Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Pakistan rape victim Mukhtaran Mai faces new injustice
Pakistan rape victim Mukhtaran Mai faces new injustice
By Aleem Maqbool
BBC News, Meerwala, southern Punjab
Mukhtaran Mai still lives in her village, and runs a school for girls.
Every day, Mukhtaran Mai, a tall, gaunt woman from a tiny farming village in Pakistan's southern Punjab province, faces the trauma of what happened to her.
Nine years ago, to punish her for an affair her brother was accused of having, a tribal council ordered that she be repeatedly raped.
After the attack, she says she was paraded past scores of villagers.
It became the most infamous women's rights case in Pakistan for years.
In a country where getting convictions in violent crimes cases against women was notoriously difficult, six suspected rapists were caught, convicted and imprisoned.
It was a result that satisfied human rights groups from around the world who had been closely following the case.
But a new judgement has changed everything.
'Brought back the pain'
Pakistan's Supreme Court has decided that all but one of the men previously imprisoned for gang-raping Mukhtaran Mai on the orders of tribal elders should have their convictions overturned.
Five of six men charged over the rape have been released
"I'm hurt and upset," says Ms Mai. "I am going through the same things I went through in 2002. It's brought back all the pain.
"Then, it was a decision of the tribal council that made me suffer, now it's a verdict from the Pakistani courts."
Since the attack, Ms Mai, who was then illiterate, managed to start a school for girls and a women's refuge just a few hundred feet from the spot where she was raped.
Five of six men charged over the rape have been released
She received international awards for her bravery in speaking out, and her autobiography In the Name of Honour has been sold worldwide.
But Ms Mai says the new ruling to free her attackers has crushed her.
"Yes I had civil society with me, and groups from all over the world," she says. "But only I knew what difficulties I still had to face."
She says she had to battle men from an influential local clan when most women who experienced what she did were expected to commit suicide.
"After everything, the men of powerful families are openly handing out sweets in celebration of this judgement," she says. "I was never expecting this."
She also feels threatened because the released men could now return to the village where they still have homes.
"They will be close to my school," she says. "My school, employees, my family and I will be in danger."
She says that if anything happens, it will be the Supreme Court and the government of Pakistan who should be held responsible.
'Low morale'
But she also worries about those girls who have been abused, but who had taken strength from her story.
There are many girls like that at the refuge that Ms Mai now runs.
Twelve-year-old Nasreen - not her real name - arrived at the refuge less than two weeks ago.
She had been raped by her father.
There been protests against the Supreme Court verdict
She is now receiving help, but her counsellor and refuge manager, Shazia Amin, says it is hard to keep her spirits up.
"We are doing everything we can to help Nasreen," she says. "But all the girls here know what's happened in Mukhtaran Mai's case.
"We're all disturbed and morale is very low."
The feeling is that if the accused in the most high-profile case of its kind here can be released in this way, then there is little hope for justice for girls like Nasreen across Pakistan.
And Ms Mai says she believes what happened to her nine years ago could still happen today.
"If a women is alone in Pakistan she will turn back from the police station, she'll be forced to keep quiet because of the laws we have, and the way women are treated," she says.
"This judgement means nothing has changed in Pakistan."
The Fix for High Oil Prices? Regulate the Speculators
The Fix for High Oil Prices? Regulate the Speculators
By Peter Cohan
Posted 10:30AM 03/04/11 Energy, Economy, Investing, Goldman Sachs , Credit
As the crisis in Libya continues to shake world oil markets, a rising chorus of voices in Washington is calling for President Obama to release millions barrels of oil from our 727 million-barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), The New York Times reports. With gasoline prices up 33 cents a gallon in the last month, that's a tempting idea. The government tapped into the SPR after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and during 1991's Persian Gulf War. In both cases, the moves took pressure off oil prices.
But is the current situation such an emergency? No way. After all, as I wrote last month on DailyFinance, Libya represents a mere 0.5% of U.S. oil imports, and Saudi Arabia is increasing its production to make up the difference. There has been no sudden increase in demand for oil, nor has there been a truly significant drop in supply. In fact, refineries -- which convert crude oil into gasoline and other chemicals -- are operating at a relatively low 88.4% of capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Institute.
So why are oil prices going up so much? Speculators.
Oil speculators using cheaply borrowed money to bet on rising oil prices and a falling dollar are playing on media-fueled fear to make big profits. The good news is that stopping those speculators would be easy: Regulators should demand higher margin requirements. By cutting off their easy ability to gamble with cheap debt, the regulators could push speculators out of the market and relieve consumers from pain at the pump.
The Politics of Regulation
Last time we had a huge run-up in oil prices was 2008 when oil hit $147 a barrel. When the Commodities Futures Trading Commission -- the body that's charged with keeping the trading pits honest -- investigated, it discovered that 81% of the trading volume in oil was being conducted by speculators. Put another way, businesses that actually use the oil, such as airlines, were doing just 19% of the trading. The vast majority was done by hedge funds and investment banks to make a quick buck.
The CFTC let speculators into the oil-trading market back in 1991. That's because, as I wrote on BloggingStocks in 2008, J. Aron, the trading unit that hired Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein, requested and got an exemption that allowed it to trade oil even though it wasn't going to take delivery. Once J. Aron got through that door, so did many others -- including Enron. Remember how that turned out?
The Dodd-Frank financial reform law requires the CFTC to do something about speculators, but they've managed to delay the implementation of so-called position limits until 2012. According to Heatingoil.com, the CFTC will be at least a year late in complying with the Dodd-Frank requirement that it limit speculators' ability to drive up oil prices.
Let Real Supply and Demand Dictate Prices
So, thanks to the CFTC's inaction, the level of speculation in oil prices is at record levels. According to Heatingoil.com, trading volume on the NYMEX from oil traders who don't take delivery -- so-called "net long positions," hit a level not seen in four years in January.
The fuel that keeps these speculators going is cheap capital -- supplied by our friends at the Federal Reserve. But again, it's easy to stop this: Simply require those speculators to use much less borrowed money when they trade.
Last month, two exchanges did just that -- but it wasn't enough. According to Bloomberg, the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) in February increased its margin requirements 20% to $6,075 per contract, and the International Exchange (ICE) increased its margin requirement 7% to $5,200.
If consumers had a say, NYMEX and ICE would double those margin requirements today, and you'd then see oil and gasoline prices drop to the levels dictated by supply and demand rather than Wall Street greed. Shutting down the speculators' ability to gamble quite so much with borrowed money would be a better answer than releasing oil from the SPR when we don't have a real supply emergency.
The African 'Star Wars'
The African 'Star Wars' - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
http://www.africom.mil/downloadCenter.asp
It is the Pentagon's Africom versus China's web of investments - the ultimate prize: Africa's natural resources.
As Africa increasingly turns to China for economic investment and guidance, Africom seeks to reverse China's geostrategic foothold on Africa
From energy wars to water wars, the 21st century will be determined by a fierce battle for the world's remaining natural resources. The chessboard is global. The stakes are tremendous. Most battles will be invisible. All will be crucial.
In resource-rich Africa, a complex subplot of the New Great Game in Eurasia is already in effect. It's all about three major intertwined developments:
1) The coming of age of the African Union (AU) in the early 2000s.
2) China's investment offencive in Africa throughout the 2000s.
3) The onset of the Pentagon's African Command (Africom) in 2007.
Beijing clearly sees that the Anglo-French-American bombing of Libya – apart from its myriad geopolitical implications – has risked billions of dollars in Chinese investments, not to mention forcing the (smooth) evacuation of more than 35,000 Chinese working across the country.
And crucially, depending on the outcome – as in renegotiated energy contracts by a pliable, pro-Western government – it may also seriously jeopardise Chinese oil imports (3 per cent of total Chinese imports in 2010).
No wonder the China Military, a People's Liberation Army (PLA) newspaper, as well as sectors in academia, are now openly arguing that China needs to drop Deng Xiaoping's "low-profile" policy and bet on a sprawling armed forces to defend its strategic interests worldwide (these assets already total over $1.2 trillion).
Now compare it with a close examination of Africom's strategy ( http://www.africom.mil/downloadCenter.asp ) which reveals as the proverbial hidden agenda the energy angle and a determined push to isolate China from northern Africa.
One report titled "China's New Security Strategy in Africa" actually betrays the Pentagon's fear of the PLA eventually sending troops to Africa to protect Chinese interests.
It won't happen in Libya. It's not about to happen in Sudan. But further on down the road, all bets are off.
Meddle is our middle name
The Pentagon has in fact been meddling in Africa's affairs for more than half a century. According to a 2010 US Congressional Research Service study, this happened no less than 46 times before the current Libya civil war.
Among other exploits, the Pentagon invested in a botched large-scale invasion of Somalia and backed the infamous, genocide-related Rwanda regime.
The Bill Clinton administration raised hell in Liberia, Gabon, Congo and Sierra Leone, bombed Sudan, and sent "advisers" to Ethiopia to back dodgy clients grabbing a piece of Somalia (by the way, Somalia has been at war for 20 years).
The September 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS), conceived by the Bush administration, is explicit; Africa is a "strategic priority in fighting terrorism".
Yet, the never-say-die "war on terror" is a sideshow in the Pentagon's vast militarisation agenda, which favours client regimes, setting up military bases, and training of mercenaries – "cooperative partnerships" in Pentagon newspeak.
Africom has some sort of military "partnership" – bilateral agreements – with most of Africa's 53 countries, not to mention fuzzy multilateral schemes such as West African Standby Force and Africa Partnership Station.
American warships have dropped by virtually every African nation except for those bordering the Mediterranean.
The exceptions: Ivory Coast, Sudan, Eritrea and Libya. Ivory Coast is now in the bag. So is South Sudan. Libya may be next. The only ones left to be incorporated to Africom will be Eritrea and Zimbabwe.
Africom's reputation has not been exactly sterling – as the Tunisian and Egyptian chapters of the great 2011 Arab Revolt caught it totally by surprise. These "partners", after all, were essential for surveillance of the southern Mediterranean and the Red Sea.
Libya for its part presented juicy possibilities: an easily demonised dictator; a pliable post-Gaddafi puppet regime; a crucial military base for Africom; loads of excellent cheap oil; and the possibility of throwing China out of Libya.
Under the Obama administration, Africom thus started its first African war. In the words of its commander, General Carter Ham, "we completed a complex, short-notice, operational mission in Libya and… transferred that mission to NATO."
And that leads us to the next step. Africom will share all its African "assets" with NATO. Africom and NATO are in fact one – the Pentagon is a many-headed hydra after all.
Beijing for its part sees right through it; the Mediterranean as a NATO lake (neocolonialism is back especially, via France and Britain); Africa militarised by Africom; and Chinese interests at high risk.
The lure of ChinAfrica
One of the last crucial stages of globalisation - what we may call "ChinAfrica" – established itself almost in silence and invisibility, at least for Western eyes.
In the past decade, Africa became China's new Far West. The epic tale of masses of Chinese workers and entrepreneurs discovering big empty virgin spaces, and wild mixed emotions from exoticism to rejection, racism to outright adventure, grips anyone's imagination.
Individual Chinese have pierced the collective unconscious of Africa, they have made Africans dream – while China the great power proved it could conjure miracles far away from its shores.
For Africa, this "opposites attract" syndrome was a great boost after the 1960s decolonisation – and the horrid mess that followed it.
China repaved roads and railroads, built dams in Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia, equipped the whole of Africa with fibre optics, opened hospitals and orphanages, and – just before Tahrir Square – was about to aid Egypt to relaunch its civilian nuclear programme.
The white man in Africa has been, most of the time, arrogant and condescending. The Chinese, humble, courageous, efficient and discreet.
China will soon become Africa's largest trading partner – ahead of France and the UK – and its top source of foreign investment. It's telling that the best the West could come up with to counteract this geopolitical earthquake was to go the militarised way.
The external Chinese model of trade, aid and investment – not to mention the internal Chinese model of large-scale, state-led investments in infrastructure – made Africa forget about the West while boosting the strategic importance of Africa in the global economy.
Why would an African government rely on the ideology-based "adjustments" of IMF and the World Bank when China attaches no political conditions and respects sovereignty – for Beijing, the most important principle of international law? On top of it, China carries no colonial historical baggage in Africa.
Essentially, large swathes of Africa have rejected the West's trademark shock therapy, and embraced China.
Western elites, predictably, were not amused. Beijing now clearly sees that in the wider context of the New Great Game in Eurasia, the Pentagon has now positioned itself to conduct a remixed Cold War with China all across Africa – using every trick in the book from obscure "partnerships" to engineered chaos.
The leadership in Beijing is silently observing the waters. For the moment, the Little Helmsman Deng's "crossing the river while feeling the stones" holds.
The Pentagon better wise up. The best Beijing may offer is to help Africa to fulfil its destiny. In the eyes of Africans themselves, that certainly beats any Tomahawk.
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times (www.atimes.com). His latest book is Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com
http://www.africom.mil/downloadCenter.asp
As Africa increasingly turns to China for economic investment and guidance, Africom seeks to reverse China's geostrategic foothold on Africa
From energy wars to water wars, the 21st century will be determined by a fierce battle for the world's remaining natural resources. The chessboard is global. The stakes are tremendous. Most battles will be invisible. All will be crucial.
In resource-rich Africa, a complex subplot of the New Great Game in Eurasia is already in effect. It's all about three major intertwined developments:
1) The coming of age of the African Union (AU) in the early 2000s.
2) China's investment offencive in Africa throughout the 2000s.
3) The onset of the Pentagon's African Command (Africom) in 2007.
Beijing clearly sees that the Anglo-French-American bombing of Libya – apart from its myriad geopolitical implications – has risked billions of dollars in Chinese investments, not to mention forcing the (smooth) evacuation of more than 35,000 Chinese working across the country.
And crucially, depending on the outcome – as in renegotiated energy contracts by a pliable, pro-Western government – it may also seriously jeopardise Chinese oil imports (3 per cent of total Chinese imports in 2010).
No wonder the China Military, a People's Liberation Army (PLA) newspaper, as well as sectors in academia, are now openly arguing that China needs to drop Deng Xiaoping's "low-profile" policy and bet on a sprawling armed forces to defend its strategic interests worldwide (these assets already total over $1.2 trillion).
Now compare it with a close examination of Africom's strategy ( http://www.africom.mil/downloadCenter.asp ) which reveals as the proverbial hidden agenda the energy angle and a determined push to isolate China from northern Africa.
One report titled "China's New Security Strategy in Africa" actually betrays the Pentagon's fear of the PLA eventually sending troops to Africa to protect Chinese interests.
It won't happen in Libya. It's not about to happen in Sudan. But further on down the road, all bets are off.
Meddle is our middle name
The Pentagon has in fact been meddling in Africa's affairs for more than half a century. According to a 2010 US Congressional Research Service study, this happened no less than 46 times before the current Libya civil war.
Among other exploits, the Pentagon invested in a botched large-scale invasion of Somalia and backed the infamous, genocide-related Rwanda regime.
The Bill Clinton administration raised hell in Liberia, Gabon, Congo and Sierra Leone, bombed Sudan, and sent "advisers" to Ethiopia to back dodgy clients grabbing a piece of Somalia (by the way, Somalia has been at war for 20 years).
The September 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS), conceived by the Bush administration, is explicit; Africa is a "strategic priority in fighting terrorism".
Yet, the never-say-die "war on terror" is a sideshow in the Pentagon's vast militarisation agenda, which favours client regimes, setting up military bases, and training of mercenaries – "cooperative partnerships" in Pentagon newspeak.
Africom has some sort of military "partnership" – bilateral agreements – with most of Africa's 53 countries, not to mention fuzzy multilateral schemes such as West African Standby Force and Africa Partnership Station.
American warships have dropped by virtually every African nation except for those bordering the Mediterranean.
The exceptions: Ivory Coast, Sudan, Eritrea and Libya. Ivory Coast is now in the bag. So is South Sudan. Libya may be next. The only ones left to be incorporated to Africom will be Eritrea and Zimbabwe.
Africom's reputation has not been exactly sterling – as the Tunisian and Egyptian chapters of the great 2011 Arab Revolt caught it totally by surprise. These "partners", after all, were essential for surveillance of the southern Mediterranean and the Red Sea.
Libya for its part presented juicy possibilities: an easily demonised dictator; a pliable post-Gaddafi puppet regime; a crucial military base for Africom; loads of excellent cheap oil; and the possibility of throwing China out of Libya.
Under the Obama administration, Africom thus started its first African war. In the words of its commander, General Carter Ham, "we completed a complex, short-notice, operational mission in Libya and… transferred that mission to NATO."
And that leads us to the next step. Africom will share all its African "assets" with NATO. Africom and NATO are in fact one – the Pentagon is a many-headed hydra after all.
Beijing for its part sees right through it; the Mediterranean as a NATO lake (neocolonialism is back especially, via France and Britain); Africa militarised by Africom; and Chinese interests at high risk.
The lure of ChinAfrica
One of the last crucial stages of globalisation - what we may call "ChinAfrica" – established itself almost in silence and invisibility, at least for Western eyes.
In the past decade, Africa became China's new Far West. The epic tale of masses of Chinese workers and entrepreneurs discovering big empty virgin spaces, and wild mixed emotions from exoticism to rejection, racism to outright adventure, grips anyone's imagination.
Individual Chinese have pierced the collective unconscious of Africa, they have made Africans dream – while China the great power proved it could conjure miracles far away from its shores.
For Africa, this "opposites attract" syndrome was a great boost after the 1960s decolonisation – and the horrid mess that followed it.
China repaved roads and railroads, built dams in Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia, equipped the whole of Africa with fibre optics, opened hospitals and orphanages, and – just before Tahrir Square – was about to aid Egypt to relaunch its civilian nuclear programme.
The white man in Africa has been, most of the time, arrogant and condescending. The Chinese, humble, courageous, efficient and discreet.
China will soon become Africa's largest trading partner – ahead of France and the UK – and its top source of foreign investment. It's telling that the best the West could come up with to counteract this geopolitical earthquake was to go the militarised way.
The external Chinese model of trade, aid and investment – not to mention the internal Chinese model of large-scale, state-led investments in infrastructure – made Africa forget about the West while boosting the strategic importance of Africa in the global economy.
Why would an African government rely on the ideology-based "adjustments" of IMF and the World Bank when China attaches no political conditions and respects sovereignty – for Beijing, the most important principle of international law? On top of it, China carries no colonial historical baggage in Africa.
Essentially, large swathes of Africa have rejected the West's trademark shock therapy, and embraced China.
Western elites, predictably, were not amused. Beijing now clearly sees that in the wider context of the New Great Game in Eurasia, the Pentagon has now positioned itself to conduct a remixed Cold War with China all across Africa – using every trick in the book from obscure "partnerships" to engineered chaos.
The leadership in Beijing is silently observing the waters. For the moment, the Little Helmsman Deng's "crossing the river while feeling the stones" holds.
The Pentagon better wise up. The best Beijing may offer is to help Africa to fulfil its destiny. In the eyes of Africans themselves, that certainly beats any Tomahawk.
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times (www.atimes.com). His latest book is Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com
China's bad growth bet
China's bad growth bet - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
A weak currency reduces household purchasing power by making imports expensive and boosting exporters' profits
I recently took two trips to China just as the government launched its 12th Five-Year Plan to rebalance the country's long-term growth model. My visits deepened my view that there is a potentially destabilizing contradiction between China's short- and medium-term economic performance.
China's economy is overheating now, but, over time, its current overinvestment will prove deflationary both domestically and globally. Once increasing fixed investment becomes impossible - most likely after 2013 - China is poised for a sharp slowdown. Instead of focusing on securing a soft landing today, Chinese policymakers should be worrying about the brick wall that economic growth may hit in the second half of the quinquennium.
Despite the rhetoric of the new Five-Year Plan - which, like the previous one, aims to increase the share of consumption in GDP - the path of least resistance is the status quo. The new plan's details reveal continued reliance on investment, including public housing to support growth, rather than faster currency appreciation, substantial fiscal transfers to households, taxation and/or privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), liberalization of the household registration (hukou) system, or an easing of financial repression.
China has grown for the last few decades on the back of export-led industrialization and a weak currency, which have resulted in high corporate and household savings rates and reliance on net exports and fixed investment (infrastructure, real estate, and industrial capacity for import-competing and export sectors). When net exports collapsed in 2008-2009 from 11 per cent of GDP to 5 per cent, China's leader reacted by further increasing the fixed-investment share of GDP from 42 per cent to 47 per cent.
Thus, China did not suffer a severe recession - as occurred in Japan, Germany, and elsewhere in emerging Asia in 2009 - only because fixed investment exploded. And the fixed-investment share of GDP has increased further in 2010-2011, to almost 50 per cent.
Overinvestment is the problem
The problem, of course, is that no country can be productive enough to reinvest 50 per cent of GDP in new capital stock without eventually facing immense overcapacity and a staggering non-performing loan problem. China is rife with overinvestment in physical capital, infrastructure, and property. To a visitor, this is evident in sleek but empty airports and bullet trains (which will reduce the need for the 45 planned airports), highways to nowhere, thousands of colossal new central and provincial government buildings, ghost towns, and brand-new aluminum smelters kept closed to prevent global prices from plunging.
Commercial and high-end residential investment has been excessive, automobile capacity has outstripped even the recent surge in sales, and overcapacity in steel, cement, and other manufacturing sectors is increasing further. In the short run, the investment boom will fuel inflation, owing to the highly resource-intensive character of growth. But overcapacity will lead inevitably to serious deflationary pressures, starting with the manufacturing and real-estate sectors.
Eventually, most likely after 2013, China will suffer a hard landing. All historical episodes of excessive investment – including East Asia in the 1990's - have ended with a financial crisis and/or a long period of slow growth. To avoid this fate, China needs to save less, reduce fixed investment, cut net exports as a share of GDP, and boost the share of consumption.
The trouble is that the reasons the Chinese save so much and consume so little are structural. It will take two decades of reforms to change the incentive to overinvest.
Income issues
Traditional explanations for the high savings rate (lack of a social safety net, limited public services, aging of the population, underdevelopment of consumer finance, etc.) are only part of the puzzle. Chinese consumers do not have a greater propensity to save than Chinese in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan; they all save about 30 per cent of disposable income. The big difference is that the share of China's GDP going to the household sector is below 50 per cent, leaving little for consumption.
Several Chinese policies have led to a massive transfer of income from politically weak households to politically powerful companies. A weak currency reduces household purchasing power by making imports expensive, thereby protecting import-competing SOEs and boosting exporters' profits.
Low interest rates on deposits and low lending rates for firms and developers mean that the household sector's massive savings receive negative rates of return, while the real cost of borrowing for SOEs is also negative. This creates a powerful incentive to overinvest and implies enormous redistribution from households to SOEs, most of which would be losing money if they had to borrow at market-equilibrium interest rates. Moreover, labor repression has caused wages to grow much more slowly than productivity.
To ease the constraints on household income, China needs more rapid exchange-rate appreciation, liberalization of interest rates, and a much sharper increase in wage growth. More importantly, China needs either to privatize its SOEs, so that their profits become income for households, or to tax their profits at a far higher rate and transfer the fiscal gains to households. Instead, on top of household savings, the savings - or retained earnings - of the corporate sector, mostly SOEs, tie up another 25 per cent of GDP.
But boosting the share of income that goes to the household sector could be hugely disruptive, as it could bankrupt a large number of SOEs, export-oriented firms, and provincial governments, all of which are politically powerful. As a result, China will invest even more under the current Five-Year Plan.
Continuing down the investment-led growth path will exacerbate the visible glut of capacity in manufacturing, real estate, and infrastructure, and thus will intensify the coming economic slowdown once further fixed-investment growth becomes impossible. Until the change of political leadership in 2012-2013, China's policymakers may be able to maintain high growth rates, but at a very high foreseeable cost.
Nouriel Roubini is chairman of Roubini Global Economics, a professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, and co–author of the book Crisis Economics.
I recently took two trips to China just as the government launched its 12th Five-Year Plan to rebalance the country's long-term growth model. My visits deepened my view that there is a potentially destabilizing contradiction between China's short- and medium-term economic performance.
China's economy is overheating now, but, over time, its current overinvestment will prove deflationary both domestically and globally. Once increasing fixed investment becomes impossible - most likely after 2013 - China is poised for a sharp slowdown. Instead of focusing on securing a soft landing today, Chinese policymakers should be worrying about the brick wall that economic growth may hit in the second half of the quinquennium.
Despite the rhetoric of the new Five-Year Plan - which, like the previous one, aims to increase the share of consumption in GDP - the path of least resistance is the status quo. The new plan's details reveal continued reliance on investment, including public housing to support growth, rather than faster currency appreciation, substantial fiscal transfers to households, taxation and/or privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), liberalization of the household registration (hukou) system, or an easing of financial repression.
China has grown for the last few decades on the back of export-led industrialization and a weak currency, which have resulted in high corporate and household savings rates and reliance on net exports and fixed investment (infrastructure, real estate, and industrial capacity for import-competing and export sectors). When net exports collapsed in 2008-2009 from 11 per cent of GDP to 5 per cent, China's leader reacted by further increasing the fixed-investment share of GDP from 42 per cent to 47 per cent.
Thus, China did not suffer a severe recession - as occurred in Japan, Germany, and elsewhere in emerging Asia in 2009 - only because fixed investment exploded. And the fixed-investment share of GDP has increased further in 2010-2011, to almost 50 per cent.
Overinvestment is the problem
The problem, of course, is that no country can be productive enough to reinvest 50 per cent of GDP in new capital stock without eventually facing immense overcapacity and a staggering non-performing loan problem. China is rife with overinvestment in physical capital, infrastructure, and property. To a visitor, this is evident in sleek but empty airports and bullet trains (which will reduce the need for the 45 planned airports), highways to nowhere, thousands of colossal new central and provincial government buildings, ghost towns, and brand-new aluminum smelters kept closed to prevent global prices from plunging.
Commercial and high-end residential investment has been excessive, automobile capacity has outstripped even the recent surge in sales, and overcapacity in steel, cement, and other manufacturing sectors is increasing further. In the short run, the investment boom will fuel inflation, owing to the highly resource-intensive character of growth. But overcapacity will lead inevitably to serious deflationary pressures, starting with the manufacturing and real-estate sectors.
Eventually, most likely after 2013, China will suffer a hard landing. All historical episodes of excessive investment – including East Asia in the 1990's - have ended with a financial crisis and/or a long period of slow growth. To avoid this fate, China needs to save less, reduce fixed investment, cut net exports as a share of GDP, and boost the share of consumption.
The trouble is that the reasons the Chinese save so much and consume so little are structural. It will take two decades of reforms to change the incentive to overinvest.
Income issues
Traditional explanations for the high savings rate (lack of a social safety net, limited public services, aging of the population, underdevelopment of consumer finance, etc.) are only part of the puzzle. Chinese consumers do not have a greater propensity to save than Chinese in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan; they all save about 30 per cent of disposable income. The big difference is that the share of China's GDP going to the household sector is below 50 per cent, leaving little for consumption.
Several Chinese policies have led to a massive transfer of income from politically weak households to politically powerful companies. A weak currency reduces household purchasing power by making imports expensive, thereby protecting import-competing SOEs and boosting exporters' profits.
Low interest rates on deposits and low lending rates for firms and developers mean that the household sector's massive savings receive negative rates of return, while the real cost of borrowing for SOEs is also negative. This creates a powerful incentive to overinvest and implies enormous redistribution from households to SOEs, most of which would be losing money if they had to borrow at market-equilibrium interest rates. Moreover, labor repression has caused wages to grow much more slowly than productivity.
To ease the constraints on household income, China needs more rapid exchange-rate appreciation, liberalization of interest rates, and a much sharper increase in wage growth. More importantly, China needs either to privatize its SOEs, so that their profits become income for households, or to tax their profits at a far higher rate and transfer the fiscal gains to households. Instead, on top of household savings, the savings - or retained earnings - of the corporate sector, mostly SOEs, tie up another 25 per cent of GDP.
But boosting the share of income that goes to the household sector could be hugely disruptive, as it could bankrupt a large number of SOEs, export-oriented firms, and provincial governments, all of which are politically powerful. As a result, China will invest even more under the current Five-Year Plan.
Continuing down the investment-led growth path will exacerbate the visible glut of capacity in manufacturing, real estate, and infrastructure, and thus will intensify the coming economic slowdown once further fixed-investment growth becomes impossible. Until the change of political leadership in 2012-2013, China's policymakers may be able to maintain high growth rates, but at a very high foreseeable cost.
Nouriel Roubini is chairman of Roubini Global Economics, a professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, and co–author of the book Crisis Economics.
The scam behind the rise in oil, food prices
The scam behind the rise in oil, food prices - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
The US uses 18 million barrels of oil each day, so price rises have major impacts on consumers
The global economy and its recovery, and the living standards of millions of plain folks, are now at risk from the sudden rise in oil and commodity prices.
Gas at the pump is up, and going higher. Food prices are following.
The consequences are catastrophic for the global poor as their costs go up while their income doesn't. It's menacing American workers too, who in large part have not seen a meaningful raise since the days of Reagan (keeping it this way is clearly behind the current flurry of attacks on unions).
Already, unrest in the Middle East and many African countries is being blamed for these dramatic increases. It seems as if this threat to global stability is being largely ignored in our media, one that treats the oil business as just another mystical world of free market trading.
Why is it happening? Why all the volatility? Is oil getting scarcer, leading to price increases? Is the cost of food, similarly, a reflection of naturally increasing commodity prices?
Oil speculating
While it's true that natural disasters and droughts play some role in this unchecked price inflation, it also seems apparent that something else is attracting increasing attention, even if most of our media fails to explore what is a political time bomb, while most political leaders shrug their shoulder and ignore it.
President Obama recently said there is nothing he can do about the hike in oil and food prices.
Critics say the problem is that government and media outlets alike refuse to recognise what's really going on: unchecked speculation!
Not everyone buys into this suspicion. In fact, it is one of more intense subjects of debate in economics.
Princeton University economist Paul Krugman pooh-poohs the impact of speculation counter-posing the traditional argument that oil prices are set by supply and demand.
The Economist agrees, summing up its views with a pithy phrase, "Speculation does not drive the oil price. Driving does."
Others, like oil industry analyst Michael Klare of Hampshire College in the US, sees demand outdistancing supply:Consider the recent rise in the price of oil just a faint and early tremor heralding the oilquake to come. Oil won't disappear from international markets, but in the coming decades it will never reach the volumes needed to satisfy projected world demand, which means that, sooner rather than later, scarcity will become the dominant market condition.
Usually you hear this debate in scholarly circles or read it in political tracts where orthodox views collide with more alarmist projections about the oil supply "peaking".
But officials in the Third World don't see the subject as academic. Reserve Bank of India Governor Duvvuri Subbarao charges that: "Speculative movements in commodity derivative markets are also causing volatility in prices".
The World Bank has held meetings on the issue, because it is seen as a matter of "utmost urgency".
"The price of food is a matter of life and death for the very poorest people in the world," said Tom Arnold, CEO of Concern Worldwide, the international humanitarian agency, ahead of his participation at The Open Forum on Food at World Bank headquarters.
"With many families spending up to 80 per cent of their income on basic foods to survive, even the slightest increase in price can have devastating effects and become a crises for the poorest," he said.
Journalist Josh Clark argues on the website "How Stuff Works" that much of the oil speculation is rooted in the financial crisis:
The next time you drive to the gas station, only to find prices are still sky high compared to just a few years ago, take notice of the rows of foreclosed houses you'll pass along the way. They may seem like two parts of a spell of economic bad luck, but high gas prices and home foreclosures are actually very much inter-related. Before most people were even aware there was an economic crisis, investment managers abandoned failing mortgage-backed securities and looked for other lucrative investments. What they settled on was oil futures.
Whistleblowers on oil speculation
The debate within the industry is more subdued, perhaps to avoid a public fight between suppliers and distributors who don't want to rock the boat.
But some officials like Dan Gilligan, president of the Petroleum Marketers Association, representing 8,000 retail and wholesale suppliers has spoken out.
"Approximately 60 to 70 percent of the oil contracts in the futures markets are now held by speculative entities," he argues. "Not by companies that need oil, not by the airlines, not by the oil companies. But by investors who profit money from their speculative positions."
Now, a prominent and popular market analyst is throwing caution to the wind by blowing the whistle on speculators.
Finance expert Phil Davis runs a website and widely read newsletter to monitor stocks and options trades. He's a professional's professional, whose grandfather taught him to buy stocks when he was just ten years old.
His website is Phil's Stock World, and stocks are his world. He's subtitled the site: "High Finance for Real People."
He is usually a sober and calm analyst, not known as maverick or dissenter.
When I met Phil the other night, he was on fire, enraged by what he believes is the scam of the century that no one wants to talk about, because so many powerful people armed with legions of lawyers want unquestioning allegiance, and will sue you into silence.
He studies the oil/food issue carefully and has concluded:It's a scam folks, it's nothing but a huge scam and it's destroying the US economy as well as the entire global economy but no one complains because they are 'only' stealing about $1.50 per gallon from each individual person in the industrialised world.
It's the top 0.01 per cent robbing the next 39.99 per cent – the bottom 60 per cent can't afford cars anyway (they just starve quietly to death, as food prices climb on fuel costs). If someone breaks into your car and steals a $500 stereo, you go to the police, but if someone charges you an extra $30 every time you fill up your tank 50 times a year ($1,500) you shut up and pay your bill. Great system, right?
Phil is just getting started, as he delves into the intricacies of the NYMEX market that handles these trades:The great thing about the NYMEX is that the traders don't have to take delivery on their contracts, they can simply pay to roll them over to the next settlement price, even if no one is actually buying the barrels. That's how we have developed a massive glut of 677 million barrels worth of contracts in the front four months on the NYMEX and, come rollover day – that will be the amount of barrels "on order" for the front 3 months, unless a lot barrels get dumped at market prices fast.
Keep in mind that the entire United States uses 'just' 18M barrels of oil a day, so 677M barrels is a 37-day supply of oil. But, we also make 9M barrels of our own oil and import 'just' 9M barrels per day, and 5M barrels of that is from Canada and Mexico who, last I heard, aren't even having revolutions. So, ignoring North Sea oil Brazil and Venezuela and lumping Africa in with OPEC, we are importing 3Mbd from unreliable sources and there is a 225-day supply under contract for delivery at the current price or cheaper plus we have a Strategic Petroleum Reserve that holds another 727 Million barrels (full) plus 370M barrels of commercial storage in the US (also full) which is another 365.6 days of marginal oil already here in storage in addition to the 225 days under contract for delivery.
These contracts for oil outnumber their actual delivery, a sign of speculation and market manipulation, as oil companies win government authorisations for wells but then don't open them for exploration or exploitation.
It's all a game of manipulating oil supply to keep prices up. And no one seems to be regulating it.
Danger met with silence
What Phil sees is a giant but intricate game of market manipulation and rigging by a cartel – not just an industry – that actually has loaded tankers criss-crossing the oceans but only landing when the price is right.
There is nothing that the conga-line of tankers between here and OPEC would like to do more than unload an extra 277 million barrels of crude at $112.79 per barrel (Friday's close on open contracts and price) but, unfortunately, as I mentioned last week, Cushing, Oklahoma (Where oil is stored) is already packed to the gills with oil and can only handle 45M barrels if it started out empty so it is, very simply, physically impossible for those barrels to be delivered. This did not, however, stop 287M barrels worth of May contracts from trading on Friday and GAINING $2.49 on the day.
He asks: "Who is buying 287,494 contracts (1,000 barrels per contract) for May delivery that can't possibly be delivered for $2.49 more than they were priced the day before? These are the kind of questions that you would think regulators would be asking – if we had any."
The TV news magazine 60 minutes spoke with Dan Gilligan who noted that investors don't actually take delivery of the oil. "All they do is buy the paper, and hope that they can sell it for more than they paid for it. Before they have to take delivery."
He says they make their fortunes "on the volatility that exists in the market. They make it going up and down."
Payam Sharifi, at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, notes that even as the rise in oil prices threatens the world economy, there is almost total silence on the danger:This issue ought to be discussed again with a renewed interest – but the media and much of the populace at large have simply accepted high food and oil prices as an unavoidable fact of life, without any discussion of the causes of these price rises aside from platitudes.
Danny Schechter made the film Plunder The Crime of Our Time (Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com) on the financial crisis as a crime story. He also wrote an introduction to the recent reissue of a classic two-volume expose of John D. Rockefeller's The Standard Oil Company (Cosimo Books), one of the top ten works top works of investigative reporting in America.
The global economy and its recovery, and the living standards of millions of plain folks, are now at risk from the sudden rise in oil and commodity prices.
Gas at the pump is up, and going higher. Food prices are following.
The consequences are catastrophic for the global poor as their costs go up while their income doesn't. It's menacing American workers too, who in large part have not seen a meaningful raise since the days of Reagan (keeping it this way is clearly behind the current flurry of attacks on unions).
Already, unrest in the Middle East and many African countries is being blamed for these dramatic increases. It seems as if this threat to global stability is being largely ignored in our media, one that treats the oil business as just another mystical world of free market trading.
Why is it happening? Why all the volatility? Is oil getting scarcer, leading to price increases? Is the cost of food, similarly, a reflection of naturally increasing commodity prices?
Oil speculating
While it's true that natural disasters and droughts play some role in this unchecked price inflation, it also seems apparent that something else is attracting increasing attention, even if most of our media fails to explore what is a political time bomb, while most political leaders shrug their shoulder and ignore it.
President Obama recently said there is nothing he can do about the hike in oil and food prices.
Critics say the problem is that government and media outlets alike refuse to recognise what's really going on: unchecked speculation!
Not everyone buys into this suspicion. In fact, it is one of more intense subjects of debate in economics.
Princeton University economist Paul Krugman pooh-poohs the impact of speculation counter-posing the traditional argument that oil prices are set by supply and demand.
The Economist agrees, summing up its views with a pithy phrase, "Speculation does not drive the oil price. Driving does."
Others, like oil industry analyst Michael Klare of Hampshire College in the US, sees demand outdistancing supply:Consider the recent rise in the price of oil just a faint and early tremor heralding the oilquake to come. Oil won't disappear from international markets, but in the coming decades it will never reach the volumes needed to satisfy projected world demand, which means that, sooner rather than later, scarcity will become the dominant market condition.
Usually you hear this debate in scholarly circles or read it in political tracts where orthodox views collide with more alarmist projections about the oil supply "peaking".
But officials in the Third World don't see the subject as academic. Reserve Bank of India Governor Duvvuri Subbarao charges that: "Speculative movements in commodity derivative markets are also causing volatility in prices".
The World Bank has held meetings on the issue, because it is seen as a matter of "utmost urgency".
"The price of food is a matter of life and death for the very poorest people in the world," said Tom Arnold, CEO of Concern Worldwide, the international humanitarian agency, ahead of his participation at The Open Forum on Food at World Bank headquarters.
"With many families spending up to 80 per cent of their income on basic foods to survive, even the slightest increase in price can have devastating effects and become a crises for the poorest," he said.
Journalist Josh Clark argues on the website "How Stuff Works" that much of the oil speculation is rooted in the financial crisis:
The next time you drive to the gas station, only to find prices are still sky high compared to just a few years ago, take notice of the rows of foreclosed houses you'll pass along the way. They may seem like two parts of a spell of economic bad luck, but high gas prices and home foreclosures are actually very much inter-related. Before most people were even aware there was an economic crisis, investment managers abandoned failing mortgage-backed securities and looked for other lucrative investments. What they settled on was oil futures.
Whistleblowers on oil speculation
The debate within the industry is more subdued, perhaps to avoid a public fight between suppliers and distributors who don't want to rock the boat.
But some officials like Dan Gilligan, president of the Petroleum Marketers Association, representing 8,000 retail and wholesale suppliers has spoken out.
"Approximately 60 to 70 percent of the oil contracts in the futures markets are now held by speculative entities," he argues. "Not by companies that need oil, not by the airlines, not by the oil companies. But by investors who profit money from their speculative positions."
Now, a prominent and popular market analyst is throwing caution to the wind by blowing the whistle on speculators.
Finance expert Phil Davis runs a website and widely read newsletter to monitor stocks and options trades. He's a professional's professional, whose grandfather taught him to buy stocks when he was just ten years old.
His website is Phil's Stock World, and stocks are his world. He's subtitled the site: "High Finance for Real People."
He is usually a sober and calm analyst, not known as maverick or dissenter.
When I met Phil the other night, he was on fire, enraged by what he believes is the scam of the century that no one wants to talk about, because so many powerful people armed with legions of lawyers want unquestioning allegiance, and will sue you into silence.
He studies the oil/food issue carefully and has concluded:It's a scam folks, it's nothing but a huge scam and it's destroying the US economy as well as the entire global economy but no one complains because they are 'only' stealing about $1.50 per gallon from each individual person in the industrialised world.
It's the top 0.01 per cent robbing the next 39.99 per cent – the bottom 60 per cent can't afford cars anyway (they just starve quietly to death, as food prices climb on fuel costs). If someone breaks into your car and steals a $500 stereo, you go to the police, but if someone charges you an extra $30 every time you fill up your tank 50 times a year ($1,500) you shut up and pay your bill. Great system, right?
Phil is just getting started, as he delves into the intricacies of the NYMEX market that handles these trades:The great thing about the NYMEX is that the traders don't have to take delivery on their contracts, they can simply pay to roll them over to the next settlement price, even if no one is actually buying the barrels. That's how we have developed a massive glut of 677 million barrels worth of contracts in the front four months on the NYMEX and, come rollover day – that will be the amount of barrels "on order" for the front 3 months, unless a lot barrels get dumped at market prices fast.
Keep in mind that the entire United States uses 'just' 18M barrels of oil a day, so 677M barrels is a 37-day supply of oil. But, we also make 9M barrels of our own oil and import 'just' 9M barrels per day, and 5M barrels of that is from Canada and Mexico who, last I heard, aren't even having revolutions. So, ignoring North Sea oil Brazil and Venezuela and lumping Africa in with OPEC, we are importing 3Mbd from unreliable sources and there is a 225-day supply under contract for delivery at the current price or cheaper plus we have a Strategic Petroleum Reserve that holds another 727 Million barrels (full) plus 370M barrels of commercial storage in the US (also full) which is another 365.6 days of marginal oil already here in storage in addition to the 225 days under contract for delivery.
These contracts for oil outnumber their actual delivery, a sign of speculation and market manipulation, as oil companies win government authorisations for wells but then don't open them for exploration or exploitation.
It's all a game of manipulating oil supply to keep prices up. And no one seems to be regulating it.
Danger met with silence
What Phil sees is a giant but intricate game of market manipulation and rigging by a cartel – not just an industry – that actually has loaded tankers criss-crossing the oceans but only landing when the price is right.
There is nothing that the conga-line of tankers between here and OPEC would like to do more than unload an extra 277 million barrels of crude at $112.79 per barrel (Friday's close on open contracts and price) but, unfortunately, as I mentioned last week, Cushing, Oklahoma (Where oil is stored) is already packed to the gills with oil and can only handle 45M barrels if it started out empty so it is, very simply, physically impossible for those barrels to be delivered. This did not, however, stop 287M barrels worth of May contracts from trading on Friday and GAINING $2.49 on the day.
He asks: "Who is buying 287,494 contracts (1,000 barrels per contract) for May delivery that can't possibly be delivered for $2.49 more than they were priced the day before? These are the kind of questions that you would think regulators would be asking – if we had any."
The TV news magazine 60 minutes spoke with Dan Gilligan who noted that investors don't actually take delivery of the oil. "All they do is buy the paper, and hope that they can sell it for more than they paid for it. Before they have to take delivery."
He says they make their fortunes "on the volatility that exists in the market. They make it going up and down."
Payam Sharifi, at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, notes that even as the rise in oil prices threatens the world economy, there is almost total silence on the danger:This issue ought to be discussed again with a renewed interest – but the media and much of the populace at large have simply accepted high food and oil prices as an unavoidable fact of life, without any discussion of the causes of these price rises aside from platitudes.
Danny Schechter made the film Plunder The Crime of Our Time (Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com) on the financial crisis as a crime story. He also wrote an introduction to the recent reissue of a classic two-volume expose of John D. Rockefeller's The Standard Oil Company (Cosimo Books), one of the top ten works top works of investigative reporting in America.
The Divine Song Of God
The Bhagavad Gita
Read the stories or Listen to the ancient sanskrit chants of Bhagavad Gita, sung in classical melodies by noted devotional singer Sri Vidyabhushana. Listen to all 700 verses of the Gita with a beautiful accompaniment of flute, veena, sitar, mridanga, tabla and tala.
The Gita: Chapter 1
As the opposing armies stand poised for battle, Arjuna, the mighty warrior, sees his intimate relatives, teachers and friends in both armies ready to fight and sacrifice their lives. Overcome by grief and pity, Arjuna fails in strength, his mind becomes bewildered, and he gives up his determination to fight.
Chapter 2
Arjuna submits to Lord Krishna as His disciple, and Krishna begins His teachings to Arjuna by explaining the fundamental distinction between the temporary material body and the eternal spiritual soul. The Lord explains the process of transmigration, the nature of selfless service to the Supreme and the characteristics of a self-realized person.
Good Work
When work is done as sacred work, unselfishly, with a peaceful mind, without lust or hate, with no desire for reward, then the work is pure.
But when work is done with selfish desire, or feeling it is an effort, or thinking it is a sacrifice, then the work is impure.
And that work which is done with a confused mind, without considering what may follow, or one's own powers, or the harm done to others, or one's own loss, is work of darkness.
(The Bhagavad Gita)
STOP HAVING BABIES
Stop Having Children! PLEASE!
Um, how can I say this gently? STOP HAVING BABIES! Enough already with these large families! You are endangering the future of mankind!
I was watching CNN today, because I have to in order to run my website, and the anchormorons The O’Brien team were smiling over the fact that a family on the west coast will have a tough time buying holiday gifts. This is because THEY HAVE 17 CHILDREN! Do you people realize that if every couple had 17 children we would enter an Armageddon type era within a decade?
The world can not sustain population growth anymore. We won’t have room to house people, to dispose of all the waste that we produce and we’ll have problem producing enough food for that many people. The amount of fossil fuel needed to keep them warm, produce their electricity or power their cars will not be available and it would cause more global warming than the planet could deal with.
I tell you right now that I fear for future generations. We are being so irresponsible with this planet that their survival is now in question. We are using up everything, destroying natural resources, contaminating large sections of the world and we are contributing to the extinction of thousands of life forms. We are creating new toxins and viruses and we are spreading them all over the world. We are actually destroying the eco system that lets us live in the first place.
STOP OVERPOPULATING THE WORLD! 2 kids are enough! Instead of having MORE children try educating the children you have. Maybe they will be smart enough to stop destroying the world! Think about it!
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Evidence Emerges that BP Gulf Disaster Not Over - Salem-News.Com
Evidence Emerges that BP Gulf Disaster Not Over - Salem-News.Com
BP Gulf Oil Spill Will Have Long-Lasting Benzene Poisoning Legacy
In addition to the millions of barrels of oil that poured into the Gulf of Mexico during last year’s BP oil disaster, the spill is responsible for poisoning the area with benzene, hydrogen sulfide, and radioactive hydrocarbon effluents. Benzene is a volatile organic compound (VOC) that is found in raw crude oil. It is also a known human carcinogen that has been linked to leukemia, other blood cancers, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), and other blood and immune system disorders.
There is no known safe level of benzene exposure, but the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set the short-term exposure limit to 5ppm for 15 minutes. Breathing in high levels of benzene for a short time can result in death. Even low level exposure over long periods of time and eating and drinking foods contaminated with benzene, like seafood from the scene of a massive oil spill, can cause chronic health effects that may lead to cancer, permanent neurological damage, and death. A report entitled “Gulf Oil Spill Health Hazards” indicates that long-term exposure to the chemicals released by the BP disaster should be avoided at all costs.
BP Gulf Oil Spill Will Have Long-Lasting Benzene Poisoning Legacy
In addition to the millions of barrels of oil that poured into the Gulf of Mexico during last year’s BP oil disaster, the spill is responsible for poisoning the area with benzene, hydrogen sulfide, and radioactive hydrocarbon effluents. Benzene is a volatile organic compound (VOC) that is found in raw crude oil. It is also a known human carcinogen that has been linked to leukemia, other blood cancers, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), and other blood and immune system disorders.
There is no known safe level of benzene exposure, but the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set the short-term exposure limit to 5ppm for 15 minutes. Breathing in high levels of benzene for a short time can result in death. Even low level exposure over long periods of time and eating and drinking foods contaminated with benzene, like seafood from the scene of a massive oil spill, can cause chronic health effects that may lead to cancer, permanent neurological damage, and death. A report entitled “Gulf Oil Spill Health Hazards” indicates that long-term exposure to the chemicals released by the BP disaster should be avoided at all costs.
Natural Childhood: The Relationship Between Feelings and Behavior
Natural Childhood: The Relationship Between Feelings and Behavior: "Feelings play a crucial role in determining human behavior. Our behavior toward other persons is determined by our feelings toward them. Obv..."
Natural Childhood: Girls 'routinely sexually harassed'
Natural Childhood: Girls 'routinely sexually harassed':
"Almost a third of young women say they have been subjected to unwanted sexual contact at school, a poll has found. Many more face harassme..."
"Almost a third of young women say they have been subjected to unwanted sexual contact at school, a poll has found. Many more face harassme..."
Natural Childhood: Nature or Nurture?
Natural Childhood: Nature or Nurture?: "I was recently asked about the book The Nurture Assumption, and the argument that peers, and not parents, are most responsible for who child..."
Natural Childhood: Jailing Kids for Cash
Natural Childhood: Jailing Kids for Cash: "As many as 5,000 children in Pennsylvania have been found guilty, and up to 2,000 of them jailed, by two corrupt judges who received kickb..."
Parenting For A Peaceful World
By Robin Grille, author of "Parenting for a Peaceful World", and also " "Heart to Heart Parenting" shares some profound information about children and parenting practices around the world and throughout history. Learn more about Robin at www.our-emotional-health.com Narrated by Aja Swafford, created by Jacob Devaney for www.culturecollective.org, and written by Robin Grille.
Spanking is counterproductive and dangerous
Alice Miller:
Why spankings, slaps, and even apparently harmless blows like pats on the hand are dangerous for a baby?
1. They teach it violence.
2. They destroy the absolute certainty of being loved that the baby needs.
3. They cause anxiety: the expectancy of the next attack.
4. They convey a lie: they pretend to be educational, but parents actually use them to vent their anger; when they strike, it's because, as children, they were struck themselves.
5. They provoke anger and a desire for revenge, which remain repressed, only to be expressed much later.
6. They program the child to accept illogical arguments (I'm hurting you for your own good) that stay stored up in their body.
7. They destroy sensitivity and compassion for others and for oneself, and hence limit the capacity to gain insight.
What long-term lessons does the baby retain from spankings and other blows?
The baby learns:
1. That a child does not deserve respect.
2. That good can be learned through punishment (which is actually wrong, punishment merely teaches the children to want to punish in their own turn).
3. That suffering mustn't be felt, it must be ignored (which is dangerous for the immune system).
4. That violence is a manifestation of love (fostering perversion).
5. That denial of feeling is healthy (but the body pays the prize of this error, often much later).
How is repressed anger very often vented?
In childhood and adolescence:
1. By making fun of the weak.
2. By hitting classmates.
3. By annoying the teachers.
4. By watching TV and playing video games to experience forbidden and stored up feelings of rage and anger, and by identifying with violent heroes. (Children who have never been beaten are less interested in cruel films, and, as adults, will not produce horror shows).
In adulthood:
1. By perpetuating spanking, as an apparently educational and effective means, often heartily recommended to others, whereas in actual fact, one's own suffering is being avenged on the next generation.
2. By refusing to understand the connections between previously experienced violence and the violence actively repeated today. The ignorance of society is thereby perpetuated.
3. By entering professions that demand violence.
4. By being gullible to politicians who designate scapegoats for the violence that has been stored up and which can finally be vented with impunity: "impure" races, ethnic "cleansing", ostracized social minorities, other religious communities etc.
5. Because of obedience to violence as a child, by readiness to obey any authority which recalls the authority of the parents, as the Germans obeyed Hitler, the Russians Stalin, the Serbs Milosevic.
Conversely, some become aware of the repression and universal denial of childhood pain, realizing how violence is transmitted from parents to children, and stop hitting children regardless of age. This can be done (many have succeeded) as soon as one has understood that the causes of the "educational" violence are hidden in the repressed history of the parents.
By Alice Miller
© 2009 Alice Miller
The Wisdom of Hunter-Gatherers
For hundreds of thousands of years, up until the time when agriculture was invented (a mere 10,000 years ago), we were all hunter-gatherers. Our human instincts, including all of the instinctive means by which we learn, came about in the context of that way of life. And so it is natural to ask: How do hunter-gatherer children learn what they need to know to become effective adults within their culture?
In the last half of the 20th century, anthropologists located and observed many groups of people - in remote parts of Africa, Asia, Australia, New Guinea, South America, and elsewhere - who had maintained a hunting-and-gathering life, almost unaffected by modern ways. Although each group studied had its own language and other cultural traditions, the various groups were found to be similar in many basic ways, which allows us to speak of the "hunter-gatherer way of life" in the singular. Wherever they were found, hunter-gatherers lived in small nomadic bands (of about 25 to 50 people per band), made decisions democratically, had ethical systems that centered on egalitarian values and sharing, and had rich cultural traditions that included music, art, games, dances, and time-honored stories.
To supplement what we could find in the anthropological literature, several years ago Jonathan Ogas (then a graduate student) and I contacted a number of anthropologists who had lived among hunter-gatherers and asked them to respond to a written questionnaire about their observations of children's lives. Nine such scholars kindly responded to our questionnaire. Among them, they had studied six different hunter-gatherer cultures - three in Africa, one in Malaysia, one in the Philippines, and one in New Guinea.
What I learned from my reading and our questionnaire was startling for its consistency from culture. Here I will summarize four conclusions, which I think are most relevant to the issue of self-education. Because I would like you to picture these practices as occurring now, I will use the present tense in describing them, even though the practices and the cultures themselves have been largely destroyed in recent years by intrusions from the more "developed" world around them.
1. Hunter-gatherer children must learn an enormous amount to become successful adults.
It would be a mistake to think that education is not a big issue for hunter-gatherers because they don't have to learn much. In fact, they have to learn an enormous amount.
To become effective hunters, boys must learn the habits of the two or three hundred different species of mammals and birds that the band hunts; must know how to track such game using the slightest clues; must be able to craft perfectly the tools of hunting, such as bows and arrows, blowguns and darts, snares or nets; and must be extraordinarily skilled at using those tools.
To become effective gatherers, girls must learn which of the countless varieties of roots, tubers, nuts, seeds, fruits, and greens in their area are edible and nutritious, when and where to find them, how to dig them (in the case of roots and tubers), how to extract the edible portions efficiently (in the case of grains, nuts, and certain plant fibers), and in some cases how to process them to make them edible or increase their nutritional value. These abilities include physical skills, honed by years of practice, as well as the capacity to remember, use, add to, and modify an enormous store of culturally shared verbal knowledge about the food materials.
In addition, hunter-gatherer children must learn how to navigate their huge foraging territory, build huts, make fires, cook, fend off predators, predict weather changes, treat wounds and diseases, assist births, care for infants, maintain harmony within their group, negotiate with neighboring groups, tell stories, make music, and engage in various dances and rituals of their culture. Since there is little specialization beyond that of men as hunters and women as gatherers, each person must acquire a large fraction of the total knowledge and skills of the culture.
2. The children learn all this without being taught.
Although hunter-gatherer children must learn an enormous amount, hunter-gatherers have nothing like school. Adults do not establish a curriculum, or attempt to motivate children to learn, or give lessons, or monitor children's progress. When asked how children learn what they need to know, hunter-gatherer adults invariably answer with words that mean essentially: "They teach themselves through their observations, play, and exploration." Occasionally an adult might offer a word of advice or demonstrate how to do something better, such as how to shape an arrowhead, but such help is given only when the child clearly desires it. Adults to not initiate, direct, or interfere with children's activities. Adults do not show any evidence of worry about their children's education; millennia of experience have proven to them that children are experts at educating themselves.1
3. The children are afforded enormous amounts of time to play and explore.
In response to our question about how much time children had for play, the anthropologists we surveyed were unanimous in indicating that the hunter-gatherer children they observed were free to play most if not all of the day, every day. Typical responses are the following:
"[Batek] children were free to play nearly all the time; no one expected children to do serious work until they were in their late teens." (Karen Endicott.)
["Both girls and boys [among the Nharo] had almost all day every day free to play." (Alan Barnard.)
"[Ef�] boys were free to play nearly all the time until age 15-17; for girls most of the day, in between a few errands and some babysitting, was spent in play." (Robert Bailey.)
"[!Kung] children played from dawn to dusk." (Nancy Howell.)
The freedom that hunter-gatherer children enjoy to pursue their own interests comes partly from the adults' understanding that such pursuits are the surest path to education. It also comes from the general spirit of egalitarianism and personal autonomy that pervades hunter-gatherer cultures and applies as much to children as to adults.2 Hunter-gatherer adults view children as complete individuals, with rights comparable to those of adults. Their assumption is that children will, of their own accord, begin contributing to the economy of the band when they are developmentally ready to do so. There is no need to make children or anyone else do what they don't want to do. It is remarkable to think that our instincts to learn and to contribute to the community evolved in a world in which our instincts were trusted!
4. Children observe adults' activities and incorporate those activities into their play.
Hunter-gatherer children are never isolated from adult activities. They observe directly all that occurs in camp - the preparations to move, the building of huts, the making and mending of tools and other artifacts, the food preparation and cooking, the nursing and care of infants, the precautions taken against predators and diseases, the gossip and discussions, the arguments and politics, the dances and festivities. They sometimes accompany adults on food gathering trips, and by age 10 or so, boys sometimes accompany men on hunting trips.
The children not only observe all of these activities, but they also incorporate them into their play, and through that play they become skilled at the activities. As they grow older, their play turns gradually into the real thing. There is no sharp division between playful participation and real participation in the valued activities of the group.
For example, boys who one day are playfully hunting butterflies with their little bows and arrows are, on a later day, playfully hunting small mammals and bringing some of them home to eat, and on yet a later day are joining men on real hunting trips, still in the spirit of play. As another example, both boys and girls commonly build play huts, modeled after the real huts that their parents build. In her response to our questionnaire, Nancy Howell pointed out that !Kung children commonly build a whole village of play huts a few hundred yards from the real village. The play village then becomes a playground where they act out many of the kinds of scenes that they observe among adults.
The respondents to our survey referred also to many other examples of valued adult activities that were emulated regularly by children in play. Digging up roots, fishing, smoking porcupines out of holes, cooking, caring for infants, climbing trees, building vine ladders, using knives and other tools, making tools, carrying heavy loads, building rafts, making fires, defending against attacks from predators, imitating animals (a means of identifying animals and learning their habits), making music, dancing, storytelling, and arguing were all mentioned by one or more respondents. Because all this play occurs in an age-mixed environment, the smaller children are constantly learning from the older ones.
Nobody has to tell or encourage the children to do all this. They do it naturally because, like children everywhere, there is nothing that they desire more than to grow up and to be like the successful adults that they see around them. The desire to grow up is a powerful motive that blends with the drives to play and explore and ensures that children, if given a chance, will practice endlessly the skills that they need to develop to become effective adults.
By by Peter Gray, Ph.D.
1 See, for example, Y. Gosso et al. (2005), "Play in hunter-gatherer societies." In A. D. Pellegrini & P. K. Smith (Eds.), The nature of play: great apes and humans. New York: Guilford.
2 See, for example, S. Kent (1996), "Cultural diversity among African foragers: causes and implications." In S. Kent (Ed.), Cultural diversity among twentieth-century foragers: an African perspective. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Peter Gray Reprinted with permission of the author. Originally published as Part III of the "Children Educate Themselves" series at Freedom to Learn .
Peter Gray, Ph.D. is a research professor of psychology at Boston College, a specialist in developmental and evolutionary psychology and author of the introductory textbook Psychology. See also "Play as the foundation for hunter-gatherer social existence". American Journal of Play, 1, 476-522, 2009.
Source: Natural Child Project
"I Was Spanked And I'm Fine!"
We hear it all the time, when spanking is mentioned. Someone steps forward and says something like this:
"Well, I don't see what all the fuss is about. I was spanked, and I'm fine. We all know that sometimes spanking is necessary for solving problems with kids. And since it's both necessary and harmless, it should be allowed and even encouraged."
At face value, this seems to be an airtight case; a perfectly logical justification of spanking as part of the necessary discipline of children. And a lot of people see it that way. But is it really so logical? Is spanking necessary? And is it as harmless as so many believe it to be?
Let's examine the argument:
"I was spanked." (fact)
"I'm fine." (opinion)
"Sometimes spanking is necessary for solving problems with kids." (false assumption)
"Since it's both necessary and harmless, it should be allowed and even encouraged." (illogical conclusion)
Now let's consider a similar argument that seems to justify smoking:
"George Burns smoked all his life from his teenage years on." (fact)
"He was in reasonably good health all his life and lived to be 100." (fact)
"Sometimes smoking is necessary for coping with life's problems." (false assumption)
"It should be allowed and even encouraged." (illogical conclusion)
This analogy should help to make it clear that the spanking argument, like the one on smoking, is based on false assumptions and leads to illogical conclusions. Some children, like some smokers, are less affected than others because of a natural emotional resiliency, just as Mr. Burns must have had physical resilience. Some children, like some smokers, are less harmed than others because of mitigating factors, such as the presence of other adults who treat them with love and care. To the extent that a spanked child is really "fine", it is in spite of, not because of, the punishments they have received. Mr. Burns must have had mitigating factors too. Perhaps his strict regimen of daily exercise helped him to fare better than other smokers, or perhaps he inherited a strong constitution. And research shows that laughter can be an important healer, and that many professional comedians live long lives.
For many reasons, George Burns was one of the survivors among frequent smokers. And for many reasons, there are also "survivors" of spanking. But we can never know just how much happier and more fulfilled they might have been had they been gently guided instead of being punished - any more than we can know just how much healthier Mr. Burns might have been had he never smoked a cigarette or a cigar. Would he have lived even longer, entertaining more people and writing more of his delightful books? Would he have brought joy, laughter, charm and wisdom to yet another generation? Sadly, we will never know.
Like smoking, spanking is not only harmful, it is entirely unnecessary, because there are far more effective and emotionally healthy alternatives. And these alternatives work in the long-term (which spanking does not) because they establish a pattern of good behavior that is motivated by the simple, genuine desire to reciprocate love. As Dr. Elliott Barker has written, "Kids who have their needs met early by loving parents ... are subjected totally and thoroughly to the most effective form of 'discipline' conceivable: they don't do what you don't want them to do because they love you so much!"
Behavior that is based on fear can last only until the child is old enough not to fear defying the parent. Punishment builds anger and resentment within the child that will inevitably be expressed at a future time (angry teenagers do not fall from the sky). In contrast, behavior that is based on mutual love and trust will last through all the years of a child's life, and through the entire length of the parent-child relationship. There is little that is more rewarding for a parent than the enjoyment of an enduring, loving and close tie with their child over many years.
Given all of this, let's revise the spanking argument:
I was spanked.
I'm fine, but I wish I were happier and more productive, and better able to love and trust others.
Since spanking is both unnecessary and harmful, it should never be allowed. Our government, like those in many European nations, should actively and strongly discourage it.
Spanking, like all other forms of punishment, such as time-out and consequences, can only bring about temporary and superficially "good" behavior based on threats and fear. As John Holt reminded us years ago, "When we make a child afraid, we stop learning dead in its tracks."
Gentle, loving, and respectful guidance is the only truly effective way to help a child to grow and develop to his full potential as a loving and trusting adult. Spanking is unnecessary, harmful, disrespectful, and unfair. Let's stop doing it!
By Jan Hunt, M.Sc.
Source: Natural Child Project
Parenting For A Peaceful World
Bullying begins at Home
Bullying begins at home with the baby, which is why everyone in the world is so fucked up.
"Do you think this is a bloody hotel? I said wait a minute. Go and put your bloody shoes on. How many times must I tell you not to....You make me sick. Stop your crying. Stop whining."
The continual carping on at the child, the never ending bad tempered bitching by irritable parents who don't have a clue except to think it was a good idea in the first place to progress from a Barbie doll to a real baby and then treat them with the same disdain, casual off-handedness bad mood smack shout threaten scream deprive harry break their spirit slowly over the years. They bring an angel into the world and then pull off it's wings.
Parents create children in their own image. Evil Swines.
Who is ever gentle with a child. Which parent always puts the child first...before it's own needs and desires and shopping urges and cleaning necessities in case the neighbors think she's a lazy, dirty slut. Clean house, hollow and bereft of mercy and human kindness.
Would you talk to an adult friend the way you talk to your child....use that same tone of voice....as if they're an absolute idiot? Are you even aware of how you talk to your child....or are they just a bloody nuisance and you have become so used to letting out your worst on your dearest and reserving your best for a total stranger who probably thinks you're and arsehole anyway. Never mind. You'll get what's coming to you when they hit puberty and can't control their pent up anger anymore.
Why in God's name did you want a child in the first place? For their sake or for yours...as an accessory, or a way of escaping home (and your parents) and hell on earth to go somewhere else and create the exact same environment for your child.
We do unto others as was done to us, where we can finally let it out on someone smaller than we are...behind closed doors and the stunned ears on the other side of the wall that will sometimes report you to the Social services who can only step in when the child is damaged or dead.
At the age of three we are already mad. Playing endless games in our head, singing songs to drown out the shouting, lost in the mind and the fascinating places it can take us, the physical world disallowed, the body taboo, sand is disease, insects dangerous - disgusted and divorced from reality we are in Neverland, somewhere over the rainbow where the grass is greener than the screamer fishwife, housewife, harridan hunting our dirty habits down into the laundry basket case madder than a clean white shirt and wash your hands before you eat.
"What goes into the mouth is not evil. It's what comes out..."
Have you heard yourself lately....? Don't touch that - Go and play in your room (mind) and don't bother me. Comics and books fill the time while we wait for death in a home sweet Jesus home from hell, always in a hurry with nowhere to go and get out of my way can't you see I'm busy with my chores and bores and things I think I should be doing but never follow my heart because of YOU sweetheart, poisoned pus-filled receptacle, steaming with unhealthy odours, bubbling in it's own acid indignation. Shut up and eat your food fed up to the back teeth can't wait till you leave home/go to school/get married.
Life is vaguely anticipated in the dim future while we dally in the dark dungeons of the mind with it's dead pictures of unreachable peaks, it's dusty hopes and desolate longings, all infinitely more pleasurable than the now.....that narrow door to heaven..guarded closely by the bitch and bastard from hell. Mommy and Daddy.
"Do you think this is a bloody hotel? I said wait a minute. Go and put your bloody shoes on. How many times must I tell you not to....You make me sick. Stop your crying. Stop whining."
The continual carping on at the child, the never ending bad tempered bitching by irritable parents who don't have a clue except to think it was a good idea in the first place to progress from a Barbie doll to a real baby and then treat them with the same disdain, casual off-handedness bad mood smack shout threaten scream deprive harry break their spirit slowly over the years. They bring an angel into the world and then pull off it's wings.
Parents create children in their own image. Evil Swines.
Who is ever gentle with a child. Which parent always puts the child first...before it's own needs and desires and shopping urges and cleaning necessities in case the neighbors think she's a lazy, dirty slut. Clean house, hollow and bereft of mercy and human kindness.
Would you talk to an adult friend the way you talk to your child....use that same tone of voice....as if they're an absolute idiot? Are you even aware of how you talk to your child....or are they just a bloody nuisance and you have become so used to letting out your worst on your dearest and reserving your best for a total stranger who probably thinks you're and arsehole anyway. Never mind. You'll get what's coming to you when they hit puberty and can't control their pent up anger anymore.
Why in God's name did you want a child in the first place? For their sake or for yours...as an accessory, or a way of escaping home (and your parents) and hell on earth to go somewhere else and create the exact same environment for your child.
We do unto others as was done to us, where we can finally let it out on someone smaller than we are...behind closed doors and the stunned ears on the other side of the wall that will sometimes report you to the Social services who can only step in when the child is damaged or dead.
At the age of three we are already mad. Playing endless games in our head, singing songs to drown out the shouting, lost in the mind and the fascinating places it can take us, the physical world disallowed, the body taboo, sand is disease, insects dangerous - disgusted and divorced from reality we are in Neverland, somewhere over the rainbow where the grass is greener than the screamer fishwife, housewife, harridan hunting our dirty habits down into the laundry basket case madder than a clean white shirt and wash your hands before you eat.
"What goes into the mouth is not evil. It's what comes out..."
Have you heard yourself lately....? Don't touch that - Go and play in your room (mind) and don't bother me. Comics and books fill the time while we wait for death in a home sweet Jesus home from hell, always in a hurry with nowhere to go and get out of my way can't you see I'm busy with my chores and bores and things I think I should be doing but never follow my heart because of YOU sweetheart, poisoned pus-filled receptacle, steaming with unhealthy odours, bubbling in it's own acid indignation. Shut up and eat your food fed up to the back teeth can't wait till you leave home/go to school/get married.
Life is vaguely anticipated in the dim future while we dally in the dark dungeons of the mind with it's dead pictures of unreachable peaks, it's dusty hopes and desolate longings, all infinitely more pleasurable than the now.....that narrow door to heaven..guarded closely by the bitch and bastard from hell. Mommy and Daddy.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Dictators' Wives.
A Look At The Women Behind Gaddafi, Mubarak, Assad And Others
Suzanne Mubarak, Egypt
Safiya Farkash (Gaddafi), Libya
Asma al-Assad, Syria
Leila Trabelsi, Tunisia
Galina Lukashenko, Belarus
Grace Mugabe, Zimbabwe
Azam al-Sadat Farahi, Iran
Simone Ehivet Gbagbo, Ivory Coast
Princess Lalla Salma Bennani, Morocco
Bangladeshi love/war film
Bangladeshi war film Meherjaan rekindles old enmities
By Anbarasan Ethirajan
BBC News, Dhaka
When Bangladeshi film Meherjaan was released in January this year, it was a great moment for the director Rubaiyat Hossain.
It was her debut and in making it she had joined a handful of female film directors in Bangladesh.
The feature film is about a Bangladeshi woman's love affair with a Pakistani Baloch soldier during Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence.
Little did she realise that her first venture would be mired in controversy.
Following fierce criticism in the media and on the internet, the film was withdrawn from cinema halls by its distributors just a week after its release.
Rubaiyat Hossain denies that she is overlooking genocide committed during the war
Critics allege that it has distorted history and ignored the horrors of the war. But the director disagrees.
As Bangladesh celebrates the 40th anniversary of its independence, the events of the time still evoke strong emotions in a country struggling to come to terms with its violent past.
According to official estimates, as many as three million people were killed and 200,000 women were raped by Pakistani soldiers when Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, fought to become an independent nation with Indian assistance.
The government has already set up an International Crimes Tribunal to try those Bangladeshis accused of collaborating with the Pakistani forces and committing atrocities during the nine-month bloody war.
Biggest stars
"In the context of 1971 we are used to looking at these binary images of Bangladeshi hero versus the dehumanised Pakistani brutal animal. I tried to break away from that and I think that's what created this huge uproar," says Ms Hossain.
“I am a rape victim and I have gone through lots of humiliation and suffering. My objection to the film is that they have shown a soft corner for the Pakistanis”
Ferdousy Priyabhashini
Sculptor
The film follows Meher, who falls in love with a Pakistani soldier during the war. When her love is discovered, she is humiliated and silenced by her family and society.
Many years later one of her relatives, Sarah, visits Meher and tries to put together her past.
The movie features some of the region's biggest stars - including India's Jaya Bachchan and Victor Banerjee - as well as other leading performers from Bangladesh and Pakistan, making it one of few attempts involving a cast from three South Asian countries.
"Personally I like the movie. But a section of the people, especially some freedom fighters, were unhappy with the film. As a freedom fighter myself, I didn't want to hurt their sentiments, that's why I decided to withdraw the film from cinema halls," says Habibur Rahman Khan, the distributor of Meherjaan.
Despite its star cast and high expectations, some critics say the brutalities of the war were not truly reflected in the film.
"Because I have not shown any war within the canvas of my cinema, they are interpreting it like I deny that there was genocide, which is really not the case. There are so many indications in the film that a war is going on," Ms Hossain says.
"It's a film-maker's choice on how they want to represent a certain topic. I can make a movie about a murder and not show a drop of blood."
Sense of injustice
But these explanations have failed to convince her critics in Bangladesh, where issues relating to 1971 are still sensitive.
There is a sense of injustice among many Bangladeshis that those responsible for the atrocities have gone unpunished.
The film-making world is divided as to whether it was correct to withdraw Meherjaan
And those who went through enormous suffering during the war disagree with the way the movie has depicted the events during the war.
Ferdousy Priyabhashini, a well-known sculptor, was 23 in 1971 and she says she was repeatedly raped by Pakistani soldiers during the war.
She says the movie has undermined the suffering of thousands of rape victims like her.
"I am a rape victim and I have gone through lots of humiliation and suffering. My objection to the film is that they have shown a soft corner for the Pakistanis," she says.
"There is a silent message in the movie that we can forget about it. This historical sentiment cannot be erased."
Some feel that the time is not yet right to take such a bold step as to show a love affair between a Bengali girl and a Pakistani soldier.
But why is the issue still so sensitive?
"Pakistan still has not...apologised for the killings of hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi civilians by its army during the war. Under such circumstances, the making of this film is a bit premature," says eminent writer and director Aly Zaker.
Despite his views, Mr Zaker said he did not demand that the movie be withdrawn.
Other cultural figures too felt that the screening of the film should have been allowed.
"Probably the distributors were worried about public sentiment especially when the trial of the alleged war criminals was around the corner," Mr Zaker says.
But for now, the supporters of Meherjaan will have to wait before the film hits the cinema screens of Bangladesh again.
By Anbarasan Ethirajan
BBC News, Dhaka
When Bangladeshi film Meherjaan was released in January this year, it was a great moment for the director Rubaiyat Hossain.
It was her debut and in making it she had joined a handful of female film directors in Bangladesh.
The feature film is about a Bangladeshi woman's love affair with a Pakistani Baloch soldier during Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence.
Little did she realise that her first venture would be mired in controversy.
Following fierce criticism in the media and on the internet, the film was withdrawn from cinema halls by its distributors just a week after its release.
Rubaiyat Hossain denies that she is overlooking genocide committed during the war
Critics allege that it has distorted history and ignored the horrors of the war. But the director disagrees.
As Bangladesh celebrates the 40th anniversary of its independence, the events of the time still evoke strong emotions in a country struggling to come to terms with its violent past.
According to official estimates, as many as three million people were killed and 200,000 women were raped by Pakistani soldiers when Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, fought to become an independent nation with Indian assistance.
The government has already set up an International Crimes Tribunal to try those Bangladeshis accused of collaborating with the Pakistani forces and committing atrocities during the nine-month bloody war.
Biggest stars
"In the context of 1971 we are used to looking at these binary images of Bangladeshi hero versus the dehumanised Pakistani brutal animal. I tried to break away from that and I think that's what created this huge uproar," says Ms Hossain.
“I am a rape victim and I have gone through lots of humiliation and suffering. My objection to the film is that they have shown a soft corner for the Pakistanis”
Ferdousy Priyabhashini
Sculptor
The film follows Meher, who falls in love with a Pakistani soldier during the war. When her love is discovered, she is humiliated and silenced by her family and society.
Many years later one of her relatives, Sarah, visits Meher and tries to put together her past.
The movie features some of the region's biggest stars - including India's Jaya Bachchan and Victor Banerjee - as well as other leading performers from Bangladesh and Pakistan, making it one of few attempts involving a cast from three South Asian countries.
"Personally I like the movie. But a section of the people, especially some freedom fighters, were unhappy with the film. As a freedom fighter myself, I didn't want to hurt their sentiments, that's why I decided to withdraw the film from cinema halls," says Habibur Rahman Khan, the distributor of Meherjaan.
Despite its star cast and high expectations, some critics say the brutalities of the war were not truly reflected in the film.
"Because I have not shown any war within the canvas of my cinema, they are interpreting it like I deny that there was genocide, which is really not the case. There are so many indications in the film that a war is going on," Ms Hossain says.
"It's a film-maker's choice on how they want to represent a certain topic. I can make a movie about a murder and not show a drop of blood."
Sense of injustice
But these explanations have failed to convince her critics in Bangladesh, where issues relating to 1971 are still sensitive.
There is a sense of injustice among many Bangladeshis that those responsible for the atrocities have gone unpunished.
The film-making world is divided as to whether it was correct to withdraw Meherjaan
And those who went through enormous suffering during the war disagree with the way the movie has depicted the events during the war.
Ferdousy Priyabhashini, a well-known sculptor, was 23 in 1971 and she says she was repeatedly raped by Pakistani soldiers during the war.
She says the movie has undermined the suffering of thousands of rape victims like her.
"I am a rape victim and I have gone through lots of humiliation and suffering. My objection to the film is that they have shown a soft corner for the Pakistanis," she says.
"There is a silent message in the movie that we can forget about it. This historical sentiment cannot be erased."
Some feel that the time is not yet right to take such a bold step as to show a love affair between a Bengali girl and a Pakistani soldier.
But why is the issue still so sensitive?
"Pakistan still has not...apologised for the killings of hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi civilians by its army during the war. Under such circumstances, the making of this film is a bit premature," says eminent writer and director Aly Zaker.
Despite his views, Mr Zaker said he did not demand that the movie be withdrawn.
Other cultural figures too felt that the screening of the film should have been allowed.
"Probably the distributors were worried about public sentiment especially when the trial of the alleged war criminals was around the corner," Mr Zaker says.
But for now, the supporters of Meherjaan will have to wait before the film hits the cinema screens of Bangladesh again.
Tourism in Sharm el-Sheikh
Egypt's resorts suffer after revolution
By Ibrat Jumaboyev
BBC News, Sharm el-Sheikh
Tricks of the trade
Sex, drugs, souvenirs? A hard sell in empty Sharm el-Sheikh
Cafes and bars are trying to look lively
The revolution in Egypt has put the tourism industry under strain, and nowhere more so than in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
I am overwhelmed by the attention I am getting here.
As a dark-skinned Uzbek, no matter how much I try to blend in with the local youth, some shrewd shop-owners and greeter boys can still see I'm a tourist.
"Hello, hello, English, Russian, Chinese? Armenian? I just want to ask you one question."
Have you come to Sharm el-Sheikh for Russian women?
One question leads to more questions, and I end up in shops that sell souvenirs and fake designer bags for women.
My lack of interest in incense burners or bags leads into offers of hashish, marijuana, cocaine or Viagra.
"Are you Muslim? Welcome, brother. Have you come to Sharm el-Sheikh for Russian women?"
The young traders of Sharm el-Sheikh seem desperate for business.
The popular demonstrations that squeezed President Hosni Mubarak out of office in February have drastically cut the numbers of tourists coming into Egypt.
Hotels and shops are almost empty. The countless bars of Na'ama Bay are only pretending to look lively, with staff members doing a line dance and singing along to Western pop songs blaring from speakers.
Some workers long to turn the spirit of Tahrir Square against their bosses
Back in the hotel, receptionist Malik asks me how my night in town went. I say I got hassled a lot. Malik looks embarrassed. "It is not good for tourism, this hassle," he says.
Malik is 22 years old and comes from a village near Cairo. He says he disapproves of a lot of the things that go on in Sharm el-Sheikh, like drinking, sex and drugs, as he comes from a very strict Muslim family.
Malik graduated from university with a degree in mass media and dreams of working in TV, but he could not get a job. So he came to Sharm el-Sheikh to work in the hotel industry for the time being.
He says he is constantly looking for a better job, but it's hard as he works 12 hours a day and doesn't get a day off.
And when he tries asking for permission to go to a job interview, his manager tells him not to bother coming back.
Malik lifts the load of papers in front of him, mimicking his boss, "Take your papers with you, take your papers with you!"
But Malik can count himself lucky.
He at least has a job while youth unemployment, now standing at 25%, seems set to get worse. According to the UN refugee agency, the unrest in Libya has forced nearly 70,000 Egyptians working there to flee the country. This is what Mubarak did to us - he turned us into beggars
Malik
Malik says thousands of people, including many from his village and family, left Egypt over the years to go to other countries, like Libya and Sudan, looking for work.
"My brother is in Misrata, in Libya, but he hasn't phoned in the last 20 or so days and we don't know whether he is OK. This is what Mubarak did to us. He turned us into beggars. Our lives aren't worth the sand you are standing on," he says.
Skinny and small Ahmed joins the conversation. Ahmed is a cheerful 20-year-old. He's a cleaner, who I've discovered has a great talent for making swans and heart shapes out of towels.
Malik prompts Ahmed to tell the story of his sacking last month. "Boss said 'No job, no tourists, go home - when tourists come I call you.'" So Ahmed tells me he complained about his sacking to the Ministry of Labour. As a result, he was reinstated into his job.
"But now Boss finds me and tells me, 'Clean this, clean that.' He says, 'Don't stand like this,'" Ahmed laughs, mimicking an Egyptian mummy. We all laugh.
"But don't worry," says Malik. "We overthrew Hosni Mubarak, so we will overthrow this boss too."
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