The Fallacy of a Democratic Government

Are today's Western nations democracies? While I have yet to find an affirmation of this, I am compelled to rant about this topic today. Thank you to Bobbi Jo, for inspiring me. While I am not an American or Indian citizen, my choice of including them in this rant is because leaders of both nations claim they live in a democracy. Though I am not convinced their governments are run like a democracy, I only use them as examples. Hopefully my rhetoric will inspire others to question their government and their lip service to democracy.

In my opinion, America and India think they have a democracy when in actual fact, only the bill of rights and privileges potential grant citizens of both countries the rights and freedoms of democracy.

Yet the minute they exercise their right to protest injustice, the radical right arises to suppress them and take away those rights by force, and force their own privileges on everyone else who is excluded by them i.e. visible minorities, the poor, and the mentally challenged.

These rights and freedoms are slowly taken away from us at home, in public education, and at work. By the time some of us make it to university, we learn that our rights and freedoms are invoilable and still remaion, despite oppression and everyday suppression we exert to protect our lives.

In any given country, it is true that some people (the upper class) have more rights than the underprivileged. If a person from the middle class does not abide by the status quo, then he or she may be bullied into accepting it by force.

If a person tries ot exercises his rights, then he treads a rocky road because, despite free legal aid, the lawyer usually sides with his oppressor.

For example, when corruption such as sexual slavery is exposed, the whistleblower is usually forced into a psychiatric ward and given medication. Later, the nation's scions will send their representative to force him to abandon his just cause and their collaborators in mass media will tarnish his name, forcing him to abandon his legal career. Then he will retire in the country to tend an orchard on his hobby farm with the money he accumulated whilst defending the poor and underprivileged, who were mainly prostitutes, drug addicts and the poor.

America is a sick society that presents its citizens with the illusion of democracy. When the smoke and mirrors are exposed, rather than admitting the truth ("government is not a democracy but a plutocracy with lip service paid 24/7 through mass media"), the majority will attack the whistle-blower rather than face the truth.

What then is truth and justice when the American way is based on a sickness in society that never goes away but worsens by the day?

Mass media perpetuates this sickness, sometimes making a parody of it to entertain the masses, and sometimes exposing their version of the truth so as to profit from it whilst a scapegoat is chosen in a feeble attempt to absolve themselves of their participation in a new round of smoke and mirrors.

Whereas in the Americas, democracy at the grassroots level often meets imprisonment for their activism, in Asia and in Africa, there appears to be a handful of nations which are either dictatorships or run as classical democracies where the majority rules, and the large number of the poor live in abject poverty. Corruption exists because most people of the middle class realize that bribery smooths the wheel of progress and hush money is often paid to repair the honor of the privileged when they err.

Muslim martyrdom falls into this part of my rant, because blood money usually prevents the surviving family from legally challenging the injustice. If anyone objects, then the radical right will harass them and bribe the legal system so that if anyone dares to confront corruption, off to prison they go.

In other nations, particularly in Africa, the native Africans are militantly confrontative towards Asians (Indians), the Chinese and other "visible" minorities who are usually the majority back in their ancestral homelands (China, India, Pakistan, and sometimes South-East Asians).

It is delusion to declare that free-market capitalism empowers democratic rights. If this were true, then why did the US government bailout mortgage banks? If capitalism helps grease the wheels of democracy, then why did not the Mexican government closely scrutinize HSBC Mexico to ensure transparency to prevent money laundering? Perhaps it is because HSBC Mexico is a legal person, and thus has more privacy rights than the poor in Mexico.

I wish I could rant longer, but I must prepare for work soon. Were I to devote time to asking these questions which rarely are answered by the government, I'd be one of the "lazy poor" rather than a merely the "working poor."

In conclusion, I like to thank the people who act to discover the answers to my questions. We are all in this together. Peace to you all.

The Marginalization of Women of Color

Women are being marginalized around the world, and especially women of color.

While this blog post is not a comprehensive look at the problem, I am posting it to show the ease with which I can find proof to back up the marginalization of women of color.

With the recent spate of rapes in India. sexism is rife in India, the world's biggest democracy.

At the same time, women of color are oppressed (including Muslim women. This includes the Pakistan girl, Malala Yousufzai, shot and now living in the UK, the hundreds of women in Afghanistan who not only have to watch out for the Taleban but also their husbands due to cultural clash between tradition and Islam, which in itself is not oppressive to women.

Now before I finish this blog post, I'm going to add all the evidence to back up my claim that women are being marginalized around the world.

India gang rape (including commentaries)

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/13/world/asia/india-new-gang-rape/index.html
http://www.thefrisky.com/2013-01-15/padma-lakshmi-responds-to-gang-rapes-in-india/
http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/01/31/delhi-rape-activists-education-campaign-idINDEE90U02720130131?feedType=RSS&feedName=globalCoverage2

Pakistan girl, Malala Yousufzai, shot and now living in UK

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/01/04/malala-pakistan-girl-released.html
http://news.yahoo.com/pakistani-girl-shot-taliban-skull-reconstructed-103807211.html
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Pakistani+girl+Malala+shot+Taliban+released+hospital/7775637/story.html

Afghani women oppressed by Taleban and husbands

http://www.fazeteen.com/issue01/afghan_women.html
http://newcommave.com/relationship-taliban-and-afghan-women
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=126628&page=1

I apologize for not writing about the oppression of women in developed nations. It's less overt and is concentrated around economic equity between men and women in the workplace. As well, I admit to ignorance about the marginalization of women of color in developed nations, because on the whole, the marginalization isn't as bad as in other parts of the world.

First of all, the marginalization of aboriginal women in Canada has been well documented.

http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/community-politics/marginalization-of-aboriginal-women.html

You can Get Raped But Not Protest Rape in the World's Largest Democracy

While the lady raped on the bus in Delhi got emergency treatment in Singapore, the 17-year old girl who was raped recently by an auto rickshaw driver committed suicide.

The reason why has led to police officials getting canned.

Why should a minor who has been raped either choose between marrying the man who raped her or settling for blood money from his rapists? Especially when the police refused to file the rape complaint, which actually victimized the young woman as much as the rape itself.

If this is how the officials of the world's biggest democracy handle rape cases, it shows that the State is highly patriarchal in nature.

Even though India may be a nuclear power, domestically it seems democracy cannot inculcate in its men full respect for its women.

IMO it looks like in both cases, the men were investing in their manhood more than in any respect for women.

Their actions were predatory in nature, and in both cases, the police have failed in their duty to the State to protect The People.

India Practices Double Standard Regarding Prostitution

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - An Indian state on Friday rejected a proposal by prostitutes to pay tax to the government in return for stopping police raids on brothels and checks on soliciting clients.

Officials in the eastern state of West Bengal said since prostitution was illegal, the government could not tax sex workers.

"Tomorrow, criminals will say we will pay taxes so don't catch us," Raj Kanojia, a top state police officer, said.

On Thursday, the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) -- an umbrella group of 65,000 sex workers in West Bengal -- announced that prostitutes would charge clients extra to help them pay tax.

"Even if we collect one rupee from each client it would boost the exchequer," Smarajit Jana, DMSC's chief adviser, said. "Let the government collect taxes legally, as prostitutes in any case pay the police hefty amounts to get away."

About four million clients visit red light areas under the control of DMSC every month in West Bengal.

Sex workers say they are harassed by police and picked up from brothels, hotels and nightclubs and jailed. They often have to pay bribes to officers to continue working.

Under Indian law, sex workers cannot solicit customers in public. Authorities tolerate brothels in some areas although police often raid them to rescue minors or to prevent women from being forced into the profession.

Prostitutes are already being "taxed" by crooked cops. Either accept their taxes or crack down on crooked cops, India!

Yamuna Gently Weeps

No mother wants to nurture her child in a slum. Families do not live in a slum out of choice; it is a matter of survival.

Yumana Gently Weeps is the story of one of the biggest and oldest slums in Delhi and in India, called Yamuna Pushta. A slum that gave shelter to 1,50,000 people and which nurtured more than 40,000 homes. A world within a world existed in Yamuna Pushta.

Schools, medical and healthcare centres, self-help groups, shops, restaurants, creches, small businesses and various social organizations, worked closely with the community, bringing about immense positive change in the lives of the residents. This massive township was demolished in a few weeks.

40,000 homes were razed to the ground and more than 1,20,000 people were left to the mercy of the cruel streets. Just twenty percent of the families whose homes were demolished, were in the guise of resettlement, shoved forty kilometres away from the main city and civilization, onto a barren piece of land in Bawana, where there was no proper sanitation, no medical facility, pathetic water supply, no electricity, and worst of all, no scope of earning one's livelihood. All this and more in the middle of peak summer.


Thus begins the book by Ruzbeh N. Bharucha, son-in-law of Dr. Kiran Bedi, India's first woman policewoman who went on to found two foundations dedicated to prison reform, Nawajyoti and India Vision Foundation.

Kiran's great-grandfather was Sikh, immigrated from Pakistan to Amritsar and opened a pilgrimage inn, one of many now managed by Peshawaria Trust.

Both her maternal and paternal relatives are on the IVF board of directors, and some of them even have contributed to the industrial development of Dehli through the North India Development Authority (NOIDA).

Indeed, the Arora, Bharucha, and Peshawaria families have done much to care for the poor of Dehli.

Terrorist leader of Deccan Mudjidaheen a black hat hacker

Early news reports indicate leader graduated as an IT professional in 1996.

But he hooked with the militant youth group S. I. M. I. 2 years later.