Category Archives: Fail!

Democrats advance Palestine censorship ahead of Trump | The Electronic Intifada

With Democrats and Republicans standing virtually unanimous in their willingness to run roughshod over the fundamental rights of Americans to advocate for Palestinian freedom, there can be little doubt Republicans will be able to push through even wider abuses of the rights of Muslims, Latinos, women and the LGBTQ community. If Democrats are not willing to stand up for the First Amendment when it comes to Palestinian rights, we can expect it will be all too easy for Republicans to peel away Democrats on other issues.

Source: Democrats advance Palestine censorship ahead of Trump | The Electronic Intifada

Former US ambassador to Israel criticizes Netanyahu′s ′nasty′ UN reaction | News | DW.COM | 26.12.2016

Israel has also vowed to reassess its relationship with the United Nations.Kurtzer maintained that the past eight years, the relationship between Israel and the United States “is on very strong ground” despite a number of disagreements between the two countries.”But none of these differences accounts for the nasty language that’s being used,” Kurtzer said. “I think we have to find a way to get beyond this and try and deal with some of these differing views more privately.”

Source: Former US ambassador to Israel criticizes Netanyahu′s ′nasty′ UN reaction | News | DW.COM | 26.12.2016

The world is trying to save Israel from itself. Will we listen? | +972 Magazine

On this issue one must repeat today what was true yesterday, the day before, and every day since 1967: the idea of settling for the purpose of marking territory — based on a worldview based on belligerence and supremacy — while placing a civilian population under military rule, is ugly and unsustainable. This worldview has been held by decent, realistic Israelis for 50 years. There is no chance for the apartheid model as embodied by the settlements, which grant their Jewish residents excessive privileges over the Palestinians.The greatest harm caused by the settlements is vis-a-vis Israelis and Judaism: they force the state to constantly deepen its hatred and fear of Arabs. Anger and fear, after all, are what raise a generation of soldiers and settlers who will maintain the mechanisms of settlement and occupation. Without anger and fear, there is nothing.Beyond the issue itself, there is the story of the settlements and the coalition of Prime Minister Netanyahu and Education Minister Naftali Bennett, which decided in the past few years to break the rules of the game when it comes to the occupied territories. No longer does Israel tread lightly and form alliances to ensure a facade of the status quo. This approach, one of the defining characteristics of the Zionist movement since its inception, has been replaced with arrogant ranting and biblical quotes, all while showing the world exactly how powerful we are.

Source: The world is trying to save Israel from itself. Will we listen? | +972 Magazine

Stalking Was Made a Punishable Crime 3 Years Ago, So How Do Stalkers Continue Despite Police Complaints? – The Ladies Finger – India is not unusual in not really taking stalking seriously. In the USA, we have seen one elected President.

Stalking Was Made a Punishable Crime 3 Years Ago, So How Do Stalkers Continue Despite Police Complaints?December 24, 2016By Divya VijayakumarImage credit: Public Transport by Ahmed Mahin Fayaz via Flickr/CC by 2.0A month ago, a friend wandered into a grocery store where she saw a vaguely familiar man staring at her. She approached him and asked if they knew each other. He said yes, he knew her name, and even rattled off a list of places where he’d seen her before – at track practice, a park close to her home, a bookstore. With growing discomfort, she turned to leave when he called out to her. “It was your birthday two days ago, wasn’t it? Happy birthday.” This last bit of information was not even on social media.While she was shaken by the interaction, many people didn’t consider it something to worry about. After all, they countered, he wasn’t harming her. In fact, he’d even been nice and wished her. While she chose not to go to the police, she felt unsettled for a long time after.On 17th December, Jyothi Kumari, an advocate in her 20s, was on her way to work in Bangalore when she was murdered by Madhu who had been stalking and harassing her for years. He had constantly harassed her when she was younger, following her to college and incessantly telephoning her house. He disappeared for a while when her uncle intervened but two months ago, Jyothi had approached the police saying that Madhu had resurfaced, attacked her when she was in her PG and also stolen her scooter. All that her complaint yielded was a “stern warning”, and no FIR was filed.Jyothi is the latest in a growing number of women who have been not just harassed but murdered by their stalkers – angry, entitled men seeking revenge after their advances were rejected. Many of these crimes also share a pattern of having been committed in public places, often as these women were travelling to or from their place of work. Pinki Devi, a beautician in Gurgaon was stabbed to death by her stalker at a metro station in Delhi in October. S Swathi, an Infosys employee, was hacked to death by her stalker at Chennai’s Nungambakkam railway station in June.With every horrific case, what becomes clear is this — stalking cannot be brushed aside as something casual. Yet there are movies and pop culture that glorify stalking, depicting it as proof that a man’s persistence pays off. Just a few months ago Tamil actor Sivakarthikeyan defended stalking, saying that it does not matter if in a movie the hero’s feelings are not reciprocated initially, if his thoughts are “pure” and he is willing to marry the girl.The Indian Penal Code, thankfully, was amended in 2013 to include stalking as a crime. Section 354 of the IPC deals with attempts to outrage a woman’s modesty: the amendment introduced Clause 354D to specifically address instances of stalking and defines a stalker as any man who follows, contacts, or attempts to contact a woman to foster a personal interaction with her, despite her clear indication of disinterest.Despite this, our police still often do not file an FIR under Clause 354D, but prefer Clause 354A that deals with molestation. But, 354A only covers incidents where a man initiates unwanted physical contact that is explicitly sexual, demands sexual favours, forcefully shows pornography against the will of a woman or makes sexually coloured remarks — things that may or may not happen in a case of stalking.Also Read:  महिलाओं पर की जाने वाली टिप्पणीयों का सिलसिला कब खत्म होगा?If my friend had indeed tried to complain to the police about the stalker in the grocery store, how effective would it have been? Journalist Arunima Mazumdar wrote of experiencing something similar when she called the police after being harassed by an old classmate, both online and offline, from 2013 to 2015. Mazumdar was made to wait for hours at the police station before an officer nonchalantly commented that Pradhan hadn’t really “done” anything to her. An FIR was not filed and the stalker was let off after writing an ‘apology’ letter.By law, stalkers can receive bail if being convicted for the crime for the first time – and this sometimes gives the offender an awful opportunity for revenge (bail can be denied only in the case of subsequent convictions for stalking). For instance, Lakshmi, a 32-year-old housewife, was stabbed to death in Delhi, in September by Sanjay Kumar. He had already been arrested for harassing her, but had secured bail. In 2015, Meenakshi, a teenager in Delhi, was also murdered by Jai Prakash despite her family having lodged a complaint against him for stalking – two years before she was murdered.

Source: Stalking Was Made a Punishable Crime 3 Years Ago, So How Do Stalkers Continue Despite Police Complaints? – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Carl Paladino, Trump Ally, Wishes Obama Dead of Mad Cow Disease in ’17 – The New York Times – Stupid and racist is doubly dangerous!

Mr. Paladino, in the interview with The Times, said he was “not politically correct,” though he disputed the notion that his comments were racist. Asked why he wanted to see the first lady live with a gorilla in Africa, he paused for a long time, then said: “What’s wrong with that?”

The CBSE has Done Away with an Entire Section of Crucial History about Caste Struggle in India – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

We may just be witnessing another bout of forced amnesia about caste atrocities. On Monday, the CBSE announced its decision to remove a section entitled ‘Caste, Conflict and Dress Change’ from its social science curriculum for Class IX students, following an order by the Madras High Court that directed it to remove ‘objectionable content’. The removed section of the NCERT textbook, used by the CBSE and 15 state boards, involves a discussion of the Nadar community, whose men and women were forced to keep their upper bodies uncovered by the National Council of the Pidagaikars, the caste council of the Nairs of the state of Travancore in the early 1800s. This was perceived as a sign of respect towards the ‘upper’ castes, and the Nadars had to pay a mulakkaram or ‘breast tax’ if they chose to cover themselves. In 1822, the practice sparked a series of violent agitations known as Maru Marakkal Samaram, or the Channar Revolt, where women from the Nadar and Ezhava communities demanded the right to wear the same clothing as ‘upper’ caste women. Hostility around the issue continued until 1858 because the Nadar women were unsatisfied with the compromises they were being asked to make – those who were Christian converts were allowed to wear a kuppayam (a jacket-blouse of sorts), but not allowed to wear any apparel in the style of Nair women, who wore an upper cloth around their torsos.

Source: The CBSE has Done Away with an Entire Section of Crucial History about Caste Struggle in India – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Israeli judges order grandchildren out of Jerusalem family’s home – How can anyone defend this shameful act?

The Ghaith-Sub Laban family’s six-year legal battle to remain in their home of six decades has come to an end, as the Israeli high court made a final ruling in the family’s eviction case on Wednesday.After Jewish settlers rejected the court’s proposed compromise on Tuesday, the Israeli judges returned a more favorable verdict to the settlers: allowing the Ghaith-Sub Laban family to remain in their home for only 10 more years, and at that point terminating their protected tenancy.Without protected tenancy, the settler organization that owns the building can evict the family.But the court has ordered the descendants of Mustafa Sub Laban and Nora Ghaith, whose mother first moved into their house in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City in East Jerusalem in 1953, to leave their home.Nora and Mustafa currently live in the house with a daughter, two sons, a daughter-in-law and two grandchildren aged 4 and 9.

Source: Israeli judges order grandchildren out of Jerusalem family’s home | The Electronic Intifada

YouTube Stars Say They Were Removed From Delta Flight for Speaking Arabic – The New York Times

Chris Ashford, 47, who was aboard the plane after a layover in London, said that he believed that the woman had “overreacted.”“She heard somebody speaking in Arabic, and assumed the worst,” he said.He added that while he thought Delta acted in the interest of some of its passengers, that “I do think it was heavy-handed, kicking the guy off the plane and then removing his bags.”Rev. Karen Georgia Thompson, 51, was also on the plane. Although she could not judge the airline’s actions as she only witnessed some of the disruption, Ms. Thompson did say that both parties should have been removed.“If you’re going to investigate, how are you going to investigate one side of an altercation?” she said.

Pinterest Thinks Hiring Female Engineers is Too Hard and Decides to Try Less – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Don’t let the “female-friendly” interface fool you. Most the team that runs the firm is male, and overwhelmingly so in the tech and leadership profiles – with men accounting for 79 percentage and 84 percentage of the fields respectively, according to numbers displayed by The Verge last year. It was this context that led the company to employ Candice Morgan at the head of its diversity campaign and publicly announce its internal goals for hiring people from underrepresented and minority categories.

Source: Pinterest Thinks Hiring Female Engineers is Too Hard and Decides to Try Less – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

H5N8 appears in Nigeria, South Korea | CIDRAP

Does anyone really need a doctorate in agronomy to understand that H5N8 influenza among “turkeys” in Nigeria explains why avian influenza is a global poultry killer and one of the most probably future sources for a killing human influenza that will make the 1918 flu looks like child’s play?

If someone talked about the turkey industry in Russia, China, Nigeria and India 30 years ago, you’d still be laughing and gasping for breath. Now because the race for profit from the industrialized poultry market knows no boundaries and has no understanding of how pandemic viruses develop, we may all soon be gasping for breath!

H5N8 appears in Nigeria, South KoreaFiled Under: Avian Influenza (Bird Flu)Stephanie Soucheray | News Reporter | CIDRAP News  | Dec 19, 2016Share Tweet LinkedIn Email Print & PDFturkeyfarm.jpgLauren M./ Flickr ccNigeria and South Korea report the first cases of highly pathogenic H5N8 avian influenza, as the strain continues to infect European poultry after first emerging in wild waterfowl populations.Nigeria reports H5N8 in mixed free-range birdsNigeria reported H5N8 in a collection of guinea fowls, turkeys and pigeons in Danbare, located in Kano state in the north-central part of the country, according to a report to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).Fifteen birds died from the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), and another 235 were culled in an attempt to prevent the virus from spreading. The outbreak occurred on Nov 19 and is considered resolved.The report said the bird owner purchased the live birds from a market. Nigeria is also battling outbreaks involving highly pathogenic H5N1, which is endemic in a handful of African nations.

Source: H5N8 appears in Nigeria, South Korea | CIDRAP