Meet The Planet’s Most Dangerous Nuclear Rogue State

Mickey Z.

Photo credit: Mickey Z.

Our history books and newspaper headlines portray an ever-benevolent United States as minding its own business, yet incessantly plagued by surprise events and unprovoked threats to test its celebrated patience.

This long record of conjuring up dubious rationales to wage war indicts those on both sides (sic) of the proverbial aisle -- equally.

As corporate-funded war criminal Barack Obama once declared: "We're leading the fight against nuclear dangers. We've applied the strongest sanctions ever on … nations that cannot be allowed to threaten the world with nuclear weapons."

Yep, since Iran obviously has the audacity to make decisions without first asking for U.S. (or Israeli) permission, we are now faced with the spectacle of America -- the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on civilians -- warning the world about how nuclear weapons might be, well, used on civilians.

Of course, this is very familiar ground for the Land of the Free™.

I'll Take Manhattan

“With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears.” --Henry Kissinger

It was in 1942, at the University of Chicago, that physicists working under Arthur Compton, Enrico Fermi, and others produced fission of the uranium isotope U-235. In other words: a nuclear chain reaction. With an ultra-secret $2.2 billion investment (the equivalent of nearly $30 billion today), the Manhattan Project began that same year.

Nearly 200,000 workers toiled in 37 installations in 19 states and Canada. On July 16, 1945, an atomic bomb was successfully detonated at Alamogordo, New Mexico after which Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut called it “the most important thing in history since the birth of Jesus Christ.”

While the long term effects of the Manhattan Project are still being calculated, the initial consequences of this Second Coming, of course, were felt by Japanese civilians. Sixty percent of Hiroshima, a city with a population of roughly 343,000, was destroyed on Aug. 6, 1945.

A Tokyo radio broadcast two days later described how “the impact of the bomb was so terrific that practically all living things, human and animal, were seared to death by the tremendous heat and pressure engendered by the blast.”

Tokyo radio went on to call Hiroshima a city with corpses “too numerous to be counted … literally seared to death.” It was impossible to “distinguish between men and women.”

The Associated Press carried the first eyewitness account: a Japanese solider who described the victims as “bloated and scorched -- such an awesome sight -- their legs and bodies stripped of clothes and burned with a huge blister.”

The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, has never been convincingly explained. “Was it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb?” asked Howard Zinn. “Were the dead and irradiated of Nagasaki victim of a scientific experiment?”

(If anyone is thinking right about now that those bombings were "necessary," feel free to contact me. I'll be happy to debunk that murderous myth for the thousandth time.)

The men that devised and carried out America's nuclear attacks on Japanese civilians are generally considered to be part of this country’s "greatest generation," yet, by any sane definition, what I just detailed is nuclear terrorism -- and it continues to this day.

Just DU It

“A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.” --Margaret Thatcher

Nuclear weapons may be a hot topic when discussing Iran or North Korea, but how many know that the United States regularly uses depleted uranium (DU) when waging its seemingly endless wars (and when training in places like Vieques, Puerto Rico, for such wars)?

DU is the byproduct of uranium enrichment, a waste product of the nuclear industry. As the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons explains: "Depleted uranium itself is a chemically toxic and radioactive compound, which is used in armor piercing munitions because of its very high density. It is 1.7 times denser than lead. This allows it to easily penetrate the steel armor of tanks and other vehicles when fired at high velocity."

"When fired," explains James Ridgeway in the Village Voice, "the uranium bursts into flame and all but liquefies, searing through steel armor like a white hot phosphorescent flare. The heat of the shell causes any diesel fuel vapors in the enemy tank to explode, and the crew inside is burned alive."

"Depleted uranium burns on contact," says Helen Caldicott, "creating tiny aerosolized particles less than five microns in diameter, small enough to be inhaled." These minute particles can travel "long distances when airborne," she adds.

John Gofman is a former associate director of Livermore National Laboratory, one of the scientists who worked on the atomic bomb, and co-discoverer of uranium-233. He knows a thing or three about radiation. "There is no safe dose or dose rate below which dangers disappear. No threshold-dose,'" Gofman says. "Serious, lethal effects from minimal radiation doses are not 'hypothetical,' 'just theoretical,' or 'imaginary.' They are real."

Also real: Seven decades of fallout from nuclear testing, the inherent dangers of nuclear power plants, the fact that nuclear power is not carbon-free, and U.S. plans for a new generation of nuclear-powered drones.

All of this radioactive reality comes courtesy not of Iran, Iraq, North Korea, or ISIS, but instead it's brought to you by none other than the Home of the Brave™

Know Yer History

“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.” --Carl Sagan

We're told we can't allow just anyone (except allies like Israel, of course) to acquire such lethal technology -- and we can't let anyone help arm men so evil they might, well, use nuclear weapons on civilians. We hear this while pretending that our tax dollars aren't funding the forces that regularly use nuclear weapons on civilians.

“Why did we drop (the bomb)?” pondered Studs Terkel in 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

“So little Harry could show Molotov and Stalin we’ve got the cards,” Terkel explained. “That was the phrase Truman used. We showed the goddamned Russians we’ve got something and they’d better behave themselves in Europe. That’s why it was dropped. The evidence is overwhelming. And yet you tell that to 99 percent of Americans and they’ll spit in your eye.”

Translation: The United States will gleefully use depleted uranium weapons on Iranian civilians in the name of stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons that they will allegedly use on (wait for it) civilians.

The cycle of violence that includes such deadly hypocrisy is a defining characteristic of our dominant culture. Thus, genuine and enduring social change will never happen "within the system" or from the top-down.

The path, as always, begins with us choosing to think for ourselves, us sharing our knowledge and skills, and us taking immediate and sustained action.

The "99 percent of Americans" Studs Terkel mentioned in 1995 still very much want to spit in someone's eye -- but this time around, we're aiming upward, at the top 1% and Obama himself.

ISIS destroys ancient sites near Mosul

Sandy English

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has reportedly used heavy equipment to demolish the site of the ancient Assyrian capital of Nimrud, 18 miles south of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. Reports describe ISIS militiamen trucking away statues and tablets from the site and the demolition of the area since last Thursday. The fundamentalist group considers pre-Islamic artifacts to be idolatrous and worthy of destruction.

Nimrud, built over 3,000 years ago, was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire after 883 BC. The Neo-Assyrian Empire, whose rulers spoke a language distantly related to Arabic and Hebrew, ruled Mesopotamia, the ancient name for Iraq and parts of Syria, from about 900 BC to 600 BC.

The site along the Tigris River contained monumental statues, frescos, temples, private dwellings and a ziggurat, the stepped pyramid characteristic of Mesopotamian civilizations. Nimrud boasted some of the most extensive carvings in ivory of any site in the world, most of which had been removed and placed in museums in Iraq and Britain.

A week earlier, the Islamic State released video showing men smashing statues with sledgehammers in the Nineveh Museum, about 20 miles from the site of Nimrud. Nineveh was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire after 705 BC.

In recent weeks, ISIS has also set off incendiary devices around Mosul Central Library. Estimates of the books and manuscripts destroyed range from 8,000 to 10,000. Bookshops on the central Al-Nujaifi Street have been burned, and ancient Christian monasteries have been vandalized.

Over the weekend, the Associated Press reported that residents near Hatra, 68 miles southwest of Mosul, saw ISIS fighters removing artifacts form the 2,000-year-old city. Hatra was built during the Seleucid Empire in the second or third century BC and changed hands over the next several hundred years, belonging in turn to the Parthians, the Romans and Araba, one of the first pre-Islamic Arab kingdoms.

Next to the tremendous loss of life, the destruction of the past is one of the most grievous products of the conflict that was initiated by the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. A whole people is being cut off from its historical roots and the study of the Mesopotamian past by historians has suffered a serious blow.

The plunder of Iraq began on April 10, 2003, when American occupation forces in Baghdad, in spite of warnings by archaeologists, allowed the National Museum to be looted of tens of thousands of historical artifacts of great artistic and scientific value. Only about half the artifacts have been recovered. The American military, in violation of cultural heritage regulations, fired on the museum.

In that first month of the occupation, dozens of other museums and libraries were burned or looted, including the Mosul Museum, where the 2,000-year-old statue of Parthian King Saqnatroq II was stolen.

In 2003-2004, American troops occupied the site of ancient Babylon, where they dug ditches across excavated areas, filling sandbags with ancient bricks labeled with cuneiform writing of the Mesopotamian civilization. The occupation forces built a heliport, and vibrations from American aircraft caused the bases of temples to collapse.

“The damage to Babylon is both extensive and irreparable,” Columbia University archeologist Zainab Bahrani said in 2007. “The occupation has resulted in a tremendous destruction of history, well beyond the museums and libraries that were looted and destroyed at the fall of Baghdad. At least seven historical sites have [like Babylon] been used by US and coalition forces since 2003, one of them being in the historical heart of Samarra, where the Askari shrine built by Nasr al Din Shah was bombed in 2006.”

The destruction and looting of Iraqi archaeological sites has been going on nonstop ever since. Iraq’s archeological sites and tells—unexcavated mounds of earth that cover formerly inhabited areas—have been dug up with earth-moving equipment and the spoils have been sold on the antiquities market for private gain.

In 2010, the New York Times noted the collusion of the police with antiquities thieves in southern Iraq, areas controlled by Shia sectarian militias. One of the great cultural crimes brought on by the American occupation of Iraq was the bombing of al-Mutinabbi Street, Baghdad’s historic street of booksellers, on March 5, 2007.

Both Nimrud and Nineveh were plundered several times during the American occupation. Before ISIS’s destruction last week, the advanced state of decay of the Nimrud site was causing archaeologists great concern.

The American and European media have expressed “shock” and “outrage” over ISIS’s cultural destruction. Irina Bokova, director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESO) said, “We cannot remain silent. The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime.”

The Iraqi government, somewhat more forthrightly, has used the ISIS vandalism to call for stepped-up intervention by the American and coalition air forces in Iraq.

But the corporate-controlled media, UNESCO, and the miserable servants of the US in the Iraq government conceal the essential causes and nature of this barbarism, and omit even naming the force that is chiefly responsible for the destruction of the past: American imperialism.

This exercise in unbridled hypocrisy assumes that the people of the world have forgotten the destruction of Iraqi, and now Syrian, heritage sites, museums and libraries as the result of 12 years of almost continuous imperialist military intervention in the region.

Over a million Iraqis have died as a result of the American invasion and occupation, and the sectarian fighting stoked up by US imperialism. Tens of millions remain internally displaced and mired in poverty. The utilities infrastructure and the Iraqi health care system have been destroyed and have yet to recover. The World Socialist Web Site has accurately defined this process as “sociocide,” “the deliberate and systematic murder of an entire society.”

The same is true for the devastation wrought by right-wing political movements such as ISIS, and the destruction of Iraq’s cultural heritage. Just as there was no presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq before the American invasion, there was no plunder of the country’s archaeology or cultural institutions.

Those above all responsible for the destruction of Nimrud, Nineveh and Hatra bear the names of Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell. One must add to this list Barack Obama, who continued the occupation for nearly three years and has now launched a new war in Iraq and Syria that can only lead to the further destruction of the region’s historical and cultural legacy, in addition to more civilian deaths and an increase in the number of refugees.

In a more direct sense, the vandalism of ISIS is an American production. In its eagerness to implement regime-change in Syria, the CIA, working with American allies among the Gulf monarchies, as well as Turkey and Jordan, armed the Islamists fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The American-stoked civil war in Syria led to the widespread destruction of antiquities.

Last year, the UN found that 24 archaeological sites have been completely destroyed, 189 severely or moderately damaged, and a further 77 possibly damaged. All six of Syria’s World Heritage sites have been damaged.

Egyptian junta begins executions of Islamists

Alex Lantier

With Saturday’s execution of an Islamist defendant, the first state killing of the hundreds of people sentenced to death in mass show trials following the July 2013 military coup, the US-backed Egyptian junta is stepping up its campaign of police-state terror against the people.

The junta chose to begin the executions with a defendant, Mahmoud Ramadan, who was personally involved in a gruesome crime: the killing of a young man in the Sidi Gaber district of Alexandria during mass protests against Egypt’s Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, in the run-up to the 2013 coup. It doubtless calculated that the selection of such a target would lend a veneer of legitimacy to its show trials and summary death sentences handed down over the last year.

Ramadan was one of a group of Islamist thugs who assaulted the teenager, who allegedly had thrown rocks at pro-Mursi protesters, and threw him off of a roof—a crime that was captured in a widely-viewed online video. In the video, Ramadan has a black flag inscribed with the Shahada, the Islamic profession of faith—a flag often associated with Al Qaeda.

However heinous the Sidi Gaber murder was, the Egyptian junta of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has no political standing to execute Ramadan. It is guilty of far greater crimes against the Egyptian masses, carried out with the support of Washington and the major European powers. After overseeing countless acts of violence against protesters under Mursi prior to the July 2013 coup, the army shot thousands of peaceful protesters opposing the coup in the streets of Cairo and other cities.

In killing Ramadan, the junta’s purpose is the same as in its murder in January of 18 protesters as they marched on the fourth anniversary of the toppling of US-backed Egyptian military dictator Hosni Mubarak. It aims to prevent a renewed revolutionary upsurge of the working class against the military through sheer police terror, making it clear that all political opponents face a potential death sentence.

Ramadan’s trial was a mockery of justice. According to court documents, Ramadan was found guilty of “killing a child by stabbing him and throwing him off the roof.” He was condemned to death in May 2014, a sentence subsequently upheld by Egypt’s Grand Mufti Shawqy Allam, as required by Egyptian law.

The ruling apparently relied on Ramadan’s televised confession following his arrest by the military in which he acknowledged his involvement in the crime. However, Ramadan later admitted only to stabbing the youth, denying that he had thrown him from the roof of the building. The online video does not show Ramadan throwing the youth off the roof.

Ramadan’s lawyers therefore requested that prosecutors provide evidence to prove their client’s involvement in the killing. The prosecutors and the judge simply ignored their requests.

Human rights groups denounced the trial. “The execution happened after an unfair trial where not all the [testimonies] were included, and where the conviction depended on very fragile evidence,” Amnesty International-Egypt researcher Mohamed Elmessiry said. “The execution should not have happened, and a retrial should have been ordered.”

The Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR) also condemned the ruling. “The court viewed fabricated evidence and refused to look into evidence that denies the charges from the defendants,” it declared.

A spokesman for Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) also condemned the execution. “There is no difference between a murderer with a rifle and a murder on a court bench,” said Mohamed Montaser, adding: “The death sentences are political.”

The counterrevolutionary terror of the Sisi junta relies above all on the support of Washington and its imperialist allies in Europe, who have maintained a deafening silence on Ramadan’s execution. They gave the green light for the mass death sentences last year, handed down in summary rulings issued after show trials of alleged members or supporters of Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB)--529 in March 2014, 683 in April, and 185 in December.

Though the mass death sentences fell primarily on a right-wing Islamist movement, their political target was the continuing opposition of the working class, the leading force in the revolutionary struggles that broke out four years ago in Tunisia and Egypt.

Between the July 2013 coup and the first mass death sentence in March 2014, the junta attacked waves of strikes and protests that culminated in a strike by workers at textile factories in Mahalla. The junta feared broad popular opposition to its dictatorial methods and free market measures, such as the slashing of food and fuel subsidies for working people as demanded by the International Monetary Fund and the imperialist powers. The subsidy cuts were ultimately introduced by Sisi last July.

Washington and its European allies piled on their support for the Sisi junta as it rained down social cuts and death sentences, rewarding Cairo with ever-closer ties and growing military supplies. The Obama administration delivered Apache attack helicopters to the junta after the March 2014 death sentences and greeted Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy when he visited Washington the day after the April death sentences.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair became a top advisor to the Sisi junta in July, and France’s Socialist Party government signed billions of dollars in weapons contracts with the junta in Paris shortly before the announcement of December’s mass death sentences.

The role of the Sisi junta as a counterrevolutionary agent of imperialism across the entire Middle East has emerged ever more clearly. Its targeting of Islamists to justify counterrevolutionary violence at home aligned it with the deepening imperialist intervention in the Middle East against the Islamic State (IS) militia and its regional proxies after IS victories in Iraq and Syria last spring.

The Sisi junta has been increasingly integrated into imperialism’s military operations against Islamist militias across the region. As Western military forces began deploying troops back to Iraq and bombing the country, Egypt bombed areas of Libya held by Islamist guerrillas since the 2011 NATO war that toppled the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The bloodletting across the region is dragging Egypt itself deeper into conflict, as the junta faces threats that Islamist groups or domestic militias will retaliate against its show trials with armed struggle or terrorist actions.

“The reply to Ramadan’s execution is an uprising and the [declaration] of jihad,” said Mohamed Galal, a leader in the Islamist Salafi Front.

Egyptian press outlets cited statements by political movements, such as the Popular Resistance in Giza and Revolutionary Punishment, vowing to avenge Ramadan’s execution.

EU Increasingly Abandons Obama On Ukraine

Eric Zuesse

As reported on Saturday March 7th by both German Economic News, and Spiegel magazine, the ongoing lies and arrogance from U.S. President Barack Obama's Administration regarding Ukraine and Russia have finally raised to the surface a long-mounting anger of Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Government. 

This is especially the case with Germany's Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who comes from Germany's Social Democratic Party, which is far less conservative (and far less anti-Russian) than the Christian Democratic Union Party, Chancellor Merkel's party. The CDU has traditionally been hostile toward Russia, but the SDP has instead favored an unprejudiced policy regarding Russia, after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of communism there.

Steinmeier has always been skeptical of Obama's intentions regarding Ukraine and Russia, but now it appears that even Merkel is veering away from the United States on these policies. 

“Resistance to the US strategy toward Russia is growing in the EU,” reports GDN, which names especially U.S. General Philip Breedlove, NATO's Supreme Commander, as the major source of this turn-about, because Breedlove has "exaggerated the military role of Russia in Ukraine.”

Spiegel provides the details on Breedlove, but especially blames Victoria Nuland, the Obama official who actually ran the February 2014 coup in Ukraine and who selected the person who would steer the new, post-coup, Ukrainian Government in the ways that President Obama wants.

Spiegel's headline is “Breedlove's Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine." GDN's is (as auto-translated by Google's Chrome browser) "Ukraine Policy: First open conflict between Germany and NATO.”

Spiegel notes that, after the second — which was the Merkel-Hollande — Ukrainian ceasefire was reached at Minsk in late February, Breedlove announced that "well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery” had just been sent to the conflict-region, Donbass, from Russia. "What is clear," Breedlove said, "is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day.” All of that was fictitious. 

Spiegel continues: "German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn't understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn't the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency,” heard Breedlove lie and were shocked by it.

But Spiegel then goes on to subhead “The 'Super Hawk',” when describing Victoria Nuland's role. Spiegel says there: 

"She and others would like to see Washington deliver arms to Ukraine and are supported by Congressional Republicans as well as many powerful Democrats. Indeed, US President Barack Obama seems almost isolated. He has thrown his support behind Merkel's diplomatic efforts for the time being, but he has also done little to quiet those who would seek to increase tensions with Russia and deliver weapons to Ukraine.”

Spiegel has always tried to portray U.S. President Obama as being trapped by conservatives, such as Breedlove and Nuland, who somehow became parts of his Administration and who are, supposedly, independent actors in the roles that they perform — as if they weren't instead his employees. For Spiegel, Nuland's (and they spell it out there, so I will here) "Fuck the EU” statement, was only speaking for herself, as if she weren't Obama's hire, though Spiegel does note there that, "Her husband, the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, is, after all, the originator of the idea that Americans are from Mars and Europeans, unwilling as they are to realize that true security depends on military power, are from Venus.” Precisely why Mr. Obama selected Dick Cheney's former chief foreign-policy advisor, Nuland, to become the person who would carry out his Administration's polices regarding Ukraine and Russia, the ever-‘tactful' Spiegel ignores. Instead, Spiegel goes on to say, "When it comes to the goal of delivering weapons to Ukraine, Nuland and Breedlove work hand-in-hand.”

Throughout, Spiegel ignores that Obama has been driving his entire Administration to marginalize, weaken, and crush Russia, and that this overriding goal of his foreign policies does not originate with his hires but with himself: he chooses these “Super Hawks” regarding Russia, because this is who he secretly is. When he plays the good cop in the good-cop bad-cop routine on Russia, it's an act, which is designed to fool the public. Obama bombed Libya because Muammar Gaddafi was friendly to Russia; he bombs Syria because Bashar al-Assad is friendly to Russia; he overthrew Ukraine's Government because Viktor Yanukovych was friendly to Russia; and he has been and is squeezing Iran because Iran is friendly to Russia. Israel is no different than the U.S.: it's rabidly anti-Russian (and most of the large political donations to there come from American billioinaires; Israel is America's 51st state, which has lots more than one-fifty-first of the power over the American Government — it's the most powerful of the 51 actual states, even though it has no fealty to the U.S. Constitution and no constitution of its own); and both the U.S. and Israel are allied with Saudi and other Arab royals because they're all anti-Russian. America's ally is Saudi Wahhabist jihadist Islam, not the EU. America created Al Qaeda, and ISIS. Everything else than the obsession to isolate and destroy Russia is just an act, for the American aristocracy (including the ones who own Israel) — and especially for all Republican politicians and for the top Democratic ones.

Maybe the EU will finally decide that they've had enough of it, and invite Russia to join with them, and will tell Ukraine that they're a bit too American for European tastes, after all: Europe has had enough experience with fascism and nazism, so that they don't want to invite it back in again.

But will Germany actually do this? Will France actually do this? Have they had enough of Sunni jihad, and of Christian nazism (both just aristocratic ploys), to decide that they want no part of either one? Maybe goodbye, U.S.; hello, Russia? What type of Europe would that be? Might it out-compete the U.S.? Would it be the best thing for Europeans?

That's the big strategic question in our time. And it's not America's to answer. Either Europe will go with democracy and peace and abandon NATO (i.e., abandon the U.S. military), or else it will go with nazism and war and abandon democracy (like the U.S. itself has done, especially in Ukraine).

Which will it be? Europe will need to choose between Russia and the United States. If it goes with the U.S., Europeans will become servants to America's aristocracy — to the people who are now actually running Ukraine. If it goes with Russia, then perhaps a United States of Europe will become possible so that no nation's aristocracy will have either the inclination or the ability to dictate to the governments of Europe.

Stay tuned. These are exciting times: the stakes for future history have never been higher.

It's not really Obama who is on the fence. It is Europe. And the decision will be for Europe's leaders — not for America's, nor for Russia's — to make.

They are in the driver's seat, for Europe's future — and for the entire world's.

Selma and the legacy of the US civil rights movement

Fred Mazelis & Joseph Kishore

Over the weekend, President Barack Obama headed an official 50th anniversary commemoration of “Bloody Sunday.” On that day, March 7, 1965, hundreds of civil rights marchers demanding the right to vote were set upon and beaten by police as they marched over the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma, Alabama, heading for the state capital, Montgomery.

Obama’s ceremony was a political farce, a state-sanctioned exercise aimed at sanctifying a corrupt apparatus with the blood of those who made great sacrifices—in many cases, the ultimate sacrifice—as part of the civil rights movement. While many thousands of ordinary people attended, the commemoration was presided over by representatives of the corporate and financial elite, including 100 members of Congress of both parties, as well as George W. Bush, who left office the most despised president in US history.

The event was designed to obscure the significance of Selma, the civil rights movement as a whole, and the trajectory of American politics during the five decades since.

The repression meted out on “Bloody Sunday” was one episode in a campaign of police violence aimed at crushing protests against the system of Jim Crow segregation in the American South. Southern blacks faced a raft of discriminatory measures, such as the poll tax, that effectively disenfranchised them.

While the specific aim of the civil rights movement was to end racial discrimination, it was part of a wave of social conflict that engulfed the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. It came only a few decades after the explosive battles out of which the industrial unions were formed in the 1930s. It was followed by powerful workers’ strikes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the urban rebellions against discrimination and poverty, and the mass protest movement against the Vietnam War.

American capitalism was in deep crisis. The underlying momentum for the civil rights movement was imparted by the immense social struggles of the working class. The masses of workers and youth, black and white, who participated in the civil rights struggle saw it as one component of a broader social movement, carried out in the face of bitter resistance from the ruling class and its political representatives.

The form the struggle took was complicated, however, by the abstention of the AFL-CIO trade unions, politically aligned with the Democratic Party and American imperialism. The Democrats, based at the time on an alliance between northern liberals and southern racists, worked for a protracted period to undermine all attempts to end legally enforced racial segregation. The unions avoided any actions that would disrupt their political alliance with the Democrats, including blocking efforts to organize black workers in the south.

In the face of the social upheavals of the period, however, the American ruling class reluctantly moved to grant legal reforms, including those enshrined in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson five months after Selma. A number of significant social reforms were also enacted during this period, including Medicare and other anti-poverty programs.

The reforms wrenched from the ruling class during the 1960s, however, marked the last gasp of liberal reformism in the United States. The American ruling class responded to the deepening crisis of the capitalist system with a two-pronged strategy. Beginning in the 1970s and escalating in the 1980s, it carried out an unrelenting assault on the working class. Jobs were destroyed, living standards were driven down, public services were slashed.

To better carry out this offensive, the ruling class worked deliberately to integrate a small minority of the African American population into positions of power and privilege. Particularly after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.—who, while remaining within the framework of the Democratic Party, had begun to focus his attention increasingly on the issues of social inequality and war—a section of the civil rights establishment was brought into the apparatus of state power. This included the likes of Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson and John Lewis, now a congressman, who was among the leaders of the 1965 Selma march.

During his 1968 election campaign, Richard Nixon called for giving a section of the African American population a “piece of the action.” As president, he initiated a program of “black capitalism.” He signed an executive order to form the Office of Minority Business Enterprise in March 1969, declaring that its aim was to “demonstrate that blacks, Mexican Americans, and others can participate in a growing economy on the basis of equal opportunity at the top of the ladder as well as on its lower rungs.”

Affirmative action, promoted by the Republican Nixon and then adopted as a central plank of the Democratic Party program, was aimed at bringing forward—in business, the military, local government, the police and academia—a privileged layer that would identify with American capitalism and facilitate the assault on the working class as a whole. Black nationalism became an ideological means for the restructuring of class rule on the basis of identity politics.

What have been the consequences of these policies? While the system of Jim Crow segregation was ended, the social position of the majority of black workers today is worse today than 50 years ago. According to official statistics, a third of African Americans live in poverty and hunger. Unemployment and underemployment are pervasive, in the northern states as much as, or even more, than in the south.

These conditions are fundamentally an expression not of racism, as claimed by the Democrats and their periphery, when they acknowledge the social crisis at all, but of class oppression.

This is evident in Selma itself. The town’s population has fallen sharply over the past 50 years, while median income is a shocking $22,418, one half of the already low figure for the state of Alabama as a whole. Even by the government’s own insultingly low threshold for poverty, 41.9 percent of Selma falls below it.

All of this is overseen by an African American mayor and police chief, and a City Council and school board that are overwhelmingly African American in composition.

Selma is hardly unique. The poverty rate in the city of Detroit, which has lost almost two-thirds of its population in recent decades, is even higher than in Selma. The city has been run by a predominantly African American political establishment for decades. A similar dynamic is repeated in city after city throughout the United States.

Obama, the first African American president, represents something of a culmination of these processes. The lies and demagogy in Obama’s Selma speech cannot conceal the huge class gulf between the government he heads and the self-sacrificing workers and youth who led the fight for civil rights. They fought for equality. He represents privilege.

In his remarks, Obama quoted the immortal words from the Declaration of Independence, “All men are created equal,” but he presides over a level of inequality previously unheard of in American history.

While Obama spoke of the need to “honor the courage of ordinary Americans willing to endure billy clubs and the chastening rod, tear gas and the trampling hoof,” he stands at the apex of a military-intelligence-police apparatus of immense brutality, which carries out a virtual reign of terror against working class youth of all races.

Just last week, the Obama administration announced its decision not to charge the police officer who killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri last August. Over the weekend, another unarmed young man was shot dead in cold blood by police in Madison, Wisconsin.

In his Selma speech, Obama noted the abysmal turnout of one-third or less of eligible voters in recent elections. “What’s our excuse today for not voting?” he asked.

He did not, and could not, answer, but there is a powerful “excuse.” Through bitter experience, millions of workers are beginning to conclude that there is no difference between the two big business parties, nor, for that matter, between the big business politicians of whatever skin color.

Perhaps the biggest lie of all is Obama’s claim, echoed by the many liberal and “left” organizations orbiting the Democratic Party, that the “unfinished business” of the civil rights movement is defined by race.

At the time of the Selma marches, systematic, state-sanctioned racism was a major factor of American political life. Even then, however, racism was subordinate to, and a product of, class rule. It was used as a means of dividing workers and preventing a unified struggle against the capitalist system.

In relation to the explosive class battles of the time, the trade unions, the civil rights establishment, the array of middle class organizations worked to obscure the fundamental class issues and maintain the political domination of the ruling class and its political representatives. The basic question then was the need to forge a revolutionary leadership to unite the working class against the root cause of repression, inequality and war—the capitalist system itself.

Fifty years later, the fundamental class questions are all the more evident. While racism still exists and plays a role in American life, it is now accompanied by the state-sanctioned identity politics that serve a similar purpose: to pit workers against one another and block a united movement of the working class. As we enter a new period of working class upsurge, the burning question remains that of leadership. The “unfinished business” of Selma is the building of the revolutionary leadership of the working class needed to carry out the socialist reorganization of society.

Dimapur Lynching: Mirror to Nagaland’s Security Scene

Wasbir Hussain

In a blatant defiance of the country’s justice system and the rule of law, a 5000-strong mob stormed the central jail in Nagaland’s commercial hub, Dimapur, on 05 March, dragged a rape accused out, paraded him through the streets after stripping him naked, and then watched him succumb to a fatal assault by the frenzied men. Not satisfied with his death, the attackers hanged the body on the clock tower in the middle of the dusty, garbage-filled town, with many clicking photographs of the macabre scene on their mobile phones. For a long time, one had heard of the murderous ISIS carrying out such merciless assaults or the Taliban meting out instant justice.

The charge against Syed Farid Khan alias Sarifuddin (27), who hailed from Bosla village, under Badarpur police station in southern Assam’s Karimganj district, was that he had raped a 20-year old Naga girl at a hotel in Dimapur on 23 February. Following a complaint, the police arrested Farid, who ran a small automobile shop in the town, the next day. A local court forwarded him to judicial custody. It was from the supposedly high-security Dimapur Central Jail, where the accused was lodged, that the mob extricated him after breaking open two of the prison gates. The jail security remained a mute witness to the rampage. Farid’s family have since claimed he was innocent and that the alleged ‘victim’, the 20-year-old girl who was known to the family, was blackmailing him with a demand of Rs 200,000.

The entire episode has once again exposed the poor governance and extremely poor law and order situation in Nagaland. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has called for a report and the Nagaland Government has instituted a probe, but the investigations must go beyond where the police or the local Dimapur district administration had erred. It is a fact that tension had been mounting since 24 February, the day Farid was arrested on the basis of the rape charge. Despite this, no additional precautionary measure was taken by the administration or the jail authorities to boost security around the prison complex. A local student group had even held a rally on the morning of the jail break-in to seek justice following the alleged rape. Even this did not move or shake the Dimapur administration. It is fine that the moribund Nagaland government, currently facing a political tug of war for chief ministership, has since placed the Dimapur Deputy Commissioner, the Superintendent of Police and the jailor on suspension, but the probe needs to examine whether more serious factors were behind the jail break by the mob and whether a section of the jail staff, as suspected, are hand-in-glove with the protestors.

One must factor in the fact that Dimapur is virtually Nagaland’s crime capital. Various factions of the rebel NSCN (National Socialist Council of Nagaland) and other Naga insurgent groups raise ‘annual tax’ from traders and businessmen who operate in Dimapur. This is an open secret. Nagaland’s new Governor, PB Acharya, told this writer in the last fortnight, although in a different context, that the daily turnover in Dimapur is to the tune of Rs 500 crore. One must also note that the headquarters of the Isak-Muivah faction of the NSCN or the NSCN-IM, called Camp Hebron, is on the outskirts of Dimapur. The NSCN-IM’s writ runs large in Dimapur. It is another matter that the rebel group has not been able to clinch an agreement with New Delhi after 18 years of the so-called ‘peace negotiations’.

The NSCN-IM may not have triggered the mob upsurge that led to the jail break-in but its influence in the area may be the prime reason for the emergence of other rag-tag outfits around Dimapur. A couple of months ago, a new group called ‘Survival Nagaland’ has come up. Largely comprising Sema Nagas, the group has been going around preparing lists of people from outside Nagaland working or carrying out business in Dimapur. According to officials in the Union Home Ministry, which is aware of the development, members of the group have been issuing ‘residence certificates’ to such people for a fee. The MHA has since provided the Nagaland Government with the details of this group called ‘Survival Nagaland’ as well as the names of around four of its key leaders. It is important to crackdown on such loose groups because they help spread and channelise xenophobia in volatile areas like Dimapur.

The Centre’s inability to clinch an acceptable Naga peace agreement even after engaging in talks with the NSCN-IM for 18 years has added to the deteriorating situation in Nagaland. Therefore, it is heartening to find Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling for fixing a time frame by which to end peace talks with all insurgent groups, and to not engage in such talks with new groups or factions. Rampant corruption is another major reason for lawlessness and lack of public order in Nagaland, particularly in Dimapur. As Nagaland Governor Acharya said during the conversation with this writer, “There is king size corruption in the Northeast.” Unless measures are initiated to tackle all these issues holistically, the problems in Nagaland, too, would turn king size, so much so that it may veer out of control.

Already, groups and individuals in Assam are engaged in protests and blocking roads leading to Nagaland. With tension along the Assam-Nagaland border over disputed territory becoming a constant phenomenon, the situation needs a holistic management. Another dimension to the ‘insider-outsider’ issue in Nagaland is the general perception that all Bengali-speaking Muslims are illegal ‘Bangladeshi’ migrants. Even Farid, who was lynched, was dubbed a ‘Bangladeshi’, which is far from the truth. His father had served in the Indian Army and currently, two of his brothers are with the Army. The question is simple: the Nagas must realise that Nagaland is a part of India and just as the Nagas are free to move about or work in any part of India, those from outside Nagaland, too, are free to do the same in Nagaland. Moreover, Nagaland has the Inner Liner Permit system that requires a non-Naga to obtain such a document to enter the state. That itself is a provision to restrict the entry of non-Nagas to Nagaland. Of course, Dimapur is outside the purview of the ILP and, if necessary, the Nagas may persuade their Government to extend it to Dimapur as well to check the entry of new people in search of work. The Centre must examine all these aspects to restore a semblance of order in a chaotic and virtually unadministered town like Dimapur.

Women's Empowerment: Not A Copy Paste Model

Fayaz Ahmad

International Women’s Day (IWD), is celebrated on Eighth of March every year. Every year IWD (March, 8), is specified Official United Nations (UN) theme. This year the theme is “Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity.

Women’s dis-empowerment is conceived as root cause of all miseries associated with the routine life of women like, their missing and disappearance at structural level of society,dis-empowerment,and gender bias and gender discrimination. Gender bias and discrimination, women dis-empowerment is not peculiar to any country or region but is a global phenomenon. However, the form and nature of women dis-empowerment, gender bias and discrimination varies in both space and time. According to Washington D.C, “social and legal discrimination against women remains a major obstacle to economic development in emerging and developing countries”. India has a worst record in gender equality and women empowerment. India has been ranked at 115 on women empowerment scale, as per global level survey which was carried out in 128 countries.

The birth of a daughter is still considered as a curse in Indian context. Female feticide and infanticide, rapes, acid attacks, eve teasing, sexual harassment, insult to modesty, abduction, dowry deaths, human trafficking, forced prostitution and honour killing are catalysts for women dis-empowerment in Indian context. Every year, approximately 1,000 honour killings take place in India.According to a report published in The Hindu( National daily) , India loss three million girls in infanticide in 2001 to 2011! Studies have pointed out that female children are not at risk at the time of birth but during infancy also. Women in India are held to be weak- minded and unworthy, considered root of all evils.In 2012, official statistics figured 8,233 dowry deaths and 38,262, abductions. Matson (1981), identified five factors for low status of women in India and also for female seclusion in Indian culture. These are: Hindu Religion, caste system, joint family system, Islamic rule and British colonialism. At the movement when I am pressing the buttons of the key board of my laptop, news is flashing on television screens that a Dalit girl has been set on fire for pursuing education. This is not something new and rare but a workaday in the country, as per National Crime Records Bureau of India, crime against women is increasing every year, and a crime against women is committed every three minutes. The phenomenon is counted as very damaging and defamatory not for women only but for country as whole.

Women empowerment is regarded a broad spectrum remedy for women’s dis-empowerment, gender bias and discrimination and other forms of crimes. William Petrocelli (2014), argues that women empowerment is not only for women but men can also benefit from it. There are many ways and means identified by scholars for women empowerment in India. Observations and interactions reveal that western and European-societies are gazed at ideal types and model for the women empowerment in India. However,they (who gaze at west) are misled and ill informed about the women empowerment and status in developed countries especially in west and Europe. Looking women half naked in pubs and clubs, colleges and universities, bars and restaurants…. often gives them wrong impression that women in west are free and empowered. There is a lot which is hidden and seemingly unseen. The development of capitalism, modernization, globalization and liberalization has crept new forms of social inequalities, discrimination and gender bias in society especially in west. The apt ideology of “equality”, “liberty’, “freedom”, “education”, “empowerment” and what not is used for perpetuating the silent, subtle suppression. The new forms of women powerlessness and impotency are even dangerous than traditional forms. Women in the west has been objectified, their bodies and soul are now not in their control. Melisa Sue, Ouagadougou and Fasco,maintain that women have no right over their own bodies. The highest gender pay gap, 29.9% has been observed in the Europe. More women in Europe and West are infected with HIV than men. In Germany it has been found that women workers become victim of sexual harassment and violence at work places.America, which is seen an ideal modelin democracy, justice, equality and what not, ranks 81st in the world with respect women representation in government. Women lead 40 percent of small business in United States but get less than 10 percent of venture capital funding, 1 in 4 college women face attempted and complete rape.Thousands of untested rape kits are said to be languishing in police departments across the US, allowing thousands of sexual predators to go unprosecuted. By copy pasting Western and European model of “empowerment” we are just becoming what Herbert Marcuse, call one dimensional men/women where only model of empowerment, democracy,modernization, educationist observable and apparent to us. That is developed countries model, especially western and European.

There is no denying that the condition of women in West is relatively better than India but not so excellent that we will blindly follow it and become one dimensional. Before following or adopting any model of women empowerment we must understand its positives and negatives as well. The only model of women empowerment which seems suitable to any context is sociological model of development. Which aims inclusive empowerment, in social sphere, economic sphere, and political sphere, moreover empowerment associated with critical thinking and consciousness raising.

Coalition And Controversies

Abdul Majid Zargar

So the BJP-PDP coalition is a fait-accompli now. Mufti Mohammad Syed has assumed the reins of coalition Govt. on the assurance of a full six year term as Chief Minster. The oath of office was administered by Governor Vohra on 1st March 2015. A galaxy of leaders from BJP were present on the dias. Congress & NC boycotted the function.

Politics make strange bedfellows, as we all know, and when bedfellows are diametrically opposite partners like PDP & BJP trying to snuggle under the covers together, the whole scenario looks weirdly .

The installation of the Govt., since the very first moment, has not been without the share of controversies. The first major controversy is about the oath taken by Chief Minster. While the format of oath prescribed in fifth schedule to the constitution of J&K requires every Minster for State to swear for bearing true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the State as by law established, Mufti swore by bearing true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India. Whether it was a verbal disorder or word “India” flows naturally from his mouth instead of “State” remains to be seen. There could be another explanation, though far-fetched, that the faux-pas was deliberately committed for a future strategy. Suppose if tomorrow Mufti becomes a willing party to BJP’s sinister game plan of subverting the State Constitution outside the legal ambit (Which India usually does in Kashmir), then Mufti can escape the charges of treason by pleading that he was not bound to uphold the State Constitution as had not sworn by the same. The oath contains another error in as much as it has been taken as “Minster of State” and not as “Minster for State” which Mufti was required to do. In any case there is a grave lacuna in his oath and he may have to take a fresh one to rectify the constitutional & legal infirmity in his status. Remember Barrack Obama had to take a fresh oath when he failed to mention his full name, required by American laws, in his oath as first President.

The second controversy generated by Mufti immediately after taking the invalid oath was his affording credit to Pakistan & pro-resistance camp for smooth conduct of elections in the State. This left the BJP leaders red faced and a ruckus in Parliament which forced Prime Minister Modi and his Home Minster to disown the statement. Mufti’s bête-noire at the moment & leader of opposition in Rajya Saba Ghulam Nabi Azad did his best to undermine his one time close associate Mufti’s position in the centre but BJP handled the position deftly. Its spokesmen exercised utmost restraint in-spite of grave provocations from Arnob Goswami likes of jingoistic media-men. It must, however be said that this was a master stroke statement from Mufti to further divide the Hurriyat, the way he did it in 2002. His purpose was to make various factions of Hurriyat suspicious of each other for lending covert support to Mufti’s election campaign leading to a further bad blood among them. His job had already been made easy by Mr. Bhatt of Hurriyat (M) visiting his Srinagar residence earlier under suspicious circumstances.

The third major controversy is generated by former pro-resistance turned Pro-India leader Sajjad Gani Lone’s refusal to take charge of the Ministry allotted to him out of BJP quota. Peeved at the insignificant portfolio allotted to him, Lone did not attend and has not, till the writing of this article, attended his Ministerial office. He left the winter capital fuming & seething and in a subsequent interview to a news channel has complained of spending huge money on elections. By implication, he was prevented to recover back this money by being allotted an insignificant portfolio. This statement from a close ally of BJP speaks volumes about the party which has mainly come to power on anti-corruption plank.

Let us wait & watch how these controversies are going to affect the coalition of aliens in coming days.

India's Daughter: Dealing With Reality

Shalu Nigam

The documentary `India's Daughter' made by Leslee Udwin about the rape that shook Delhi in December 2012 raised a lot of debate, outrage and furor in Parliament, in media and in general. The police filed a FIR and the broadcast of this documentary is banned in India. Statements were issued by groups in favour [1] and against [2] such ban. However, what is being overlooked amidst this debate is the reality of women's lives in India. A woman in India faces this patriarchal misogynist attitude every day – at home and at public spaces, through her entire life in different ways. The documentary pointed to this regressive attitude and subjugating culture that needs to be addressed. Prohibiting the documentary is futile as shying away from such questions that pertains to reality of women's live or living in denial that misogyny exists or closing eyes to realities is hardly helpful to bring about social transformation. The need is to strike at the roots and confront the sexist and patriarchal violent culture in a mature manner.

What does the documentary depicts?

The film uncovers the ugly reality of rape that shook the country in December 2012. The maker of the documentary interviewed the rapists, the defense lawyers, the parents of deceased woman Nirbhaya who was raped brutally, her tutor, the doctor who were involved in providing treatment to the woman, the psychiatrist, the gynecologist, the families of the rapists, the police, bystanders, Mrs Shiela Dixit, the members of Justice Verma Committee formulated immediately after the incident took place and also explanations given by a Professor from Oxford besides showing the anger of the protestors and the police response to such protest held after the rape. 

The film sketches the childhood of Nirbhaya, her dreams, her aspirations, her happiness, her brutal, heinous rape, her death and what happened after that. It also outlines the life of the rapists – the poverty situation they live in, their inhuman conditions and their lifestyle besides their horrific mental state.  There are progressive ideas expressed by her parents and Verma Committees' Members and there are repressive voices of the rapist and of the defense lawyers. Though it does not talk about the other many rape cases, nuances of issues relating to rape in India, evolution and implementation of the rape law, efforts made by the women's movement in India in seeking amendments within the law or highlighting the cause of sexual assault or statistics pertaining to rape cases yet the documentary depicted the reality of the rape, power, control, male domination, violence and what happened after that without sensationalizing it or glorifying the rapist. Rather it exposed the chauvinistic mindset – the attitude of rapists and the misogynist approach of defense lawyers. The film depicts `what does it means to be a woman' in a patriarchal society [3] . It clearly shows that rape is not an aberration rather it is a malaise that is deeply entrenched. More than reflecting on the Western views of Indian situation, the issues raised in the film compel the citizens of the country to think and consider if what is happening is really right or not and how this can be prevented.

What does the Documentary Convey?

The documentary conveys the significant message that the rape culture exists in the country; that in spite of rhetoric of equality and justice women are treated as chattels in the society.  This is depicted by the statement made by the defense lawyer as well as the rapist interviewed in the 59 minutes film. The articulation by the accused or the defense lawyers is something that has been on and off repeated by men and even some women in various ways at different levels and at diverse forums. The movie reflects on the sexist attitude that prevails in the Indian society that blames women for any violence; it attempts to point out at the collective psyche and approach towards violence against women. It also pointed out the hope to bring about change as expressed by Nirbhaya's parents. 

The documentary reveals the mind of rapists as well as the mind of `educated' men in the country. Though it does not show the announcements made by the religious or political leaders about their attitude relating to rape, it provides an insight into the psyche of the culprits as to why they think they have the right to rape a woman. It pointed out the reasons as to why rapists are not remorseful even if they know they are jailed and penalized for doing wrong. The documentary shed light on the rape crisis existing in the country. Such kind of documentaries may be used as a material to explain men and women relationship in the country as it demonstrates the manner in which the sexist mindset operates. It does not defame the country rather it highlights the fact that much more needs to be done to fulfill the goals of constitutional equality and justice. The film unmasks the illusions and tears apart the fabric of morality that has been used for ages to cover the core of violence against women. The message is clear and loud – forbid the mindset that promotes rape culture.

Does the content of documentary obstruct justice or prevent law?

Rape or discussions around it relating to prevalent patriarchal culture is not something new that has been highlighted for the first time in this country. Furious debates have taken place earlier after the Mathura's rape case in 80s, Bhanwari Devi's rape case, Rameeza Bi's case, Manorama's case, Aruna Shaunbaug's case, Soni Suri, and many other cases. In Mathura's rape case the open letter issued by the four eminent people which later resulted in the amendments in the rape law in 1983. In Bhanwari Devi's rape case the PIL was filed by the organization Vishakha when the criminal trial of Bhanwari Devi was pending before the lower courts. Similarly, in the aftermath of Nirbhaya case, Justice Verma Committee was constituted and on the recommendations made by the Committee the amendments were made to the criminal law dealing with rape. When this Justice Verma Committee was constituted, the matter of Nirbhaya rape was pending, when the protests took place after the incident, the Nirbhaya's matter was subjudiced and nothing has made a dent on the legal process. Currently, the matter relating to the appeal against the death penalty to the rapists in Nirbhaya's case is pending before the Supreme Court of India. However, it may be pointed out that the judiciary is mature enough to handle the case without biases and prejudices as it has been done earlier in this case and in other matters too.

Besides, women are being raped everyday in every nook and corner of India. Some of these cases came to limelight and there are many others which could not receive attention or are never reported. Also, there are high profile cases or otherwise cases which are tried by the court where evidences have been misplaced, two fingers test is used to monitor the virginity of women, police fails its duties in registering the cases or conducting investigations, witnesses have been threatened and trials have been hijacked and even courts have expressed their anguish over such cases as justice has been obstructed due to various reasons. The need therefore is to revamp the criminal justice system.

Further, the analysis of the documentary also indicates that struggle to justice is long. Penalizing the rapists in the Nirbhaya's case will not end the issue of sexual violence; the need is to look beyond a particular case into the perverted mindset and an ugly deeply entrenched thought process that legitimize such barbaric behavior towards women. It points out the gravity of the situation and indicates that banning a documentary will not end rape.

What is Outrageous and Should be Debated and Banned?

The attitude that `women are like flowers and men are like thrones' or `women are like diamonds, or food' is outrageous and needs to be debated;

the statement that `she should not have fought back' is despicable and should be disallowed;

the declaration that` our culture is best but there is no place for women' is disgraceful that needs to be questioned;

the position that women should do household work only is problematic and should be changed;

the chauvinistic depiction of masculinity is appalling which should be banned,

 the attitude that `the girl asks for it or deserves it' needs to be altered,

the regressive attitudes pertaining to morality, decency and character of women as daughters, wives or mothers need to be challenged,

the notion that women are the bearer of honour needs to be discussed;

the concept that women is to be blamed for all that happens with her needs to be stopped;

the approach that blame the women and hold them responsible needs to be debated;

the idea of `teaching her a lesson' needs to questioned and should be prevented;

shoving the larger socio-political issue behind the curtains of safety and protection of women needs to outlawed;

 the culture of impunity is harmful which should be forbidden;

the impression that `others are doing it so why can't we' needs to be prohibited;

the norms that legitimize men's right over women need to be raised and banned;

the mores that women should confirm to the diktats pronounced by men need to be looked into;

the misogynist statements given by several leaders, religious as well as political, and played on media repeatedly need to be stopped;

the culture that treats women as commodity in the guise of being treated as goddesses needs to be changed;

the society where women have no rights need to be modified and checked;

the need is to revamp the criminal justice system which fails to register many cases or could not provide speedy and fair justice in those cases which are reported;

the approach of banning the freedom of expression in itself is dreadful that needs to be transformed;

and above all rape itself should be banned; stop the rapists from raping anyone.

What can be done further?

Instead of banning the film and covering the issue of rape with the layers of legality or morality or wrapping it with the sugary coat of tolerance is not going to help. The acceptance of the fact that rape happens and needs to be stopped may facilitate the process of justice. The need is to address the structural causes of increasing violence against women. The need is to accept the reality instead of shying away from it or living in denial. Pushing the conversation about rape and related mindset under the carpet is not going to bring any change. Open discussions and healthy debates are required. There is a need to change the culture which blames women for violence – women's dress, her mobility, her action, a mindset that held women responsible to `protect' herself.  Symptomatic solutions which `protect' women like women's safety apps, restricting women's mobility, CCTV cameras, self defence classes for women, pepper spray are not going to help. Essential is to educate men and women against patriarchal culture and shame the chauvinistic exhibition of manliness and masculinity. The need is to involve men, shaming the culprits, understanding the patriarchal attitude and addressing the misogynistic culture in everyday life. Banning the documentary is no solution; the answer is to ban the rape culture which requires political will and commitment. Such kind of informative, educative media is a tool to understand the attitude of violence; it is an instrument to patriarchal and sexist approach and a mechanism to discuss debate and brainstorm the culture of violence against women.