Author Archives: Lila

Feminastiness: Eastern Men As Oppressive As Westerners….

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Topping my recently opened female-of-the-species-is-more-deadly-than-the-male file, this, from an Indian site (I’ve changed some of the language for clarity):

How to Improve Gender Sensitivity in India: 

1) Women must not be imprisoned even if they kill. They need to be put into reformatories.

2) As soon as a woman marries, she should get 50% rights to her husband’s property.

3) Large scale single parenting by woman (with maintenance provided by husband) is the norm. Research shows that children who are not allowed to see their fathers after divorce for years grow up to be very healthy. In India, Gender Sensitive judges alone should decide if the women should allow the father to see the child after divorce or not. Or if he should ever see them.

4) Any violence committed by woman against others (including murder) should be considered self-defense.

5) The disparity between life expectancy rates in men and women needs to be raised to the levels in developed countries. In India, women live 2.4 years more than men on an average. This difference has to be improved to the levels in the US and Europe where women live more than 6 years than men on an average.

6) If a man cancels an engagement, he need to be punished by imprisonment of upto 5 months. On the other hand, if a woman cancels an engagement, she should be compensated with 30% or more of the man’s yearly income.

7) For any woman who commits suicide within 7 years of marriage, a dowry harassment (or other harassment) case against the husband should be filed by default. He should be imprisoned for at least a year for not taking care of his wife.

8) If a woman complains of domestic violence, the man should be imprisoned immediately and bail only granted by a court. All their joint bank accounts need to be frozen at once. The woman also has the to right to stay on in the “matrimonial home” (i.e., the husband’s house), until she gets a divorce. If the women has an adulterous relation that is proved beyond doubt, the husband must still allow her to live in his house, or provide alternate accommodation of equal quality. The benchmark case is in the movie, “Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.” The husband is even expected to help the women achieve her adulterous goals. If he cannot directly help, he must provide one-third of his salary towards the wife until she marries the other man.

9) A man must do half of all household work, even if his wife is not working. But he must always work full-time. If he does not, even if he does all house work, he should be labeled lazy, improvident, pathetic, and derelict, certainly in private, and preferably in public where it will cause maximum humiliation and pain either to him or to his relatives. If a woman does not work either outside the house or in, she is nonetheless entitled to all consideration and respect and anything less than deferential treatment of all her needs, demands, whims, and psychiatric moods should be considered a violation of her human rights.

10) After marriage, a man must not stay with his parents or allow his parents to stay for a prolonged period with him (“prolonged” to be decided by the woman and subject to revision at any time on request by her, her friends, or her relatives however distant and uneducated). He must allow her in-laws to stay in his house for at least the same length of time his parents stay in his house. If he violates any of these fundamental human rights of a woman, he can be imprisoned for neglect and abuse of his in-laws.

11) If in-laws of a man “feel” their daughter (or they) are not properly treated, the man should be thoroughly counseled and sensitized to his failure. If he does not mend his ways, stringent laws must be passed (with provision even for administering a good lashing) that will rectify his behavior.

12) The ratio of male:female suicide rates in India should be brought to the levels in the West. In India, 50%(about 25,000) more men commit suicide than women. This is much lower than western standards, where about 150% more men commit suicide than women.

13) The richer and the more educated the men are, the more pressure should be placed on them. They should provide the wife with a lifestyle equivalent to their status….. and they must also spend quality time with family (See 9, 10, 11 above). If this is still impossible, see 12.

14) By definition, Bangalore techies (since they work with software) are required to be softer than others. Since they are also paid more than most, they should deposit 20% of their monthly salary, at least,  in their wives’ names.

15) If the wife of a techie complains of dowry harassment (or any other harassment), he must be sacked from the job immediately (that is, after he gets out of jail on bail).

16) If the wife and husband are both techies, then the wife must not spend any part of her salary towards household or personal expenses. All expenses must be born by the man.

17) Streedhan given as a gift to the daughter during marriage must also be considered dowry.

18) Rural women and poor women are ignorant and can’t afford legal help. So, clearly the laws are really meant for urban India. Rural women should actually be discouraged from approaching the police or the courts since they don’t have the money anyway. Instead, they should be empowered in other ways – by better employment and by continuing to live in the traditional family system where they respect the decisions of elders. That will show everyone that that women’s rights laws are really UNDERUSED and (more importantly) will encourage urban women to MISUSE the law and file false cases. That makes for good business for feminist and Human Rights lawyers and keep bribe-giving at a healthy level, the booty being divided between the police and the women’s organizations. Currently, the rate of extortion for a techie is upto 1 lac and for an NRI (non-resident Indian) it goes upto 4 lacs.

19) Since, rural women do not suffer from domestic violence (see 18), domestic violence laws must be used mostly – and most stringently –  in urban India. Quod Erat Demostrandum.


More here in the archives of one of many new blogs on the feminist abuse of dowry and domestic abuse laws in India.

It would be funny if it were not another grim reminder of the way statutory remedies by the state end up creating more problems than remedies. Ultimately, both the men’s movement and the feminists are right….only in different places and ways. The feminists are more right (generally) about rural, uneducated women…..and the men’s movements is more right (generally) about urban, well-educated women.. But even then, each individual case is unique.

Racism, sexism and exist, but only as useful terms for analysis.. Down in the marrow, it’s all about power and relative power.

And when it holds power, the fairer sex is also the fiercer sex…

Read more here on the abuse of dowry laws and some advice for expatriate men who want to return home to be married:

498A victims offer the following advice for men getting married in India:
• When the bride and groom’s families exchange gifts, keep a written record of everything received and given.
• If you are traveling to India, make copies of your passport, visa and all credit cards and leave the copies with a trusted friend or relative.
• Don’t give anyone your tickets or passport.
• Register with the local Foreigners Registration Office upon arrival in India, and let them know your expected date of departure as well.
• “Don’t sign any blank checks.”
• Consider a prenuptial agreement.
• Keep aware of any bank activity by monitoring your bank statements.
• Print out and save any emails that may help your case. Under India’s recent cyber-laws, the emails may be admissible as evidence.
For more information, contact the following:
• Yahoo! Groups: Misusedowryact and Nridivorce
• www.sangyabalya.org (site is not always operational; alternatively, call them in Bangalore at 011-91-80-5696-9850 or email them at victimsof498a@rediffmail.com.
• The FBI’s local Indian staff can be reached through the American embassy in New Delhi: 011-91-11-2419-8000
• A few blogs are online, such as batteredmen.fullhydblogs.com, batteredmen.rediffblogs.com and batteredmen.blogspot.com.

The Flight to Food….

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“All over the world, food is causing trouble. Why? Not because there is too much of it or too little, but because it has gone way up in price.Why has it gone up? Well, for one reason, Ben Bernanke and other monetary authorities are pushing more money into the world financial system. The cash has to go somewhere. Much of it seems to be finding its way into the commodities markets – including soft commodities, notably food. In other words, worldwide inflation of food prices is a monetary phenomenon, as Milton Friedman might have put it, not a feature of the weather. But rather than attack the cause of inflation, the authorities are aiming squarely at its consequences.

Of course, there are other reasons for food price increases. There are a lot more people in the world than there used to be. And the new people have to eat too. Since many of these new people are entering the ‘middle class’ they have more money to spend on food, so they can bid up prices. And, typically, they want more meat. It takes more land to produce meat than it does to produce grains – putting further pressure prices all up and down the food chain.”

Thus speaks the proprietor of a newsletter in the business of watching financial trends.

Housing Bubble Trouble: Foreigners Keeping the Shine on the Big Apple?

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“Meanwhile, anyone who believes that the worst is over for real estate should keep an eye on New York City’s terminally bloated market. It has not crashed yet, but the likelihood that it will seems as certain a bet as that the sun will rise tomorrow. Last week’s report that prices are up while unit sales are down was regarded, incredibly, as evidence that the Big Apple might somehow be immune to the crash that has already spread to most other big cities. We are asked to believe that the high level of foreign ownership is what is keeping NYC’s housing prices buoyant. But if that were true, then how to explain the fact that Citigroup shares, which are heavily owned by foreigners whose pockets are almost infinitely deep, have fallen by nearly 70%?  

In fact, signs of an impending collapse in New York City real estate have been masked by the sale of a relative handful of apartments at exorbitant prices in the $25 million-$40 million range. Despite this, in the broad middle of the market – i.e., run-of-the-mill co-ops valued at $1.5 million to $3 million — buyers have peen pulling back in droves. Under the circumstances, only an imbecile could believe that NYC real estate will somehow weather the devastation of Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and hundreds of other financial firms both big and small…..”

Rick Ackerman.

Yes, Virginia, Housing Can Go Down….

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“Janice and Joe Pimentel, who are 52 and 58, respectively, decided to follow their families’ dairy farm tradition when they bought their 25-acre property in Atwater two decades ago. Their sons, now 21 and 30, decided not to go into the business, and the Pimentels thought they would retire one day and convert the farm into an almond orchard.

How they lost their farm, once a thriving business with some 200 cows, is not a simple sub-prime mortgage story. It has to do with a drop in the price of milk, a spike in the cost of feed, some bad luck and, yes, a five-year refinance loan with an interest rate of 12 percent.

On top of their financial problems, in 2007, Joe’s father developed cancer. With such a heavy personal and financial burden, the Pimentels could not give the farm the attention it required.

“At 58, I’m starting over,” said Joe, who has started working for the county Department of Agriculture, setting pest traps.

The Pimentels’ farm is a ghostly sight, with its empty stalls, the flapping roof on the main barn, and weeds where flowers used to grow. Soon, the Pimentels will take their pets — two horses and three dogs — to the modest house Joe’s father left them, about a mile away.

The Pimentels doubt their property will ever be a family dairy farm again. Maybe a developer will grab it, Janice said, “for when housing grows again in Merced, someday.”

More by AP writer Ethel Nieves

Bruni & Sarkozy Take Their Show on the Road…

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And, a moment of comic relief, in the middle of all the financial trouble. On the public (and, apparently, well-hydrogenated) display of affection by the exhibitionistic French president, Carla Bruni, and her escort, Nicholas what’s-his-name, the last word came from a British columnist:

QUOTE:

“However, ultimately, it wasn’t her nudity in the past that was the issue, it was the Sarkozys’ naked ambition in the present, which was seemingly to be crowned as the hot new couple on the international political stage, the couple who make all other political couples look dusty, passionless and redundant. And correspondingly their politics, too, even their countries.

Indeed, was it inadvertent or was there a bizarre whiff of quasi-sexual competitiveness from the Sarkozys towards the Browns, a preening display of potency?

Whether Carla was sashaying into Sarah’s charity lunch or Sarkozy was ‘playing football’ with Brown at Arsenal’s stadium (both men coming across like two girls desperate not to get their petticoats dirty), it seemed palpable; the none too subtle one-upmanship from the French camp. The whole event had the air of a quiet, serious country couple making the mistake of inviting a glamorous, intimidating couple over for a hellish weekend of nonstop patronising, the story of the town mouse and the country mouse as reinterpreted for the international political stage.

However, for some of us, if the idea was to make the Browns, and by association Britain and its politics, look a bit passionless and lacking, it backfired. No offence meant, but the last thing I ever want to see is the Browns playing tonsil tennis on a boat on the Thames. Or anywhere. To me, this doesn’t say ‘virile and go-getting’, it says ‘midlife crisis alert, get him away from the button’.

Admittedly, it was all very diverting and it was sweet to see how gallantly British men rushed to welcome Madame Sarkozy and her interesting views on monogamy. Ultimately though, the whole try-hard thing with the Sarkozys left one with a huge appreciation for the Browns. In fact, I’d like to use this column to make an apology: I interviewed Gordon once and left whingeing that he was serious and dull. I’d like to change my mind. Like surgeons and airline pilots, you don’t want your world leaders to be too exciting or, God forbid, surprising – it’s reassuring that they’re serious and dull.

Indeed, although one feels this country was too easily seduced by the Carla-Nicolas roadshow, and should maybe have felt affronted by the way they made British politics look passionless by comparison, perhaps in the end, we should just feel relieved….”

More from Barbara Ellen in The Observer.

Financial Follies: George Soros on Regulating the Reflexive Markets

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A very strange interview of George Soros this evening, by CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo (the original, trade-marked “money honey”).

Soros, of course, is the much-billioned currency speculator who’s tanked a few economies in his time with his fancy moves in the markets.

On the plus side: Soros took a bash at the hoary – and completely false – notion of the “efficient market” – the idea (mostly propagated by economic theorists) that the market always tends to equilibrium and fully expresses all economic information in its prices. Instead, he called attention to the tendency, indeed the inevitability, of market action to go to extremes because of crowd psychology. “Reflexivity” is his term for this interactivity of human beings with their environment.

Well, gee, George. That is the insight and copyrighted mantra behind this particular website (mind-body, see?). You could have sent us a hat tip…..

Robert Prechter of Elliot Wave fame, has talked about the same thing. We ourselves prefer the New Age-ey term, intentionality, to reflexivity…..but we’re with Soros’ sentiment. Hear, hear.

On the minus side:

Soros thinks that that means the markets ought to be regulated to limit extremes of crowd emotion.

Hmmmm……we’ll pause here. There are already a posy of mechanisms in place to curb the excesses of sentiment in trading. If something like the infamous “Black Monday” of 1987 happened, trading would be automatically discontinued….

So, what on earth could Soros have in mind?

Seems he likes the Fed’s intervention in the Bear Stearns business. Absolutely the right thing to do, says he, because Bear is “too big to fail,” i.e. , if it did, investors would have lost confidence in the markets.

Well, here’s a thought, George. Maybe investors should lose confidence in these markets.

What’s going on? Looks to me like Soros wants a piece of the same action that J. P. Morgan just got for itself recently.

Next up on the weird-o-meter: Soros is all for the proposed merger of the regulatory mechanism of the stock exchange and that of the commodity exchange. Now, that’s a self-interested proposal, if ever there was one. And, what a surprise, the idea comes from the self-interested ex -CEO of Goldman who’s now at Treasury – Hank Paulson. Paulson was the guy who orchestrated the kick in the pants that got Dick Grasso out of the NYSE and got another Goldmanite in at its head (Eliot Spitzer was the most visible face of this anti-Grasso coup: Karma, anyone?). Part of Hanks’ new Panky would be to reduce the power of the SEC (Spitzer’s old roost, from where he terrorized Wall Street traders – look, the guy wasn’t all bad – and took pot shots at CEO’s – most prominently, “Hank” Greenberg, a Goldman buddy we hear).

And who would take over the SEC’s role? The new regulatory NYSE-CFTC combo and the investment houses themselves…. In other words, Hank (Paulson) says Wall Street will self-regulate.

Now, where did we hear the self-regulation mantra before? Was it in the late 90’s? That’s right. Just before the market began blowing bubbles….

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Back on the positive(with qualifications) side:

Soros is probably talking no more than sense when he advocates the regulation of the multi-trillion dollar derivative market (10 times global GDP).

But the devil is always in the details. There’s so much already in Washington’s greasy little paws that anyone proposing to hand over even more control had better give us the whole diabolical nitty-gritty…

Wright on Race……

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“In 1957, Doubleday released Richard Wright’s White Man Listen. In it, he wrote “…the greatest aid that any white Westerner can give Africa is by becoming a missionary right in the heart of the Western world, explaining to his own people what they have done to Africa.”

Nobody expects the media to educate the public about Africa. The current coverage is consistent with the images found in the Tarzan movies. It’s not going to change. I’ll settle for missionary work among the American public. Free them from entrapment by the corporate media, which are causing their brain cells to atrophy. Teach them the other points of views that are smothered by the noise, and trivialized on You Tube. Then maybe they’ll understand where the crazy Rev. Wright is coming from…”

Controversial but well argued piece by Ishmael Reed at Counterpunch, on the continuing media “scandal” about Obama’s tough-talking preacher man. Reed is a”racialist” by all accounts, but while race is central in media (and public) perception, it isn’t clear to me that making it the centerpiece of any campaign makes sense….

Iran War Creeps Closer…

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“The US Congress, the US media, the American people, and the United Nations, are looking the other way as Cheney prepares his attack on Iran.

If only America had an independent media and an opposition party. If there were a shred of integrity left in American political life, perhaps a third act of naked aggression — a third war crime under the Nuremberg standard — by the Bush Regime could be prevented.

On March 30, the Russian News & Information Agency, Novosti, cited “a high-ranking security source: ‘The latest military intelligence data point to heightened US military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran.’”

According to Novosti, Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov said “that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran’s military infrastructure in the near future.”

The chief of Russia’s general staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, said last November that Russia was beefing up its military in response to US aggression, but that the Russian military is not “obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans.”

On March 29, Chris Floyd cited a report by the Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz, which was picked up by the German news service, DPA. The Saudi newspaper reported on March 22, the day following Cheney’s visit with the kingdom’s rulers, that the Saudi Shura Council is preparing “national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts’ warnings of possible attacks on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactors.”

And Admiral William “there will be no attack on Iran on my watch” Fallon has been removed as US chief of Central Command, thus clearing the way for Cheney’s planned attack on Iran….”

More by Paul Craig Roberts at Online Journal.

And at Counterpunch. 

Bucking Up the Buck…

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“Steve Hanke, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, agreed that international action, as well as expansionary fiscal policy in Japan and Europe, were needed to help put a floor under the dollar.

Countries including China and Middle East nations that have large holdings of dollars in their reserves should pledge not to talk about diversifying their portfolios while action is being taken to stabilise the U.S. currency, Hanke told the conference.

Gulf countries in addition should stop talking about de-pegging their currencies from the dollar.

“It’s unproductive and creates a great deal of short-term volatility in the dollar,” he told the Credit Suisse Asian investment conference.

Adams said the dollar was likely to remain under pressure for the next few months because of uncertainty about when the U.S. business cycle will bottom out and how far the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates.

But he said the currency would find its footing, as the American economy is still fundamentally stable and the United States is one of few countries that will be able to keep absorbing huge global capital flows….”

More here from Reuters at GATA.org

No-Interest CDs: Putting the ‘Flation back in the Stag….

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A lot of people think there’s no inflation yet and that the current scenario is only deflationary. Monetary reserves are contracting, they say. They point to the Fed’s open market operations as a form of adjustment (taking money from banks with bad debt by buying up mortgage debt and giving to banks in good shape through the sale of Treasuries).

Steve Saville points out why their argument is wrong and why inflation exists along with asset deflation:

“Many pundits still treat M1’s growth rate as an important indicator of monetary conditions on the basis that the amount of ‘narrow money’ is supposed to have a substantial influence on the total supply of money due to the famous “money multiplier” effect. In fact, some well-respected analysts have expressed concern that the lack of growth in the narrowest measures of US money supply over the past couple of years means that Fed policy has been excessively restrictive. But these analysts are failing to appreciate that regulatory changes made by the Fed in the early 1990s caused M1 to become a shadow of its former self with respect to its usefulness as a general monetary indicator.

In rough terms, the rules were changed in the early 1990s to allow banks to dramatically reduce the amount of money held in the form of reserves at the Fed by “sweeping” money from checking accounts (components of M1 that are subject to reserve requirements) into savings accounts (non-M1 components of M2 for which there are no reserve requirements). For example, you might think you have a checkable deposit at your local bank, but in the bank’s books you probably have a zero-interest CD (the type of deposit that has no reserve requirement). Whenever one of your checks is presented the bank’s software “sweeps” the relevant amount of money from the zero-interest CD you never knew you had into the checking account you thought you had.

These rule changes have made commercial banks more profitable because money held in reserve at the Fed is money that doesn’t generate income for the banks; and this, of course, is why the changes were made in the first place.”

Steve Saville in The Speculative Investor