Interesting data

Campaign against rape in Afghanistan

Details: Last Updated: Monday, 01 May 2017 09:08; Published: Thursday, 05 July 2012 06:01; Written by Avaaz; Hits: 2331

http://www.avaaz.org/en/justice_for_lal_bibi_c/?cJircbb

Dear friends,

After being kidnapped, raped and tortured by Afghan police, 18-year-old Lal Bibi is fighting police impunityand the cultural requirement that she commit suicide. Prosecutors are failing to try her rapists, but a massive global outcry can persuade the donor countriesthat are about to hand over billions to Afghanistan to use their leverage to force real change for Lal Bibi and all Afghan women. Sign the petition, and tell everyone:

18 year-old Lal Bibi was kidnapped, raped, tortured and chained to a wall for five days by a gang of powerful Afghan police officers. But she stood up to do what women in Afghanistan are told not to -- she is fighting back, and together we can help her and all Afghan women win justice.

According to deep cultural mandates, as a raped woman, Lal Bibi has been "dishonoured" and will kill herself -- and she publicly says she must, unless her rapists are brought to justice to restore her honour and dignity. Afghanistan's justice system routinely fails to pursue these cases and so far the chief suspects in Lal Bibi's case have not been prosecuted, likely in the hopes that international attention will die down. Every day that passes without an arrest pushes Lal Bibi closer to suicide -- but there is hope.

This weekend, the US, UK, Japan and other major donors are expected to pledge 4 billion dollars to Afghanistan -- money that will pay for the very police forces responsible for Lal Bibi’s rape. But an international outcry can shame donor countries into action, conditioning their aid on real action to fight rape and protect women. We don't have much time left -- click below for change that could save Lal Bibi’s lifeand our petition will be delivered right into the donor conference in Tokyo:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/justice_for_lal_bibi_c/?bJircbb&;v=15757

Local custom in some parts of Afghanistan dictates that women are shamed by rape and must kill themselves to restore their family's honour for generations to come. Amazingly, Lal Bibi and her family courageously are seeking to save her life by insisting on the prosecution of her torturers and shifting the blame to the perpetrators, in society's eyes.

The Afghan police force responsible for the rape depends heavily on foreign funding that will be pledged this weekend, when all of Afghanistan’s major donors gather in Tokyo. Donor countries can and should require that funds are not spent to grow a police force that acts with appalling impunity and that police officers work to protect women, not attack them!

There are hundreds of women and girls all across Afghanistan who are subject to the “tribal justice” meted out to Lal Bibi. Thousands more arewatching carefully to see how the Afghan government and the world will respond to the girl who is fighting back and refuses to die quietly. Let's stand with her -- sign the petition below and tell everyone:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/justice_for_lal_bibi_c/?bJircbb&;v=15757

The global war on women is relentless. But time and time again our community joins together to win. We helped stop the illegal stoning of Sakineh Ashtiani in Iran, and fought for justice for rape survivors in Libya, Morocco and Honduras. Let’s show the global power of our community to help win justice for Lal Bibi and millions of women in Afghanistan.

With hope and determination,

Dalia, Emma, Alaphia, Ricken, Laura, Antonia and the rest of the Avaaz team

Bhopali: the movie

Details: Last Updated: Monday, 01 May 2017 09:05; Published: Thursday, 28 June 2012 14:41; Written by Colin Sumner; Hits: 2300

Bhopali is a feature documentary about the survivors of the world's worst industrial disaster, the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal, India. Today the suffering continues, prompting victims to fight for justice against Union Carbide, the American corporation responsible for the disaster.

Its website is at

http://www.bhopalithemovie.com/

You can buy the DVD there and so support the Bhopal Medical Appeal

As seen on that site, Pearce and Tombs' book, Bhopal: Flowers at the Altar of Profit and Power, published by CrimeTalk Books can be seen here on CrimeTalk and bought here.

Road builders must put people first to curb epidemic of death and injuries

Details: Last Updated: Monday, 01 May 2017 09:05; Published: Sunday, 20 May 2012 11:14; Written by The Guardian; Hits: 2347

The piece below contains some interesting social data and should be the basis of growing discussion, research and debate.

Road builders must put people first to curb epidemic of death and injuries

"Road crashes are one of the most disturbing global health problems of our time. A staggering 3,500 people die on the roads daily. Worldwide road crashes are now the No 1 cause of death and debilitating injuryamong young people and they disproportionately affect the poor, with nine out of 10 deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries.

Perhaps the most distressing aspect of this is that many of these deaths are both predictable and preventable. We know where people are most likely to die on the roads, how these crashes happen and – crucially – how to treat the root causes of the problem.

Yet, across the world, millions of schoolchildren, families, workers and farmers risk their lives on a daily basis simply by travelling on dangerous roads."

The United States Has Been Enabling Torture for Decades

Details: Last Updated: Monday, 01 May 2017 09:05; Published: Monday, 30 April 2012 07:01; Written by Truth Out; Hits: 2648

Truth Out needs to be brought to European attention: "Truthout provides an independent platform for in-depth investigative reporting and critical analysis, to reveal systemic injustice and offer transformative ideas to strengthen democracy". It is now on our BlogRoll.

The United States Has Been Enabling Torture for Decades

The above article contains useful information documenting the normalization of torture in the USA.

I only want to add that two decades ago Noam Chomsky noted and documented the fact that most of the world's most authoritarian states were the biggest recipients of US aid. What seems to have changed, becuase that fact is probably less straightforwardly true than it was, given the support authoritarian regimes now receive from China and fellow African states, is that the brutal systems and mechanics of authoritarianism have now been fully internalized.

See Noam Chomsky:

After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Construction of Imperial Ideology (with Edward Herman), Boston: South End Press, 1979.

Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace, Boston: South End Press, 1985.

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (with Edward Herman), New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.

Terrorizing the Neighborhood: American Foreign Policy in the post-Cold War Era, Stirling, Scotland: AK Press, San Francisco: Pressure Drop Press, 1991.

Academic journals: an open and shut case

User Rating: 5 / 5

Details: Last Updated: Thursday, 08 August 2019 14:32; Published: Wednesday, 11 April 2012 11:02; Written by Colin Sumner/The Guardian; Hits: 5690

I would normally put thie link below into our Education section but CrimeTalk is very much about talk as well as crime. And talk is not cheap, especially for academics. They/we do/did all the hard graft: the hours and hours of painful labour poring over every word and thought for its truth value, the days of finding the right people to ask questions of, weeks discovering the sources of the information they need to build a picture....then they sell it, either to a book publisher for 10% or to a journal run by fellow academics who give them precisely nothing for it, other than an imaginary status voucher which they can then cash in at the next research audit/lottery and so keep their employment for a further few years.

Academic journals: an open and shut case

The link is to a Guardian leader and the comment begins as follows:

"Some very clever people have put up with a very silly system for far too long. That is the upshot of our reporting on scholarly journals this week. Academics not only provide the raw material, but also do the graft of the editing. What's more, they typically do so without extra pay or even recognition – thanks to blind peer review. The publishers then bill the universities, to the tune of 10% of their block grants, for the privilege of accessing the fruits of their researchers' toil. The individual academic is denied any hope of reaching an audience beyond university walls, and can even be barred from looking over their own published paper if their university does not stump up for the particular subscription in question.

This extraordinary racket is, at root, about the bewitching power of high-brow brands. Journals that published great research in the past are assumed to publish it still, and – to an extent – this expectation fulfils itself. To climb the career ladder academics must get into big-name publications, where their work will get cited more and be deemed to have more value in the philistine research evaluations which determine the flow of public funds. Thus they keep submitting to these pricey but mightily glorified magazines, and the system rolls on."

Following the Guardian comment, there are many interesting and sensible comments. Perhaps I can add here that the solution advocated in the article is the one supposed here in earlier articles in our Education section, namely that "the old order needs to change, not just for the good of academics, but for the good of the public who pay them. Copy-editing and admin will still need to be funded, but this can be done through direct grants for a fraction of the cost of subscriptions."

If websites like CrimeTalk were funded by universities directly, the latter would save themselves a lot of money. Moreover, academics could, through those universities and through editorial boards on websites, have considerably more control over content, production values and styles, and intellectual standards.

There is one vital thing I must add: by not overturning the iniquitous system of academic publishing, and it really is wrong not just "silly", scholars are, as the Guardian says, denying themselves an audience beyond academic walls. From personal experience and having committed the silly sin myself, I can say this works in two ways: [1] by academics' writing in a technical language which is developed within the cloistered walls of an enclosed system and has no need to explain itself to anyone outside, and [2] by suppressing the public voice in return for re-employment within the university - the technical language combined with a rigged peer-review system contains the academic publication within its enclosed environment in return for a steady and comfortable salary. In developing countries, it is called bribing off potential trouble-makers....

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