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A disturbing new type of 'honour' killing Women are often involved in 'honour' killings as perpetrators, but it has tended to be older women (such as aunts and mother-in-laws) who help with the murder. This case in India is the first I have read about in which it was the daughter of the victim who arranged the murder: "The girl planned her mother’s murder and hired two contract killers for the job who eliminated Mohinder Kaur (45) in Malout town here on Saturday. Veer Pal [20] was incensed over her mother’s "illicit relationships" with two men who would frequent the house, with one of them routinely staying back with her overnight. (Via Kawthar at the indispensable International Campaign Against Honour Killings) [ Add comment ] Look at the bigger picture In recent months I've been reading a fair bit about feminism and attending feminist events in London. 'Third wave feminism', as it is being dubbed, is attracting a lot of interest, and the vitality at these events is very awe-inspiring. I have no trouble calling myself a feminist - the view that women should have complete equality in all spheres of life and be fully free to make decisions about their bodies and their lives (hence my strong support for abortion). This view, incidentally, is also a central tenet to Sikhism, the most feminist of all faiths. But I'm interested in all this for a bigger reason. This blog is mostly about race and religion-based issues in modern Britain. It is about how we can all live together. But the point is this. Any discussion of racial equality cannot take place without understanding how other factors affect people. How their gender affects them, how their opportunities are affected by poverty (class) and even by their legal status (immigration). Continue here... [ Add comment ] The Ethics of Aid Burmese state radio states the official death toll of last weekend's Cylcone Nargis to be 22,980 with over 40,000 missing and thousands injured. If this data is not devastating enough, fears are now growing that the figure might be as high as 100,000 deaths. According to the UN, more than 1 million people are currently without shelter. For millions, the struggle now is for survival. The real risk now is the outbreak of acute diarhhoea, malaria or even cholera. Continue here... [ Add comment ] Obama is the nominee I'm calling for Obama to be the Democrat nominee for race. Heck, if the TV stations can call it, why can't a blog? Especially after last night's rout, which I stayed up all night to watch and glee over. Check the math: There are only six contests remaining in the Democratic primary calendar and only 217 pledged delegates left to be awarded. Only 7 percent of the pledged delegates remain on the table. There are 260 remaining undeclared superdelegates, for a total of 477 delegates left to be awarded. If all this is gobbledegook to you, don't worry about it. The point is, Obama is home free. He is the man. And I'm gonna book a ticket to the US for October to work for his campaign. I need more political experience. Who's coming with me? [ Add comment ] Can patriotism ever be progressive? This is a guest article by Genevieve Maitland Hudson In a recent article for the Guardian’s Comment is Free pages I questioned the way in which nationalism is being used to give rhetorical power to environmental politics and I was surprised by the vehemence of some of the blog responses. I think those responses means the subject is worth a little continued exploration and Pickled Politics seems like an ideal venue. In the article I outlined why I was bothered – I am bothered – by the way in which certain writers have recently begun celebrating localism as ‘really’ English. By doing this these writers and activists inevitably set up an all too familiar dichotomy according to which some cultural phenomena are truly English and others are not. This is a problem for the same old reasons it has been a problem in the past, because once you hit on your definition of ‘real’ Englishness you place those aspects of national life that are not to your taste outside the sphere of acceptable behaviour. I think that so far this trend has been tolerable to the left because the phenomena which have been excluded are unpalatable to liberal sensibilities; they include supermarkets, industrial farming and chain stores. But isn’t the desire to define Englishness a problem in and of itself? Isn’t it even more of a problem when it is yoked so explicitly to rural tradition? After all, most of us are not rural, nor are our lifestyles recognisably traditional and I for one see no particular reason why they should be. England is a country with a wide variety of inhabitants of different backgrounds, different faiths, ethnicities, religions and so on but also of sensibilities, views, likes and dislikes and of course shopping and cooking habits. To what extent do we need to think about these habits in nationalist terms? And what are the consequences of doing so? I would argue that we take a risk in equating environmental choices with nationalist commitment, and that the risk far outweighs the benefits. Talking about Englishness is one thing, an ongoing national conversation can be a positive means of creating, and re-creating, civic bonds and of broadening, changing and deepening our sense of what being English is about, but settling on a fixed conclusion is quite another. When it comes to Englishness, it’s the journey that really matters, not arriving at a fixed and firmly sign-posted destination. Genevieve Maitland Hudson is an academic and writer employed at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and Birkbeck College in London. [ Add comment ] |
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