“A bloody nose” as Swedish foreign policy degenerates to be just domestic policy

March 10, 2015

UPDATE! The 22 foreign ministers of the member countries of the Arab League released a statement today condemning the Swedish Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström, for her anti-Saudi comments. Her comments were considered “irresponsible and unacceptable”. The undertone is that she does not understand very much about the Arab world or about Sharia law. No matter what one may think of Sharia and Saudi Arabia, Margot Wallströms statements reveal a Swedish foreign affairs behaviour which either does not analyse the consequences of its statements – or is incompetent. The obsessions of the greens and the far-left are bringing the country’s foreign policy into disrepute.

The new left-green Swedish government seems to have become a slave of their minority green partners (and are also going out of their way to placate the far left party which supports them from outside the government). So much so that foreign policy has now become a string of sanctimonious positions. It is now more about being politically correct in a domestic context rather than actually promoting Sweden’s interests (geopolitical and commercial) in foreign lands.

The Foreign Minister – Margot Wallström – started of her term by recognising Palestine as a State. It pandered to all her domestic constituents and allies, upset Israel and the US,  and has not helped the Palestinians one jot. But it allowed those on the left to expound their beliefs and provided support for the growing anti-semitism in Sweden.

Some 10 years ago the socialist government of the time entered into a cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia regarding defence and defence production. The agreement was nurtured all through the 8 years of the subsequent moderate-led government and provided a good deal of business and many jobs in Sweden. The current socialist government of Stefan Löfven is hard pressed by its own left wing to cancel the deal. The greens absolutely hate this agreement but that is because their goal is to dismantle the Swedish defence industry. The politically correct feminist view is that all things Saudi Arabian must be condemned. For the last few weeks the Swedish media (which are predominantly left of centre and hopelessly politically correct) have been running a campaign to support the greens and the far left in condemning the Saudi agreement.

And their efforts have now resulted in Margot Wallström “receiving a bloody nose” from Saudi Arabia. She was scheduled to make a speech to the Arab League (about Human Rights) but this was cancelled at short notice by a very irritated Saudi Arabia.

TheLocal.se: Sweden’s national debate about a controversial arms deal has sparked anger in Saudi Arabia and formed the backdrop to its move to block the Swedish foreign minister’s planned speech at the Arab League, according to an expert on Saudi politics.

Thord Janson, a Saudi Arabia expert at Gothenburg University, said: “This isn’t a slap on the hand; it’s a punch in the nose,” he told news agency TT. The decision by Saudi Arabia, a regional powerhouse, to prevent Wallström from speaking in Cairo on Monday appeared designed to cause embarrassment, he said. “From a diplomatic perspective it’s incredibly harsh. One couldn’t be more clear.” Janson predicted that Saudi Arabia would now make life trickier for Swedish firms operating in the wealthy Middle Eastern oil state. “The authorities might make it more difficult for them to import goods, deliveries might get slowed down in customs, and it could become hard to get certain permits.” 

The very public discussion in Sweden on whether to extend a military cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia had sparked strong reactions in Riyadh, said Janson. Sweden’s Green Party, the junior partner in the Social Democrat-led government, wants to scrap the deal, as do several members of Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s own party.  

Swedish criticism of the flogging of the blogger and human rights activists Raif Badawi may also have played a part in the Saudi decision.

“They thinks it’s an internal matter,” said Janson. “They don’t understand why a morally decadent country like Sweden is getting involved in the Saudi legal system.

My perception is of Swedish foreign policy now becoming quite shallow and with little substance. It is more concerned with being – and being seen to be – politically correct in the eyes of the greens, the far left and the feminist party. Foreign policy has degenerated to become a series of sanctimonious and self-righteous statements where the purpose is to look good for the domestic audience. And Margot Wallström – who is not inexperienced – has not the strength to resist the domestic lobbying.

Swedish foreign policy no longer shows any evidence of any deep thought about Swedish interests or how to promote change abroad. The end of the agreement with Saudi Arabia is now inevitable. There is little chance of Saudi Arabia (or Israel) now paying any attention to the “Swedish opinion”. Swedish business of any kind – and not just the defence business – can expect to meet more unfriendly customers. Other European countries will not be slow to step in to replace Swedish suppliers. But the far left and the greens can wallow in self-righteousness. Any chance of a place on the Security Council has disappeared.

 

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High stocks and continued oversupply mean oil price has further to drop

March 9, 2015

The underlying and driving fundamental remains that there is an oversupply and oil stockpiles are still increasing. Certainly oil exploration has taken a hit with the drop in oil prices and will – eventually – lead to lower production. Certainly the growth of shale oil production in the US has slowed. But the decline in some of this production has only been to turn off the most expensive production rigs. The oversupply has hardly been affected. Industrial growth has not yet picked up enough to balance this oversupply.

Oil price has been relatively stable for over a month at around $60 per barrel and all the talk from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf is about a stabilisation at this level and a recovery of oil price in the second half of 2015.

MarketPulse:

Saudi Arabia’s oil minister said on Wednesday he expected oil prices, which hit a near six-year low in January, to stabilize, signalling cautious optimism about the market outlook. Giving a speech in the German capital, Ali al-Naimi also urged non-OPEC producers to help balance the oil market, saying it was not up to Saudi Arabia to subsidize higher-cost producers and that circumstances required non-OPEC to cooperate.

“Going forward, I hope and expect supply and demand to balance and for prices to stabilise,” Naimi said. “Global economic growth seems more robust.” The comments are a further sign OPEC’s top producer is sticking to its policy to defend market share. Last month, Naimi signalled satisfaction with developments, saying he saw oil demand growing and that markets were “calm”. Oil was trading just above $60 a barrel on Wednesday, up more than 30 percent from a near six-year low close to $45 on Jan. 13.

ABS CBN:

World crude prices are expected to gain this year or at least stabilise at between $50 and $60 a barrel, Kuwaiti Oil Minister Ali al-Omair was quoted as saying.

“Forecasts for the oil price this year indicate that it will gain or at least stabilise between $50 and $60 a barrel,” the official KUNA news agency quoted Omair as saying late on Saturday in Bahrain. The minister said prices are currently supported by conflict in Iraq and Libya and by a drop in sand oil and shale oil output. But that is counterbalanced by slow global economic growth, which is dampening demand, Omair said.

World prices dropped at close on Friday as the dollar rose sharply, making dollar-priced crude more expensive for buyers using weaker foreign currencies. West Texas Intermediate for delivery in April slid $1.15 to $49.61 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, ending near its week-ago level. Brent North Sea crude for April, the international benchmark, dropped 75 cents to $59.73 a barrel in London.

But there is a large element of wishful thinking here. The January price of around $45 per barrel was just testing the waters that we will probably see again later this year. According to “data released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that crude inventory is sitting at an 80-year high with the United States recently recording its biggest weekly inventory rise in 14 years. Crude inventories are now sitting at 444.4 million barrels, which is more than a year’s worth of production”. Storage capacity in the US is now utilised to 60% compared to 48% at this time last year.

Global economic growth may provide some demand growth in the second half of 2015 and it is possible that oil price will remain at between $50 and 60 for most of the year. But I think it is more likely that we will see another dip to around $40.

US crude oil stocks March 2015 source EIA

US crude oil stocks March 2015 source EIA

 

 

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India’s daughter let down by government stupidity

March 9, 2015

The documentary film about the Delhi rape victim by Leslee Udwin and which was banned by a Delhi Court and the Indian government, was shown on Swedish TV tonight (available here till 7th April with Swedish text). I thought the authorities were being rather stupid in their knee-jerk reaction in imposing the ban. Now after seeing the documentary, it is apparent that I was being too kind. The stupidity was multiplied by idiocy. The ban does no service to India’s daughters.

The ban was for having “objectionable content” and because it might cause a “public outcry”. There should instead be a public outcry against their ridiculous ban. I found nothing derogatory at all about women in the film. In fact the attitudes displayed by the rapist (and his lawyer) were what I found most revealing. Their attitudes are no different to what is displayed by most of the male politicians (of all political hues). The argument made by the government that the film provides a platform for the condemned rapist does not hold and could only be put forward by someone who has not seen the film.

As a documentary, the film itself was a little patchy but very good in parts. But where it worked very well was in exposing the ingrained nature of the attitudes of people – male and female – when they have been brought up to see women as chattel.

It ought to be compulsory viewing for Rajnath Singh, all members of the BJP and the Delhi Court which banned the film. (Of course what ought to come first is that they all be required to exercise their minds before opening their mouths).

I was glad to hear that NDTV which was scheduled to screen the documentary today did not replace the film but just showed a slate with the film title for the scheduled duration of the banned documentary:

Screen grab from NDTV of a slate featuring India's Daughter titles

BBC: 

India’s NDTV has halted programming in protest at the banning of the BBC documentary India’s Daughter.

The network ran a slate referring to the film’s title, during the hour-long slot when it should have aired.

The film, which features an interview with one of the men convicted of the Delhi bus rape, was due to be broadcast by the channel on Sunday night.

But it was outlawed by the Indian authorities on the grounds of “objectionable content”.

Explaining its decision not to broadcast an alternative show from 21:00 to 22:00 local time (15:30-16:30 GMT), editorial director Sonia Singh said in a tweet: “We won’t shout, but we will be heard.”

 

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The monkey orchid

March 8, 2015

Seen at Kuriositas

Dracula simia: These wonderful orchids come from the south-eastern Ecuadorian and Peruvian cloud forests from elevations of 1000 to 2000 meters

monkey orchid grinning

Image Credit Columbus GV Team

 

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MH370: One year on and those who know still aren’t telling

March 8, 2015

Some few do know what happened to MH370 a year ago.

My post from April 13th last year speculating that this was a state sponsored and highly successful hijacking, is just as valid or invalid as it was then. There has been much speculation since but no new, certain, evidence has appeared. In fact even the “handshake” tracking which places the plane in the Southern Indian Ocean turns out to be fairly speculative in itself.

Whatever happened to MH370 was no accident. In one year there has been no evidence to alter my belief that this was the most successful hijacking and “disappearing” of a commercial airline and its 239 passengers and crew. And the objective – which was clearly achieved – was to prevent some passengers or cargo or both from reaching Beijing.

MH370: Emirates CEO suggests plane’s flight was controlled, October 11, 2014

MH370: Further indications of a deliberate event to prevent technology reaching Beijing, June 22, 2014

MH370: Very short preliminary report issued – could have been “laundered”, May 2, 2014

MH370: The most successful, state-sponsored hijacking ever?, April 13, 2014

MH370: The altitude excursion which could have rendered most unconscious, April 1, 2014

A deliberate excursion?

The calculations leading to the search area are speculative

 

 

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Pvt Jogendra Nath Sen (1887 – 1916) of the 15th West Yorkshire Regiment

March 7, 2015

A rather poignant story about Jogendra Nath Sen of Bengal and Leeds.

JN Sen by Caroline Jaine

JN Sen by Caroline Jaine

Born in Chandernagore in 1887, Jogendra Nath Sen left from Calcutta in 1910 and travelled to Leeds University to study electrical engineering (54 years before I also travelled from Calcutta to the UK though I was on my way to the Midlands and mechanical engineering). He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree and took up employment with Leeds Corporation at their Electric Lighting Station when the First World War broke out. He was one of the first to volunteer when the 15th West Yorkshire Regiment (Leeds Pals) was formed a month later in September 1914 (service number 15/795). He served first in Egypt and then on the Western front. He was killed during heavy shelling in the trenches of Bus-les-Artois on the night of 22 May 1916 and is buried in the Sucrerie Military Cemetery at Colincamps.

In spite of his education, the colour bar of the time prevented his ever reaching any rank higher than Private. He was not permitted even to be a non-commissioned officer, and to be a regular officer was completely out of the question. Twenty five years later the situation was somewhat changed when my father enlisted for WW2.

15th (Service) Battalion (1st Leeds)
Formed in Leeds in September 1914 by the Lord Mayor and City.
June 1915 : came under orders of 93rd Brigade, 31st Division.
December 1915 : moved to Egypt. Went on to France in March 1916.
7 December 1917 : amalgamated with 17th Bn to form 15th/17th Bn.

Leeds University has published this account of their  former student:

The unlikeliest of Pals? An Indian soldier alone among Yorkshiremen

A shattered pair of spectacles in an Indian museum has helped shed light on the fascinating story of a lone non-white soldier among Yorkshire volunteers fighting on the Western Front.

Jogendra Sen, a highly-educated Bengali who completed an electrical engineering degree at the University of Leeds in 1913, was among the first to sign up to the 1st Leeds “Pals” Battalion when it was raised in September 1914.

He remained the only known non-white soldier to serve with the 15th West Yorkshire Regiment during the First World War. Despite his education, he was thwarted in his attempt to join up as an officer and unable to progress beyond the rank of private. 

Killed in action near the Somme in May 1916, aged 28, the bachelor is thought to have been the first Bengali to have died in the war. Private Sen’s name is on the University’s war memorial. 

His story caught the attention of Dr Santanu Das, Reader in English at King’s College London and an expert on India’s involvement in the First World War. On a visit in 2005 to Sen’s home town of Chandernagore – a former French colony – Dr Das came across Sen’s bloodstained glasses in a display case in the town’s museum, the Institut de Chandernagore.

He said: “I was absolutely stunned when I saw the pair of glasses. It’s one of the most poignant artefacts I’ve seen – a mute witness to the final moments of Sen’s life. It was astonishing that something so fragile has survived when almost everything else has perished.”

A contemporary photograph shows Private Sen relaxing with his fellow Pals – who knew him as Jon – wearing what is thought to be the same spectacles Dr Das found almost a century later. ……… 

……. Known as Jon to his fellow soldiers, he was among the first to sign up to the Leeds Pals shortly after the outbreak of war, while working as assistant engineer at Leeds Corporation Electric Lighting station.

A comrade, Arthur Dalby, told historian Laurie Milner in 1988: “We had a Hindu in our hut, called Jon Sen. He was the best educated man in the battalion and he spoke about seven languages but he was never allowed to be even a lance corporal because in those days they would never let a coloured fellow be over a white man, not in England, but he was the best educated.” 

The battalion had been formed in September 1914 by mayor Edward Brotherton. Some 20,000 people gathered to wave off the first recruits from Leeds on September 25. 

The title “Leeds Pals” is unofficial, but as it suggests, pals battalions were often made up of friends from the same street, school, factory, church or even university. Heavy losses inflicted on such battalions from towns and cities across the country were therefore felt even more keenly back home.

Private Sen ended up in Number 16 Platoon (D Company) of the 15th (Service) Battalion (1st Leeds) Prince of Wales’s Own (West Yorkshire Regiment) – often abbreviated to the 15th West Yorkshire Regiment or 1st Leeds Pals. ….

…. Sen’s personal effects were sent from York back to his brother in India in 1920. Along with a graduation picture, regimental cap badge, notebooks, snaps and a pocket knife was – somewhat tantalisingly – an undated photograph of a well-dressed young woman taken in a Scarborough portrait studio. It bears the inscription “Yours with love, Cis”. 

Nothing more was known about the mystery woman, who also gave the young soldier a book of quotes about the value of friendship inscribed: “With the very best of good wishes in this world + after, To Jogi, my dear brother, From his loving sister, Cis”.

But then researcher Ruth Allison was able to identify her as Mary Cicely Newton (nee Wicksteed), who may have met Sen through her connection with Mill Hill Chapel. Their relationship appears to have remained a platonic one. 

David Stowe also did much research on Jogendra Nath Sen and his account is here,

PTE. JOGENDRA SEN: A LEEDS PAL AND SON OF LEEDS

I first came across the name Jogendra Nath Sen in 2010 when researching the Leeds University Roll of Honour. More recently my attention was drawn to the work of Dr Santanu Das after he had lectured at a Legacies of War event at the University of Leeds.1 Dr Das is an expert on the Indian soldier and his work in that area is impressive. However, as I began to read his work on Jogendra Nath Sen I realized the archive in Chandernagore, where he had located several artefacts belonging to Sen, had caused confusion by mislabeling the collection and mixing Jogendra Nath Sen with his doctor brother who shared the same initials.2

This article seeks to not only correct that confusion, but also answer the question posed by Dr Das: ‘Now, was Dr Sen, a member of the elite Indian Medical Services, fighting as a British imperial subject, or as a Bengali (a member of the ‘non-martial’ race) or as a resident of Chandernagore, which was a French colony, or all three?’3Using both local and national sources it might be impressed that Jogendra Sen had settled into the local community and even joined a local battalion at the outbreak of war. It might be further impressed that Jogendra Sen was a volunteer who had made Leeds his home. ……… 

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Sexual perks for senior Australian surgeons

March 7, 2015

Senior Australian surgeons, it seems, regularly expect sexual gratification from their juniors as part of their due.

The President of the Australian Medical Association in New South Wales, Dr. Steven Smith, however seems remarkably complacent and quite content to allow demographics to solve the problem. He is just waiting for the tide to turn.

“”But we know increasingly and the trend is that every graduating year for medicine is more female than male as far as the graduate numbers. And as such, there is a tide to turn.” – ABCnet

Sydney Morning Herald:

A senior surgeon has been criticised for her “appalling” suggestion that surgical trainees should stay silent if they’re sexually assaulted by a colleague because coming forward could ruin their careers.

Dr Gabrielle McMullin, a Sydney vascular surgeon, says sexism is so rife among surgeons in Australia that young woman in the field should probably just accept unwanted sexual advances.

She referred to the case of Caroline, who won a case against a surgeon accused of sexually assaulting her while she was completing surgical training at a Melbourne hospital. But the woman was unable to get work at any public hospital in Australasia after the legal victory, Dr McMullin told ABC radio at a book launch at Parliament House in Sydney on Friday night.

“Her career was ruined by this one guy asking for sex on this night. And, realistically, she would have been much better to have given him a blow job on that night,” Dr McMullin said.

“What I tell my trainees is that, if you are approached for sex, probably the safest thing to do in terms of your career is to comply with the request; the worst thing you can possibly do is to complain to the supervising body because then, as in Caroline’s position, you can be sure that you will never be appointed to a major public hospital.”

 

ABC: …. Dr McMullin told the ABC the story of a neurosurgical trainee in Melbourne suggested this was the case.

“Caroline was … the daughter that you’d wish to have. She excelled at school. What she always wanted to be was a neurosurgeon,” she said. “At the hospital Caroline ended up training at, one surgeon took her under his wing. But things got uncomfortable. “He kept asking her back to his rooms after hours. But after this one particularly long [work] session, she felt it was rude to refuse and they ended up back in his rooms, where, of course, it was dark and there was nobody else around, and he sexually assaulted her.

“She was horrified. She ran out of the office. She didn’t tell anyone.” 

Dr McMullin said the surgeon began to give Caroline bad reports and faced with the prospect of failing after years of hard work, Caroline finally complained. After a long and gruelling legal process, Caroline won her case. 

“However, despite that victory, she has never been appointed to a public position in a hospital in Australasia,” Dr McMullin said.

“Her career was ruined by this one guy asking for sex on this night. And realistically, she would have been much better to have given him a blow job on that night.

“The worst thing you could possibly do is to complain to the supervising body, because then, as in Caroline’s position, you can be sure that you will never be appointed to a major public hospital.”

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Gods and religions as tools for control of social behaviour

March 6, 2015

Religions (belief in systems of supernatural punishment – BSP) and then those based on Moralising High Gods (also to mete out punishment for social transgressions) were, no doubt, originally invented as a means of social control in societies of increasing size and/or complexity. It has been suggested that Moralising High Gods (MHG) were a necessary condition which probably enabled the growth of complexity in, and success of, such societies. (Effectively then, a means for getting large numbers to behave themselves and as a cheap substitute for – and perhaps a complement to – an expensive police force in complex societies).

A new paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (B) reports on studies of religious beliefs in 96 Austronesian cultures and suggests that a belief in a “Big God” was not necessarily the driver of developing social complexity.

Joseph Watts et al, Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia, Proceedings B, The Royal Society, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2014.2556

Abstract: Supernatural belief presents an explanatory challenge to evolutionary theorists—it is both costly and prevalent. One influential functional explanation claims that the imagined threat of supernatural punishment can suppress selfishness and enhance cooperation. Specifically, morally concerned supreme deities or ‘moralizing high gods’ have been argued to reduce free-riding in large social groups, enabling believers to build the kind of complex societies that define modern humanity. Previous cross-cultural studies claiming to support the MHG hypothesis rely on correlational analyses only and do not correct for the statistical non-independence of sampled cultures. Here we use a Bayesian phylogenetic approach with a sample of 96 Austronesian cultures to test the MHG hypothesis as well as an alternative supernatural punishment hypothesis that allows punishment by a broad range of moralizing agents. We find evidence that broad supernatural punishment drives political complexity, whereas MHGs follow political complexity. We suggest that the concept of MHGs diffused as part of a suite of traits arising from cultural exchange between complex societies. Our results show the power of phylogenetic methods to address long-standing debates about the origins and functions of religion in human society.

Philip Ball comments in Nature:

All human societies have been shaped by religion, leading psychologists to wonder how it arose, and whether particular forms of belief have affected other aspects of evolved social structure. According to one recent view, for example, belief in a “big God” — an all-powerful, punitive deity who sits in moral judgement on our actions — has been instrumental in bringing about social and political complexity in human cultures.

But a new analysis of religious systems in Austronesia — the network of small and island states stretching from Madagascar to Easter Island  — challenges that theory. In these states, a more general belief in supernatural punishment did tend to precede political complexity, the research finds, but belief in supreme deities emerged after complex cultures have already formed. …

The most common examples of religions with MHGs — Christianity and Islam, the dominant representatives of so-called Abrahamic religions — are relatively recent and obviously postdated the appearance of complex societies. But the question is whether earlier MHGs, for example in Bronze Age civilisations, catalysed sociopolitical complexity or resulted from it. …

…. Watts and his colleagues pruned the 400 or so known Austronesian cultures down to 96 with detailed ethnographic records, excluding any in which contact with Abrahamic religions might have had a distorting outside influence. They range from native Hawaiians, who hold polytheistic beliefs, to the Merina people in Madagascar, who believe in a supreme God.

The team considered two classes of religion: MHGs and a broader belief in systems of supernatural punishment (or ‘BSP’) for social transgressions, such as those enacted through ancestral spirits or inanimate forces such as karma. Although both schemes see religious or supernatural agents as imposing codes of moral conduct, BSP does not assume a single supreme deity who oversees that process.

Six of the cultures had MHGs, 37 had BSP belief systems and 22 were politically complex, the researchers concluded. They used trees of evolutionary connections between cultures, deduced from earlier studies of linguistic relationships, to explore how the societies were inter-related and exchanged ideas. That in turn allowed them to test different hypotheses about MHGs and BSPs — for example, whether belief in MHGs precedes (and presumably then stabilizes) the emergence of political complexity.

But it seems to me that the distinction between BSP (with punitive supernatural forces) and MHG (with punitive moralising high gods) is largely a matter of degree. MHG is a natural progression with the identifying of the supernatural forces in human terms – and therefore – allowing some sections to claim some special alliance with the god having supernatural force. A god without supernatural force clearly would not qualify. Worshipping a Sun-god is different to worshipping the Sun only in that it allows the priests of the Sun-god to identify with the god. Priests of the Sun (rather than a Sun-god) just don’t have the same credibility and thus authority. It is not by accident that all gods are in the recognisable image of man (and that applies even to the elephant god Ganesh and the monkey god Hanuman). That allows the “priests” and the “prophets” to establish themselves in a position of social power (allied to the political power). It seems to me to be a logical extension of “calling on supernatural forces” for social control to become “calling on a specific supernatural god” as a cost-effective, self-policing method to control the masses in an increasingly complex society.

It also seems quite apparent to me that a small clan would have no need of a religion since the “leader” would exercise his social control directly and by the force of his personality or his strong right arm. It would be the increasing numbers of the society and his inability to exercise control – even with some rudimentary police force – which would lead to some measure of self-policing becoming necessary. And that would drive the invocation of a system of super-natural punishments for transgressions. And so religion would have been born. “Correct” behaviour was a requirement to placate the supernatural forces and avoid punishment. Thereafter it was just a matter of increasing numbers and/or complexity which would have led to the definition of “humanised” gods and their chosen cadre of priests.

A religion (BSP) then is no more than a tool for developing the self-policing of the social behaviour of the masses. And then religions need to “humanise” supernatural forces into gods and moralising high gods (MHG) only when a ruling class needs to secure its power over the unwashed masses.

 

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Idiotic – but expected – Indian government ban on BBC rape film

March 5, 2015

The banning of a BBC film by the BJP and the Court in Delhi, because it reported on an interview with one of the Delhi rapists, is – at best – idiotic. Leslee Udwin had received all necessary permissions to interview the rapist in jail – from the government and from the jail authorities. The film is banned in India but was broadcast in the UK last night.

Of course the real reason for the knee-jerk banning (with little or no exercise of mind either by the government or the Court) is that what the rapist/murderer said is no different from what the male members of the BJP think. He showed absolutely no remorse and contended that if his victim had not struggled and had accepted being raped she would not have been killed. The BJP – and especially their spiritual leaders – all firmly believe that in every instance of rape it is the behaviour of the woman which has invited the rape. And it is not just the BJP of course. It is the mind-set which still prevails in most of rural India (and especially it seems in northern India where the male-female ratio is heavily skewed towards males). It is exacerbated when droves of macho young men migrate to the urban areas and continue to treat women as prey – just as they do with women of “lower caste” in their villages. And the so-called god-men with their fossilised minds don’t help.

DNA:

Mukesh Singh is a man without remorse, retelling in staccato, precise detail how he and his friends raped and grievously wounded the 23-year-old physiotherapy intern on a moving bus on the night of December 16, 2012, and why they were not in the wrong. She was.

His lawyers are equally blasé, men who have little compunction in echoing the view that a girl who goes out at night has only herself to blame — or words to that effect — with one going on to say that he would burn his daughter alive in public were she to have premarital sex. 

The death row convict is the unrepentant, boastful face, the defence lawyers the brazen reflection of a deeply misogynistic society that views as brutal a crime as rape as a consequence of something wrong that a woman has done. And the twin mirrors have found currency in the documentary India’s Daughter by British filmmaker Leslee Udwin that will be telecast by BBC on International Women’s Day on March 8; the chilling testimonies being played out on television prime time, the likes of Mukesh Singh and lawyers ML Sharma and AP Singh, who are not forwarding legal points in a client’s defence but just articulating their views, entering our homes as channels replay the interviews.

…….. there is a degree of voyeurism in a film which has a rape convict expounding at length before a TV camera on his crime and saying that the girl should have just “submitted herself quietly to the rape”. There is also the uneasy question of whether a filmmaker would be given similar licence in Britain to get a rapist’s views out in the public domain. And that, too, when the appeals of three of the convicts against their death sentence are still pending.

There’s another point to ponder — how Udwin got permission to interview a death row convict in Tihar jail when rights activists are consistently denied access to prisoners while probing a case.

…. The various arms of the Indian establishment have reacted true to type — with home minister Rajnath Singh declaring that the government would take all steps to stop the telecast, Delhi Police registering an FIR and a court stepping in on Wednesday to restrain the broadcast of the film.

And that is really no answer.

The knee-jerk ban culture, as we have seen repeatedly, is short-term, ill-advised and serves little or no purpose. The freedom of expression, however uncomfortable, cannot be selective. India’s Daughter may have touched a raw nerve and putting the how and why in question, but seeking a blackout is not the way out.

The simple reality is that Udwin should never have been given permission to interview a rapist/murderer awaiting execution. The BJP as the party in government is responsible for such permission being given. Just bureaucratic and administrative incompetence I think rather than any sinister conspiracy. The subsequent banning both by the Delhi Court and the government however, is a typical reflex, reactive action of guilty consciences with no exercise of mind.

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Before time began

March 5, 2015

In the what, when there was no when,

It was the where before time began,

Nothing pre, nothing post, no before nor after,

Without any forces, or any slower or faster.

 

All matter in space hung still in the firmament,

And each particle stayed fixed within its own element,

Nothing went up so there was no coming down,

With nowhere to fall, nothing could go around.

 

In that what, when there was no when,

Nothing was stirring not even the zen.

Nothing could change not even a thought,

He was as bored as could be, with what He had wrought.

 

And so in that where, before time began,

His mind exploded in a mighty Big Bang.

 

And the rest is history.

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