Rioting comes easily to those on the margin in France, anywhere

Villiers-le-Bel was not affected by the 2005 riots in France, but shares many features of other banlieues – an unemployment rate of over 20 per cent, poor transport links with the city centre and a population of 27,000, 60 per cent of whom are under 25, according to this report in The Independent of the UK.

The ghetto violence this week in Villiers-le-Bel is spreading, leading to fears of further outbreaks and a possible repeat of the wave of urban violence in 2005. The immediate provocation for the rioting by the people in the ghettos was the death of two teenagers in a collision involving a police car, according to this report from the BBC.

Rioting comes easily to people on the margin, particularly as they have lost all trust in the police, other authorities, and society at large. Many of these people are migrants of North African origin who do not feel assimilated into French society. Some of them believe that the French police may have deliberately killed the boys on the motorcycle. That is incorrect, according to the French authorities, but try telling that to the people in the ghetto who live forever in suspicion and in simmering discontent.

That discontent in the ghettos can only get worse as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a firm lover of all things American, tries to push through economic reforms in the country. Common people do not take kindly to having their privileges removed, more so when it is aimed to help big business. The ghetto-ization of France can hence be expected to continue. Add to that the racial and religious divide, and France’s ghettos are a tinder-box.

There are lessons for other countries from the troubles in France. While votaries of big business and unbridled capitalism push for the dismantling of the welfare state and subsidies, such measures push out into the margin larger numbers of people, who become disempowered, and susceptible to militant ideologies, whether secular or religious.

The experience of most countries proves that unbridled capitalism has only increased inequality, as the benefits have not trickled down. In the US, the middle class finds itself facing extinction, being pushed into the lower classes by high costs of everything including healthcare.

The violence in the ghettos of France are a signal. The people living there may not be articulate enough to put out a policy statement against globalization and unbridled capitalism. They will look instead for refuge in the extreme fringes of their religions, which will both give them an ideology and money to live on.

In Mumbai, where its new super rich are spending millions of Rupees on expensive cars and large houses, the poor don’t have an ideology, but a resentment, that is dangerously high, and waiting to be misused. There are potentially other trouble spots as well.

It is unfashionable, but the hard truth is that the resurgence of capitalist ideology in its unbridled form, has only provided an opportunity for the rich to spend and flaunt their wealth without compunction. Charity, if any, has become a matter of prestige, accompanied by a press release. Once upon a time, the wealthy did not display their wealthy – it was seen to be in bad taste, and yes could invite resentment. Charity was on a quiet note and did not humiliate the receiver. Today display is the raison d’etre for capitalist society.

French suburbs still await change after the 2005 riots, according to this report by Reuters. "High unemployment, underperforming schools, poor relations with the police, inadequate housing and controversial new immigration laws have created a generation of frustrated youths ready to turn to violence at any time", according to the report. This could be as much a description of the state of affairs in the ghettos of France, the slums of India, or the black population in some parts of the US. Economic development has to be inclusive, and neo-right economic policies in many of these countries have not helped.


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Defame with impunity on Wikipedia

I agree that information should be free and free-flowing. Wikipedia was built around those principles, and around community-generated content. Unfortunately the community, or more correctly the public at large, is not as responsible as Wikipedia had expected.

Now A French judge has dismissed a defamation and privacy case against Wikipedia after ruling that the free online encyclopedia was not responsible for information introduced onto its Web site, according to this report from Reuters.

Moreover, Web site hosts are not legally bound to monitor or investigate the origin of the information they store, the Judge Emmanuel Binoche said after the online encyclopedia was sued by three French nationals over a Wikipedia article that said they were gay activists, according to the report.

Laws vary from country to country, but the overall tendency seems to be to exempt owners of community edited web-sites and social networking sites from liability for pornography or slander or other such nefarious content.

This ultra-liberal attitude when it comes to content crimes on the Internet leaves me wondering – where does that leave the individual ?

Before the arrival of online community edited news and opinion sites, the main source of potential defamation were public speeches and the newspapers, and in both cases liability for defamation is quite clear. Both the person defaming, as well as the forum which published the defamatory remarks are liable in varying degrees.

Issues of liability aside, because of the viral nature of the online medium, there is no stopping a false rumor before it starts.

Once a story is up on the net, it gets picked up by blogs, other sites, and even online newspapers. Some of them may quote the allegation, and hope to reduce liability by linking to the site from where they picked up the allegation. The upshot is that the slander is all over the place, before you can even say “ cease and desist”. By the time you have been able to identify and send a notice to the site that started it, your reputation is raked fore and aft.

In this context, the need for community edited sites and social networking sites to monitor content, and block content found objectionable is a must. Their liability should in fact be increased to make sure they acquit this responsibility. To be sure Internet companies will throw up their hands, and tell us their sites are so popular that the volume of content is more than they can filter properly.

That is a nice argument – but it is cold comfort to me if someone goes on Facebook or Wikipedia and describes me as a rapist. Sure, I can go after Facebook and Wikipedia, ask them to remove the objectionable material, identify the person who described me as a rapist, and sue him in court. But it may be all too late - the allegation is already all over the Internet.

Google has often used the analogy of the telephone to argue that the Internet service provider should be only as liable as a telephone services provider, who is not liable if a murder is plotted over the telephone. The times have changed. Two people talking on the phone, and calling me a pedophile are just two people. That is the extent of the damage. But if these two people put it out on their Orkut scrapbook or on Wikipedia, that number could jump to millions of people.

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The Armenian genocide, and Turkish denials

Despite the evidence, Turkey denies the genocide of the Armenians during the first World War.
Like the Germans after World War II, Turkey should accept that there was a genocide on its soil, apologize for it, make reparations where required, and move forward. Then only can it claim to be part of the civilized world.

As the successor to the Ottoman empire, the modern Turkish state has instead spent millions of pounds on public relations and lobbying to dissuade western governments from labeling the events of 1915 - 1917 a genocide, according to The Guardian. It cancelled defense contracts with France last year when its national assembly voted to make denial of the Armenian holocaust a crime.

Against the protests of US President George Bush, who is worried about retaliation from Turkey, the US Congress is planning to officially recognize as a genocide the forced deportations and massacre of Armenians in the last days of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey does not accept that there was a genocide against the Armenians arguing instead that the Armenians were killed in widespread fighting.

But critics within and outside Turkey insist that the country come to terms with this gory and controversial element of its past. Turkish author, and Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk was prosecuted in Turkey after he referred to the Armenian issue. "What happened to the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 was a major thing that was hidden from the Turkish nation; it was a taboo," he told the BBC in 2005 after he returned to Turkey to face charges against him.

Turkey’s reign of terror against the Armenians was an attempt to destroy the race, and the Armenian death toll was almost a million and a half, according to Robert Fisk in his book “The Great War for Civilization.” On September 15, 1915, Fisk writes, the then Turkish interior minister Talaat Pasha, cabled an instruction, of which a carbon copy still exists, to his prefect in Aleppo, telling him that he had already been informed that the government “had decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons living in Turkey”.

Fisk found from eyewitness that in Margada on the Turkish-Syria border over 50,000 Armenians had been killed. Turks tied together Armenian men, women, and children, starved and sometimes naked, and pushed them off the hill of Margada into the river, and shot one of them, according to Fisk. The body of the person shot then dragged the others down into the water, at the expense of a single bullet.

There are innumerable parallel that can be drawn between Margada and Auschwitz, and between the Ottoman Empire and Nazi Germany. Where the paths differ is that while Germany acknowledges and repents for the Holocaust, the Turks insist that there wasn’t a genocide of the Armenians. It resorts to blackmail of countries that would refer to the killings as genocide.

Globalization is nice, but……

Most people endorse free trade, multinational corporations and free markets, but they are also concerned about inequality, threats to their culture, threats to the environment, and threats posed by immigration, depending on which country you come from.

These latest findings of the latest Pew Global Project Attitudes survey of more than 45,000 people in 47 countries are not startling, but in fact a sober confirmation of what many political analysts and economists have been saying all along. Globalization is accepted as inevitable today, and how you respond to it depends on how you are impacted by it.

Thus India and China whose economies are benefiting from large scale outsourcing of software and contract manufacturing from the US, Europe, and other countries, are positive about economic globalization. “There is near universal approval of global trade among the publics of rising Asian economic powers China and India”, reports the Pew Research Center.

In contrast, “there are signs that enthusiasm for economic globalization is waning in the West -- Americans and Western Europeans are less supportive of international trade and multinational companies than they were five years ago”, according to the survey results released October 4.

As Americans and Europeans find their jobs moving to India, as multinational companies look for lower cost locations, they are bearing the brunt of economic globalization, and they are not unexpectedly resenting it.

Even as the response to economic globalization is along expected lines, there are some worrisome pointers too. In nearly every country surveyed, people worry about losing their traditional culture and national identities, and they feel their way of life needs protection against foreign influences, according to the survey. They are also worried about immigration, and a lot of that worry comes from concerns about losing their culture and traditions, it added.

A number of authors including Benjamin R. Barber in “Jihad vs. McWorld” have said that confronting “McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce” is Jihad defined by the resurgence of “parochial identities”.

Until recently, it was thought that the re-assertion of parochial cultures and identities was primarily happening in the Middle East, Asia, and part of the Balkans, buffeted by globalization and multinational companies aiming at global homogenization and neutralizing local culture, in favor of mass-produced culture, usually of American origin.

The assertion of local identities has now spread to the West too where sections of traditional populations feel alienated and threatened by the culture of migrants. Even in the US there have been reports of small towns trying to control the expanding influence of Hispanic culture. In Germany, a proposal for a new mosque sparked of a debate on the rights of Muslim women, and the need to meld Islamic and local, predominantly Christian, culture.

Fully eight-in-ten in Italy and 72 percent in Spain agree that their way of life needs protection from foreign influence, according to Pew Research. Narrow majorities in Great Britain (54 percent) and Germany (53 percent) agree that their way of life needs protection. Opinions are almost evenly divided in France, a country famous for vigilantly protecting its language and culture, according to the survey. In the US and Canada 62 percent believe that their way of life must be protected.

Even as the world wants to be economically close knit, it still wants to be culturally separate and maintain its identity. That could potentially be a source of tension and conflict moving forward.

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Olympic Games, and the diplomatic charade over Myanmar

The think tanks have come up with a way to get the army in Myanmar to heel. Get China, which is a large investor in the country, to intervene. If China, declines to intervene, European Union countries should boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Now that gives the Chinese something to think about !

The upshot is that the diplomatic community is passing the buck to China as it finds itself impotent against a repressive regime in Myanmar that at this point cares for nothing else than its survival in power.

The boycott of the Olympics is however unlikely to pan out, because other interests, stronger than the fate of the democratic movement in Myanmar, will come to the fore. Will the US for example agree to a boycott of the Olympics ? It views China as a strategic partner in Asia, far more important than old ally Taiwan, and has turned a blind eye to Chinese repression at home. Nor will the European countries like the UK and France agree to boycott the Olympic games, and give China a stinging rebuke over Myanmar.

The regime in China, and the army in Myanmar know that caught up in their business interests, the world has become impotent to fight against repression. So you will find China making some polite remonstrations while the army in Myanmar gets on with its brutal work. After it is done, it may even announce that it has backed off at the request of the Chinese.

In recommending a boycott, vice president of the European Parliament Edward McMillan-Scott, has shown a large heart. “The civilized world must seriously consider shunning China by using the Beijing Olympics to send the clear message that such abuses of human rights are not acceptable,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

But political decisions by large nations are not from the heart, but conceal cynical long-term calculations. As the nations of the world debate on a boycott, the massacre in Myanmar will be over. So our only option may be to sit back and watch the massacre. We did that in 1988.

UPDATE: Internet connectivity has been cut off in Myanmar, even as the army intensifies its crackdown on protesters. Blogs, instant messenger, and video sharing sites had provided locals an opportunity to get information on the clampdown to the world outside.

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When atheists and secularists want to play God

In India, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, a state in south India, said that Lord Ram, a god in the Hindu pantheon, did not exist. The chief minister M. Karunanidhi heads the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) which has strong atheist underpinnings.

Karunanidhi was reacting to Hindus, the majority community in India, who are opposed to a canal that could damage Adam’s Bridge or Ram Setu between India and Sri Lanka.

The Hindus, quoting from a Sanskrit epic called the Ramayana, believe the bridge, which consists of a chain of limestone shoals, was built by supporters of Lord Ram to reach Sri Lanka, and rescue his abducted wife Sita from the asura king, Ravana.

Where is it said that this Ram was an architect, asked Karunanidhi who described the bridge as “natural” rather than man-made. Protests by agitated Hindus led to the burning of a bus killing two persons.

Move over to the UK. A Hindu woman working at Heathrow Airport, for caterers Eurest, was dismissed for wearing a nose stud, which she said was a mark of her Hindu faith, reports the BBC.

Last year, another Heathrow worker Nadia Eweida was suspended by British Airways for wearing a Christian cross, but later reinstated following condemnation by clerics and politicians, according to the BBC.

These moves violate people’s right to practice their faith. A nose ring or a cross can in no way be considered offensive.

Secularists are getting mixed up between secularism, which means that religion should not interfere in state matters, and the right of human beings to believe in what they want, and wear the symbols of their religious identity.

Last year, the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the wearing of full face veils, called the niqab, by Muslim women was a " a mark of separation and that is why it makes other people from outside the community feel uncomfortable," according to the International Herald Tribune and other newspapers.

Blair was closing ranks with Jack Straw, the leader of the House of Commons, who earlier in the month said he did not believe women should wear the full-face veil.

Earlier, the French parliament passed a law in March, 2004 that bans the wearing of religious symbols, such as the Islamic veil, and large Christian crosses in schools.

Secularists have expressed their opposition to the niqab as a sign of the oppression of women in Muslim society, but a number of Muslim women have said that it is an expersssion of their identity. Which should serve as a reminder that other religious communities and cultures should not be always judged by Western standards.

These remarks and rules also demonstrate that atheists and secularists can at times be as intolerant of other people’s views as fundamentalists and fascists.

To be sure, the secularists and progressive Muslims are within their rights to push for change, but not by law, expuslions, and public pronouncements by officials of the state. That goes against another prized Western tenet – the separation of the State and religion.


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