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Increasing deoxygenation of the oceans is a death knell for all marine life and there by the food security of humanity.
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New Report on Ocean Oxygen Loss Gives ‘Ultimate Wake-Up Call’ to Act on Climate
by Andrea Germanos
“We are now seeing increasingly low levels of dissolved oxygen across large areas of the open ocean. This is perhaps the ultimate wake-up call from the
uncontrolled experiment humanity is unleashing on the world’s ocean as carbon emissions continue to increase,” said report co-editor Dan Laffoley, the principal advisor on Marine Science and Conservation for IUCN’s Global Marine and Polar Program.
A new report on ocean oxygen loss released Saturday should serve as the “ultimate wake-up call” to take bold action to rein in planet-warming emissions and save the world’s “suffocating seas,” researchers said.
The publication from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) shows how the problem known as ocean deoxygenation, driven by global warming and human-caused nutrient pollution, is expanding, with impacts on humans and marine ecosystems alike.
“With this report, the scale of damage climate change is wreaking upon the ocean comes into stark focus. As the warming ocean loses oxygen, the delicate balance of marine life is thrown into disarray,” said IUCN acting director general Dr. Grethel Aguilar.
Representing the expertise of over five dozens scientists across 17 countries, the report is framed as “the largest peer-reviewed study conducted so far on ocean deoxygenation.”
Driving the problem is climate change, both directly, as oxygen is less soluble in warmer waters, and indirectly by affecting ocean dynamics. Deoxygenation is also being fueled by nutrient pollution, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, from sewage, agriculture, and aquaculture. Those factors are summed up in an infographic from IUCN:
A four-minute video entitled “A Breathless Ocean” released by the IUCN explains the process further:
The researchers found that from 1960-2010 overall ocean oxygen reserves fell by 2%, and they say the level could drop by as much as a further 7% by 2100.
While there were just 45 ocean sites around the world with low oxygen conditions in the 1960s, 700 such sites now exist. The number of areas in the global ocean depleted of oxygen, or anoxic waters, has quadrupled, the report found.
That’s bad news, because changes in oxygen levels mess with species distribution. Species like jellyfish want low-oxygen areas, but low-oxygen sensitive ones, including most fish, don’t.
Those species are then driven to other areas not affected by deoxygenation, but that can leave them susceptible to over-fishing by commercial operations.
Humans dependent on the affected species, especially smaller-scale fisheries, are adversely impacted. Communities may have a reduced catch or are forced to spend more to obtain the afected species—impacts that threaten not only nutrient loss but cultural loss.
“We are now seeing increasingly low levels of dissolved oxygen across large areas of the open ocean. This is perhaps the ultimate wake-up call from the uncontrolled experiment humanity is unleashing on the world’s ocean as carbon emissions continue to increase,” said report co-editor Dan Laffoley, the principal advisor on Marine Science and Conservation for IUCN’s Global Marine and Polar Program.
“To stop the worrying expansion of oxygen-poor areas,” said Laffoley, “we need to decisively curb greenhouse gas emissions as well as nutrient pollution from agriculture and other sources.”
That points to action global leaders must commit to right now as they attend COP 25.
According to Minna Epps, IUCN Global Marine and Polar Program director, “Decisions taken at the ongoing climate conference will determine whether our ocean continues to sustain a rich variety of life, or whether habitable, oxygen-rich marine areas are increasingly, progressively, and irrevocably lost.”
Originally published by CommonDreams.org
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Peace. Goodwill And Joy On Earth At Christmas For Palestine
by Irwin Jerome
Peace, Good Will and Joy at Christmas! But what does that mean for Palestine and Palestinians?
Peace, Good Will and Joy at Christmas! But what does that mean for Palestine and Palestinians? Every year, on the 11th day of the 11th hour of the 11th month, the human spirit pauses to pay tribute to world peace, good will and joy towards all and commemorate that dark moment in modern world history, a century ago, when an armistice put an end to the host of conquerors who once again were intent, at all cost, upon committing one of the greatest blood bathes to date. That date and time marked the latest end to the madness of the human soul when it felt compelled to commit a blood-letting of over 60 million human beings in a never-ending quest to once again divide the world up, like some giant monopoly board, between the conquerors and the conquered.
Each year on that same Armistice Day in November special tribute is paid in particular to all the warriors who lost their lives in the struggle to defend their nation’s right to continue to exist in peace and good will towards all and experience the joy of what it means to be a free people. But the millions of nameless, faceless, innocent civilians murdered in the process forever remain all but unacknowledged beyond being labelled collateral damage.
Yet on the 25th of December, barely a month later, in Palestine, the world pauses once again to honor the hallowed birthplace of Jesus and commemorate the life and teachings of that consummate Prince of Peace. But during that sacred time each December is exactly when yet another moment should be taken to pause and honor not only the birthplace of Jesus Christ but also give a face to all those lost millions of nameless, faceless, innocent ones by paying a living tribute to the fearlessness of those like the Palestinian peoples and other unheralded ones, who still daily, alone and with little help from the world, lose their lives, either as warriors or as collateral damage, in defense of their right and that of their nation to exist and remain free.
Ever since that “World War to End All Wars” came to a bloody halt, Britain’s Balfour Declaration, a racist-assimilationist document made at the war’s conclusion, with the Western World’s acquiessence, changed the course and composition of the Middle East forever, but for the worse. Among the artifical divisions that the Balfour Declaration created, Palestine ended up being mandated to the Jewish race to the exclusion of the Palestinian peoples themselves.
What that Balfour Declaration in essence created was an immigrant settler-occupier-conqueror reality that ever since the end of the Second World War has threatened the integrity of Palestine as a nation and the rights of the Palestinians as a people deservant of the same level of respect and defense of their right to exist and remain free and independent in their own homelands. To this day, they represent the poster child face of the world’s collateral damage.
Without the world’s protection and defense of their right to exist, the nation of Palestine and the Palestinian people’s former way of life has continued to be reduced down to mere pathetic fragments of what it once was. The Palestinian peoples once prosperous villages, towns and cities filled with happy children, families and the commerce of a viable way of life, now have been turned into squalid refugee camps with little hope for the future: cordoned-off by Israeli checkpoints at gun point; reduced to walled-in enclaves of homes cut off from their fields and livestock, with; borders demarcated on three sides by an Apartheid Wall on land and a fourth invisible wall, demarcated by the Mediterranean Sea and patrolling Isreali Defense Force boats that symbolize death, arrest and humiliation to all who dare to attempt to go beyond Israel’s imposed 3-Mile Limit. But to the rest of the world it’s as if all this remains invisible.
And yet, ever since, the same hatred that the Jewish people once felt towards the Nazi for the many pogorms, expulsions and genocide they were forced to endure, that earned them the expression “Am Israel Chai”, meaning “The Jewish Nation Lives”, could also be used as an apt phrase to describe the same fierce defiance that Palestinians continue to display against those in Israel and their allies who now hate them as much. The fact that places like Gaza survive and the people defiantly struggle to find joy in spite of their miserable state could amply be described as Am Palestine Chai.
The vexing, unresolved tensions that continue to exist unabated between Israel & Palestine in places like Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, like the unresolved tensions between other nations and peoples gripped in similar unresolved conflicts, such as those between: India and Pakistan and the sovereign kingdoms of Jammu and Kashmir; or the warring systems of government between an authoritarian China and democratic Hong Kong, where widespread torture, extrajudical killings, arbitrary arrests and disappearance of journalists and activists, continue to cause the world to tetter on the edge of yet other future threatened wars that threaten to embroil all nations.
It’s not surprising that in some circles, what with the on-going threats of Climate Change, rise of fascist authoritarian governments and growing ever-wider disparities between the rich and poor, the world’s ’Doomsday Clock’ has now been advanced to two minutes before midnight. But the world’s nations seemingly remain all but impotent to ever do anything to rein in the political, military, corporate and financial forces that continue to dangerously move the Doomsday Clock that much closer still to midnight.
Called into question is the human spirit’s inability to ever realize on earth a permanent just peace and good will for all. So the unaswered question remains: when, if ever, can freedom-loving Palestinians, Hindus, Muslims, Chinese, or whatever persecuted and brutalized indigenous peoples hope to celebrate their own day of remembrance of the values and identities of their peoples’ lives needlessly lost in their quest for peace and freedom?
Yet, still, almost as if it were a compulsive, irrational, knee-jerk reaction, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, and 25th of each December the human spirit nevertheless strives to honor and pay tribute to the Prince of Peace who once spoke out so eloquently and powerfully against the needless futility of the very butchery, savagery and carnage that humans still remain so compelled to wage upon one another, the natural world, all non-human forms of life, and, indeed, against the very essence of life itself.
In spite of it all, during each Christmas-tide, special tribute and honor continues to nevertheless be paid to what the birth of the baby Jesus in Palestine still symbolizes. Yet, oddly, the birth of that extraordinary human being once ended up being assassinated by the same Jewish people who now ruthlessly rule today over Palestine and the Palestinians.
No other place on earth since has ever been spared. At the slightest whim or desire, with the arrival of whatever new would-be conqueror, megalomaniac or narcissist, the young crème-de-la-crème of whatever nation, like Pavlovian Dogs, are prepared to once again thrust themselves into the meat grinder for The Cause, whether it be for God, King or Country. Like lemmings being led to the sea, they’re prepared to sacrifice themselves for whatever new hopeless, meaningless, unattainabe version of ‘The Madness’.
On the eve of 2020, as the world continues to delve deeper into the 21st century, the meltdown and unraveling of civil human societies continues to lead to untold, irrational acts of murder, mayhem and terror committed against so many innocent populaces in a myriad of places.
The long history behind how countries like Israel, India, Pakistan and others throughout the Middle East artifically first came into being at the end of WWI & WWI, and the terror they continue to be responsible for in their on-going expansion, should be the real background story evoked by the watchword phrase Lest We Forget.
The Nakba War that began in Palestine in 1948; the endless intifadas and military operations that ever since have proliferated in still other occupied territories, in violation of international law and U.N. resolutions; continue to provoke perpetual terror everywhere that rage on like deadly untreated cancerous scourges.
Yet the sheer magnitude of so many betrayals that have been perpetrated against so many different peoples over the past century have been committed with the consent of an indifferent world that, like modern-day Pontius Pilate’s who continue to wash their hands of the whole matter, has left the fate of many to those who lust for their blood.
What continues to happen in places like East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is nothing less than a blatant outrage against humanity. But it isn’t. The Palestinians continue to struggle to survive in open-air prisons and squalid refugee camps, victimized by on-going illegal sieges, blockades and onslaughts against their some 2 million refugees, crammed into a tiny 24 mile by 7 mile strip of land that continues to grow as one of the worlds most densely populated concentrations of land on earth.
But in spite of it all, over the years of Israeli air, missile and artillery bombardments continue to surgically fire upon Gaza, whether at UN-designated sites, hospitals, schools, mosques or homes, that have killed thousands of civilians with whole families and clans wiped out. Yet the resistance of the people remains strong in the face of however many more innocent, defenseless civilians become the victims of endless punitive death and destruction inflicted by one Israeli military operation after another, with IDF military snipers repeatedly maiming, murdering terrorizing and humiliating the people.
In the past, some Israeli leaders, lke Gilad Sharon, son of Israel’s former PM Ariel Sharon and a major in an elite Israeli Defense Unit (IDF), have even had the temerity to wish for the utter destruction of Gaza, not by the use of gas chambers but by a nuclear bomb that would create yet another Hiroshima or Nagasaki and send the Gaza Strip back to the Stone Age.
Meanwhile, in the hell-hole that is Gaza, the people continue to be subjected to innumerable inflicted tortures, such as: trying to cope with only two to four hours of electricity per day; left without air conditioning or heating in blistering hot or freezing cold tempertures; while the nearby Mediterranean ocean, as polluted and empty of fish as it is, is designated off-limits beyond an artifically-imposed limit to the rights of fishermen to search for food or adventurous Palestinian sailors who desire to explore the world beyond; while 97% of Gaza’s water is considered undrinkable because the people are denied the ability to purify the water; with 50% of Gaza’s hospitals deemed non-operational due to an inability to get supplies through Israel’s maze of cruel, concentration camp-like borders and military checkpoints. Few Palestinians can even get in or out of the Gaza Strip without onerous restrictions, while virtually nothing that human beings everywhere in the world normally take for granted to make their lives viable, if not palatable – like food, medicine, fuel and goods – can ever get into Gaza, further perpetuating their misery. But the same could be said for the plight of many other dispossessed indigenous peoples throughout the world.
So, now that the world once again has just passed yet another Armistice & Remembrance benchmark anniversary, and approaches yet another Christmas season of rebirth, forgiveness and good will, it seems only fitting and proper if yet one more brief moment were taken to remember, lest we forget, such outrages and pay tribute to those less fortunate ones who, over decades of time, have striven, against the greatest of odds, to help their people survive against the cruelest and most barbarous conditions, under all but insurmountable odds.
But can or will the world in 2020 and beyond ever hear the hue and cry for retribution, boycotts, divestments and sanctions against countries like Isreal and other fascist-minded governments that once brought the apartheid state of South Africa to its knees and forced it to give in to reason and sanity?
Meanwhile, the state media apparatus of countries like the U.S., Canada, Israel, and their allies in the EU and U.N., only ever refer to Palestinian and Hamas activists and freedom-fighters as ‘militants’ and ‘terrorists’, rather than ‘patriots’ and ‘heroes’ who desire to live free and dream dreams of a more positive future.
In the face of it all, so-called democratic Western nations like the United States, Canada and others also continue to provide unequivocal moral support, succor, and billions of their willing or unwilling tax payers monies to provide the wherewithal for those intent upon carrying out whatever nefarious ends of state-run terrorism; with virtually little oversight or accountability of how the monies spent contravene U.N. resolutions, principles of international law, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
So at this Christmas season of giving, Lest We Forget, it would seem appropriate for the world to recall what it means to truly irradicate all the ugly things of the past from which the human race forever dreams of one day freeing itself and join together with the peoples of all nations who search in earnest for that elusive dream of peace, justice and good will for all.
Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American activist-writer who, for decades, has sought to call world attention to problems of environmental degradation and unsustainability caused by excessive mega-development and the host of related environmental-ecological-spiritual issues that exist between the conflicting philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Irwin is the author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey”, a spiritual sojurn among the native peoples of North America, and has produced numereous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel & U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine & Siege of Gaza, as well as; innumerable accounts of the violations constantly waged by industrial-corporate-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Collective Soul
Ending the Gulf crisis: Natural gas frames future Gulf relations
by Dr James M Dorsey
Natural gas could well emerge as the litmus test of how relations among the Gulf’s energy-rich monarchies evolve if and when a Saudi-United Arab Emirates-led alliance and Qatar bury their hatchet.
Natural gas could well emerge as the litmus test of how relations among the Gulf’s energy-rich monarchies evolve if and when a Saudi-United Arab Emirates-led alliance and Qatar bury their hatchet.
It could also position Gulf states as key players in shaping the future of the energy architecture of Eurasia.
This week’s summit in Riyadh of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that groups Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain is likely to determine how close the kingdom and its allies are to lifting a 2.5-year-old diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar.
Qatari foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani suggested that secret Saudi-Qatari talks in recent weeks had “moved from a deadlock in the Gulf crisis to talks about a future vision regarding ties.” It was not immediately clear whether the UAE was equally willing to find a way out of the Gulf crisis.
The bellwether of how much progress has been made will be the level of Qatari representation at the Riyadh summit. Qatar emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has refrained from attending GCC summits since the boycott was imposed in June 2017 in a bid to force Qatar to fall in line with Saudi and UAE regional policies and effectively accept the two Gulf states’ tutelage.
An end to the boycott potentially could open the door to the creation of a regional gas network at a time that Qatar plans to increase its annual Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) production by a whopping 64 percent to 126 million tons by 2027 and Saudi Arabia is investing up to USD$ 150 billion in becoming a major gas player.
The network would facilitate Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plans to streamline and diversify the kingdom’s economy. It would further enable Saudi Arabia to capitalize on the fact that Iran is hobbled by crippling US sanctions in its efforts to maintain its status as a key swing producer serving Eurasian markets.
Building a regional network may be easier said than done even if the Gulf states succeed in putting their debilitating dispute behind them. Healing the scars of the dispute that impacted people’s lives on both sides of the divide to the point where countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar would be willing to become dependent on one another is likely to take time.
That kind of trust didn’t exist even before the Gulf crisis. Saudi Arabia initially opposed the construction of the Dolphin gas pipeline, the region’s first cross-border gas project that links Qatar to the UAE and Oman.
Qatar continued to supply the UAE with two billion cubic feet of gas a day despite the boycott, which the Emirates would have found difficult to fully replace.
An end to the boycott would significantly enhance Saudi plans announced in early 2019 to establish a natural gas network with the UAE and Oman that eventually would extend to Kuwait, Bahrain Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and possibly Palestine.
Potential moves to enhance gas cooperation in the Gulf come as the eastern Mediterranean emerges as a potential competitor, particularly in future exports to Europe, Asia and China.
Huge gas finds in Israeli, Cypriot and Egyptian waters have seen industry eyes swivel to the Levant Basin, which, according to a 2010 estimate by the US Geological Survey, could hold as much as 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the equivalent of Iraq’s reserves.
Energy experts argue that Qatari gas could significantly help Prince Mohammed rationalize Saudi Arabia’s energy market at a time that climate change is casting doubts on the sustainability of oil.
The King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center estimated that Saudi Arabia burned some 900,000 barrels per day of liquid fuels for industrial use and power generation in 2017.
“Replacing this oil with natural gas could generate more than U$10 billion of additional export revenue at current market prices… Qatar is one of the cheapest ways for the kingdom to remove oil entirely from power generation,” said Andy Critchlow, head of Europe, the Middle East and Africa at S&P Global Platts.
While Qatar may be willing to assist Saudi Arabia once the boycott is lifted, its is certain to ensure that it does not become dependent on gas exports to the kingdom.
Diversification of its gas exports is a pillar of Qatar’s soft power strategy that helped shield it from the effects of the boycott.
Some Qatari officials have long believed that gaining control of Qatari gas reserves was a main objective of the Saudi-UAE boycott.
As a result, Qatar is likely to be weary of plans by Saudi Arabia to become a global gas player. The kingdom holds the world’s fourth largest gas reserves that it so far has been unable to develop.
Amin H. Nasser, CEO of Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, said earlier this year that he expected the kingdom to massively invest in the Saudi gas sector over the next ten years. Mr. Nasser envisioned gas production increasing from 14 billion standard cubic feet to 23 billion by 2030.
“We are looking to shift from only satisfying our utility industry in the kingdom, which will happen especially with the increase in renewable and nuclear to be an exporter of gas and gas products,” Mr. Nasser said.
Qatar laid down its marker a year ago when it decided to leave OPEC, the cartel of oil exporting countries, to focus on its gas exports.
Speaking at the time, Qatari energy minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, articulated what is likely to shape the Gulf state’s policy even if the boycott is lifted.
“We are not saying we are going to get out of the oil business, but it is controlled by an organization managed by a country,” Mr. Al-Kaabi said.
Qatar, he said, was unwilling “to put efforts and resources and time in an organization that we are a very small player in, and I don’t have a say in what happens.”
Thank you for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. A written version of this podcast is on my blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer at mideastsoccer.blogspot.com. Please join me for my next podcast in the coming days. All the best and take care
Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture
A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Podbean, Audecibel, Patreon and Castbox.
Why Citizenship Amendment Bill be rejected?
by Aftab Alam
It has no answer to the inclusion of Christians, Buddhists and Parsis as like Muslims they do have many alternative places to seek refuge. The rationale that BJP has given for the exclusion of Muslims from CAB is not only flawed and devoid of logic but also constitutionally impermissible and must be rejected in its present form.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led government at the centre is all set to introduce the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) in the Parliament on December 9. The existing Citizenship Act was enacted in 1955 which along with articles 5 to 11 of the Constitution of India determines Indian citizenship.
The original Citizenship Act of 1955 has been amended several times in the past but it had never attracted such media and public galore as it has received this time. It is intriguing to explore as to what makes the current CAB so controversial. Is there anything serious in the proposed CAB that Muslims should be worried about? How CAB is linked with the National Register of Citizens (NRC) which BJP is planning to carry out at the national level?
The government had first introduced the CAB in 2016 after 2014 general elections but due to lack of a requisite number in the upper house it could not get through that time. This time, however, the government seems to be visibly more confident after Parliament’s nod to the triple talaq bill and abrogation of Article 370 with support from crucial alliance partners like Janata Dal (United) and some regional parties like AIADMK, BJD, TRS, YSRCP and some Independents.
The main provision which has made CAB a controversial legislation is the promise to grant citizenship on the basis of religion. The proposed CAB seeks to grant citizenship to all Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, Jains and Parsis illegal migrants fleeing religious persecution from Muslim majority states of Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan if they had entered India on or before December 31, 2014. The existing laws debar illegal migrants from applying for Indian citizenship.
The CAB, however, palpably excludes Muslim migrants of these countries from acquiring Indian citizenship even if they had suffered similar religious persecution. There is no clear answer from the government as to why the CAB discriminates against Muslims.
If anyone wishes to understand the true motives behind the CAB one have to view it against the backdrop of recently concluded National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam wherein at least 19 lakh people, mostly Hindus, have been excluded from the final list.
Upset with NRC’s final list, BJP’s Assam unit quickly rejected it. Its leader and Assam’s Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma explained that his government had decided to reject it because it “included many who should not have been and excluded many who are genuine Indian citizens”.
The Assam NRC has exposed the BJP which has been falsely propagating that after the 1971 War a large number of Muslims, ranging between 4 million to 10 million, had illegally migrated to India from Bangladesh. This, according to BJP, has not only changed the demography of the some north eastern States particularly Assam but also seriously undermined the right of the local people over resources.
During the 2019 election campaign the Home Minister Amit Shah had even described the illegal immigrants as ‘termites’ who were eating the grain that should go to the poor, and are taking our jobs. Stoking the communal passion he also pledged that every single infiltrator from this country would be removed, except Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs.
This narrative has helped the BJP to gain power in the region but the Assam NRC has come as a huge disappointment to the party. Its bogey of illegal Muslims infiltration has not only fallen flat but has even backfired. The party is now being blamed for this humanitarian catastrophe of making 19 lakh people as stateless. The BJP is facing stiff resistance in the region both from within and from the opposition parties after the NRC in Assam.
Upset with the developments in Assam, the BJP now wants to correct its political folly through CAB which it thinks will prove as a two–edged sword. Through CAB, BJP wants to give citizenship to all Hindus illegal migrants who have been excluded from the Assam’s final NRC list but at the same time, it can easily exclude Muslims out of it. It will help boost BJP’s image of a party that cares Hindus not only living in the country but also outside the state.
The RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had already announced that Hindus need not be apprehensive irrespective of whether their names feature in the NRC or not in Assam and elsewhere. The BJP president and the Home Minister, Amit Shah has also echoed the same view. Recently he stated that “I assure all Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain refugees they won’t have to leave the country, they will get Indian citizenship and enjoy all the rights of an Indian national.”
With the government’s proposal to conduct a nationwide NRC after CAB, Muslims seem to be worried. They fear that if their names are left out in this exercise, due to one reason or the other, they would eventually lose their citizenship but if non-Muslims are somewhat excluded they would always have a chance to get the citizenship back through proposed CAB.
While refuting the allegation of the opposition that the proposed CAB is communal legislation specifically targeting Muslims, the BJP has come out with the following arguments: Firstly, it claims that religion is not the basis of the grant of citizenship under CAB rather religious persecution. Secondly, BJP argues that while Muslims have many countries to seek refuge, Hindus have no other place to go except India. It further considers all Hindus as the natural citizens of India.
But it has no answer to the inclusion of Christians, Buddhists and Parsis as like Muslims they do have many alternative places to seek refuge. The rationale that BJP has given for the exclusion of Muslims from CAB is not only flawed and devoid of logic but also constitutionally impermissible and must be rejected in its present form.
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The writer is a Professor, Department of Political Science, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.
Ambedkar, Constitutional Morality and the Question of Minority Rights in Today’s Indian politics
by Badre Alam Khan
For putting forward the radical legacy of Ambedkar, and fighting against the onslaught of the Hindutva forces, it is a high time for young Ambedkarites, left-progressive forces and oppressed minorities to develop a larger social solidarity among themselves. That shall be also a litmus test for a secular, democratic and socialist
country like India in times to come.
RAPE-UBLIC!
by Kabir Deb
It is not some chicken
that rests on those breasts
they feed your next generation
pluck them out and you’ll see death
all around, you do think to pluck those
every night in a small corner of your bed
you might be a father, brother, husband or
just some man who is desperate to drive fast!
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