (named after Robert Mugabe’s paramilitaries).

Complained march organizer Des D’Sa of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, “About 300 protesters, dressed in official COP17 volunteer uniforms, tore up placards, physically threatened and attacked activists participating in the march. In spite of heavy police presence throughout the march, including mounted police, riot police, air-patrol and snipers, and requests to address this disruption, police did not take any action.”

The group had “green eThekwini tracksuits with city branding and emblems, but acknowledged themselves to be ANC Youth League supporters, displaying pro-Zuma and anti-Malema placards,” says D’Sa, with the message “100% COP17”. And that tells you all you need to know about the stakes and dirty politics in play here in central Durban.

Patrick Bond in The Mercury on 6 December

Happy Jumuah !

(Cartoon from : thinkchristian)

Stereo Hearts ...

I love it , the tune is so catchy and it's totally dance-able :) 

It shall be my ring tone!

16 Days Of Activism

 

(Woman with a make-up made to look like a bruises during a protest against violence towards women in front of the Parliament building in Bucharest. Reuters)

The global 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children campaign, runs from 25 November (International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women)through to International Human Rights Day on 10 December. 


The objective of the campaign is to reinforce a plan to fight abuse. Lets try to take some time out during these 16 days and get involved because judging from the statistics we probably all know someone who is a victim of domestic violence.

*For more information:  http://www.southafrica.info/services/rights/16days.htm

Today Is Ashura

(Turkish Shi'ite women take part in a religious procession in Istanbul, AFP/Getty images)

Muhurram is not just for ten days, and then going back to the old business as usual. For a Muslim "who stands up to strive in the cause of God, for him the place is Karbala, the month is Muhurram, the day is Ashura. He is Imam Hussain and his opponent is Yazid. 

-Dr. Ali Shariati

The Tools Of Social Justice ...

Instant Activist Just Remove Clothing!

Much has been said about Aliaa Magda Elmahdy the 20 year old, Egyptian that stripped for nude photos and then blogged them. According to her the photo: "screams against a society of violence, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and hypocrisy".  

A self-proclaimed 'feminist' and 'activist' like Elmahdy should know that there are more authentic and involved ways to be an activist for women’s rights that don’t include stripping for photos that look like cheap porn. Undressing to be liberated feeds into the western idea that to be unclothed translates into being free - I am certain that the over 8 million women and girls trafficked for sex globally will probably have another view-. 

She is doing this for art and free expression in response to the terribly repressive Muslim country in which she lives. I find the entire action inciteful and opportunistic she has made herself a western darling and will probably get entrance into the American art school of her choice and an easy, unlimited visa unlike the millions of other Egyptian students trying to reach hallowed American ground for further education.

Of course her controversial facebook group in which she began calling for men to wear the hijab goes back to the old idea which requires men to act and speak on behalf of women. It's as if the millions of women who wear hijab as resistance globally need men to do the same in order to make their actions meaningful. 

With almost 3 million hits which include praise, insults and death threats her bold move cannot be entirely ignored even if it does smack of gaining entry into the 'Islam Industry in the West' where anyone (preferably Muslim and female) that can show how oppressive and repressive Islam is to women is a hero.

Surely activism and resistance come in ways more than stripping of your kit? The photo is a black and white full frontal with her wearing only stockings, red shoes, a red bow in her hair and it feeds entirely into the western concept of beauty and sexiness. Now if there was even an ounce of activism to her nude scene maybe I could attempt to understand her action. I was thinking maybe if the background was Tahrir Square or an anti-military slogan or anything remotely Egyptian or Arab.

So the question remains who speaks for the Muslim woman and how? And my answer is… PLEASE LET IT NOT BE HER.

On World AIDS Day...

                                                                          (http://welovetypography.com)

This world AIDS day let us force the pharmaceutical company cartels to see that, the more than 35 million, people living with AIDS are more important that their profits!