Remember Kathua

Stop and ask, can depravity, brutality and injustice be justified by religion and politics?

The brutal murder and serial rape of an eight-year-old Bakherwal-Gujjar girl living in a village near Kathua, 72 km from Jammu, is horrific enough in all its detail. But, what has emerged since the police investigation led to the arrest of the alleged perpetrators of the crime is even worse, for it has exposed the fault lines in our society. How have we reached a point where the rape and murder of a child is used to fuel communal hatred and promote politically sanctioned impunity for criminals?

The gruesome details about what happened to this child between 10 January, when she disappeared, and 17 January when her brutalised young body was found, are terrifying because of what this represents in terms of human depravity. That a child could be abducted, drugged, confined in a temple, repeatedly beaten and raped, and then murdered and thrown out is horrific enough. What makes it worse is that the perpetrators included members of the local police. One of them even joined the search party with her parents after they complained that she was missing, all the time aware of where she was and what was being done to her.

Joint announcement of CPG(m-l) TKP/ML

The crisis of the global capitalist-imperialist system fuels and is fueled by the contradictions of the imperialist powers at all levels. All around the world workers and peoples are facing the most ferocious attack of the system’s forces which seek a solution in an ever greater and more profound barbarism. In our countries the working class and the peoples live in the conditions of fierce exploitation, unemployment, and impoverishment. The working force is getting discredited, the social and democratic rights of the masses are being trampled upon. In the meantime, the imperialist grip is tightening in a region, which constitutes an ardent and crucial arena of the global imperialist competition. A region in which American, Russian, Chinese, and European imperialists come across and clash according to the ambitions and magnitudes of each, in a tangle of contradictions, that daily magnifies the dangers for the peoples.

In this context the peril of war, that threatens the peoples on the both sides of the Aegean Sea, grows ever larger. A peril that is rooted in the particular and specific features, and in the history of the two countries” reactionary confrontation, but at the same time constitutes an integral part of the turmoil and of the developments that are occurring across the region.

Urban Homelessness in Toronto

Toronto Mayor’s Housing Policies Costs Lives

By Yogi Acharya*

Via: GlobalResearch

Eighty people have died in the last two years as a direct result of homelessness in Toronto. That’s one homeless person dying every 10 days. In 1985, people fighting homelessness started keeping track of these senseless, and entirely preventable deaths. Since that time, they’ve recorded over 800 deaths – lives sacrificed in service of a perverse economic logic that demands ever more cuts from the destitute and grants ever more comforts to the rich.

Talk to anyone who has used the City’s emergency shelter system, or anyone who works with people using shelters, and a grim picture emerges of chronic overcrowding, bug infested dormitories, the recurrent spread of contagious diseases, and the perpetual lack of sufficient beds.

Solidarity to Pablo Hasel

Spain: “They want to condemn me to 2 years in prison for writing songs”

 

Every day we have to endure all kinds of defenders of fascism and absolutely nothing happens; on the contrary, fascists are even defended by the police when they protest, they have TV channels, newspapers, public finance etc.
However, saying that those who throw families out on the streets deserve to be punished is considered defending terrorism. They accuse me of not feeling bad if something happens to those who condemn us to poverty and precariousness. They judge me because they cannot stand our struggle to end the constant injustices and the fact that my music makes people think.

How dare she?

Last Tuesday, Israel Defense Forces soldiers shot Hamed al-Masri, 15, in the head, wounding the unarmed boy from Salfit severely. On Friday, soldiers shot the unarmed Mohammed Tamimi, also 15, in the head, wounding the Nabi Saleh boy severely. Also on Friday, soldiers killed Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, a double amputee, shooting him in the head, too. On the same day Ahed Tamimi, 16, stood in the courtyard of her home with her girlfriend and slapped an IDF officer who had invaded her home.
Israel woke from its slumber angry: How dare she. The three victims of the barbaric shooting didn’t interest Israelis, and the media didn’t even bother to report on them. But the slap (and kick) by Tamimi provoked rage. How dare she slap an IDF soldier? A soldier whose friends slap, beat, abduct and of course shoot Palestinians almost every day.

Letter from jail

Prof. G.N. Saibaba is a former Delhi University professor who is currently serving life sentence for his alleged links to Communist Party of India (Maoist) and his health is in critical condition. He wrote a letter from Nagpur Central Jail. This time he wrote to Anjum. Anjum is one of the central figures of Arundhati Roy’s new novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

Dear Anjum,

How are you? I hope you are doing well along with the entire Ministry in Jannet Guest House. I hope you still remember me six months after my disappearance from Delhi. I know it’s easy to forget people who go to prisons or the otherworldly worlds. Life outside on the Earth has to go on.

Coal Miners' Strike Spreads In Kazakhstan As Workers Stay Underground

From: RFE/RL

SHAKHTINSK, Kazakhstan -- A strike by coal miners in north-central Kazakhstan has spread to more mines as hundreds of workers are refusing to return to the surface, demanding higher salaries and better benefits.

Kazakh Labor Minister Tamara Duisenova told reporters on December 12 that 684 miners at eight different mines have spent two nights underground in coal mines in the town of Shakhtinsk, in the Qaraghandy region.