Sparse Employment, High Poverty

"Today, First Nations stand in solidarity with Indigenous peoples everywhere to revitalize and restore our collective rights as peoples and to support one another in that goal."
"This is a day for all governments to recommit to work with us to fully implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Declaration affirms Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination and sets out minimum standards for their survival, dignity and well-being." "Implementing the UN Declaration will promote peace and help close the gap in the quality of life between First Nations and Canadians. Canada has stated its unqualified support for the UN Declaration and, as we approach the 10^th anniversary of its adoption by the UN General Assembly, it is time to work together to give life to the Declaration in Canada and around the world."
AFN [Assembly of First Nations] National Chief Perry Bellegarde. 

Last week, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde stated that a meeting is due between Indigenous, federal and provincial leaders to work on closing the economic gap among First Nations, to more closely resemble income levels of the wider Canadian population. This, when billions of dollars are earmarked and dispatched annually in support of First Nations aboriginal reserves. The AFN insists that First Nations tribes continue to live in reflection of their heritage, on often-remote areas of the country difficult to access.

Most people who chose to live away from urban centres on properties where services are absent are on their own; they must themselves provide potable water from wells for themselves, and access to medical care is fairly inconvenient, necessitating long drives to reach hospital and medical centres. Schooling for children can also be a problem, where children are bused to local schools in nearby towns taking hours of commuting time out of peoples' daily schedules. Those committed to living rurally and remote accept these conditions as those they've chosen.

The seasonal inaccessibility to many remotely-located reserves ensures that commodities and food ae expensive, and access to potable water often a problem, as is reaction to unstable or seasonal weather conditions leading to wildfires or to flooding conditions. On reserves, residents do not own their homes and as a result make no effort at upkeep. On reserves there is scant employment available other than what the band council doles out, usually to their own family members. This is not living traditionally, this is living in hazardous conditions where poverty is almost guaranteed.

Conditions are further exacerbated by the social conditions that prevail, with alcoholism and drug dependency common problems. As are poor parenting skills and interests in the welfare of children. Leading to a good degree of social dysfunction, made far worse by epidemics of suicide, particularly among children. Violence perpetrated by males against female members of tribal communities is common and frequent. And each time a reserve is faced with emergencies they seem incapable or unwilling or both to execute measures to meet those emergencies, instead calling upon government to solve those social ills.

Complaints are plentiful about unkempt homes requiring replacement because they've never been cared for, about a lack of psychological counselling and medical facilities close at hand, and the quality of the schools to which aboriginal youth are expected to attend until they reach higher grade levels and must go elsewhere to continue their educations. Health is impacted, both physical and mental, but persuading health and medical professionals to commit to living in hardship posts that remote communities represent is difficult.

Now Statistics Canada has released a report on income data retrieved from the 2016 census revealing that four of every five Aboriginal reserves report median incomes falling below the poverty line. A review of census figures for Indigenous communities reveal 81 percent of reserves had median incomes below the low-income measure, considered to be $22,133 for one person. Of the 367 reserves where data was available, 297 communities fell below the low-income measure, and 70 registered median incomes above the de facto poverty line.

Median total incomes below $10,000 were reported for 27 communities, registering at the lowest end. Oddly, women had marginally better incomes than their male counterparts with about 22 percent of female incomes on-reserve over the low-income measure, as opposed to about 19 percent for males. Indigenous peoples living on reserve reflect a significantly younger population than the general community in Canada reflecting a fertility rate exceeding non-Indigenous counterparts. The bad news is a shorter life expectancy and lower incomes.

A mere 26 of the 503 reserves on the Prairies had higher median household incomes where some reported household incomes of up to $70,336, reflecting employment, investments and government benefits, ranging from $13,168 in Manitoba to $114,381 in James Bay, Quebec.

Statistics Canada released another installment of census data Wednesday, this time with a focus on poverty and income. Still from Video

Labels: Canada, Child Welfare, Crime, Economy, Education, Employment, First Nations, Health, Indigenous, Poverty

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, October 12, 2017

Turkey "Improves" Education by Burak Bekdil December 11, 2014 at 5:00 am http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4947/turkey-improves-education Members of Turkey's National Education Council last week did not discuss Turkey's extremely poor PISA rankings, or improving the curriculum in mathematics and science. Instead, a pro-government teachers' union proposed making religion a required course in pre-school. Turkey's response to the European Court of Human Rights, which vehemently told Ankara to scrap all compulsory religious education, was to introduce Islamic teaching to six-year-olds. Another casualty was the "human rights and democracy" classes that Turkish fourth-grade students must take. Systematic Islamist indoctrination in Turkey is becoming less stealthy. Education is the new battlefield. Turkey's government is pushing to advance its declared policy goal of "raising devout (Muslim) generations." In 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] released the findings of its prestigious education report, the "Program for International Student Assessment" [PISA], which experts view as the world's most comprehensive education survey. PISA assesses the extent to which 15-year-old pupils from 65 OECD member nations have acquired key knowledge and skills in mathematics, reading, science and problem-solving (the PISA survey covers 510,000 students worldwide.) In their overall performance, Turkish pupils ranked poorly: 44th out of 65 countries. Ironically, Turkey and six other predominantly Muslim member nations of the OECD all ranked in the bottom slice of the ranking: the United Arab Emirates, 48th; Malaysia, 52nd; Tunisia, 60th; Jordan 61st; Qatar, 63rd; and Indonesia, 64th. Turkish universities did not perform any better. The acclaimed Quacquarelli Symonds [QS], a higher education surveyor, ranked only three Turkish universities in the world's top 500 universities list. According to the findings of QS, only nine Turkish universities (out of 175 Turkish universities) were listed among the world's 800 best universities -- and the best ones appear in the modest 430-460 bracket. Such alarming data did not prompt Turkish leaders to reform the education system. For them, education simply meant ideological indoctrination. When scientific research told them that there was something seriously wrong with education in Turkey, the government amended laws and regulations to allow the Islamic headscarf on campus; then paved the way for fifth-grade students to attend the religious "imam" schools. In 2001, Turkey had 71,000 students enrolled in the imam schools. Now, there are 670,000. Turkey's President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan participates in a celebration marking the 100th anniversary of the religious "Imam Hatip" school system, January 2014. (Image source: Türkiye Gazetesi) It even surfaced at the beginning of the semester in September that the Education Ministry had enrolled a few Jewish and Christian students at imam schools. A ministry official later said that this was a "technical error." If newspapers had not unveiled the scandal, Turkey would be the world's first country to have Jewish and Christian imam students. Last year, the Turkish government made it compulsory for students at fourth grade and higher to take up "religion" classes. In religion classes, the Turkish curriculum almost exclusively teaches the virtues of Sunni Islam, but Alevi or non-Muslim students also must attend these classes. After an appeal by an Alevi family, the European Court of Human Rights [ECHR] recently concluded that the Turkish education system was "still inadequately equipped to ensure respect for parents' convictions" and violated the "right to education." Europe's top court ruled: "Turkey has to remedy the situation without delay, in particular by introducing a system whereby pupils could be exempted from religion and ethics classes without their parents having to disclose their own religious or philosophical convictions." Such was the general set-up when Turkey's National Education Council met last week to debate a better education system and make recommendations to the government. At the meeting, the Council's members did not discuss Turkey's extremely poor PISA rankings. Nor did they discuss improving the curriculum in mathematics and science. Instead, a pro-government teachers' union proposed making religion a required course at pre-school. The union demanded that Turkish children aged three to six should be taught Islam. Fortunately, that proposal did not win a go-ahead from the Council but religion (read: Sunni Islam) classes were made compulsory for first, second and third grade students (aged six to eight). Turkey's response to the ECHR, which vehemently told Ankara to scrap all compulsory religious education, was to introduce Islamic teachings to six-year-olds. The Council agreed to recommend that the government scrap "alcoholic beverages service and cocktail preparation" courses at the vocational tourism management schools. The Council ruled that young students should not get acquainted, even for schooling purposes, with alcohol. A new generation of professional Turkish bartenders at five-star hotels will emerge and offer their customers nice non-alcoholic cocktails. Another casualty was the "human rights and democracy" classes that Turkish fourth-grade students must take. That is not a useful subject, the Council members apparently think. A controversial recommendation was to make Ottoman Turkish a required course at all Turkish schools. After hot debate, the Council recommended to make the Ottoman language a required course at imam schools and an elective course at other schools. Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, abolished the Ottoman language and script in 1928 because only a few Turks, apart from the Ottoman royals and bureaucrats, could speak, read or write that language, a bizarre blend of Turkish with Arabic and Persian. Eighty-six years later, neo-Ottoman Turks wish to revive it in a futile bid: No one knows how many Turks can today speak and teach Ottoman Turkish; but everyone knows there are not more than a few. This is Turkey's return from modern schooling to the times of Ottoman madrassa. Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Labels: Child Welfare, Education, Islam, Social-Cultural Deviations, Turkey

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, December 13, 2014

World Aids Day, Uganda

"Infections are going back up again, and we need to get back to the drawing board as young people and see what relevant techniques we could use if we are going to a school outreach."
"That's the reason why we are working with [reformed thief, onetime drug peddler] Hood Katende. If you don't integrate music, if you don't integrate drama into the message you are trying to carry out forward, some people may not realize how grave the situation is."
Lawrence Mukiibi, youth co-ordinator, Treasure Life Center, Kampala, Uganda

"At night you find boys waiting for girls to rape, and I go to them and I try to talk to them not to do it. I used to be with them, smoking weed the whole day in the ghetto and moving around at night."
"I was a member of a gang, but now they see that I have changed day and night."
Hood Katende, 26, anti-AIDS activist

According to Ugandan researchers, the AIDS virus spread has been hastened among married couples in polite society, in response to the secret lovers or mistresses that Ugandan man take on, a popular 'cultural' phenonemon named "side dishes" where the mistresses are poor teenagers preyed upon by wealthy, often HIV-infected men. Such predators infect not only their own wives, but unsuspecting and helpless teens.

Each week HIV transmission infects over 500 young women between the ages of 15 and 24, according to the Uganda AIDS Commission. The number of Ugandans infected with HIV rose from 1.3 million to 1.6 over the six-year period from 2007 to 2013. This, according to the country's Ministry of Health. Although they have the statistics the government does not appear to have the will to mount an anti-AIDS campaign.

The prevalence rate in the country of HIV infection stands a 7.4 percent, an increase from around six percent a decade earlier. Activists want Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's government to resurrect the old prevention campaigns from the 1990s that made Uganda a global leader in the control and spread of HIV.

The spiralling increase of HIV infection is hugely troubling to the Western donors contributing to the cost of IDS treatment for poor Ugandans, ensuring that a quarter-million Ugandans have access to AIDS treatment. Impoverished girls in Kampala's Kamwokya slum are accustomed to desperately scavenging for food and clothing. Many of those girls have been repeatedly raped.

Hood Katenda watched recently as a dozen children in a dance troupe perfected their hip gyrations, then accompanied him as dancers to take part in an AIDS awareness performance they plan to take across the east of the country. As a "change agent", Hood Katenda is paid to perform at UN children's agency functions, events where singers perform rap encouraging voluntary HIV testing.

Activists with street credibility and a compelling life story of their own are used to reach out to impressionable young people in communities where violent crime, poverty and sex attacks against girls and young women are prevalent, through the production of "edutainment"; public activities such meant to entertain while educating about reproductive health; a large part of the education arsenal funded by local and foreign donors.

Rebecca Vassie/The Associated Press -- Children perform a traditional courtship dance from eastern Uganda as part of a platform for changing attitudes among youth using dance, drama and popular hip hop music in the Kamwokya slum of Kanpala, Uganda, to mark World AIDS Day

Labels: Education, Entertainment, Health, Uganda

posted by Pieface @ Monday, December 01, 2014

Reconciling Exclusion

"There is a huge hope and belief that schools contribute to peace, but in Rwanda, there are ways in which they contribute to underlying conflict."
"It's a really dangerous and negative direction to be excluding the views, the losses, the mourning of a really important and majority segment of the population."
"Hutu who feel excluded find it hard to relate to and to embrace the suffering of Tutsi Rwandans and that's really problematic for peace building."
Elisabeth King, author of From Classrooms to Conflict in Rwanda

In this photo taken Monday, March 24, 2014, Rwandan students standing next to a mural talk amongst themselves after finishing an examination and waiting to eat lunch at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village near Rwamagana, in Rwanda. Most of the kids in a school set amid the lush green, rolling hills of eastern Rwanda don't identify themselves as Hutu or Tutsi. That's a positive sign for Rwanda, which is now observing the 20th anniversary of its genocide (The school is the brainchild of New Yorker Anne Heyman who decided to open a school on the model used in Israel for orphans of the Holocaust. With help from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and corporate donor Liquidnet Holdings, she purchased land in 2006 to build a school and dorm-like homes. The school's annual budget is $2 million a year, or about $4,500 per child. An oasis of calm in a sea of distrust.
 
In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide little was left of the country's 1,836 schools to enable them to be functionally useful. Many of the sites had been scenes of bloody massacres. Looters trashed the Ministry of Education, broke windows, doors and furniture. But that was nothing whatever, compared to the fact that over a million children had been left orphans after the blood-letting was done with, and the country had a good, hard look at itself.

In the twenty years since the genocide that shocked the world out of its complacent trust that United Nations peacekeeping forces were capable of keeping tribal hatred from demolishing a nation, over $1-billion has been invested through foreign aid into the country's education system, according to the UN's Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization. Rwanda today can boast it enjoys the highest primary school enrolment in Africa.

But just as the politics that saw the dominant, majority Hutu conspire against the once-dominant, minority Tutsi population of the country resulted in one hundred days of atrocities leaving an estimated 800,000 people, mostly Tutsi, but Hutu as well dead, the education system of the country in this new era of peace and reconciliation looks as though it is inspiring ethnic tensions all over again. And where there is tension, resentment and mistrust there will be hatred and the potential for violence.

The teaching of contemporary history is itself at the root of the problem, since it is canted, biased toward the "official" version as per the present government's view of the genocide. That official version places emphasis on the fact that most of the victims were Tutsis, which is undeniably true, but the while diminishing the fact of tens of thousands of Hutu deaths during the terror, it overlooks their anguish and the terror they too were confronted with.

If it is estimated that at least a half-million Tutsis were slaughtered by the hordes of rabidly hateful Hutu extremists, it is glossing over the fact that moderate Hutus who wanted nothing to do with the hate and slaughter campaign themselves became victims because of their unwillingness to embark on a killing spree of their neighbours.

After 1994 groups associated with the Tutsi ruling party set upon thousands of Hutu refugees had had attempted to remove themselves from harm's way by seeking shelter in countries bordering Rwanda, killing them by the thousands. This too is part of the history of Rwanda's dreadful dissolution into barbarism, but it is never mentioned in the history curriculum. Pointedly iterating and reiterating the role of the Hutu as genocide perpetrators while true, picks at the nation's scab so it can never heal.

And the impression left is that all Hutu are genocidaires by their very nature. While historians from outside the country hold the impression that most people who took part in the killing spree did so from fear and confusion, according to Timothy Longman, director of the African Studies Centre at Boston University. It is unlawful to discuss ethnicity in public, yet the new generation knows instinctively who is Hutu and who is Tutsi.

"They are being told that Hutu and Tutsi no longer exist, but people feel that identity is still important and power depends on it", said Ms. King who teaches at the Trudeau Centre for Peace Conflict & Justice at University of Toronto. Teachers may not speak frankly about the genocide; some have been arrested by government authorities for speaking of the killings in a manner that differs from the official line.

"It's impossible to promote reconciliation if people can't talk about their experiences", said Mr. Longman.

"And, for a lot of people, their experience is that of having suffered human rights abuses at the hands of the current government. Because that is off the table, there's no way that schools can actually promote real reconciliation", he further explained. Ethnic discrimination in access to schools and the history curriculum, points out a 2011UNESCO report, was partially responsible in laying the groundwork for the 1994 genocide.

The Rwandan education minister stresses the need for sensitivity in addressing the needs of all groups. "Peace education" and annual genocide commemoration activities are presented at every school in the hopes of promoting unity and reconciliation. "The genocide was committed by Rwandans against other Rwandans. It is a very sensitive subject. We are approaching it with caution", said Vincent Viruta, the education minister.

In the meantime, about 40% of the population is under the age of 15, and almost every child attends primary school while secondary school admission is merit-based now where once it was linked to ethnic quotas. From 3,000 in 1995, university enrolment has risen to over 80,000 at the present time. Even yet, however, poor, mostly Hutu youth are not in school, and struggle to exist.

"If you're teaching people a distorted history and one that serves the political interests of the regime, it lays the groundwork for politicizing the population", warned Mr. Longman.

Labels: Atrocities, Conflict, Education, Rwanda, Social-Cultural Deviations

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, April 22, 2014

The Old/New Afghanistan

"Women, you know we will defend your rights and your dignity."
Abdul Rasul Sayyif, Afghan war lord, al-Qaeda mentor, presidential candidate

AFGHANISTAN : Afghan presidential candidate and hardline Islamist Abdul Rasul Sayyaf (c) addresses a election campaign rally in Kandahar Monday. Taliban gunmen abducted a provincial election candidate in northern Afghanistan, officials said, five days ahead of national polls Islamist militants have vowed to target.— AFP

This generous assurance given to black burka-clad women quietly sitting in the audience of an election rally. This is a man they can trust, a man they can place their best interests in. And should they decide to vote for him, he will protect women's rights, their dignity. On the stump, he avers that he is in favour of female doctors and teachers. All in Sharia style, of course, separated from men as is proper, for never the twain should meet until marriage when bondage is women's fate.

The women of Afghanistan will of necessity be required to adjust their expectations yet again. The intervention of the West was but an eyeblink of time that creased the culture but did not dent it. Life will go on as it always has, for Islam demands that it must, and in the Islamic way. Abdul Rasul Sayyaf has been around; he fought with jihadists, a honour shared by all mujahadin during the Russian invasion.

When he speaks, people listen, though when he appears in public a phalanx of armed guards ensures his security in a country where assassination takes place swiftly, finally, endlessly. The crowd knows him and they know his Islamist credentials, a recognition made manifest by cries of "Death to America. Death to England." Hands thrust into the air the cries of "Death, death, death" are shouted at the rally; no more need to be said, the message is complete in and of itself. A symptom of Islamic faith.

Mr. Sayyaf occupied a place of honour under the Taliban rule of Afghanistan. Inviting Osama bin Laden to move from Yemen to Afghanistan, he was a soulmate in Islam of the planners of 9/11. A dozen years have gone by since then, international troops entered the country to capture al-Qaeda and disarm the Taliban; billions of international aid was funnelled into the local economy, building government infrastructure, courts, medical centres, schools, business opportunities.

And now, the international community, their militaries and their humanitarian NGOs are scaling back, the former to completely return home, the latter to remain where their business has stationed them, and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf is prepared to support a leading candidate with his influential connections. General Abdul Rashid Dostum who is accused of atrocities against prisoners, along with other war crimes, also presents as a support to the triumphant presidential candidate.

Once a Taliban stalwart, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf now presents himself as anti-Taliban, prepared to work with the West, to permit a small contingent of American forces to remain in Afghanistan rather than see complete withdrawal. This is the man whom the 9/11 Commission Report cited as a mentor to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who masterminded the Twin Towers attack.

In Kabul, where Western aid and encouragement to modernize and move beyond the strictures of ancient cultural and religious roadblocks to social-political advancement has taken hold, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf is recognized for the brutality of his past activities, commanding his forces to slaughter thousands of Hazaras, Shiite minorities considered infidels to Islam by Sunni conservatives, in the 1990s.

Human Rights Watch considers him a war criminal. That shouldn't stop him, however, from moving on to attaining great heights of power and influence in the new Afghan government.

Labels: Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Conflict, Democracy, Economy, Education, Health, NATO, Taliban

posted by Pieface @ Monday, March 31, 2014

The Afghan madrassa accused of radicalising women

Malyar Sadeq Azad BBC Afghan A BBC investigation has found that the Ashraf-ul Madares madrassa in Kunduz province preaches that listening to radio, watching television and taking photos are un-Islamic activities and that women should not work outside their homes.

Activists say the school undermines women's rights, but the founders say they are providing badly needed religious education.

About 6,000 women and young girls are studying at the madrassa which was established by two influential mullahs in Kunduz four years ago.

Students from the madrassa are instantly recognisable because of their strict Islamic clothing.

The older students cover their heads, faces and eyes, and they also wear gloves and socks. Some wear a full body black chador, which has led to them being dubbed "tent-wearers" by some residents.
Kunduz city officials say the radical interpretation of Islam taught in the school - particularly over dress codes - is causing tension between seminary students and other local people.

"They tell them 'you are an infidel - why is your clothing un-Islamic, why don't you know how to pray?'" says an official from the Kunduz Women's Affairs Directorate.

Some of the seminary students also attend local government-run schools, and here too there have been confrontations.

"When [they] see students or teachers of ordinary schools wearing normal clothes or with their hair visible, they stop them and openly tell them: 'You have committed a sin by not wearing clothing to cover your entire body'," says Wazhma, a teacher at a government-run school.

The head of the madrassa, Mawlavi Abdul Khaleq, rejects the criticism.
He told the BBC the school's goal was to help young women achieve their full potential by understanding the history and basic teachings of Islam.

"In the beginning of Islam, Muslim girls used to take part in religious activities," he said. "They even used to participate in wars… but we Muslims have now lagged behind."

 
So what do the students themselves think? Although they've been warned not to talk to the media, one young woman agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.

"If a chocolate does not have a wrapper, every fly can sit on it, but if it has a wrapper, it can be protected better," she said. "So the hijab for women is like a wrapper for them."

She told the BBC that she had grown up as a refugee in Pakistan, and had previously attended a private university.

"I used to wear short, tight clothes which are not appropriate for a Muslim woman," she said. "But now I have been informed about the truth of Islam and I know it is not appropriate for a Muslim girl to laugh and joke at any party."

In government-run seminaries in Afghanistan, male teachers can instruct girl students face to face - as they do in ordinary schools and colleges.

But at Ashraf-ul Madares, male staff have to teach their girl students from behind a curtain or from inside a booth in order to avoid eye-contact.

"There should be partitions so that the male teacher can't see the girls, even if they wear hijab, because their eyes are open during reading," says Abdul, one of the seminary teachers.

The rules are less strict for the 200 girls under 10 who also study at the Ashraf-ul Madares.
Here the teachers sit among the children, wooden ruler in hand to enforce good behaviour.

"The madrassa discipline is military-style, and children will be punished if they don't learn well or are noisy," Abdul says.

So why go to an unregistered madrassa when there are more than 30 similar schools in Kunduz run by the Ministry of Education and already catering for some 2,000 female students?

Officials at the Ashraf-ul Madares argue that the curriculum provided by the Ministry of Education is not fully Islamic. They say they offer different teaching based on books brought in from Iran, Pakistan and some Arab states.

Afghanistan's deputy education minister Shafiq Samim, declined to comment specifically on the Ashraf-ul Madares madrassa, but acknowledges there is a problem in Kunduz.

"Students are told people who don't pray are infidel, while in Sharia law only unbelievers are called infidel," he said. "One madrassa student even told her mother that she was infidel because she did not pray for a few days."

Mawlavi Abdul Khaliq, the head of Ashraf-ul-Madares takes issue with this.
"Those who oppose this seminary are actually unaware of Islam or are influenced by countries that support non-Islamic ideas and values in Afghanistan and want a decline in Islamic values", he says. "In general, these kinds of people are provoked by outsiders."

Many of the school's critics also want to know how it is funded.
Mawlavi Abdul Khaliq says some costs were covered by donations from students.
"They sell their earrings, rings and gold to help," he said. "Once we were even able to buy land for around $20,000 and build on it, all paid for by these girls."

The madrassa has expansion plans, hoping to open branches in other Afghan provinces.
The Ministry of Education has confirmed that there are about 1,300 unregistered religious schools operating in the country, as opposed to 1,100 state-run madrassas.

Shahrzad, a civil society activist in Kunduz fears that the growing influence of conservative establishments outside government regulation could cost women in particular dear.

"When religion is misinterpreted, the first and biggest victims will be women," she says. "Their Islamic and legal rights, their rights to work, learn, train and join politics and their civil freedom will be restricted."

Labels: Afghanistan, Education, Fundamentalism, Human Rights, Islamism, Sexism

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, March 16, 2014

Turkey to close down 'Gulen' preparatory schools

Mr Gulen is embroiled in a bitter feud with PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has accused the US-based cleric of plotting against his government.

The schools are a major source of income for Mr Gulen's 50-year-old Hizmet ("Service") movement.
The law says the schools must close by 1 September 2015, local media reported.
Mr Erdogan has said that abolishing the preparatory schools is part of a reform of an "unhealthy" educational system that ranks Turkey below most other developed countries in literacy, maths and science.

Until recently, Hizmet has generally avoided overt involvement in politics and Mr Gulen still denies he meddles.

But tensions between the former allies were exacerbated in 2013, when thousands of alleged Hizmet sympathisers in the police and judiciary were demoted while prosecutors with alleged links to the movement aggressively pursued investigations against allies of the prime minister.

Labels: Conflict, Education, Human Rights, Islamism, Turkey

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, March 01, 2014

Afghanistan Now

"The list of how much we didn't know was quite substantial, vis-a-vis the nature of the challenge that has been allowed to emerge. So our understanding of what we were getting into versus the reality had to be discovered by doing."
Canadian Lt.-Gen. Stuart Beare, commander, Canadian Joint Operations Command

"The entire NATO  exercise was one that caused Afghanistan a lot of suffering, a lot of loss of life, and no gains because the country is not secure."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai

When the final government report on Canada's Kandahar mission was released in March of 2012, it found that Canada had managed to achieve thirty-three of its forty-four development targets. One of its signature projects was the building of 52 schools and the training of over three thousand teachers.

In 2001 when the Taliban was overthrown, there was an estimated 900,000 children attending school around Afghanistan, and all of those children were boys. Now, after the twelve and more years of international aid to Afghanistan, where NATO countries accepted the challenge of delivering funding and committing troops to keeping the Taliban out of provinces they formerly dominated, there was verifiable success.

Currently over six million boys and girls attend school in Afghanistan. They and their families have access to basic health care, an increase to 85 percent of the population as opposed to the ten percent that had formerly been able to access health care services. The child mortality rate has dropped. A program to eradicate polio in Kandahar Province spearheaded by Canada, was another success, since reversed.

The Pakistani Taliban and the Islamist tribal leaders in the mountainous villages on the border of Afghanistan have maintained an active campaign to keep medical aid out of their regions, leaving thousands of Pakistani children living in those areas vulnerable to polio, one of the last areas of the world where poliomyelitis remains a distinct threat to the health and life of children. And from Pakistan it spreads to Afghanistan.

In 2012 with the drawdown of many foreign troops in Afghanistan's provinces, the Taliban destroyed over a hundred schools. Other schools have been closed because no funding to pay their teachers was available. Al-Qaeda has indeed been convinced to leave Afghanistan, making its way to other areas of the world, like neighbour Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Syria and Mali.

The Taliban have returned to Afghanistan. In nine of the country's 34 provinces they have re-established themselves with a vengeance, their fighters in conflict with government forces in the country's south, north and east. The Afghan military and police, trained for years by NATO forces are now expected to meet the challenges that the Taliban will continue to mount.

Whether the training they received from NATO forces will stick with them any more than that they received by Soviet trainers is a matter the future will reckon with. The high rate of illiteracy, and the rate of desertion from the army, the infiltration by Taliban, all contribute to a less than reliable security situation, with endemic corruption adding its corrosive influence.

In Afghanistan no forward momentum hauling that medieval society with its fundamentalist religious outlook seems to have any lasting power. Security and development gains were celebrated, the pride of NATO countries and humanitarian NGOs that flooded into the Taliban-freed country. But all those advances appear fragile, a blip in the traditions and heritage of the country where peace and security have been strangers in a hostile land.

Now, the Canadian diplomats who yet remain in Kabul, the capital, with a more progressive outlook than provincial Kandahar, yet as the seat of government just as corrupt as any other segment of the country, remain in lockdown. There is no area of Afghanistan that can be deemed safe from suicide attacks by Taliban infiltrating wherever they can. They can, and they do. Even the most secure areas of Kabul must be aware and reactive.

The Green Zone represents an inner maze of buildings and bunkers surrounded with concrete barriers and guard posts within an outer ring of concrete barriers, sand-filled blast barriers and guard posts. The 500-metre stroll from the Canadian embassy inside the Green Zone to the Afghan Defence Ministry building located in the enclave, requires that people suit up in full protective gear, accompanied by a security detail.

Outside the Green Zone, despite the billions of foreign aid that has flowed and continues to flow into the country, women in burqas beg in the streets, children sit in the middle of the road, hoping drivers will hand off a small donation. In Kabul's poor districts men, women and children line up for rice and cooking oil, courtesy of the United Nations and the government of America.

And the billions of treasury that foreign governments spilled into the country to help haul it into a place of security and progressive hopes for the future? No accounting is available of how, where and when it was properly used. But the wealth of Afghan parliamentarians, high-placed government workers, warlords and businessmen certain has increased exponentially.

Labels: Afghanistan, Conflict, Economy, Education, Health, NATO, Taliban

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Afghanistan, the Perennial Failure

"If the international community stops (funding) Afghanistan it will not be a big change for poor people because poor people never used this money.
"But it will be a disaster for a minority in power, the ministers, the warlords."
Ramazan Bashardost, anti-corruption crusader, member of Afghan parliament

The United Nations has given warning just recently of the numbers suffering severe malnutrition in Kandahar, Farah, Kunar, Paktika and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan. These areas represent locations where the Taliban remains very active, and warfare is ongoing. Physicians in the capital Kabul, have also said they are seeing more cases of malnutrition among people within the general population.

Food is being distributed by the United Nations. And just close by the area where that food distribution is taking place is an area of multi-million-dollar homes. They look crassly conspicuous in their obvious splendour, contrasting sharply with the bunker-like look of the barricades erected around them for security purposes. This is where the Afghan elite live; businessmen, power brokers, warlords, government officials.

A few are the homes of Afghan cabinet ministers. They earn about $1,000 monthly. Hardly sufficient to pay for such splendid mansions. But then, there are other perquisites of their job, principally among them the sacking of humanitarian funds given the country by international treasuries which have pledged to do their part to help the country overcome its traditional state of penury.

Hundreds of millions in aid funding meant to improve the lives of the Afghan people has poured into the pockets of those with connections. Afghan leaders, including the Karzai clan have done very well, alongside the financial fortunes of the war lords. But then there are other sources as well, primarily the poppy trade, of which everyone demands their due share, from government ministers to the Taliban.

This is a corrupt society at every level of social and administrative culture.

And it's not only Afghans who have thrived on the avails of Western guilt and responsibility for the welfare of Afghans. The thriving industry of the humanitarian aid groups in their countless numbers have done very well for themselves. Foreign advisers and consultants have also cashed in on the bonanza, earning an average of a quarter-million dollars annually for their priceless services that do, after all, have a price.

Both the Americans and the Soviets during the Cold War provided assistance to Afghanistan, hoping to convince it to loyalty to their sphere of influence. The U.S. built dams and irrigation systems, they sent educators, engineers and medical doctors to train, aid and influence the country. The Soviets did even more, pouring $2-billion in development and military aid into the country, before they finally invaded it.

The Soviets trained and equipped the country's army and air force with modern armaments, building power stations, irrigation systems, factories, apartment buildings, bridges and tunnels. They were big on education, providing over 70,000 Afghans with advanced training in engineering, opening technical institutes in Kabul, providing free tuition to students from deprived backgrounds. The Russians provided advisers on banking, transportation, foreign affairs and agriculture.

They promoted the rights of women, bringing them into the civil service and military, and tried to persuade a girls' school students in the north to shed their veils. A huge complex of state-operated agricultural communities was constructed outside Jalalabad, employing six thousand Afghans full-time. Those farms were destroyed by the Afghan rebels trained by Pakistan and the U.S.; the emerging Taliban.

Once the Soviet military left Afghanistan and civil war set in with the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban forces, the civil infrastructure built with high hopes by the Russians was destroyed. What they didn't manage to destroy, the Taliban finished when they came to power. The Soviet development aid to Afghanistan during the pre-Taliban period helped train Afghan engineers and doctors.

Now, even with the huge financial support from nations of the West, unemployment in the country remains rampant with over 35% of the workforce without jobs; some estimates put that number at 50%. "In the cities, there is a huge disparity. You see a lot of very, very poor people and a lot of extremely rich people riding around in cars or living in properties that cost millions to build", observed Ziggy Garewal who works for the French charity ACTED.

This is an agrarian society. But though NATO countries promoted agricultural diversification such as growing pomegranates, local farmers understood that it was more effective for them to grow poppy fields, requiring far less irrigation than conventional crops, and giving them far more in return for their trouble; earning ten times more for planting illegal drug-trade poppies.

Afghanistan has an estimated $1-trillion to $3-trillion in mineral resources waiting to be extracted. There have been a few contracts signed with Canadian and Chinese mining companies, but they have yet to produce significant royalties, and the concern looms large that whatever will result stands the real potential to be drained off by officials for their own bank accounts. The country has a paltry tax base.

The medical clinics opened with funding from international support and the hundreds of schools opened by foreign aid groups and with the help of NATO forces have begun to wane in serviceability as the international community withdraws and the government of Afghanistan which has never been able to even partially serve the needs of the population outside the capital, has been unable to adequately fund those operations let alone pay the salaries of doctors and teachers.

What was formerly seen optimistically as success in Afghanistan, in succeeding in combating the Taliban, in denying al-Qaeda safe haven there, in helping the country build a workable civil infrastructure and train its leaders and its military is simply a repeat of what has been done before. It collapsed earlier because the government of the country is corrupt and disinterested in the welfare of the country, and it seems destined to repeat that story all over again.

Labels: Afghanistan, Agriculture, Conflict, Drugs, Education, Health, Societal Failures, Taliban

posted by Pieface @ Monday, February 17, 2014

Fatah, the ruling political party of the Palestinian Authority (PA), continues to incite violence against Israel on its Facebook page.

According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a prominent post reads, "Teach your children to love the soil. Teach them that we live in misery. Teach them that there is a seed in the soil; if you water it with blood, it will sprout a revolution."

The statement is accompanied by an armed and uniformed man standing over a large crowd with a rifle, under the Palestinian Arab flag.

Fatah's Facebook page has been a hotspot for incitement. Last week, the page praised a mass murdering terrorist, in a post celebrating the anniversary of terrorist Ali Ja'ara's Jerusalem bus suicide bombing attack that killed 11 in 2004. Ja'ara was honored on PA TV in 2012 when his body was handed over by Israel in a "goodwill gesture."

The post called Ja'ara a "quiet hero" who "succeeded in breaking the Zionists' security barriers and breaching their fortresses."

The group also praised several other terrorists, including Wafa Idris, the first female suicide bomber who killed 1 and injured over 100 in downtown Jerusalem in 2002, calling her "a Palestinian who knows the way." Idris was able to get through Israeli security in a PA ambulance as a volunteer for the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Idris is "the sun of Palestine and its shining beacon" according the party of Israel's "peace partner" Abbas. Her terror attack was lauded by Fatah as "heroic" and "an object of pride, honor and admiration." The murderer was praised as being "sharp as a sword and strong as an oak tree."

Another post featured a photo of the terrorist Mohammed Mubarak, who earlier this month opened fire on an IDF post near the Samaria community of Ateret, close to Ramallah.

Mubarak was eliminated by the IDF soldiers who returned fire, but not eliminated from the Fatah page where he was praised as a "heroic martyr." A picture of Mubarak superimposed on that of former PA Chairman Yasser Arafat features the text "on couches, facing one another, with Allah on a magnificent throne," a paraphrase of verses from Quran Sura 56 describing Heaven.

PA incitement against Israel continues to escalate, prompting intense efforts to assess the scope of the incitement and bring it to international attention. Last month, Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz presented a detailed report on the incitement.

Findings included an analysis of how statements against Jews and Israel are being distributed and what is being said; a clear link was shown between the incitement and ongoing peace talks.

"We must not ignore the fact that the Palestinian educational system and media, under the patronage of Abbas and during the negotiations, are educating and inciting – on a daily basis – for the destruction of the State of Israel," Steinitz stated at the time. 

Labels: Child Abuse, Conflict, Education, Human Relations, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Violence

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 05, 2014

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A controversial Islamic school in the city of Derby, in eastern England, was shut down on Wednesday, only a few weeks after complaints were reported that Muslim and non-Muslim female staff members were being forced to wear headscarves.

Al-Madinah school, which made media headlines recently, has reportedly deemed it compulsory that women working at the school must adhere to Islamic dress codes, reported The Guardian.

The school was shutdown abruptly on Wednesday after a visit by Ofsted’s team, the British official body for inspecting schools.

Undetailed “health and safety” reasons were cited by Ofsted as the reason behind closure.
“We can confirm that Ofsted is currently undertaking a two-day inspection of the Al-Madinah school in Derby,” it said, in a statement carried by The Guardian.

“As a result of findings that our inspectors have shared with the principal during the first day of the inspection, we understand that he has written to parents informing them that the school will be closed to children.

“We have also informed the Department for Education and the local authority of our initial findings. As the inspection is in progress, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.”

The move comes less than two weeks after a teacher quit her job at the school, claiming that in addition to the headscarf rule, all girls were being made to sit at the back of classrooms, separate from male students, the newspaper added.

The al-Madinah school has about 200 pupils and opened last year part of the British government’s free school program.

The school’s online prospectus states that: “our school will be underpinned by the principles of the Islamic faith, which we believe to be universal principles that all should aspire to whether they are Muslims, of other faiths or none.”

It also stresses on the importance of female staff adhering to the Islamic dress codes, even if they are non-Muslim.

“All staff members will also express decency and modesty in their clothing and appearance. Female members of staff – irrespective of their religious beliefs – will cover their heads and bodies appropriately in light of the teachings of Islam,” the prospectus notes.

Labels: Britain, Education, Islamism

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, October 03, 2013

The Palestinian Authority's "Israeli Affairs Committee"

What is really needed is a "Palestinian Affairs Committee" that would go to every mosque, school, university, village and refugee camp in the West Bank and Gaza to talk about peace and coexistence with Israel. To win the support of the Israeli public for peace, it should start by showing the Israelis that it is making every effort to convince Palestinians to support peace.

Instead of preparing Palestinians for peace with Israel, the Palestinian Authority leadership has decided to focus its efforts on winning the support of the Israeli public for a peaceful settlement based on the two-state solution.

In the context of its efforts to "convince" Israelis to accept the two-state solution, the Palestinian Authority recently established a special "Israeli Affairs Committee" with the goal of promoting the idea among the Israeli public.

The committee's main task, in fact, is to scare Israelis that failure to accept all Palestinian demands would plunge the region into another cycle of violence and bloodshed. The Palestinian Authority is hoping that to avoid another intifada, intimidated Israelis would put pressure on their government to comply with Palestinian demands.

Over the past few weeks, in a bid to "influence" public opinion in Israel, this committee organized a series of meetings between Palestinians and Israelis, Palestinian sources told the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper.

The Palestinian committee, formed by Mahmoud Abbas, includes top PLO and Fatah officials Yasser Abed Rabbo, Nabil Sha'ath, Jibril Rajoub, Hanan Ashrawi and Mohamed Madani.

"Why should any Israeli believe the Palestinian Authority when most Palestinians appear to be opposed to the resumption of the peace talks?" asks Khaled Abu Toameh. In this photo, U.S. Secretary of State Kerry, Israeli Justice Minister Livni, and Palestinian Chief Negotiator Erekat address reporters in Washington, D.C., on July 30, 2013. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]

Last week, the committee organized visits by Israeli parliamentarians to Ramallah, where they held talks with Abbas and other Palestinian officials to discuss prospects for peace in the Middle East.
One of the committee members explained, "Those we are meeting are the leaders of Israeli society and they will decide its fate. The Israeli public no longer knows what is happening here in the Palestinian territories."

It is always nice, of course, to see Israelis and Palestinians meeting and talking to each other.
But instead of devoting its efforts and energies to trying to persuade the Israeli public to support peace, it would be more helpful if the Palestinian leaders in the West Bank also tried to win the backing of their own people for the peace process.

Why should any Israeli believe the Palestinian Authority when most Palestinians appear to be opposed to the resumption of the peace talks?

Abbas does not even have the backing of the PLO and Fatah leaderships for his recent decision to return to the negotiating table with Israel, and returned to the peace talks with Israel against the advice of the PLO leadership.

Instead of inviting Israeli parliamentarians to Ramallah, Abbas might have tried to persuade the PLO and Fatah to support his efforts to achieve peace with Israel.

The Israeli parliamentarians who met with Abbas in his office last week already support the two-state solution and the peace process.
But most PLO and Fatah leaders remain opposed to the resumption of the peace talks.

As Abbas was meeting with the Israeli parliamentarians, thousands of Palestinians in the streets of Gaza City were demonstrating against the peace talks and two-state solution.

These are the people with whom Abbas needs to work to change their hearts and minds. These are the people who need to be told that peace with Israel will only do good for the Palestinians.
Why should any Israeli believe Abbas when his own supporters continue to wage a campaign to combat "normalization" with Israel?

While Abbas feels free to receive Knesset members in his Ramallah office, other Palestinians continue to receive threats for talking to, or doing business with, Israelis.
What is needed is a special "Palestinian Affairs Committee" that would work toward preparing Palestinians for peace with Israel.

The committee members should be asked to go to every mosque, school and university in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to talk about peace and coexistence with Israel.
The members also need to visit every village and refugee camp to talk to as many people as possible about the importance of peace.

They should also meet with representatives of all Palestinian factions to try to win their support for the peace process.

It would also be a good idea if such a committee would ask the Palestinian Authority to "lower the tone" and stop rhetorical attacks against Israel that drive Palestinians towards more extremism.
Inciting Palestinians against Israel through the media and mosques only serves the interests of Hamas and other radical Palestinians. Moreover, the anti-Israel rhetoric eventually undermines Abbas and anyone who conducts peace talks with Israel.

The Palestinian Authority has chosen to "educate" Israelis about the significance of peace while it has done almost nothing to persuade its own people to move towards moderation and pragmatism.
If the Palestinian Authority really wants to win the support of the Israeli public for peace, it should start by showing that it is making every effort to convince Palestinians to support the peace process.

Related Topics:  Israel  |  Khaled Abu Toameh

Labels: Bias, Bigotry, Communications, Controversy, Education, Human Relations, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Peace

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, September 03, 2013

One Child, One Pen, One Book

"When you were attacked it was shocking for me. I wished it would never happened and I had advised you before."
"Taliban believe that you were intentionally writing against them and running a smearing campaign to malign their efforts to establish Islamic system in Swat and your writings were provocative. You have said in your speech yesterday that pen is mightier than sword, so they attacked you for your sword, not for your books or school."
"At the end, I advise you to come back home, adopt the Islamic and Pashtun culture, join any female Islamic madrassa near your hometown, study and learn the book of Allah, use your pen for Islam and plight of Muslim ummah [community] and reveal the conspiracy of tiny elite who want to enslave the whole humanity for their evil agendas in the name of new world order."
Adnan Rasheed, Pakistan Taliban commander

They were, after all, tribally related. Malala Yousafzai and Adnan Rasheed; both Pashtun, Pakistani, of the Yousafzai tribe. He experienced the shock of brotherly feelings at the news that a sister had been morbidly wounded. So he sat down to pen a four-page letter to the young girl who was fortunate to have survived a deadly attack; where medical intervention in the international arena saved her life. And has given her the opportunity to further her academic education in Britain.

Where she will have the freedom to select whatever area of the sciences, the arts and humanities, law and justice, philosophy and history she wishes to become more familiar with. She has already familiarized herself with the very basics of human rights, heritage, female empowerment and social studies. How many young women of 17 have addressed the United Nations? How many seventeen-year-olds have been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize?
How many girls and young women have urged their peers to settle for nothing less than their own educated futures and that of others in a collective determination to find their way and assume their rightful place in the world? Now, a senior figure in the Pakistan Taliban, the very group that planned for her death because of her irritation factor in their narrative of withholding the power of education from girls and women, professes patience for her misguided and errant ways, urging a return to the study of the Koran, instead.

That instead is what Malala Yousafzai rebelled against. It was her informed choice as the child of mind-liberated parents, to study language, history, mathematics, science and whatever else struck her interest. As a Muslim, she could study the Koran in a separate part of her busy lifestyle. "One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution", she chanted in a poetic essay aimed at world leaders.

Labels: Child Abuse, Crime, Education, Human Relations, Human Rights, Pakistan, Taliban, United Nations

posted by Pieface @ Friday, July 19, 2013

South Africa Today

The country has changed. The end of official Apartheid is not mourned by South Africans. Except for an enclave of Afrikaners who do recall it fondly, and would welcome its return. Canada was in the forefront of condemning the former South African Apartheid government and used all diplomatic means at its disposal, including shame and blame and the pressure of trade sanctions, as well as lobbying its democratic neighbours to join in sanctioning the Apartheid regime.

The reward came when the transition to a democratic South Africa became a reality, and when Nelson Mandela, freed from his long incarceration in Robben Island prison made him finally available as the moral authority of his country to take his African National Congress party to victory and himself as the first black president of the new South Africa. He was given celebratory honourary citizenship in many countries, including Canada.

One term in office sufficed for him to prepare to surrender it to a successor. He and Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu became the face and the voice of conscience of the new South Africa; no recriminations, no violence, no arrests and no government grab of land documented in the legal possession of white South Africans. Forgiveness and togetherness was the order of the day, along with promises to pull blacks out of their endemic poverty.

Now, all those years later, Nelson Mandela's legacy remains an honoured one; education and health services are available to everyone. Free, fair elections take place, and multi-racial opposition parties see inclusion in all aspects of political and private and commercial life. There is no discernible interference in the judiciary, and there is a free press, along with private radio stations in competition with the official broadcast service.

But inadequate housing remains a problem, and so does widespread, dire poverty. Unemployment is distressingly high. The country has been flooded with refugees from neighbouring countries fleeing instability, oppression, and violence. Yet South Africa seems incapable of controlling its own overwhelming violent crime rates. And there is corruption everywhere. And resentment because of high unemployment, at the presence of refugees willing to undercut wages for work.

Young South Africans are less wedded to the concept of achieving an academic record than they should be, releasing to the public hordes of young people who are uneducated and unskilled and who thus cannot be a credit to a growing industrial and commercial base, despite the country's potential. Young people leave the education system without achieving diplomas, only to enter a weak labour market minus qualifications for employment.

The general health condition of South Africans is dismal. HIV/AIDS runs rampant through the population. Violent rape is common, and there remains a generalized aura of sexual promiscuity among the young. Ignorance of the cause of HIV/AIDS is widespread; under former President Thabo Mbeki the prevalence of men believing AIDS could be overcome by sleeping with a virgin saw its apotheosis in his successor, Jacob Zuma, raping a young HIV/AIDS-positive woman who trusted him as an 'uncle'.

Nepotism and cronyism in government administration is widespread, as are illicit procurement procedures. Parliamentarians as guilty of corrupt fiddling of accounts as public civil servants. Police have been involved with drug traffickers, and embezzlement is widespread in South African society. The highly moral South African administration saw nothing they should criticize in the criminal administration of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

While neither Bishop Desmond Tutu nor Nelson Mandela's voices were raised in condemnation of Robert Mugabe for despoiling his once-wealthy and productive country -- spreading poverty and unemployment, raising inflation to sky-high levels, promoting the illegal seizure of white-owned farmland, and destroying the agricultural base of a country once famous for exporting excess food, now dependent on imports -- both have raised their voices in condemnation of "Apartheid" Israel.

South Africa is in dire need of being rescued from its congenital and seemingly inescapable dysfunction.

Labels: Crime, Economy, Education, Health, Human Rights, Poverty, Social-Cultural Deviations, South Africa

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, June 27, 2013

Sad and Sordid Similarities

In the Palestinian Territories there is an active war with its neighbour, Israel. Not a military war, but a war of minds. Palestinians are captured in a net of unforgiving, unrelenting resentment that fuels their sense of victimhood and hatred against Israel. This is a deliberate, institutionalized policy of Fatah, every bit as much as it is of Hamas, rival political-ideological foes, each representing themselves as the true champions of the Palestinian 'cause'.

The Palestinian cause could readily be solved, which is to say its wish to be recognized as a sovereign state could become reality. But it comes at a price. To accomplish that goal it must be prepared to sit down at the bargaining table with its neighbour, to negotiate terms and conditions to establish a lasting, reliable and honourable state of peace between the two. The land to be shared; one portion allocated to Israel, the other to the Palestinians.

Hamas simply scorns the very idea of Israel having any legitimacy whatever in the Middle East, and certainly not on land which they deem to have been accredited to Arab rule, by the Palestinians who came to the area primarily from Jordan and Egypt. The two solitudes represented by the West Bank and Gaza are representative of the different culture and heritage obtaining in Jordan and Egypt, informing the current culture of both Territories.

What they do have in common is that both Territories' peoples are taught from an early age that the formation of the State of Israel was a tragedy, a catastrophe of monumental proportions for the Palestinians; their land and their right to autonomy within the land, although traditionally denied them by Jordan and Egypt, was horribly infringed upon by Jews who stole the land from under the rightful owners.

This is a story without end, just as the 'refugee' syndrome that the Palestinians clasp dear to their hearts is a tragedy without end. It might end only with the departure of the Jewish State in a Muslim-dominated geography, one that was wholly consecrated to Islam, until the upstart Jews made their mark. The heritage of Judaism, and the reality that Jews have always lived in the neighbourhood is denied unequivocally. And the Palestinian Authority has no intention of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

As such it would have to surrender its demand that the Palestinians living in what is now Israel, along with their countless descendants, must all be allowed to return to what was once theirs to reclaim it in perpetuity. Without that agreement which in effect would destroy the intention and nature of the State as one while not limited to Jews only, is meant to reflect the Judaic presence as a majority, legitimizing it as a Jewish state, would be accomplished.

School texts are written for the express purpose of emphasizing the criminal illegitimacy of Israel, occupying Palestinian heritage, a heritage that had its questionable presence in the modern era, alongside that of the original Palestinians, Jews who had lived there for millennia. Children are taught of the blessings inherent in 'resistance', in the restoration of Palestinian pride, honour and belonging. They are taught hostility toward the occupiers.

And children become adults deeply steeped in the pathology of suspicion, hatred and revenge, creating a population functionally incapable of living in peace and harmony with those next door. A situation that makes it just about impossible for the two sides - Arab and Jew - to sit down together with confidence and trust that each will be prepared to make reciprocal sacrifices to satisfy the needs of the other so that an effective settlement for peace can be reached.

Who might imagine that a somewhat similar situation exists in Canada? For it does. Quebec speaks of itself as a nation. Its institutions are called national institutions, not provincial ones. French-Canadian schoolchildren are not taught the history of Canada. They are taught the history of Quebec, outside and without Canada. They are led to believe that they are in essence, living within a nation, just as Canada itself is a nation, but without Quebec.

The words "Canada" and "Canadian" are despised, incendiary nomenclatures within Quebec French-Canadian circles. This is a matter of politics, of culture, of pride, of determination. And, hugely, resentment. And it is not necessarily traditional, but it is reflective of the second half of the 20th Century attitudes in the province. School texts teach Quebec history, inclusive of the existence of Front de Liberation du Quebec.

The FLQ was a terrorist group. They focused attention on themselves, on their radical separatist purpose and their violent conflict with the federal government by setting bombs, by the violence of their language and their threats, and by their abduction of those whom they felt were symbolically responsible for the purported suffering of the French under English rule. Canada may be officially bilingual, but despite legislation to the contrary, Quebec is officially unilingual.

History texts speak of the FLQ-murdered Pierre Laporte as an incident where the man was "found dead", and no elaboration given, no mention of murder, no explanation that those responsible were convicted in a court of law of murder. The French language must be protected at any cost from the malign presence of English, and students are to be taught all about "the Quebec space", but there is no mention of a corresponding "Canadian space" for balance.

All school texts teach about Bill 101, in protection of the French language in Quebec, and the need to repress English, to diminish its influence, to give it little official status. There is never any mention that French is protected as an official language across Canada. The day that all Canadians celebrate as "Canada Day" is simply referred to in Quebec as "July 1". Students are exposed to a history chapter with a unit titled "Must we celebrate July 1?"

It concludes by asking the student: "Last year, did you celebrate on July 1? Why?" July 1 in Canada appears to be Quebec's version of the Palestinian Nakba calamity, a day of mourning.

Labels: Canada, Conflict, Controversy, Education, Fatah, French, Hamas, Heritage, Human Relations, Israel, Judaism, Palestinians, Quebec

posted by Pieface @ Monday, May 20, 2013

Child Conscripts

"I was excited to learn the right way to use a weapon. It's important because of the occupation. I feel stronger with the knowledge, which I could use against the occupier."
Izzadine Mohamed, 17, Gaza student

One can just imagine how exciting it must be to a 17-year-old to be given close, authorized exposure to munitions, military hardware, equipment of war that young boys can ordinarily only dream about. And here his dream has become a reality. How extremely fortunate for him. He can anticipate a future -- actually not all that far into the future -- when he can join the forces of the Hamas militias and go to war -- against their neighbour, Israel.

Hamas, in its wisdom, and looking itself to the near future, anticipating new recruits coming down the line, reasons that it makes good sense to train them as soon as possible. Why wait until they're of adult age to begin training? Facilitating ease of use with weapons at an early stage in the development of a young boy into an adult makes reasonable sense. Going into conflict it gives them that much more of an edge.

So Palestinian schoolboys are now learning how to accurately and confidently fire Kalashnikovs, and how to throw grenades. Initially a two-week program operated by the education ministry under Hamas does the trick. But the boys can always sign up for an extended privilege to continue their exposure to war techniques, and get a taste of their exciting future.

The program is called Futuwwa, and it was ushered formally into the state curriculum last September. Boys aged between 15 and 17, an estimated 37,000 Palestinian Gazans, are being introduced to adulthood, initiated into a new generation of Palestinians to struggle against Israel, the occupier. The weekly school classes themselves cover first aid, basic firefighting, and firing a rifle.

An initial five thousand boys across Gaza signed up for a two-week camp at a Hamas military base, aside from the exposure they're getting at school. Military-style uniforms of black T-shirts and trousers are supplied. Training is effected by officers from the Hamas National Guard and militants representing Hamas's armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades.

Does life get any better for teen-age boys, fed the pablum of self-defence and proximity to a deadly neighbour from infancy on?

Young Mohamed explained that along with martial-arts style street fighting, he and the other conscripts were taught how to throw hand grenades and how to react if one should happen to explode nearby -- "drop flat on the ground next to the grenade, it explodes outward". Isn't that magnificently useful?

"We are not conducting military training in our schools, we are providing information", rebuts Mohamed Syam, head of the education ministry in charge of the program.  Oddly enough, an article on the Hamas ministry of education website credits the al-Qassam Brigades in a commendation for its contribution to the course.

Labels: Child Abuse, Conflict, Education, Gaza, Hamas, Hypocrisy

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, April 30, 2013

In Israel, on the third day of his visit, US President Obama struck a cord of confusion with the people in Israel when he ascribed peaceful intentions to the Palestinian Authority, when he said that: “While I know you have had differences with the Palestinian Authority, I genuinely believe that you do have a true partner in President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad. I believe that they have a track record to prove it.”

Hamas, responsible for the cold blooded murder of more than 1,000 Israeli citizens, and in complete control of Gaza, has launched more than 29,000 aerial attacks on southern Israel over the past 11 years

Perhaps the many middle east advisors who surround President Obama should note the consistent message that the Palestinian Authority delivers in the Arabic language, after which the policy makers can decide as to whether the PA is a “true partner” for peace.

Labels: Controversy, Defence, Education, Hypocrisy, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Security, United States

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, April 03, 2013