Peace for the World World ! Your War Our Lives
The Dalai Lama
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
(Full Story)
Back to 500BC.
Monday, February 28, 2022
Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threat shows how much is going wrong for him in Ukraine
No plan of battle survives contact with the enemy, but his has fared worse than many
Feb 27th 2022
The russian invasion of Ukraine is not going to plan. In Kharkiv, the country’s second city, Ukrainian defences appear to have repulsed a major assault. In the south Vladimir Putin’s forces have taken territory, but partly by avoiding Ukrainian towns. Around Kyiv, Ukrainian forces have foiled numerous attacks. In the capital itself, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, has cut a defiant figure. In contrast to the drug-addicted Nazi Mr Putin describes in his speeches, Mr Zelensky has taken his place at the head of a nation buoyed by courage and patriotism.
The war is still in its first week. Russia’s president can summon reserves of military force that he could yet use to surround Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, at terrible cost to civilians and the soldiers of both sides. It is still a war that Mr Putin may well win, in that he could eventually impose a puppet government in Kyiv or Kharkiv, the original Soviet capital of Ukraine.
Yet, in a broader sense, the moment Mr Putin is obliged to wage such a war of attrition, he will already have lost. In Ukraine the patriotic spirit forged from his targeting of cities and their inhabitants has already ensured that any government which rules in his name will be seen as illegitimate. Across much of the world, he would become even more of a pariah. And at home, he would preside over a society strangled by sanctions and trampled under his repressive regime.
It seems ever clearer that the Russian elite is appalled—and impoverished—by his paranoid adventurism. The worse his plans go in Ukraine, the sooner cracks will start to appear in his regime and the more the Russian people will take to the streets. If Mr Putin is to hold on to the Kremlin, he may be obliged to impose terror of a severity that Russia has not seen for decades.
Mr Putin’s first mistake was to underestimate his enemy. Perhaps he believed his own propaganda: that Ukraine is not a real country, but a fake erected by the cia and run by crooks who are despised by the people they govern. If he expected Ukraine to collapse at the first show of Russian force, he could not have been more wrong.
Mr Putin’s second mistake was to mismanage his own armed forces. His air force has so far failed to dominate the skies. He has laboured to reassure his people that Russia is not engaged in a war, but just what he calls a “denazification” operation. Soldiers, unsure of what they are supposed to be doing, have turned up in Ukraine expecting to be welcomed as liberators. If he orders troops to slaughter their Ukrainian kin in large numbers, they may not obey. If many of his troops die in the attempt to crush Ukrainian cities, as is likely, he will not be able to cover it up at home.
And his third mistake was to underestimate the West. Again, perhaps he believed that it was too decadent and self-absorbed to muster a response. As a dictator who may find it hard to understand that people’s faith in democracy is genuine, he has almost certainly been surprised by the upwelling of popular support for Ukraine—the support that sees Londoners stand to the Ukrainian anthem and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin lit up in the blue and gold of the Ukrainian flag.
Inspired by Ukrainian courage and urged on by their own citizens, Western governments have at last found the will to fight back. They have rightly refrained from direct military action against Russia, such as imposing a no-fly zone. Instead, at their third attempt, on February 26th, they agreed on genuinely powerful sanctions, against Russia’s central bank and its financial system. These may block access to the country’s reserves and undermine its banks.
The next day these sanctions met with a furious Russian response. Mr Putin, having consulted his military chiefs, put the country’s nuclear forces on higher alert. He was equating economic sanctions with nuclear war.
That is not only morally wrong, but it also raises the prospect of a catastrophic escalation. That does not make the West’s use of sanctions a mistake. Mr Putin’s belligerence is evidence of how dangerous he is. Backing away for fear of what he might do would only invite the next enormity.
Instead, Russia’s warning must be countered by the unambiguous declaration in the un Security Council and by all nuclear powers, including China and India, that issuing nuclear threats is unacceptable. At the same time, senior American officers need to remain in close contact with their Russian counterparts, to warn them that they will be held personally accountable for their actions. The world cannot afford for Mr Putin to miscalculate again.
as Vladimir Putin ordered all his forces to “high combat alert”, following the invasion of Ukraine.
Not for the first time his most senior ministers looked visibly uncomfortable with the orders he was giving them on Russian television.
But amid street-to-street fighting in Ukraine it appears that both sides have agreed to meet for talks on the Belarus border tomorrow morning local time even in the face of Putin’s nuclear threat.
Covid shrinks on all fronts AGAIN as daily cases plummet by a third in a week, deaths fall 24% and hospital admissions drop 9%
- UKHSA figures showed another 31,933 Covid cases were detected today, down a third on the tally last week
- Daily cases have consistently fallen for more than three weeks now as the Omicron wave continues to recede
- It comes as health chiefs today revealed a more infectious Omicron variant is not dominant in England
Britain's Covid wave is continuing to fizzle out with daily cases, hospital admissions and deaths all still trending downwards, official data shows.
There were another 31,933 infections recorded over the last 24 hours, down a third on last Friday.
Daily cases have consistently fallen for more than three weeks now, with about 35,000 infections being recorded every day — similar to levels seen in early November before Omicron struck.
There were also another 120 Covid deaths, a drop of 24 per cent on the same time last week. And hospitalisations fell nine per cent after 1,169 admissions were recorded on February 21, the latest date UK-wide figures are available for.
It came as health chiefs revealed today a more infectious version of Omicron — scientifically named BA.2 — was now dominant in England.
But scientists said this was not a cause for concern because cases are still trending downwards, and there is no evidence that it is more dangerous or better at dodging vaccines than Omicron.
Weeks of falling Covid statistics gave Boris Johnson the confidence to lift the last Covid restrictions, with the legal requirement to self-isolate ending yesterday after almost two years. Free Covid tests are also set to end from April 1 amid a drive to save £2billion a month from the Treasury, and the contact tracing system is to be wound down.
The above graph shows that BA.2 - a sub-variant of Omicron - is now behind 52.3 per cent of all Covid cases in England. It is now dominant over old Omicron
UK Health Security Agency statistics showed Covid cases dropped across all four UK nations today, compared to the same time last week.
The positivity rate — the proportion of tests that pick up the virus — also fell slightly, further illustrating how the current Covid wave is receding.
Meanwhile, the UKHSA today revealed in its bi-weekly report that a more infectious version of Omicron is now dominant in England.
It said BA.2 was behind 52 per cent of all Covid cases in the week to February 20.
But the agency added there was no evidence that the strain was more severe or better able to dodge vaccine-induced immunity than Omicron.
Scientists said today it was not likely to 'undermine' the current drop in cases seen in the country.
They pointed to Denmark where the wave has peaked after BA.2 became dominant, which lifted its Covid restrictions at the start of this month.
The weekly report showed BA.2 was behind the highest proportion of cases in London (62.9 per cent of Covid cases).
It was also dominant in the South East (57.1 per cent), East of England (52.6 per cent), North West (51.1 per cent) and West Midlands (50 per cent).
The regions where it was not dominant were the East Midlands (49.4 per cent), Yorkshire and the Humber (42.9 per cent), North East (33.1 per cent) and South West (32.7 per cent).
The UKHSA also revealed that Deltacron — a hybrid of Omicron and Delta — was now spreading in England, although in low numbers.
It claimed that 32 cases had been spotted since it first emerged on January 7, but only two of these were in the latest week data is available.
A fortnight ago the UKHSA announced it would be keeping tabs on the hybrid.
SAGE scientists have warned the mildness of Omicron may be a 'chance event', and say it is a 'common misconception' that viruses become weaker overtime.
But other scientists argue that high levels of immunity in the population mean no variant will emerge that can set the UK back to where it was in March 2020.
The weekly report showed BA.2 was behind the highest proportion of cases in London (62.9 per cent of Covid cases). It was also dominant in the South East (57.1 per cent), East of England (52.6 per cent), North West (51.1 per cent) and West Midlands (50 per cent)
Government scientists also said they had detected 32 cases of 'Deltacron'. But the hybrid appears to have fizzled out rather than taking off in a promising sign
It comes after No10's public spending watchdog claimed Britain's Covid vaccination drive was good value for money.
The National Audit Office heaped further praise on the £5.6bn jabs rollout – adding that far fewer doses were wasted than predicted.
It claimed securing a supply of vaccines early on in the pandemic was 'crucial' to its success and this helped to 'save lives and reduce serious illness and hospitalisation'.
The independent watchdog warned there were still risks ahead for the programme, however, including staff burnout.
In a report released today, covering a period up to the end of October 2021, the NAO said wastage of about 4.7 million doses – 4 per cent of the total – had been 'much lower than the programme initially assumed'.
The NAO, which only looked at first and second doses, said the operation had been 'an effective use of public money'.
The report said the programme had cost £5.6billion, out of £8.3billion available over the two years to March this year.
This included £2.9billion purchasing the jabs from AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and other pharmaceutical giants.
Doses cost £15.02 each on average, the NAO said, while the average cost of administering each jab was £25.70.
However, it warned that staff burnout could affect delivery of jabs to the remaining unvaccinated adults, of which there are 3.7million.
And the NAO called on ministers to 'redouble' efforts to ensure jabs were available to those who had not yet been vaccinated.
Organ transplants from pigs: Medical miracle or pandemic in the making?
Xenotransplantation is the transplanting of cells, tissues or organs from animals to humans. Pre-clinical trials of organ transplant from pigs have addressed some of the technical barriers. (Shutterstock)
Published: February 27, 2022
Three out of four new diseases are zoonotic, meaning they have evolved to infect new host species. For example, a mutated bird-flu virus may jump from wild birds to free-range domestic poultry and then to humans who are in contact with poultry. Similar pathways have led to infection by the pathogens that cause Ebola, Zika, HIV, Lyme disease and likely COVID-19.
If a new medical technology increased the risk of a new zoonotic pandemic — however marginally — how would society decide the balance of risk and benefit? If you needed new lungs that were only available in another country, would a health prohibition on the transplant in your own country stop you?
New developments in organ transplant technology may have streamlined a pathway for new zoonotic diseases, but the biotechnology innovators and medical research institutes have not engaged the public on the risks. Failing to do so may jeopardize the potential of a promising therapy.
Xenotransplantation
Over 4,400 Canadians are waitlisted for the lifesaving transplant of a new kidney, liver or lung. In 2019, 250 died waiting. In the United States and elsewhere, the supply gap is more extreme and high hopes ride on xenotransplantation: the transplanting of cells, tissues or organs from animals.
Read news coverage based on evidence, not alarm.
Pre-clinical trials of organ transplants from pigs have addressed the technical barriers to xenotransplantation, reducing the likelihood of rejection. Last summer, Maryland School of Medicine surgeons reported the 31-day survival of a baboon after receiving a lung from a genetically modified pig.
Weeks later, a team at New York University transplanted a kidney from a genetically modified pig into a brain-dead person. In December 2021, surgeons at Maryland School of Medicine transplanted a genetically modified pig heart into a living 57-year-old man.
All projects were approved under U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, and corporate funding was supplemented by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The next step with the FDA is to approve clinical trials. Normalization of xenotransplantation could happen before there is informed public acceptance of the benefits and risks.
A potential zoonotic pathway
As a developmental geneticist, it has been exciting to track these advances. The revolution in designer gene editing (known as CRISPR-Cas9) makes this stunning progress possible. CRISPR allows molecules on the surface of pig cells to be modified so the human immune system will not trigger tissue rejection.
To prevent human transplant recipients from being infected with pig retroviruses (viruses that can integrate their genetic material into the host’s cells), the retroviruses hiding in the pig genome have been removed by CRISPR editing. The risk of transferring a disease directly from a genetically modified donor pig to the human host is negligible.
However, disease-free transplanted pig organs could become infected after transplantation. Zoonotic bacteria and viruses enter hosts most readily through the delicate surfaces of the respiratory tract, as with COVID-19. Living pig cells in a transplanted lung could readily be infected by an inhaled pig virus, including a novel virus from a wild animal host that has evolved to infect pigs.
After entering the human body, a replicating zoonotic virus could generate millions of mutations a day, because their mechanism for gene copying is naturally error prone. A pig virus replicating in a lung transplanted into a human could produce variants that may be capable of recognizing and infecting human cells. Although likely a rare event, it is not impossible that this could trigger a new zoonotic pandemic.
Risk, fear and polarization
The scenario described above could evoke risk and fear from a complex new medical technology. It parallels the thinking involved in vaccine hesitancy or the distrust of genetically modified foods. Both are well anchored in today’s political culture. In both cases, citizens increasingly demand prior consent and the choice to opt out — despite possible risks to public health. Vaccine hesitancy has increased the death toll from COVID-19 and delayed economic recovery from the pandemic.
In contrast, distrust of the industrialization of food has discouraged introduction of genetically modified foods that enhance nutrition or sustain agricultural productivity in a warming climate. Consumers question whether genetically modified organisms (GMOs) exist for public benefit or for corporate profit.
Increasingly, health issues such as vaccination, vaping or genetic testing generate highly polarized platforms for misinformation, debate and political leverage. Social media algorithms amplify extreme positions and elicit strong emotional reactions at the expense of the middle ground. When communications from the scientific community are reactive, poorly targeted or unintelligible to the average person, the influence of science in the policy process is diminished.
In 2022, progress in xenotransplant technology makes good news stories. Immense pressure to resolve the growing organ shortage for transplantation may tempt the biotechnology business and public regulators to be insufficiently critical as they seek permission to proceed with clinical studies. They must prepare for the nature and scale of backlash from those tired of experts and mistrustful of corporate motivation and institutional authority.
Concern about zoonosis from transplants was voiced over twenty years ago, long before CRISPR transformed the field. Since then, there appear to be no hard facts or even a call for research on zoonotic infection through xenotransplants after transplantation. Bioethicists are flagging the issue now, but the silence about xenotransplant zoonosis from biotechnology corporations and their affiliated preclinical research institutes leaves an open door to a narrative motivated by skepticism and distrust. It is incumbent on them to lead a public dialogue on managing the risk of novel zoonotic diseases arising from infection after transplantation.
US-linked anti-abortion centre targeting women with misinformation in Côte d’Ivoire
Abortion would be ‘murder’, even in cases of rape, a counsellor says to openDemocracy’s undercover reporter
Illustration: Inge Snip. All rights reserved
Asenator in Côte d’Ivoire has expressed concern about a US-linked ‘crisis pregnancy centre’ in his country misinforming women and girls about their sexual and reproductive rights.
Months after openDemocracy first revealed the presence of such centres in 18 countries around the world, more have been identified in the francophone West African countries of Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire and Togo.
In Côte d’Ivoire, a counsellor with the Étoile du Matin ‘crisis pregnancy centre’ in Abidjan, the country’s largest city, provided misinformation about the laws and medical facts concerning abortion. The centre’s Facebook page says that it offers “advice” to pregnant women, but openDemocracy found that, faced with a young woman who said she was considering an abortion, the centre’s counsellor used misinformation and emotional manipulation to dissuade her from seeking one.
The counsellor told the woman that ending her pregnancy would constitute “murder”. In fact, murder and illegal abortions are entirely different matters under Ivorian law. If rape is legally proven, the law permits abortion. Even when illegally done, abortion is a much less serious offence than murder; the woman would face a maximum of two years in prison and a fine of $516. Convicted murderers face life imprisonment.
The counsellor also implied that she could provide financial assistance, as an inducement for the woman to keep the baby, and offered misleading opinions on contraception, which is encouraged by the Ivorian government.
Legal and medical misinformation
Étoile du Matin’s Facebook page includes posts that make it appear neutral, rather than anti-abortion. For example, a post (in French) reads: “Pregnant and desperate and want to talk to someone? We are here for you. Without judging you, we will lend you a listening ear.”
However, when the counsellor met openDemocracy’s undercover reporter – posing as a vulnerable woman who had been raped by an uncle – she told her that aborting the “child” would constitute murder, and offered to take her to a lawyer who would show her the laws that “stipulate” that.
“Murder is punished by law,” she told the reporter.
The counsellor repeatedly referred to abortion as “murder” and said that Ivorian law prohibits abortion. In fact, abortion is allowed in some circumstances, including rape, if the rape can be legally proven. When the reporter suggested she could explain to police officers that she had been raped, the counsellor said the police would not ask for an explanation, but would arrest her because she had “killed a human being”.
The counsellor also misled the undercover reporter about the medical facts surrounding abortion, and repeatedly told her that she could die if she had an abortion, leaving her current child motherless.
The counsellor also alleged – without providing any evidence – that women can face psychological problems after having an abortion. She said that some women cannot go near babies afterwards, and when asleep are haunted by the sound of infants crying. She also implied that the use of birth control or the morning-after pill could lead to infertility.
Despite the fact that the reporter said she had been raped by a family member, the counsellor told her the way to avoid getting pregnant was sexual abstinence.
The Côte d’Ivoire government funds access to contraception. Family planning is encouraged, and condoms are available over the counter (only the birth control pill requires a prescription). Emergency contraception is also legal; the morning-after pill is available in pharmacies without a prescription.
When the reporter told the counsellor that she could not afford to raise another child, the counsellor suggested that she could provide her with financial support if she kept the baby. She also encouraged the reporter to forgive her rapist and ask him for financial help.
Étoile du Matin referred openDemocracy to their lawyer, who did not respond to our request for comment.
US Christian Right links
Étoile du Matin is listed as an affiliate of Ohio-based Heartbeat International. openDemocracy’s previous investigation, involving 18 countries, found that undercover reporters were fed false claims at ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ affiliated to Heartbeat.
Étoile du Matin is also an affiliate of the Association for Life of Africa (AFLA), an anti-abortion organisation based in Zambia. AFLA’s goal is to create a regional network of grassroots efforts to promote alternatives to abortion. It is financially supported by Heartbeat International, and US donors can give money directly to AFLA via the Heartbeat website.
According to a 2019 US tax return, Heartbeat International spent $48,469 in Zambia. It said all funds were used for "training, consulting and support of our joint affiliates”.
Heartbeat International and AFLA did not respond to openDemocracy’s request for comment.
In response to openDemocracy’s findings, senator Mamadou Kano said the Ivorian government should investigate “what is really happening in this centre”. He said it was wrong for the counsellor to tell our undercover reporter that she would be imprisoned for murder if she sought an abortion.
“I don’t think that the current law is going to imprison someone who has ‘removed’ an unwanted pregnancy after being impregnated by rape,” he said (in French).
Carelle-Laetitia Goly, an Ivorian lawyer, feminist blogger and women’s rights advocate, said the government must firmly condemn Étoile du Matin. “The law is clear: a woman who has been raped […] has the right to abort the child born of the rape,” she said. “The government should act to dismantle these groups. This NGO […] is undermining the rights of women in particular and human rights in general in Côte d’Ivoire.”
Nènè Fofana-Cissé, regional director for West and Central Africa at EngenderHealth, a US-based sexual health charity, said that Étoile du Matin should be better regulated.
“We need to see better management of this centre by the ministry of health or the ministry of women and family affairs to understand what kind of services they are providing, and what kind of information they are sharing,” she said. “Frightening or making women feel guilty should not be tolerated in a country where […] clandestine abortions are [one of] the main cause[s] of maternal mortality.”
Côte d’Ivoire has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, with 614 deaths per 100,000 live births, 18% of which are due to complications from unsafe abortions. More than 200,000 women aged between 15 and 49 seek abortions every year. But only 30% of young people use contraception, according to Médecins du Monde.
Current law on rape victims: ‘ridiculous’
Abortion is legal in Côte d’Ivoire only in cases of rape or to save the life of the woman, on the advice of three doctors. Otherwise, those who perform, receive, advertise or “incite” abortion could face imprisonment.
However, the country is also a signatory to the Maputo Protocol, an African Union initiative that obliges members to allow abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape and incest; if the pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother; and if the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother or the foetus.
Côte d’Ivoire ratified the protocol in 2011, but has not changed its laws accordingly. “The law needs to be updated – it’s outrageous,” said EngenderHealth’s Fofana-Cissé. Senator Kano said that if Côte d’Ivoire has signed the protocol, the government must apply it.
Campaigners say that the current provision for rape victims is insufficient because of the burden of proof required – and the time it takes to obtain it. Rape vicims have to go to a hospital, pay for a medical certificate, file a police report (though not all police stations accept rape depositions) and then prove the rape in court – all this before being allowed to access an abortion.
“There’s so much that needs to be done to be able to prove rape, it’s just ridiculous,” said Fofana-Cissé.
Goly described the current process as a “trap” for vulnerable women. “[When] we say a raped woman has the right to abort if she becomes pregnant, we are not talking about presumption of rape, but about rape, which requires a legal procedure,” she said. “But a legal procedure can take one to two years.”
Priced Out of the Market and Other Housing Woes
Photograph Source: antony_mayfield – CC BY 2.0
BY
If you’re a person of average means, you may have noticed the disappearance of affordable housing. It was bad before covid, when a person earning minimum wage couldn’t rent a one-bedroom apartment in any city in the U.S. But what about middle-income people, home-buyers? Well, melancholy news for them since the pandemic hit, as mega-firms like Black Rock grab houses across the nation. This includes, indeed focuses on, affordable houses, which are good investments, since they’re supposedly undervalued, meaning investors can get away with jacking up the price. Pretty soon most Americans won’t be able to achieve the American dream of home ownership. This means, at the low end of the income scale, that the multitudes of homeless people will swell. Those less desperate might want to tell their kids that renting, renting and more renting lies in their future. Welcome to 21st century serfdom.
You think serfdom’s too harsh a term? Well, rents in the U.S. have skyrocketed, as hikes “average up to 40 percent in some cities,” the Guardian reported February 16. And according to Zerohedge – recently and preposterously smeared as a Russian propaganda outlet by American so-called intelligence – on February 20, “rent increases put the Consumer Price Index to shame, soaring an average of 13.5 percent.” In Phoenix, rents jumped 25.3 percent, while numerous other Sunbelt cities exceeded 20 percent. That means all those would-be homebuyers, priced out of the market, now bleed their paychecks to predatory landlords. Lucky them.
Meanwhile, the same publication noted earlier, on Feb. 15, that on-time rent collections have hit an historic low, 92 percent. That’s because people are broke. No more stimulus checks. Rents exploding through the roof. Inflation. Oh, and those jobs the bipartisan Scrooges want folks to grovel back to? Surprise! They don’t pay enough to live on. Who ever woulda thunk it? So when it’s time to cut down to blood and bone, people cut rent, not food.
This latest spasm of housing investment greed dates back to the first lockdown, when anyone who had the cash fled cities and purchased homes outside them. Big Money caught on quick. It scented blood in the air, a financial killing to be made. According to Slate back on June 19, “corporate investors snapped up 15 percent of U.S. homes for sale,” in the first quarter of 2021. In Conroe, Texas, “an investment firm won a bidding war to purchase an entire neighborhood worth of single-family homes.” These investors don’t buy just any houses. They zero in on “inexpensive single-family homes built since the 1970s in growing metro areas.”
As always in the grim and decayed landscape of hyper-capitalism, corporations prey on a captive audience: ordinary people scrabbling for a foothold on the economic precipice, people without lots of options. Investors know which cities (Atlanta, Charlotte, Phoenix) offer younger, working- and middle-class people good-paying jobs, Slate argues, and they scour those markets. They look for “rent growth potential.” Because leasing homes or apartments at exorbitant rates is the preferred corporate method of draining every last cent out of slender pocketbooks.
Investors can siphon off high rents because they’ve boosted prices in the home purchasing market, blocking that avenue of escape from serfdom. “Last year, investors bought nearly one in seven homes in America’s top metropolitan areas,” the Washington Post reported February 16. That was “the most in at least two decades.” These investors do two things: “flip homes to new buyers, while others rent them out.” According to the Post, “neighborhoods where a majority of residents are Black have been heavily targeted…Last year, 30 percent of home sales in majority Black neighborhoods, went to investors, compared with 12 percent in other zip codes.” This is not good.
Meanwhile on February 17, again according to Zerohedge, over the last five years “cities where homes cost an average of $1 million or more have doubled.” These astronomical prices hold true in 481 U.S. cities. Citing Bloomberg, the article reports that 49 more cities are on track this year to bust past the $1 million home price average.
This trend has gathered force for some time, but now, coupled with inflation, it’s expanding, and that bodes very poorly for middle-income Americans. It doesn’t take a shrewd prognosticator to foresee a time, in the not-too-distant future, where multimillion-dollar homes abound nationwide, and million-dollar ones are the norm, squeezing the more modestly priced market down to a skimpy skeleton of its former self. As that market shrivels, the vast majority of Americans not rolling in dough will sweat just to make the rent. Indeed, the Apartment List National Rent Report this month announced that that ugly future is on our doorstep. Over the last year, “rent growth currently stands at a record-setting 17.8 percent.” And this ain’t just happening in the U.S. It’s global.
According to UN News last October, “among the rights at risk from increased speculation in the financial markets by hedge funds and other investment funds are…adequate housing.” A former Special Rapporteur on adequate housing observed that in the Global South, “informal settlements in Southern cities are regularly demolished for luxury housing and commercial development.” That’s been going on since before most of us were born, but, to understate matters, it accelerated lately. Take Edinburgh Scotland, where rents zoomed up to warp speed. Edinburgh’s not even in the Global South. But according to Roaming Charges in last week’s CounterPunch, 15 “super landlords” own 10 percent of that city’s rentals.
Back in the U.S., we’ve recently seen headlines like “Rental Bidding Wars Heat Up as Economy Improves in a Hot Housing Market,” “Showdown Shapes Up in California Over Growing Housing Crisis,” and “A Lot of Buyers Have Had Enough: Bidding Wars for Homes Fall to Lowest Level Since 2020.” It doesn’t take a genius to see where this is heading for ordinary people trying to make ends meet.
What doesn’t make headlines is that some people fight back. A year and a half ago, the Debt Collective battled evictions in Los Angeles with actions to blockade the courts. That was at the start of the pandemic. It’s not too much to say that such high-profile struggles helped bring about the eviction moratorium, something pretty much unprecedented in U.S. history. But that’s gone now, and as Jacobin headlined in September, “America’s Housing Crisis Is About to Get Much, Much Worse.”
Why is that? Because five months ago the supreme court, too lofty to bother with the money-matters of little people, sided “with landlords over the millions of renters on the edge of eviction.” Eight million Americans, to be exact. That’s how many, behind on rent, lost their case before the court. According to Jacobin, 3.5 million of them reported facing eviction post-September. You can assume a good number had no plans besides pitching a tent under the local overpass.
Just because they don’t make headlines now, doesn’t mean those millions of people weren’t booted out on the street. The reporters and the cameras went away, but so did those renters’ homes. That’s not news. It happens every day in America, where housing courts exist to rubber stamp evictions. This lesson impressed itself on me long ago as the lone representative of the press for a couple of years in New York City’s Housing Court. Everything was against the tenants, but most notably, the judges, some of whom, in their ferocious pro-landlord anti-communism, were quite insane. They ran their courts like circuses, and one compelled the luckless tenants to prove their fealty to American capitalism by reciting the pledge of allegiance. Real estate developers, landlords, were treated like pashas. That the whole game was fixed was and remains incontrovertible. The proof is in who has lawyers. The landlords do. The tenants don’t. If a tenant appears in housing court with an attorney, that’s practically a show-stopper.
With no access to justice, tenants know the system is rigged against them. It always has been. That’s because in the U.S., to state the obvious, housing isn’t a human right, it’s a commodity. And the U.S. exports this crass, malignant ideology all over the world, often at gunpoint. No wonder there’s no affordable housing for first-time home-buyers. The miracle is that there ever was any to begin with.
A tribute to the martyrs - The horror of BDR carnage in Bangladesh
I vividly remember the bloodshed about the carnage of BDR, which people tend to forget, was one of the worst massacres in human history after our 1971 war.
by Anwar A. Khan-24 February 2022
Howard Zinn competently said, “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” There was chaos. There was bloodshed. There was carnage.The Bangladesh Rifles mutiny was a carnage that took place on 25th and 26th February 2009 in Dhaka by a large section of jawans of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), a paramilitary force mainly tasked with guarding the borders of Bangladesh. The rebelling BDR soldiers took over the BDR headquarters in Pilkhana, Dhaka killing a total of 74 people, including 57 army officers along withthe BDR Director-General. Our people strongly believe that “Peelkhana Massacre” on those 2 days in 2009 was the outcome of a long and deep-rooted conspiracy. Thirteen years are on, but the mystery still remains brought to light.For love of country, they accepted death.
For those interested in the dark side of human nature, mass murderers hold an understandable fascination. Seemingly ordinary people who turned out to be capable of acts too monstrous to comprehend, many killers like that of the BDR massacres have shown not one shred of remorse for anyone but themselves once finally apprehended.I do not know what I am supposed to write or feel it made me totally benumbed. My tears are dried out from my eyes. I still cannot believe what I saw or heard that terrible two days of February 2009 after our glorious Liberation War of 1971.
I was in our office early morning on that day and suddenly, my Dhaka University Class-mate, friend and the first batch trained guerilla freedom fighter in the prestigious Dehradun Military Academy, India, during our liberation struggle in 1971, Mr. Md. Mujibur Rahman phoned me up and broke the fierce news that the BDR soldiers staged a violent mutiny killing army officers. He also communicated with me that BDR chief along with so many senior army officers were already brutally murdered by those soldiers. I was then affrighted as my cousin’s (amar boro phuphur meye, Dr. Royena Matin, one of the country’s best Radiologists) husband Colonel Enshad Ibne Amin was serving in BDR on deputation from the Bangladesh army.
I checked with my close relatives over cell phone about the fate of Col Enshad and opened the TV channels and almost all TV channels were live telecasting this very sad episode. My cousin Dr. Royena, paternal uncles and paternal younger auntie were standing nearby the BDR Headquarters with deepening concerns. Their whole day and night passed away with tearful eyes, but no trace was found out of Col Enshad, a former bright star student of illustrious Fauzderhat Cadet College and a perfect gentleman senior army officer.
The next day, his disfigured dead body with bullet wounds along with the BDR Director General Maj Gen Shakil Ahmed was excavated from the earthbound. 74 murdered dead bodies of army officers were discovered during the two days of 25th and 26th February in 2009.
I was terrified and shocked by watching what was happening inside the Pill Khana then. The real thing was far more pathetic than we expected. The very next day Premier Sheikh Hasina gave her speech before the nation via TV and Radio channels and ordered the BDR jawans to surrender or the Government will take a severe action against them. After that, they surrendered with the weapons. But as soon as the bodies came out from the sewerage one after another and the mass grave was found, the people were horrified. Everybody including my relatives was nearly collapsed by watching the horrific scene. The bodies were so ruined that they couldn’t be identified unless some identification marks in the body or with some IDs.
I vividly remember the bloodshed about the carnage of BDR, which people tend to forget, was one of the worst massacres in human history after our 1971 war.I don’t know how and why people could do such brutal acts to their own people? How come this massive murder happened inside the most secured organisation? The family of those officers who were killed, they will carry out the tears till the last of their lives. 13 years ago, so many brilliant army officers were slaughtered. Above all, the massacres achieved their goal. To this day, the families of victims left have not recovered. They are living with stories, loss, and trauma that they are afraid of telling.
The killers wanted us to be afraid; they became so much inhuman that they threw away their kindness; they wanted us to bury our love and burn our hope; and their aim was to take all our light! They thought that their carnage would defeat us. They were so ignorantthat they did not understand that our souls and our near and dear ones’ souls are old friends. They were so ignorant thatthey did not understand that when they cut our own men and women, we were bleeding.
They were so ignorantthat they did not understand that we would never be afraidof; and we will never be silent for life is ours!I repeat and have to say that these two days of February thirteen years back of the BDR tragedy represent a black page in the history of Bangladesh. On 2 March 2009 a state funeral was held for all fallen army officers, who were buried with full military honours and I attended that observance with all prayers at the National Army Parade Ground, Dhaka.
With many of its officers among the dead, the people might resist the amnesty and push for the legal penalty for mutiny: death by hanging. And as ever in Bangladesh, with its long history of coups and counter-coups, there is speculation that such a rebellion would not be possible without the backing of a certain strong quarter. To me, it seems like we have been through another 1971 war. The people who were involved in this mutiny and led this massacre killing, they all should be punished with no reservations. Our nation as a whole both the Government and the people should strictly aim to that.
It is one of the darkest chapters of our own history. These are truly scenes from hell, written also on the darkest pages of human history.Our debt to the heroic men in the service of our country can never be repaid. They have earned our undying gratitude. We shallnever forget their sacrifices.Theirs are the tombstones that the nation must rally around.Our nation owes a debt to its fallen heroes that we can never fully repay, but we can honour their sacrifices. We echo that our pain will heal only when the killers will be executed. We want the real mastermind behind the killings to face justice. We also hope for justice exists for survivours and victims' family members. As I write this piece in memory of BDR martyrs, my eyes are getting moist, tears are blurring my vision, my heart is bleeding, I cannot write anymore! May God grant the martyrs to rest in peace in Heaven.
The End –
The writer is an independent political analyst based in Dhaka, Bangladesh who writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)