Sunday 15 January 2017
Saturday 14 January 2017
Main Bhi Kafir, Tu Bhi Kafir by abducted teacher, poet and activist Salman Haider
Salman Haider reciting Main bhi Kafir, Tu bhi Kafir
History of the muzzling of the freedom of expression in Pakistan - by Hamid Bhashani
All those in developing countries please look away now - Aid in reverse: how poor countries develop rich countries
Jason Hickel In The Guardian
We have long been told a compelling story about the relationship between rich countries and poor countries. The story holds that the rich nations of the OECD give generously of their wealth to the poorer nation cheats of the global south, to help them eradicate poverty and push them up the development ladder. Yes, during colonialism western powers may have enriched themselves by extracting resources and slave labour from their colonies – but that’s all in the past. These days, they give more than $125bn (£102bn) in aid each year – solid evidence of their benevolent goodwill.
This story is so widely propagated by the aid industry and the governments of the rich world that we have come to take it for granted. But it may not be as simple as it appears.
The US-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI) and the Centre for Applied Research at the Norwegian School of Economics recently published some fascinating data. They tallied up all of the financial resources that get transferred between rich countries and poor countries each year: not just aid, foreign investment and trade flows (as previous studies have done) but also non-financial transfers such as debt cancellation, unrequited transfers like workers’ remittances, and unrecorded capital flight (more of this later). As far as I am aware, it is the most comprehensive assessment of resource transfers ever undertaken.
The flow of money from rich countries to poor countries pales in comparison to the flow that runs in the other direction
What they discovered is that the flow of money from rich countries to poor countries pales in comparison to the flow that runs in the other direction.
In 2012, the last year of recorded data, developing countries received a total of $1.3tn, including all aid, investment, and income from abroad. But that same year some $3.3tn flowed out of them. In other words, developing countries sent $2tn more to the rest of the world than they received. If we look at all years since 1980, these net outflows add up to an eye-popping total of $16.3tn – that’s how much money has been drained out of the global south over the past few decades. To get a sense for the scale of this, $16.3tn is roughly the GDP of the United States
What this means is that the usual development narrative has it backwards. Aid is effectively flowing in reverse. Rich countries aren’t developing poor countries; poor countries are developing rich ones.
What do these large outflows consist of? Well, some of it is payments on debt. Developing countries have forked out over $4.2tn in interest payments alone since 1980 – a direct cash transfer to big banks in New York and London, on a scale that dwarfs the aid that they received during the same period. Another big contributor is the income that foreigners make on their investments in developing countries and then repatriate back home. Think of all the profits that BP extracts from Nigeria’s oil reserves, for example, or that Anglo-American pulls out of South Africa’s gold mines.
But by far the biggest chunk of outflows has to do with unrecorded – and usually illicit – capital flight. GFI calculates that developing countries have lost a total of $13.4tn through unrecorded capital flight since 1980.
Most of these unrecorded outflows take place through the international trade system. Basically, corporations – foreign and domestic alike – report false prices on their trade invoices in order to spirit money out of developing countries directly into tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions, a practice known as “trade misinvoicing”. Usually the goal is to evade taxes, but sometimes this practice is used to launder money or circumvent capital controls. In 2012, developing countries lost $700bn through trade misinvoicing, which outstripped aid receipts that year by a factor of five.
Multinational companies also steal money from developing countries through “same-invoice faking”, shifting profits illegally between their own subsidiaries by mutually faking trade invoice prices on both sides. For example, a subsidiary in Nigeria might dodge local taxes by shifting money to a related subsidiary in the British Virgin Islands, where the tax rate is effectively zero and where stolen funds can’t be traced.
GFI doesn’t include same-invoice faking in its headline figures because it is very difficult to detect, but they estimate that it amounts to another $700bn per year. And these figures only cover theft through trade in goods. If we add theft through trade in services to the mix, it brings total net resource outflows to about $3tn per year.
That’s 24 times more than the aid budget. In other words, for every $1 of aid that developing countries receive, they lose $24 in net outflows. These outflows strip developing countries of an important source of revenue and finance for development. The GFI report finds that increasingly large net outflows have caused economic growth rates in developing countries to decline, and are directly responsible for falling living standards.
Who is to blame for this disaster? Since illegal capital flight is such a big chunk of the problem, that’s a good place to start. Companies that lie on their trade invoices are clearly at fault; but why is it so easy for them to get away with it? In the past, customs officials could hold up transactions that looked dodgy, making it nearly impossible for anyone to cheat. But the World Trade Organisation claimed that this made trade inefficient, and since 1994 customs officials have been required to accept invoiced prices at face value except in very suspicious circumstances, making it difficult for them to seize illicit outflows.
FacebookTwitterPinterest Protest about tax havens in London in 2016, organised by charities Oxfam, ActionAid and Christian Aid. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images
Still, illegal capital flight wouldn’t be possible without the tax havens. And when it comes to tax havens, the culprits are not hard to identify: there are more than 60 in the world, and the vast majority of them are controlled by a handful of western countries. There are European tax havens such as Luxembourg and Belgium, and US tax havens like Delaware and Manhattan. But by far the biggest network of tax havens is centered around the City of London, which controls secrecy jurisdictions throughout the British Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories.
In other words, some of the very countries that so love to tout their foreign aid contributions are the ones enabling mass theft from developing countries.
The aid narrative begins to seem a bit naïve when we take these reverse flows into account. It becomes clear that aid does little but mask the maldistribution of resources around the world. It makes the takers seem like givers, granting them a kind of moral high ground while preventing those of us who care about global poverty from understanding how the system really works.
Poor countries don’t need charity. They need justice. And justice is not difficult to deliver. We could write off the excess debts of poor countries, freeing them up to spend their money on development instead of interest payments on old loans; we could close down the secrecy jurisdictions, and slap penalties on bankers and accountants who facilitate illicit outflows; and we could impose a global minimum tax on corporate income to eliminate the incentive for corporations to secretly shift their money around the world.
We know how to fix the problem. But doing so would run up against the interests of powerful banks and corporations that extract significant material benefit from the existing system. The question is, do we have the courage?
We have long been told a compelling story about the relationship between rich countries and poor countries. The story holds that the rich nations of the OECD give generously of their wealth to the poorer nation cheats of the global south, to help them eradicate poverty and push them up the development ladder. Yes, during colonialism western powers may have enriched themselves by extracting resources and slave labour from their colonies – but that’s all in the past. These days, they give more than $125bn (£102bn) in aid each year – solid evidence of their benevolent goodwill.
This story is so widely propagated by the aid industry and the governments of the rich world that we have come to take it for granted. But it may not be as simple as it appears.
The US-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI) and the Centre for Applied Research at the Norwegian School of Economics recently published some fascinating data. They tallied up all of the financial resources that get transferred between rich countries and poor countries each year: not just aid, foreign investment and trade flows (as previous studies have done) but also non-financial transfers such as debt cancellation, unrequited transfers like workers’ remittances, and unrecorded capital flight (more of this later). As far as I am aware, it is the most comprehensive assessment of resource transfers ever undertaken.
The flow of money from rich countries to poor countries pales in comparison to the flow that runs in the other direction
What they discovered is that the flow of money from rich countries to poor countries pales in comparison to the flow that runs in the other direction.
In 2012, the last year of recorded data, developing countries received a total of $1.3tn, including all aid, investment, and income from abroad. But that same year some $3.3tn flowed out of them. In other words, developing countries sent $2tn more to the rest of the world than they received. If we look at all years since 1980, these net outflows add up to an eye-popping total of $16.3tn – that’s how much money has been drained out of the global south over the past few decades. To get a sense for the scale of this, $16.3tn is roughly the GDP of the United States
What this means is that the usual development narrative has it backwards. Aid is effectively flowing in reverse. Rich countries aren’t developing poor countries; poor countries are developing rich ones.
What do these large outflows consist of? Well, some of it is payments on debt. Developing countries have forked out over $4.2tn in interest payments alone since 1980 – a direct cash transfer to big banks in New York and London, on a scale that dwarfs the aid that they received during the same period. Another big contributor is the income that foreigners make on their investments in developing countries and then repatriate back home. Think of all the profits that BP extracts from Nigeria’s oil reserves, for example, or that Anglo-American pulls out of South Africa’s gold mines.
But by far the biggest chunk of outflows has to do with unrecorded – and usually illicit – capital flight. GFI calculates that developing countries have lost a total of $13.4tn through unrecorded capital flight since 1980.
Most of these unrecorded outflows take place through the international trade system. Basically, corporations – foreign and domestic alike – report false prices on their trade invoices in order to spirit money out of developing countries directly into tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions, a practice known as “trade misinvoicing”. Usually the goal is to evade taxes, but sometimes this practice is used to launder money or circumvent capital controls. In 2012, developing countries lost $700bn through trade misinvoicing, which outstripped aid receipts that year by a factor of five.
Multinational companies also steal money from developing countries through “same-invoice faking”, shifting profits illegally between their own subsidiaries by mutually faking trade invoice prices on both sides. For example, a subsidiary in Nigeria might dodge local taxes by shifting money to a related subsidiary in the British Virgin Islands, where the tax rate is effectively zero and where stolen funds can’t be traced.
GFI doesn’t include same-invoice faking in its headline figures because it is very difficult to detect, but they estimate that it amounts to another $700bn per year. And these figures only cover theft through trade in goods. If we add theft through trade in services to the mix, it brings total net resource outflows to about $3tn per year.
That’s 24 times more than the aid budget. In other words, for every $1 of aid that developing countries receive, they lose $24 in net outflows. These outflows strip developing countries of an important source of revenue and finance for development. The GFI report finds that increasingly large net outflows have caused economic growth rates in developing countries to decline, and are directly responsible for falling living standards.
Who is to blame for this disaster? Since illegal capital flight is such a big chunk of the problem, that’s a good place to start. Companies that lie on their trade invoices are clearly at fault; but why is it so easy for them to get away with it? In the past, customs officials could hold up transactions that looked dodgy, making it nearly impossible for anyone to cheat. But the World Trade Organisation claimed that this made trade inefficient, and since 1994 customs officials have been required to accept invoiced prices at face value except in very suspicious circumstances, making it difficult for them to seize illicit outflows.
FacebookTwitterPinterest Protest about tax havens in London in 2016, organised by charities Oxfam, ActionAid and Christian Aid. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images
Still, illegal capital flight wouldn’t be possible without the tax havens. And when it comes to tax havens, the culprits are not hard to identify: there are more than 60 in the world, and the vast majority of them are controlled by a handful of western countries. There are European tax havens such as Luxembourg and Belgium, and US tax havens like Delaware and Manhattan. But by far the biggest network of tax havens is centered around the City of London, which controls secrecy jurisdictions throughout the British Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories.
In other words, some of the very countries that so love to tout their foreign aid contributions are the ones enabling mass theft from developing countries.
The aid narrative begins to seem a bit naïve when we take these reverse flows into account. It becomes clear that aid does little but mask the maldistribution of resources around the world. It makes the takers seem like givers, granting them a kind of moral high ground while preventing those of us who care about global poverty from understanding how the system really works.
Poor countries don’t need charity. They need justice. And justice is not difficult to deliver. We could write off the excess debts of poor countries, freeing them up to spend their money on development instead of interest payments on old loans; we could close down the secrecy jurisdictions, and slap penalties on bankers and accountants who facilitate illicit outflows; and we could impose a global minimum tax on corporate income to eliminate the incentive for corporations to secretly shift their money around the world.
We know how to fix the problem. But doing so would run up against the interests of powerful banks and corporations that extract significant material benefit from the existing system. The question is, do we have the courage?
Friday 13 January 2017
Sex-for-rent is the hidden danger faced by more and more female tenants
Penny Anderson in The Guardian
The private rented sector is broken and house-hunting is a dreadful task fraught with abject desperation. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, to the list of nasties (the grasping letting agents and truculent and capricious buy-to-let owners) whom tenants confront can now be added creepy, predatory rentiers offering homes in return for sex.
In the weird swamp world of online portals, everything is so much more dangerous. Female tenants are especially vulnerable when flat-hunting, and some landlords are quite open about what they expect, while others hide in plain sight. The basic act of flat-hunting often involves wandering into an unfamiliar neighbourhood, then entering a flat for guided viewings with strangers: a man you have never met before, who could assume or imagine that signing a rental agreement entitles him to sex. Remember, too, that this man might ultimately be in possession of the key to your home, and, if he’s a live-in landlord, could occupy the adjacent bedroom.
Some ads are overtly soliciting sex, while others are coy. During a bizarre viewing tour of a tiny flat with a friend, the drunken landlord, having first claimed that he was moving out to live with his girlfriend, changed tack. He explained: “She’s not really my girlfriend and would it be OK if I visited?” I left.
An especially odious case involved a friend who moved out after her landlord offered to reduce the rent if she were “nice to him”. He then accused her of prudery and had the effrontery to pursue her for the income he lost after she escaped his lair. (And frankly, it was a lair, wasn’t it?)
Let’s be clear: this isn’t an issue about consensual sex or self-empowered, independent “sex-workers”. It is exposed women seeking a safe place to live, who are then ruthlessly compelled to have sex with their landlords in order to keep a roof over their heads. Many are trying to escape homelessness – and encounter vile men offering to house vulnerable women in return for sex. And by vulnerable, I don’t just mean women who are poor, but also exploited asylum seekers, those fleeing domestic violence, care leavers and victims of “the right to rent”, where potential tenants must show documents proving they have the right to remain in the UK.
I endured some troubling encounters when using a website popular with flat-hunters, having placed a carefully worded flat-wanted ad. One response sounded positive, but when I called, the landlord was evasive about terms, thought my self-description (“professional female”) odd, and then asked if I wanted “male company”. I hung up. To my amazement, a male friend found this hilarious, doubted my story, then checked to unearth a whole new world of abuse of women (and some men) simply looking for a home.
Yet still coercive homes-for-sex is too often seen as bit of a laugh. It isn’t. It’s not merely undermining but hazardous. A friend home-hunting with her toddler was contacted by one man who offered her use of his home, eventually explaining that he didn’t require rent; rather he “enjoyed light, consensual anal intercourse”. She was both terrified and appalled.
The private rental sector in areas of high demand (especially London) is growing sleazier by the day, and many men are brazen about what they expect. A supporter of tenant support group Acorn shared one man’s response to a female flat-hunter: “Can you pay with sex twice per week?” In a moment of dark levity, a male commenter offered to provide the sex, reasoning this probably wasn’t what sleazebag-guy was expecting.
The private rented sector is broken and house-hunting is a dreadful task fraught with abject desperation. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, to the list of nasties (the grasping letting agents and truculent and capricious buy-to-let owners) whom tenants confront can now be added creepy, predatory rentiers offering homes in return for sex.
In the weird swamp world of online portals, everything is so much more dangerous. Female tenants are especially vulnerable when flat-hunting, and some landlords are quite open about what they expect, while others hide in plain sight. The basic act of flat-hunting often involves wandering into an unfamiliar neighbourhood, then entering a flat for guided viewings with strangers: a man you have never met before, who could assume or imagine that signing a rental agreement entitles him to sex. Remember, too, that this man might ultimately be in possession of the key to your home, and, if he’s a live-in landlord, could occupy the adjacent bedroom.
Some ads are overtly soliciting sex, while others are coy. During a bizarre viewing tour of a tiny flat with a friend, the drunken landlord, having first claimed that he was moving out to live with his girlfriend, changed tack. He explained: “She’s not really my girlfriend and would it be OK if I visited?” I left.
An especially odious case involved a friend who moved out after her landlord offered to reduce the rent if she were “nice to him”. He then accused her of prudery and had the effrontery to pursue her for the income he lost after she escaped his lair. (And frankly, it was a lair, wasn’t it?)
Let’s be clear: this isn’t an issue about consensual sex or self-empowered, independent “sex-workers”. It is exposed women seeking a safe place to live, who are then ruthlessly compelled to have sex with their landlords in order to keep a roof over their heads. Many are trying to escape homelessness – and encounter vile men offering to house vulnerable women in return for sex. And by vulnerable, I don’t just mean women who are poor, but also exploited asylum seekers, those fleeing domestic violence, care leavers and victims of “the right to rent”, where potential tenants must show documents proving they have the right to remain in the UK.
I endured some troubling encounters when using a website popular with flat-hunters, having placed a carefully worded flat-wanted ad. One response sounded positive, but when I called, the landlord was evasive about terms, thought my self-description (“professional female”) odd, and then asked if I wanted “male company”. I hung up. To my amazement, a male friend found this hilarious, doubted my story, then checked to unearth a whole new world of abuse of women (and some men) simply looking for a home.
Yet still coercive homes-for-sex is too often seen as bit of a laugh. It isn’t. It’s not merely undermining but hazardous. A friend home-hunting with her toddler was contacted by one man who offered her use of his home, eventually explaining that he didn’t require rent; rather he “enjoyed light, consensual anal intercourse”. She was both terrified and appalled.
The private rental sector in areas of high demand (especially London) is growing sleazier by the day, and many men are brazen about what they expect. A supporter of tenant support group Acorn shared one man’s response to a female flat-hunter: “Can you pay with sex twice per week?” In a moment of dark levity, a male commenter offered to provide the sex, reasoning this probably wasn’t what sleazebag-guy was expecting.
Many platforms seem slow or unwilling to deal with such abusive posts, or else tacitly tolerate them. Shelter has picked up on the situation, noting the power imbalance and the distorted sense of entitlement: man provides home, man deems himself entitled to sex with isolated, scared, sofa-surfing young woman lacking genuine alternative options.
The answer is of course for offenders to cease and desist. But failing a mass changing of ways and renunciation of sordid sexual bullying, it seems women must take steps to ensure our own safety. So, when flat-hunting, do not go alone. Always let somebody know where you are. If possible, arrange a guided viewing with an agent (if an agent is being used to let the property). And if you are being coerced into sex, inform the police.
The internet has opened up a whole new fresh hell of sleaze and importuning. On the plus side, it’s also excellent for naming and shaming. And hopefully those women so desperate that they have felt as if there were no choice but to submit can be empowered to summon enough courage to report these abusers.
The answer is of course for offenders to cease and desist. But failing a mass changing of ways and renunciation of sordid sexual bullying, it seems women must take steps to ensure our own safety. So, when flat-hunting, do not go alone. Always let somebody know where you are. If possible, arrange a guided viewing with an agent (if an agent is being used to let the property). And if you are being coerced into sex, inform the police.
The internet has opened up a whole new fresh hell of sleaze and importuning. On the plus side, it’s also excellent for naming and shaming. And hopefully those women so desperate that they have felt as if there were no choice but to submit can be empowered to summon enough courage to report these abusers.
Spot the gender of your future child 26 weeks before conception
Sarah Knapton in The Telegraph
Craving sweets, early morning sickness and a watermelon-shaped stomach are all said to indicate that a woman will give birth to a baby girl.
But an intriguing new study suggests that it is possible to determine the sex of a baby months before it is even conceived.
Scientists in Canada discovered that a woman’s blood pressure at around 26 weeks before conception predicts if she will give birth to a boy or a girl. Higher systolic blood pressure signals she will deliver a boy while lower suggests a girl.
Dr Ravi Retnakaran, endocrinologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, said: “It suggests that a woman's blood pressure before pregnancy is a previously unrecognised factor that is associated with her likelihood of delivering a boy or a girl.”
The team made the connection while trying to work out what determines the ratio between girls and boys in a population.
The sex ration of a population can change depending on societal change CREDIT:GETTYIMAGES-DV1953025.JPG
Several studies have shown that stressful events such as wars, natural disasters and economic depression can change the proportion of boys and girls in a country.
The difference occurs because in stressful times one gender is more likely than the other to survive through pregnancy. So even though the conception sex ratio remains at 50:50, the birth ratio will alter depending on which sex is stronger.
In the new study the mean systolic blood pressure reading for women who had boys was 106 mm Hg, compared to 103 mm Hg for those who had girls, in the months leading up to conception.
“When a woman becomes pregnant, the sex of a foetus is determined by whether the father’s sperm provides an X or Y chromosome and there is no evidence that this probability varies in humans,” added Dr Retnakaran
“What is believed to vary is the proportion of male or female fetuses that is lost during pregnancy
“This study suggests that either lower blood pressure is indicative of a mother’s physiology that is less conducive to survival of a male foetus or that higher blood pressure before pregnancy is less conducive to survival of a female foetus.
“This novel insight may hold implications for both reproductive planning and our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying the sex ratio in humans."
A simple blood pressure test could give some indication on what sex a baby will beCREDIT: ANTHONY DEVLIN
For the study, 1,411 newly-married Chinese women were recruited all who were trying to become pregnant. Their blood pressure was checked at around 26 weeks before conception and they were followed through pregnancy. Overall the women gave birth to 739 boys and 672 girls.
After adjustment for age, education, smoking, Body Mass Index (BMI) , waist, cholesterol, triglycerides and glucose, mean systolic blood pressure before pregnancy was found to be higher in women who subsequently had a boy than in those who delivered a girl.
Fertility expert Prof Charles Kingsland, of Liverpool Women’s Hospital, said: “We have been aware that more male fetuses miscarry than females and more females are born for obvious biological reasons, namely you need more women in the world to have children.
“There is also some evidence that you are more likely to miscarry a boy when you are compromised either by health or environmental issues. So I suppose, blood pressure changes in these circumstances might affect conception of different sexes.
“This study is therefore very interesting. However it does not take into account the potential physiological aspects of race. Will those changes be the same in the Caucasian or Afro Caribbean populations in the world. And what if you want a girl? Do you just go and live in Syria for a few months?”
However some experts were skeptical about the results.
Geoffrey Trew a consultant in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at the Hammersmith Hospital in west London said: “I haven't heard anything like this before.
“I would be very surprised that a BP measurement , which is notoriously variable, could dictate sex 26 weeks before, some reptiles can have sex differences due to temperature changes at the time of early fetal growth , but not 26 weeks beforehand.”
The study was published in the American Journal of Hypertension.
Craving sweets, early morning sickness and a watermelon-shaped stomach are all said to indicate that a woman will give birth to a baby girl.
But an intriguing new study suggests that it is possible to determine the sex of a baby months before it is even conceived.
Scientists in Canada discovered that a woman’s blood pressure at around 26 weeks before conception predicts if she will give birth to a boy or a girl. Higher systolic blood pressure signals she will deliver a boy while lower suggests a girl.
Dr Ravi Retnakaran, endocrinologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, said: “It suggests that a woman's blood pressure before pregnancy is a previously unrecognised factor that is associated with her likelihood of delivering a boy or a girl.”
The team made the connection while trying to work out what determines the ratio between girls and boys in a population.
The sex ration of a population can change depending on societal change CREDIT:GETTYIMAGES-DV1953025.JPGSeveral studies have shown that stressful events such as wars, natural disasters and economic depression can change the proportion of boys and girls in a country.
The difference occurs because in stressful times one gender is more likely than the other to survive through pregnancy. So even though the conception sex ratio remains at 50:50, the birth ratio will alter depending on which sex is stronger.
In the new study the mean systolic blood pressure reading for women who had boys was 106 mm Hg, compared to 103 mm Hg for those who had girls, in the months leading up to conception.
“When a woman becomes pregnant, the sex of a foetus is determined by whether the father’s sperm provides an X or Y chromosome and there is no evidence that this probability varies in humans,” added Dr Retnakaran
“What is believed to vary is the proportion of male or female fetuses that is lost during pregnancy
“This study suggests that either lower blood pressure is indicative of a mother’s physiology that is less conducive to survival of a male foetus or that higher blood pressure before pregnancy is less conducive to survival of a female foetus.
“This novel insight may hold implications for both reproductive planning and our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying the sex ratio in humans."
A simple blood pressure test could give some indication on what sex a baby will beCREDIT: ANTHONY DEVLINFor the study, 1,411 newly-married Chinese women were recruited all who were trying to become pregnant. Their blood pressure was checked at around 26 weeks before conception and they were followed through pregnancy. Overall the women gave birth to 739 boys and 672 girls.
After adjustment for age, education, smoking, Body Mass Index (BMI) , waist, cholesterol, triglycerides and glucose, mean systolic blood pressure before pregnancy was found to be higher in women who subsequently had a boy than in those who delivered a girl.
Fertility expert Prof Charles Kingsland, of Liverpool Women’s Hospital, said: “We have been aware that more male fetuses miscarry than females and more females are born for obvious biological reasons, namely you need more women in the world to have children.
“There is also some evidence that you are more likely to miscarry a boy when you are compromised either by health or environmental issues. So I suppose, blood pressure changes in these circumstances might affect conception of different sexes.
“This study is therefore very interesting. However it does not take into account the potential physiological aspects of race. Will those changes be the same in the Caucasian or Afro Caribbean populations in the world. And what if you want a girl? Do you just go and live in Syria for a few months?”
However some experts were skeptical about the results.
Geoffrey Trew a consultant in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at the Hammersmith Hospital in west London said: “I haven't heard anything like this before.
“I would be very surprised that a BP measurement , which is notoriously variable, could dictate sex 26 weeks before, some reptiles can have sex differences due to temperature changes at the time of early fetal growth , but not 26 weeks beforehand.”
The study was published in the American Journal of Hypertension.
Thursday 12 January 2017
Indian sport’s Forever Men
Nirmal Shekar in The Hindu
Many of the sports administrative bodies are besmirched by feudal attitudes where the top guys have reigned for long and appear to claim ownership rights over their ‘property’
The best thing that has happened to sports in India in a long, long time — longer perhaps than many of us have existed on this planet — is the laudably idealistic yet remarkably pragmatic intervention of the Supreme Court into Wild West territory — the landscape of cricket administration.
So much of what the well-meaning lay people have expected of the men who control sports has been trampled under mercilessly and maliciously, that a good majority of sports-lovers in the country have found refuge in nihilism and come to believe that nothing will change in the state of affairs.
When you think that something has been transformed for the better, very soon you realise it is nothing more than chimerical and it might be foolish and useless to bravely make your way through the haze.
If sports politics is even more Machiavellian than Indian politics in general, then that should come as no surprise. For we resign ourselves to the fact that sport is not a matter quite as important as electing the country’s Prime Minister.
Sliver of hope
But just when we thought that it is a tunnel without an end, the Supreme Court, headed by its upstanding, noble Chief Justice Mr. T.S. Thakur (who retired recently) has offered us a sliver of hope here or there — in fact much, much more than what we may have come to expect 70 years after the country’s Independence.
A popular, veteran Indian sportsperson, who tried to get into the administration of his sport not long ago, put it succinctly the other day when I asked him what was wrong with sports administration in the country at a time when the nation’s richest, and perhaps one of the world’s wealthiest sports bodies, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), was making front-page news for all the wrong reasons every day.
“You tell me what is right with it. It stinks. I shudder to think that such mismanagement, corruption, nepotism and chaos can exist in 2017,” he said.
Most well-meaning people in the world of sports, when asked the same question, not surprisingly come up with the same answer: “a total lack of professionalism.’’
Reasons for lagging
This is an over-arching judgement that seems to ignore the nuts and bolts of everyday affairs in major sports in the country. From experts down to lay fans, almost everybody has an opinion on why such a huge nation should not be among the leading performers in the world of sport. Infrastructure, money, attitude, culture…you can think of dozens of reasons why India does not stand tall in the world of sport.
Says Joaquim Carvalho, Olympian and hockey administrator “Sports governance in India lacks transparency and accountability. Most officials are not passionate about sports at all. They use this platform to keep themselves in the news and also indulge in corruption.
“I have a poor impression of sports governance because I have seen these officials as a player and later I as someone connected with the conduct of the game. They have vested interest and development of sport is never a priority for them. Basically, it helps them stay in the news, build connections and enjoy junkets. Sports governance in India is absolutely unprofessional.”
While it will be unfair to make a sweeping generalisation — there are a few sports that benefit from modern management where the administration is totally transparent in its business. But most are besmirched by feudal attitudes where the top guys have been the same since the days of your childhood, and they appear to claim ownership rights over their ‘property.’
‘Honorary’ positions are not ones manned by individuals with perfectly altruistic intentions. To even expect it is ridiculous. Even saints do what they do to get into the good books of the big, all-knowing, all-powerful man up there.
On an upward swing
There is a flip side to all this. Adille Sumariwala, IAAF executive council member and president, Athletics Federation of India, says, “Sports is on the upward swing in India. Television and the leagues in virtually all sports have increased the fan following. Children know the names of kabaddi players, not only cricketers. Television has brought sports to people, there is more awareness. It’s a matter of time before sports emerges much stronger. There are opportunities to make sport a career in life. And so sports is on the upswing’’.
But here is the catch. Do we have honest officials with a long-term goals in mind? It is indeed boom-time in Indian sports. But the launching pads, corporate support and fans’ enthusiasm may quickly evaporate if the quality of administration remains the same.
How many of our present sports administrators come in with a clear mandate and then move forward stridently to carry it out? Do they go through the same strict annual evaluation process as do brilliant business school graduates?
Success as sports administrators demands a few basic skills in areas such as communication, organisation, decision making, value system and team building.
“Indian sports administrators are special. I must admit that. They are in a category of their own,” said the late Peter Roebuck, my best friend among foreign journalists visiting India frequently, during one of our post dinner conversations.
What Roebuck referred to was mainly cricket but he was curious enough to want to know more and more about other sports. Leadership skills can be either cultivated or learned but the men and women who run our sports are keen on only one thing — staying where they are with a great love for being in the spotlight.
How many times have we seen sports bosses appearing prominently in photographs of athletes who return after world-beating success at airports across the country?
Long ago, a top Indian sportsman returning after winning the world championship told me something that was shocking. I asked him who the gentleman who was hugging him in the front page of a leading Indian English language paper? “I swear, I have never seen the guy before,” he said of a man who was a senior administrator in the sport.
Of course, the nameless one is part of the Forever Men club.
The best thing that has happened to sports in India in a long, long time — longer perhaps than many of us have existed on this planet — is the laudably idealistic yet remarkably pragmatic intervention of the Supreme Court into Wild West territory — the landscape of cricket administration.
So much of what the well-meaning lay people have expected of the men who control sports has been trampled under mercilessly and maliciously, that a good majority of sports-lovers in the country have found refuge in nihilism and come to believe that nothing will change in the state of affairs.
When you think that something has been transformed for the better, very soon you realise it is nothing more than chimerical and it might be foolish and useless to bravely make your way through the haze.
If sports politics is even more Machiavellian than Indian politics in general, then that should come as no surprise. For we resign ourselves to the fact that sport is not a matter quite as important as electing the country’s Prime Minister.
Sliver of hope
But just when we thought that it is a tunnel without an end, the Supreme Court, headed by its upstanding, noble Chief Justice Mr. T.S. Thakur (who retired recently) has offered us a sliver of hope here or there — in fact much, much more than what we may have come to expect 70 years after the country’s Independence.
A popular, veteran Indian sportsperson, who tried to get into the administration of his sport not long ago, put it succinctly the other day when I asked him what was wrong with sports administration in the country at a time when the nation’s richest, and perhaps one of the world’s wealthiest sports bodies, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), was making front-page news for all the wrong reasons every day.
“You tell me what is right with it. It stinks. I shudder to think that such mismanagement, corruption, nepotism and chaos can exist in 2017,” he said.
Most well-meaning people in the world of sports, when asked the same question, not surprisingly come up with the same answer: “a total lack of professionalism.’’
Reasons for lagging
This is an over-arching judgement that seems to ignore the nuts and bolts of everyday affairs in major sports in the country. From experts down to lay fans, almost everybody has an opinion on why such a huge nation should not be among the leading performers in the world of sport. Infrastructure, money, attitude, culture…you can think of dozens of reasons why India does not stand tall in the world of sport.
Says Joaquim Carvalho, Olympian and hockey administrator “Sports governance in India lacks transparency and accountability. Most officials are not passionate about sports at all. They use this platform to keep themselves in the news and also indulge in corruption.
“I have a poor impression of sports governance because I have seen these officials as a player and later I as someone connected with the conduct of the game. They have vested interest and development of sport is never a priority for them. Basically, it helps them stay in the news, build connections and enjoy junkets. Sports governance in India is absolutely unprofessional.”
While it will be unfair to make a sweeping generalisation — there are a few sports that benefit from modern management where the administration is totally transparent in its business. But most are besmirched by feudal attitudes where the top guys have been the same since the days of your childhood, and they appear to claim ownership rights over their ‘property.’
‘Honorary’ positions are not ones manned by individuals with perfectly altruistic intentions. To even expect it is ridiculous. Even saints do what they do to get into the good books of the big, all-knowing, all-powerful man up there.
On an upward swing
There is a flip side to all this. Adille Sumariwala, IAAF executive council member and president, Athletics Federation of India, says, “Sports is on the upward swing in India. Television and the leagues in virtually all sports have increased the fan following. Children know the names of kabaddi players, not only cricketers. Television has brought sports to people, there is more awareness. It’s a matter of time before sports emerges much stronger. There are opportunities to make sport a career in life. And so sports is on the upswing’’.
But here is the catch. Do we have honest officials with a long-term goals in mind? It is indeed boom-time in Indian sports. But the launching pads, corporate support and fans’ enthusiasm may quickly evaporate if the quality of administration remains the same.
How many of our present sports administrators come in with a clear mandate and then move forward stridently to carry it out? Do they go through the same strict annual evaluation process as do brilliant business school graduates?
Success as sports administrators demands a few basic skills in areas such as communication, organisation, decision making, value system and team building.
“Indian sports administrators are special. I must admit that. They are in a category of their own,” said the late Peter Roebuck, my best friend among foreign journalists visiting India frequently, during one of our post dinner conversations.
What Roebuck referred to was mainly cricket but he was curious enough to want to know more and more about other sports. Leadership skills can be either cultivated or learned but the men and women who run our sports are keen on only one thing — staying where they are with a great love for being in the spotlight.
How many times have we seen sports bosses appearing prominently in photographs of athletes who return after world-beating success at airports across the country?
Long ago, a top Indian sportsman returning after winning the world championship told me something that was shocking. I asked him who the gentleman who was hugging him in the front page of a leading Indian English language paper? “I swear, I have never seen the guy before,” he said of a man who was a senior administrator in the sport.
Of course, the nameless one is part of the Forever Men club.
Wednesday 11 January 2017
SOAS students have a point. Philosophy degrees should look beyond white Europeans
Tom Whyman in The Guardian
We all know what students are like nowadays, don’t we? Special snowflakes who can’t cope with the real world, who refuse to venture out of their safe spaces to learn anything, who are so achingly PC they won’t even let their institutions serve sushi in the cafeteria. When they’re not wasting their lives on social media or fighting for a fairer world for all, these mewling, overprivileged babies like to spend their time policing their academic superiors on their curriculum choices.
The latest scandal? Step forward SOAS, University of London students’ union, which has outraged basically every outlet in the rightwing press by calling, astonishingly enough, for such great philosophers as Kant, Plato and Descartes to be banned from the curriculum, just because they are white.
As part of a wider campaign to “decolonise” the curriculum, the union has proclaimed, “the majority of philosophers” taught at Soas should be from Africa or Asia, and – when the great names of European philosophy are taught, which is something that should only happen when absolutely necessary – it should be from a critical standpoint, accounting for (for instance) the colonial context in which Enlightenment thought arose.
Read the news articles on this story and you’d be convinced that some great act of intellectual barbarism was about to take place. But in truth, the notion that anything untoward is going on here is mostly nonsense.
Allow me to explain. First, it must be noted that despite the headlines no one, at any point, has actually called for white philosophers to be dropped from the curriculum at SOAS. Even at its most extreme, all the SOAS students’ union demands (and note that their demand has no binding force whatsoever) is that European philosophers only be taught in preference to African and Asian ones when necessary. Adopting this principle, if it turns out that say, Kant, has expressed some insight that is vital for understanding some aspect of reality, then he should be allowed to remain in the curriculum.
This seems fair: there’s only so much thought one can study as an undergraduate, and students should have a right to not waste their time on any second-rate thinkers who happen to have snuck themselves into the western canon. If we’re going to teach philosophy at a university, then it seems more than worthwhile to critically reflect on which philosophers we’re focusing on, and why. Indeed, this is something that Kant himself, whose mature work is pitched against dogmatism in all its forms, would welcome.
Second, philosophers should also welcome the demand that European philosophy be studied in its appropriate social and historical context. This doesn’t just mean PC hand-wringing: it can be used to actively enrich our understanding of these texts. Consider an example such as Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes – one of the founding documents of western political thought. Hobbes argues that we need a state authority invested with absolute power – because otherwise society would collapse into what he calls “the state of nature”, where no one has any security and life is nasty, brutish and short. The state of nature is often called a fiction, but if you read Leviathan closely you’ll notice that Hobbes is actually getting it from early anthropological accounts of Native American civilisation, which he describes as being devoid of any understanding of law. This of course is deeply problematic – and it’s exactly the sort of point that, if we understand it in its proper context, can allow us to get a better, richer understanding of Hobbes (and obtain a better understanding of our social world in general).
Third, even if the SOAS students had demanded that all white philosophers be banned from the curriculum, it’s still unclear to me how much would actually be lost. You wouldn’t know it from reading any of the other news articles on this topic, but SOAS doesn’t actually have a philosophy department – and nor does it offer a BA degree in philosophy. Rather, SOAS offers a BA in world philosophies, which is run by the department of religions and philosophies. Given the nature of this course and the nature of SOAS as an institution, it makes complete sense for the students to want to study more African and Asian thought at the expense of European. Of course if nearby Birkbeck decided to purge its curriculum of European thought, that would be an entirely different issue. But these matters are context-sensitive, and diversity across curricula should be welcomed.
Finally, the stereotype of students as easily “triggered” special snowflakes who use political correctness to police their teachers is one I simply don’t recognise. Most of the students I’ve encountered as a university lecturer are bright, engaged and want to be challenged. And to be honest, that’s something I recognise in the statement issued by the SOAS students as well. This oh-so-scandalising statement reads to me like it must have been produced by students who are deeply invested in their course and care passionately about what they study. As educators we have a duty to respond to and nurture this passion.
We all know what students are like nowadays, don’t we? Special snowflakes who can’t cope with the real world, who refuse to venture out of their safe spaces to learn anything, who are so achingly PC they won’t even let their institutions serve sushi in the cafeteria. When they’re not wasting their lives on social media or fighting for a fairer world for all, these mewling, overprivileged babies like to spend their time policing their academic superiors on their curriculum choices.
The latest scandal? Step forward SOAS, University of London students’ union, which has outraged basically every outlet in the rightwing press by calling, astonishingly enough, for such great philosophers as Kant, Plato and Descartes to be banned from the curriculum, just because they are white.
As part of a wider campaign to “decolonise” the curriculum, the union has proclaimed, “the majority of philosophers” taught at Soas should be from Africa or Asia, and – when the great names of European philosophy are taught, which is something that should only happen when absolutely necessary – it should be from a critical standpoint, accounting for (for instance) the colonial context in which Enlightenment thought arose.
Read the news articles on this story and you’d be convinced that some great act of intellectual barbarism was about to take place. But in truth, the notion that anything untoward is going on here is mostly nonsense.
Allow me to explain. First, it must be noted that despite the headlines no one, at any point, has actually called for white philosophers to be dropped from the curriculum at SOAS. Even at its most extreme, all the SOAS students’ union demands (and note that their demand has no binding force whatsoever) is that European philosophers only be taught in preference to African and Asian ones when necessary. Adopting this principle, if it turns out that say, Kant, has expressed some insight that is vital for understanding some aspect of reality, then he should be allowed to remain in the curriculum.
This seems fair: there’s only so much thought one can study as an undergraduate, and students should have a right to not waste their time on any second-rate thinkers who happen to have snuck themselves into the western canon. If we’re going to teach philosophy at a university, then it seems more than worthwhile to critically reflect on which philosophers we’re focusing on, and why. Indeed, this is something that Kant himself, whose mature work is pitched against dogmatism in all its forms, would welcome.
Second, philosophers should also welcome the demand that European philosophy be studied in its appropriate social and historical context. This doesn’t just mean PC hand-wringing: it can be used to actively enrich our understanding of these texts. Consider an example such as Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes – one of the founding documents of western political thought. Hobbes argues that we need a state authority invested with absolute power – because otherwise society would collapse into what he calls “the state of nature”, where no one has any security and life is nasty, brutish and short. The state of nature is often called a fiction, but if you read Leviathan closely you’ll notice that Hobbes is actually getting it from early anthropological accounts of Native American civilisation, which he describes as being devoid of any understanding of law. This of course is deeply problematic – and it’s exactly the sort of point that, if we understand it in its proper context, can allow us to get a better, richer understanding of Hobbes (and obtain a better understanding of our social world in general).
Third, even if the SOAS students had demanded that all white philosophers be banned from the curriculum, it’s still unclear to me how much would actually be lost. You wouldn’t know it from reading any of the other news articles on this topic, but SOAS doesn’t actually have a philosophy department – and nor does it offer a BA degree in philosophy. Rather, SOAS offers a BA in world philosophies, which is run by the department of religions and philosophies. Given the nature of this course and the nature of SOAS as an institution, it makes complete sense for the students to want to study more African and Asian thought at the expense of European. Of course if nearby Birkbeck decided to purge its curriculum of European thought, that would be an entirely different issue. But these matters are context-sensitive, and diversity across curricula should be welcomed.
Finally, the stereotype of students as easily “triggered” special snowflakes who use political correctness to police their teachers is one I simply don’t recognise. Most of the students I’ve encountered as a university lecturer are bright, engaged and want to be challenged. And to be honest, that’s something I recognise in the statement issued by the SOAS students as well. This oh-so-scandalising statement reads to me like it must have been produced by students who are deeply invested in their course and care passionately about what they study. As educators we have a duty to respond to and nurture this passion.
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