Middle-Eastern Patriarchy struggles against modernity
JOHN CHUCKMAN
9:13 AM on January 21, 2012
Sorry, the premise of this piece is shabby.
There’s nothing special about “the Muslim world” which makes the path to modernity neither safe nor easy. Indeed, saying so, demonstrates not a good grasp of history and provides one more sad bit of evidence of the Islamophobia with which we are inundated.
Just a few hundred years ago, Christians were hacking each other into pieces and burning alive those who varied in some minute detail, such as the nature of the bread and wine at mass, in their faith.
Yet Europe today is generally regarded as the world’s most civilized and tolerant set of societies in the world, although the social impacts of heavy immigration are beginning to erode that view.
The path to modernity is never, never safe or easy, for anyone, and, truth be told, it is never finished. We are always playing catch-up in our laws with the social changes engendered by technical and economic change.
The idiot-savants at the Pentagon and the CIA would have us believe that you can just change an ancient society in a matter of years, but that belief is the equivalent of thinking you can remove an ancient, ailing oak tree from your yard with a hand scoop.
It took virtually all Western societies centuries to evolve even to the state of civilization we see now. The beginnings of the modern era go back about five centuries, a time span which reflects the emergence of a new standard in economic growth. Still, even those five centuries are filled with riots, revolutions, wars, and countless horrors.
Even in “the New World,” the United States took more than two centuries to become the approximation of a democracy we see today. In the wake of its Revolution, almost no one could vote, it being estimated that maybe one percent of Virginians could vote, blacks and women being excluded but also, often not appreciated, most white males. You had to have a certain amount of wealth to cast a ballot.
Even then, the Senate was appointed until 1913, the President was elected only by the Electoral College (a small group of the moneyed elites), the popular vote did not determine anything, and the Supreme Court dared not dream of enforcing the Bill of Rights across states so it remained an empty set of high-sounding words. It took decades of change and strife to get what we see today, including what was the bloodiest war ever experienced by Americans, the Civil War, in which it lost roughly twice the people it lost in WWII.
The immense turmoil and mass murders in getting votes and rights for blacks went on for most of the country’s history. In the 1920s, several black towns in Oklahoma and Florida were virtually wiped out by white mobs, the bodies of hundreds buried in mass graves.
Women only gained the vote in 1921 after a long and difficult struggle.
The truth is that democracy in some form and respect for human rights are virtually inevitable when an old society experiences consistent economic growth. Economic growth and the rise of a strong middle class act almost like a solvent on the customs and beliefs of old societies. It is a long process, and it is never without a good deal of pain.
Even in North America we are not through with the process of economic development affecting old ways: look at all the turmoil over matters like rising divorce rates, abortion rights, and gay marriage – all things which are necessary and, in a sense, inevitable for a free society which continues to grow and change.
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Here is the article in the Globe and Mail that precipitated the foregoing:
Viola Desmond honored with Commemorative Stamp
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2012/01/14/ns-viola-desmond-commemorative-stamp.html
Nova Scotia civil rights activist Viola Desmond will soon be featured on a commemorative stamp from Canada Post.
Desmond, a black woman, went to jail in 1946 for sitting in a segregated section of a New Glasgow theatre reserved for whites.
Her sister, Wanda Robson, is thrilled by the national recognition of her struggle, 47 years after her death.
“It’s beyond my dreams that this would come about. It’s overwhelming, really,” Wanda Robson said.
She has a copy of a first draft of the postage stamp featuring her sister and the theatre where she refused to move from the whites-only section.
Robson made sure the final version was accurate, down to the title of the movie on the marquee.
“It’s a picture of her with her hair [in the style] of the ’40s, swept up, superimposed over the theatre. The story itself — the whole story — is important, of course,” Robson said.
The stamp that will be publicly unveiled Feb. 1 to kick off Black History month in Nova Scotia.
Robson hopes the stamp issued in her sister’s honour will prompt those outside the province to ask who she was and what she did.
Her struggle recently became the inspiration for a film called Long Road to Justice.
Apology and pardon
“She was beautiful, she was well dressed and she was very well spoken, and they carried her out to a patrol car, hauled her off to jail and she spent the night in the town lock-up,” the film tells viewers.
Her family received an apology and a pardon from the province in April 2010, and the town of New Glasgow paid tribute to Desmond in August 2010.
Desmond, then a 32-year-old beautician, was driving from Halifax to Sydney on Nov. 8, 1946, when her car broke down in New Glasgow. She decided to see a movie at the Roseland Theatre while she waited for repairs.
Desmond sat downstairs, unaware of the theatre’s rule that blacks could sit only in the balcony seats. She was asked to leave but refused. Eventually, the manager and a police officer pulled her out.
Desmond spent the night in jail. The next morning, she was convicted of tax evasion. Prosecutors made no mention of race. They told the judge that Desmond didn’t pay the full price to sit up front and therefore didn’t pay the proper tax — a difference of one cent.
She was fined $20 and sentenced to 30 days in jail.
Desmond, who owned her own hairdressing business, fought unsuccessfully to appeal both her conviction and fine.
Thanks to her public court battle, the Nova Scotia government dismantled its segregation laws.
St. Lucian Woman Writes of her Experience
Malaise Norah, 1997, St. Lucia
I am walking down a wide dirt road toward the marina in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, a charming island known for some of the sweetest bananas in all the Caribbean. Figs, they call them here. Falcon and Fabian walk beside me, smoking weed that’s rolled in a dried banana leaf. My husband is pushing our 2-year-old daughter in the stroller and the both of them have fallen behind. The sun has already set, and the evening sky is a deep inky blue. We are meeting travelers from England at a restaurant on the water, a printer, his wife and two teenage girls, both of whom are natural blondes, which Falcon and Fabian confess to adore. Falcon is a Rastafarian who lives on the beach in Rodney Bay, makes his living off tourists as a pirate of sorts, recording dub and dancehall onto cheap cassettes, $10 a tape. Yes, he’s a Rastafarian with a boombox. Some of them even have got cars. You might know they are Rasta by the Lion of Judah bumper stickers.
Falcon hangs out around the Candyo Inn, a small, St. Lucian-owned hotel in the style of a traditional island home, just a short walk from the beach. It is white, the hotel, with emerald awnings and lots of lattice, fits in well with the local neighborhood. “The tourists here are friendly,” he tells me, “like you,” and so are the hotel employees. Fabian is Falcon’s oldest friend,…… click on the link
http://www.alternet.org/story/153696/some_feet_not_meant_for_shoes_-_novel_excerpt?page=entire
Ouch!
Trini family on ‘scam’ charges gets 418 years
Published:
Friday, January 13, 2012 (Trinidad Guardian)
NEW YORK—A Queens judge sentenced three members of a Richmond Hill family to serve a combined 418 years in jail for a brazen immigration and real-estate scam. The couple and their daughter, all originally from Trinidad and Tobago and dubbed “The Ramsundar Gang” by Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder, were found guilty of defrauding 19 families of US$1.8 million over six years. Holder said his harsh sentences were nothing compared to the street justice the Ramsundar family would have faced back in their native T&T. He said: “You and I know that if you did this fraud and paraded and strutted it in your own country, you would have probably been hacked to death,” Holder told the family, which immigrated from T&T in the ’90s.
Shane Ramsundar, 53, wife, Gomatee, 47, and daughter, Shantel, 24, were found guilty of grand larceny, money laundering, criminal impersonation and other charges during a three-month trial. Holder had no sympathy for any of them. The tough judge even had one of their victims, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, stand up in court so Shane could see him. Holder said the family’s crimes nearly killed that victim, who lost so much money he couldn’t afford medication. “Now it’s your turn to hear your return on your investment for these crimes,” said Holder, before sentencing the ringleader dad to 781/2 years to 235 years in prison and fining him US$1.8 million. Wife Gomatee was sentenced to 51 to 153 years in prison and fined US$221,090, while daughter, Shantel, was sentenced to ten to 30 years and fined US$182,180. The courtroom was packed with victims and even jurors wanting to hear Holder scold the trio for swindling neighbours out of their life-savings to fuel their lavish lifestyle.
Dad Shane pretended to be an FBI agent and swindled 12 victims out of US$300,000, promising to get them removed from a terrorist watchlist and a deportation list, while also scoring them green cards. The Ramsundars also claimed their ties to “Feds” allowed them to buy cut-rate properties seized in Florida and Queens from tax evaders and drug dealers. The couple then convinced victims to give them money, promising to obtain mortgages for them.
Guyanese born Justice Kendall faces the courts himself
INJUSTICE IN THE US VIRGIN ISLANDS
Murder of Jassi Sidhu
The death of a Sikh girl at the hands of her parents because she married a boy from the wrong class. This cold-blooded murder has cast a shadow on all Sikhs in Canada. Most do not subscribe to this behaviour. Honour killings apparently are carried out by lower class wanna bee’s. Those who have to prove that they are worthy of respect from people who are in higher classes. The Sidhu family wanted that respect but I think after what they did they were shunned by the community. This is a wake up call for Canada about what can happen in this free country if the government turns a blind eye on this murder.
As Canadians we do not want this sort of cultural practice here in Canada. We call on the government to extradite those responsible to be tried in India. Jassi’s death must not go in vain, please.
Suicide rates in Guyana is highest in the region
Why are our people killing themselves? We need to get to the root cause.
New Direction for Jamaica
Jamaica will become a republic,
new prime minister vows
Miller, installed as Jamaican prime minister for a second time, has said she will restore prosperity and drop the Queen as head of state. Photograph: Reuters
Portia Simpson Miller has been sworn in for the second time as Jamaica‘s prime minister with a pledge to ease poverty, boost the economy, heal political divisions and drop the Queen as head of state.
Simpson Miller, who was prime minister for a year and half until 2007, took the oath of office before roughly 10,000 guests on the grounds of the governor-general’s official residence.
The 66-year-old politician scored a dramatic victory in last week’s national elections, leading her centre-left People’s National party to a 2-1 margin in parliament over the centre-right Jamaica Labour party. Her opposition faction won a dominating 42 seats in the 63-seat legislature, leaving the incumbent party with 21.
Simpson Miller, Jamaica’s first female prime minister, takes over from Andrew Holness, a 39-year-old Labour MP who led the government for just over two months.
“After being tested and tempered I stand before you today a stronger and better person prepared to be of service to my country and people,” Simpson Miller said at the start of a spirited 45-minute speech.
She said her government intended to abandon the British monarch as Jamaica’s official head of state and instead adopt a republican form of government. Jamaica declared independence from Britain in 1962 but remains within the Commonwealth and has the Queen as head of state……
Help the women in Somalia from thugs who call themselves soldiers
Imagine a woman being stoned to death for refusing to marry a thug. Women in war-torn countries become pawns and are used and abused at will by thugs who call themselves soldiers.
More ought to be done by the United Nations and peace-loving, democratic nations to help women in these countries after the war is over.
It is disheartening to read of the lives some women have to leave. They have no rights, they live in poverty and their dignity is wrenched from them like animals.
Jamaica Grabs Top Prize
Don’t ever underestimate your intelligence because you are from a so-called, third world country. There are no borders when it comes to intelligence. In the right hand an intelligent person of any colour, race, or creed will succeed. Bravo Jamaica. Good job
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The Norman Manley Law School has again captured first prize in the World Human Rights Moot Court Competition.
After a victory in the worldwide contest last year, the Jamaican team travelled to Pretoria, South Africa, last week and, for the second successive year, emerged number one.
This year’s competition, organised by the Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, and the United Nations Office of Human Rights, saw three selected law schools from each of the United Nations regions in the semi-final round of the competition.
The Norman Manley Law School team included Jermaine Case and Love Odih, with Leslie Mendez as the reserve speaker, and Nancy Anderson, tutor at the law school, as coach.
In the semi-final round last Thursday, Norman Manley defeated the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In the final, the Jamaicans faced the prestigious Yale Law School and again prevailed.
Case was selected second best oralist (tied) in the competition, while Odih, third best oralist.
Principal of the Norman Manley Law School, Professor Stephen Vasciannie, was overjoyed with the victory.
“I am ecstatic that Norman Manley has once again brought home the World Human Rights title. Love, Jermaine and Leslie have been a model team, putting in long hours on research, writing and advocacy.
“With coach Anderson, Senior Tutor Emerita Dorcas White and the entire school willing the team forward, we went to South Africa with confidence, and left with success. Yale and other schools will have taken note of our very high standards at home; the Caribbean should be proud of our students and this wonderful accomplishment,” said Vasciannie.
Last year, the Norman Manley Law School, as a first-time entrant, with a team consisting of Merrick Watson, Lori-Ann Green and Gabrielle Elliott-Williams, won the World Human Rights Competition, and enjoyed much success in various other international mooting and client counselling competitions.
Leguanite
