Africa's dismal Human Rights Record

In December 2011, President Barack Obama signed a memorandum instructing federal agencies to promote the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people overseas.

 The memorandum coincided with a speech by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Human Rights Council in Geneva declaring that "gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights." Here are some developments concerning anti-gay legislation in Africa since the memorandum was issued:

THESE TWO TEENAGERS [GAY THUGS, THEY ARE CALLED IN UGANDA]
 WERE SHOT DEAD AFTER BEING ALLOWED ONE LAST KISS

UGANDA: A bill originally calling for the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" was re-tabled in February 2012. "Aggravated homosexuality" includes engaging in gay sex three times or while HIV-positive. The bill would also punish Ugandans who fail to turn in homosexuals to the authorities. President Obama called the bill "odious" in 2010. Its author has since said the death penalty provision has been removed.

LIBERIA: Lawmakers introduced two bills in 2012 that would strengthen existing anti-gay provisions in the criminal code. A bill banning same-sex marriage was unanimously passed in the Senate but has yet to be taken up by the House of Representatives. A bill in the House of Representatives is broader, and includes a provision banning the "promotion" of gay sex. The bill has yet to be voted on.

MALAWI: Just days after Clinton's December 2011 speech, Malawi's justice minister said the government would review anti-gay legislation "in view of the sentiments from the general public and in response to public opinion regarding certain laws." Last November, the government said it would suspend implementation of the current law imposing maximum prison terms of 14 years against men engaged in same-sex sexual conduct. Women charged under the law face prison terms of up to five years. However, the government later denied issuing the statement.

NIGERIA: The House of Representatives last month passed a bill imposing 14-year prison terms for gay marriage. Witnesses or anyone who helps couples marry could be sentenced to 10 years in prison. Anyone taking part in a group advocating for gay rights or anyone caught in a "public show" of affection also would face 10 years in prison if convicted by a criminal court. The Senate passed the same bill in November 2011, one week before Obama's memorandum was signed.

CAMEROON: Officials in Cameroon have continued to pursue prosecutions under a penal code provision that carries prison terms of up to five years for gay sex. Rights groups say Cameroon arrests, prosecutes and convicts more people for homosexuality than any other country in Africa, although they say the evidence in such cases is often weak. Evidence cited in recent cases has included effeminate clothing and text messages.

(Source: Amnesty International)

'I wish you enough'

A well worn story that needs retelling:

 

 At an airport, I overheard a father and daughter in their last moments together. They had announced her plane's departure and standing near the door, he said to his daughter, "I love you, I wish you enough."

 She said, "Daddy, our life together has been more than enough. Your love is all I ever needed. I wish you enough, too, Daddy."

They kissed good-bye, and she left.

He walked over toward the window where I was seated. Standing there, I could see he wanted and needed to cry. I tried not to intrude on his privacy, but he welcomed me in by asking, "Did you ever say good-bye to someone knowing it would be forever?"

 "Yes, I have," I replied. Saying that brought back memories I had of expressing my love and appreciation for all my Dad had done for me. Recognizing that his days were limited, I took the time to tell him face to face how much he meant to me. So I knew what this man was experiencing.

 "Forgive me for asking, but why is this a forever good-bye?" I asked.

 "I am old, and she lives much too far away. I have challenges ahead, and the reality is her next trip back will be for my funeral," he said.

 "When you were saying good-bye, I heard you say, 'I wish you enough.' May I ask what that means?"

 He began to smile. "That's a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone." He paused for a moment, and looking up as if trying to remember it in detail, he smiled even more.

 "When we said 'I wish you enough,' we wanted the other person to have a life filled with enough good things to sustain them," he continued, and then turning toward me, he shared the following as if he were reciting it from memory.

 "I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.

 I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.

 I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.

 I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.

 I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.

 I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.

 I wish you enough 'Hellos' to get you through the final 'Good-bye.'"

 

 He then walked away.

From Woodstock to Musicwood

Ah, the feel of a genuine Gibson Acoustic Guitar! Don't all of us amateur guitar twangers pay homage to the instrument? Now comes this documentary that's torn this illusion of beauty and its gonna break your heart a little. I'm talking about MUSICWOOD. And my guitar gently weeps....

If the purpose of an environmental documentary is to make you see an otherwise invisible world of problems attached to an item in your hands, Musicwood is a striking success.

This elegant, troubling 2012 feature by director Maxine Trump follows top brass from three of the U.S.’s most revered makers of acoustic guitars—Martin, Gibson, and Taylor—as they grapple with the ecological costs of one of their prime ingredients: old-growth Sitka spruce, the wood of choice for building the light, resonant soundboards of their instruments.

 Nearly all of this wood comes from one place, Tongass National Forest in the Alaskan Panhandle. Tongass contains the largest unbroken stretch of temperate coniferous rainforest in the world.

 But only a few short decades of clear-cutting, to feed not just the relatively tiny guitar market but the booming Asian-based industries in construction materials and veneers, has erased a huge percentage of old spruce stands.

Like most compelling films, Musicwood lays out a story in which heroes and villains are harder to separate than they seem at first. Golly Miss Molly!

For starters, the product under the microscope here isn’t a roll of paper towels. It’s a soul-stirring, centuries-old musical device—and almost everyone, from the most ardent environmentalist to the most profit-obsessed corporate CEO, has a favourite song that’s played on one. The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind...

 Add to this the fact that the clearcuts are being carried out not by some faceless multinational but by a First Nation-run corporation that emerged from years of struggle over land claims.

And then complicate matters with tensions between the well-heeled executives of that corporation and its poor and embittered “shareholders”, many of whom see their traditional resources and way of life being liquidated.

Even the nobly intended Musicwood Coalition—formed by the otherwise competing guitar makers at the behest of Greenpeace—ends up getting compromised.

After gaining a degree of trust and cooperation from the Aboriginal business leaders in Tongass, its mission to conserve old-growth spruce is suspended when the Gibson company gets raided by U.S. officials for importing illegal wood from Madagascar.

With cameo appearances by Yo La Tengo, Steve Earle, Kaki King, and Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner, Musicwood is charged with the West Coast landscape and the much-loved musical instruments that rely on it. Viewers, whether guitarists or not, will rightfully worry about the future of both.

Religion shouldn't be an excuse for Gay bashing

In brief, that's the main message of Ban Ki Moon, and because I endorse it, it's carried here:

 

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s video message to the International Conference on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, in Oslo on 15-16 April:

Your Excellency, Espen Barth Eide, Foreign Minister of Norway, Your Excellency, Minister for Women’s Rights of the French Republic, [Najat] Vallaud-Belkacem, Excellencies, distinguished friends,

I am pleased to greet the participants in this important Conference.

We should all be outraged when people suffer discrimination, assault and even murder simply because they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. We should all speak out when someone is arrested and imprisoned because of who they love or how they look. This is one of the great neglected human rights challenges of our time. We must right these wrongs.

Governments have a legal duty to protect everyone. But far too many still refuse to acknowledge the injustice of homophobic violence and discrimination. We need to document this problem and share information with States on a regular basis for discussion and action.

We must institutionalize our efforts to address discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. We need public education to change popular attitudes.

Some will oppose change. They may invoke culture, tradition or religion to defend the status quo. Such arguments have been used to try to justify slavery, child marriage, rape in marriage and female genital mutilation. I respect culture, tradition and religion — but they can never justify the denial of basic rights.

My promise to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members of the human family is this: I am with you. I promise that as Secretary-General of the United Nations, I will denounce attacks against you and I will keep pressing leaders for progress.

I am committed to leading a global campaign in partnership with the United Nations human rights office. I count on others to join us.

Together, we can make the world safer, freer and more equal for everyone.

Thank you.

Just a review

Purely by accident, I came across this review of one of my short stories published in an anthology....
if you want to read it in full, here's the link
No Ying for This Yang  
Here's an extract...

This anthology tells their story. It's an unrelenting gaze writers as diverse as Vikram Seth, Rakesh Ratti, R. Raja Rao, Bhupen Khakhar and Frank Krishner fix on the meetings and the matings, the horror and the hypocrisy, the sadness and the sensuality, the abandon and the absence that in forms gay lives. Not prettified soft focus Chien Win Lee. This is brutally direct, merciless no-holds-barred Sebastio Salgado vision that destroys artifice, disallows subterfuge. Khakhar throws open the Pages from a Diary: men meet and mate here. But amidst all that meat is a mind that somehow ennobles, infuses with dignity, even tenderness, what is essentially a primal carnal rite. There are sexual schizoids like sexy, silly, willing-to-wound but fearing-to-strike Khalid, who Rao delineates with bemused pen in Moonlight Tandoori. Unforgettable Khalid! One orifice spouts the scriptures, the other begs entry into Saturnalia. The old professor waits, watches, wins and leaves resigned, indifferent, as the inevitable denouement unfolds. Khalid clings to his "unknowing", the departing older lover to cherished moment that will soon be memory. The doomed emotional dialectic of Gay Eden.

It's the same vision, call it harsh, direct, even wistful but never cloying, that writers like Krishner bring to their stories. His The Sweetest of All is about the best document of the rollercoaster bittersweet ride that's the average gay boy's life. Beautiful boy head over heels in love seeking sex change in response to if-only-you-were-a-girl refrain of macho lover being cautioned by surgeon—" If he's so keen on women what's he doing in your bed?" He loves on. Learns about double-dealing, self-deceiving lovers. Some leave troubled by religious guilt, others with equally cavalier nonchalance to sire children to whom they want him to be uncle. Mark, the protagonist , emotionally wise and old, knows, accepts, plays along. He'll keep old memories. And new men. After all, isn't the next man and moment "the sweetest of them all"?

[By the way, that's not the reason why the story was titled - the sweetest of all - but, well, a review is a review....]

Packaging confusion!

The revenue -driven model of 'private' television channels has fashioned 'news  as commodity'. News has to have a glitzy, colourful 'package', and for most of the vernacular 'news' channels, ethics has been thrown out with yesterday's garbage.. News is being peddled in orer to 'improve viewer ratings'.



WHAT'S IN THE PACKAGE? THAT'S THE QUESTION. BY THE WAY, THIS PHOTOGRAPH HAS NOTHING TO ADD TO THIS POST, SO THERE....

So, this means that you, the viewer are a passive witness to the shrill and boisterous sparring between panellists, [sound and fury signifying, alas, nothing!]. At the end of the session, the hapless viewer is left confused, bewildered and struggling to make sense of the story and to form a considered opinion.

What the public needs isn't the biased views of the so-called experts, but the drect and balanced reports of journalists on the ground, who have the advantage of first-hand experience.

High decibel TV debates can entertain, but fail to educate or enlighten, which is what news reporting is all about.

We are dependent on the newspapers and the print media like never before... the paradox is that only a fraction of today's so-called literate young adults spend time to read.
Go figure!

If it's playing at my place, it's BBC 2

Ah! Radio... someone still loves you, and that's yours truly!

After the untimely and much-mourned demise of Worldspace Radio, I turned to the internet.

FM Radio stations in India, especially small town India are a load of doggy poop, with a few rare exceptions, such as AIR FM Rainbow... but only the feed beamed by the Delhi station that has decent western music, and some very tolerable Radio Jockeying.

Why can't we have a good FM station which beams at least a few hours of decent western music? Narrow minded Desi politicians to blame, obviously, huh?

My current favourite is BBC Radio 2, which a fellow radio listener put it, has 'age appropriate' music and programming.

I listen to BBC Radio 2 every morning, and of course, i catch their late late night shows and their very early morning programming... but that's alright.

So here's a toast and morning chai to the great team at Beeb 2.
Listen here...

April Fool Salute

Oh for Heaven's sake! Cut out the practical jokes already!

It's the first of April, the start of a New financial Year for taxpaying indians and other rare entities.

Well the joke is on you folks, railway fares are up, and you're paying more than you did yesterday for jostling along rickety tracks that were mostly left behind by the Brits when they left for Blighty some 60 years ago.

LET'S DRINK TO THE HEALTH OF THE CHOO-CHOO TRAINS!

The railway system in India, is a hopeless tangle, any way you look at it. Its an unsafe, unhygenic, unpunctual, uneconomic, ill-run, behemoth that moans its pain with every wailing train that pulls into its plethora of platforms. By all accounts it should have breathed its last a long time ago. Yet, year after year, more unviable, financially suicidal projects are added on to its payload.

On this day of Fools, let's salute the Indian Railways, it's India's longest running Miracle!