Will North America and Europe Follow Turkey and Russia...? Will We Putinize...?

Yesterday I e-mailed to friends a report just published about countries that are danger to women...
Here it is...

The most dangerous country to be a woman is India , but the US is not far behind... The US ranks 10th in survey... and sorry to admit, it will be worse before it gets better...The Handmaid's Tale is looming larger and larger with each passing day... (You may browse the survey too... the link is included...)

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The Thomson Reuters Foundation released its results Tuesday of a survey of 550 experts on women's issues, finding India to be the most dangerous nation for sexual violence against women, as well as human trafficking for domestic work, forced labor, forced marriage and sexual slavery, among other reasons.

It was also the most dangerous country in the world for cultural traditions that impact women, the survey found, citing acid attacks, female genital mutilation, child marriage and physical abuse. India was the fourth most dangerous country for women in the same survey seven years ago.

Nine of the 10 countries on the list were from Asia, the Middle East or Africa. At number 10 was the United States, the only Western country to be included. The foundation said this was directly related to the #MeToo movement.

The world's most dangerous countries for women

According to the survey:

1. India

2. Afghanistan

3. Syria

4. Somalia

5. Saudi Arabia

6. Pakistan

7. Democratic Republic of Congo

8. Yemen

9. Nigeria

10. United States

Just imagine the counties which some leaders in the US called "shitholes...counties..." 

And only "shitholes" are preceding the US... what an irony...!

When I wrote to my friends that "it will be worse before it will get better...,"  It was just my observation and analysis of the political evolution of the "Western Liberal Democracies... for the past decade... But the vacancy created in the US Supreme Court ... adds to my worries and apprehension...

Justice Anthony Kennedy to retire from Supreme Court... The Supreme Court will shift to the populist and extreme conservative right... The Puritan Ethic will dictate the decisions and the Evangelical hypocrisy will  reign supreme...

The Handmaid's Tale will be more of a reality... and I am worried...  

 

The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, originally published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England, in a totalitarian state resembling a theonomy, which has overthrown the United States government. The novel focuses on the journey of the handmaid Offred. Her name derives from the possessive form "of Fred"; handmaids are forbidden to use their birth names and must echo the male, or master, whom they serve.

The Handmaid's Tale explores themes of women in subjugation in a patriarchal society and the various means by which these women attempt to gain individualism and independence. 

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In Turkey, Erdogan began his crusade for anti-democratic "Reforms" just like the populist revolutions which are sweeping the US and the Western Liberal Democracies... But now Erdogan of Turkey reigns supreme and he was re-elected again this past Sunday... Erdogan, just like Putin of Russia, has eroded the democratic norms in Turkey and imprisoned reporters and journalists and teachers and professionals... the jails in Turkey are full of innocent intellectuals... 

    Erdogan’s Victory in Turkey Election Expands His Powers... and Putin becomes an absolute oligarch... Both have lulled their people by populist rhetoric similar to what is happening in North America and Europe...

Is this what will become of Europe and Northern America and the US...? 

The Danger is dangling before us...

Are we to follow the example of Erdogan's Turkey and Putin's Russia... ? Even positing this question makes me jittery... and I get vertigo by thinking about it...

Will the people in Europe and North America sense the danger and defend their rights...? I am not that certain...!

...and I am pessimistic for the future...

The US Has a Long History of Separating Families...

Actually, the US has a long history of separating families...

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

The White Man's Burden as a concept existed in England and Europe long before US declared independence... but the white man's heritage was solidified and refined in the US... and as in Europe, it was chocolate-coated as a humanitarian mission to educate the barbarians... meaning non-white peoples of the world... The "hot Civil War" ended long ago... Though it may be argued that the police shootings in the US of unarmed African-Americans... and other is just a continuation of the hot civil war... But the Civil War has never ended...  The civil war for societal norms and mores have continued unabetted...  Racism is part of the cool civil war... Anti-Muslim hysteria is part of the cool civil war... Anti-immigrant bias and delirious agitation is part of the cool civil war... and the recent anti-immigrant policies in the US and Europe is the fruit of a racist tree... The Civil War never ended... Neither the hot nor the cold... The Evangelicals are nothing new...  their rhetoric and bias are not new... Check the better known books... The Scarlet Letter... Hester Prynne, a young, beautiful, and dignified woman, who conceived a child out of wedlock and receives the public punishment of having to always wear a scarlet "A" on her clothing. She refuses to reveal the father of her child, which could lighten her sentence. Her husband, the aptly-named Roger Chillingworth, who Hester thought had died in a shipwreck but was actually being held captive by Native Americans, arrives at the exact moment of her deepest public shaming and vows to get revenge. Her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, remains safely unidentified, but is wracked with guilt. Though originally published in 1850, the story is set in seventeenth-century Massachusetts among Hawthorne's Puritan ancestors. In The Scarlet Letter, he created a story that highlighted both their weaknesses and their strengths. His knowledge of their beliefs and his admiration for their way of life was balanced by his concerns about their rigid and oppressive rules. The Crucible... The Crucible is a 1953 play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692/93. Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government ostracized people for being communists. Miller himself was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956 and convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended. The intolerance of the evangelicals compounded with the inherent political biases of both the conservatives and liberals... have shackled the US to racism and generated its unique culture of The White Man's Burden... Inherit The Wind... In a small Southern town, a school teacher, Bertram Cates, is about to stand trial. His offense: violating a state law by introducing to his students the concept that man descended from the lower life forms, a theory of the naturalist Charles Darwin. Cates is denounced by town leaders including the Rev. Jeremiah Brown. The town is excited because appearing for the prosecution will be Matthew Brady, a noted statesman and three-time presidential candidate. A staunch foe of evolution and a Biblical scholar, Brady will sit beside prosecuting attorney Tom Davenport, in the courtroom of Judge Coffey. The teacher's defense is to be handled by the equally well-known Henry Drummond, one of America's most controversial legal minds and a long-standing acquaintance and adversary of Brady. An influential newspaperman, E.K. Hornbeck of the Baltimore Herald, has persuaded Drummond to represent Cates, and ensured that his newspaper and a radio network will provide nationwide coverage of the case. Rev. Brown publicly rallies the townspeople against Cates and Drummond. The preacher's daughter Rachel is conflicted because she and Cates are engaged...............................and the rest... And if you have any courage left... read the essays of  Eldrige Cleaver... in Soul on Ice... The now-classic memoir that shocked, outraged, and ultimately changed the way America looked at the civil rights movement and the black experience. By turns shocking and lyrical, unblinking and raw, the searingly honest memoirs of Eldridge Cleaver are a testament to his unique place in American history. Cleaver writes in Soul on Ice, "I'm perfectly aware that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro, that I've been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation." What Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this now classic autobiography, is how much he was a man... The African-American experience in the US is unique and their struggle for "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness..." exposes the bias of the ........... "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" the well-known phrase in the United States Declaration of Independence. The phrase gives three examples of the "unalienable rights" which the Declaration says have been given to all human beings by their Creator, and which governments are created to protect... The Creator created the African-Americans too... ********************************************** The current globalized immigration-refugee crisis in the US and Europe is the legacy of our Greco-Roman heritage and indoctrination... and also the Judeo-Christian culture... which is inherently racist and intolerant.   The Blog Editors

Many Americans across the US are angry with US Immigration Policies... for the government's "zero tolerance" immigration policy, which has sought to deter illegal entry by detaining and separating migrant families.

Critics say the policy, which was recently altered to address some concerns of separation, is not emblematic of who we are as a nation. Others say it runs counter to the America they know and love.

But history shows policies like this have been implemented time and time again since the nation began.

In fact, the US has a long history of separating children from their parents. Government policies forced apart the families of enslaved Africans, Native Americans and Mexican immigrants, and detained Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Splitting up slave families

Enslaved parents lived with the constant fear of being separated from their children.

Slave owners could split up families for any number of reasons -- including selling slaves to pay off debts, dividing families to create equal inheritance or as punishment.

"During slavery, there was a belief among slave owners that these families could be ripped apart and there was no need to think about how they ever might be brought back together," said Henry Fernandez, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

The Misery of the plantations...

Likening the separation of black families to migrant families, Fernandez said: "What we're seeing here is a federal government which had no strategy to ever bring these families back together."

Native American boarding schools

In the 19th century, the US government began a campaign to assimilate Native American children into white American society by separating them from their families and stripping them of their language and culture.

In 1819, Congress passed the Civilization Fund Act, which provided religious organizations the resources to run schools for Native American children "for introducing among them the habits and arts of civilization."

Sixty years later, Capt. Richard Henry Pratt founded the first Indian boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Native American children were taken from their parents and communities and forced to attend similar institutions that aimed to "kill the Indian, and save the man," as Pratt famously said.

Native American girls from the Omaha tribe at Carlisle School, Pennsylvania.

The removal of Mexican immigrants

During the Great Depression, a wave of anti-Mexican hysteria swept parts of the nation. Federal and local authorities rounded up large numbers of Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans, forcing them to leave their homes on the Arizona, California and Texas borders and relocate to Mexico.

Many Americans at the time blamed Mexican communities for taking away jobs and public assistance resources from them. That may have been the 1930s, but that justification is not too far off from Trump suggesting that immigration hurts American workers.

This period in history is often referred to as the Mexican Repatriation. But that term suggests those who left were returning voluntarily to their native country.

In fact, an estimated 60% of those who were pushed out were US citizens, Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez wrote in their book "Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s." Facing threats of unemployment and the loss of social assistance, the families who packed up their bags often felt like they had no other choice but to leave.

Another consequence of the deportations?

Some families were separated.

Japanese-American internment camps

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the US government began to fear Japanese-Americans might turn against it.

In 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an executive order that gave the military the authority to exclude citizens from certain areas. While the order didn't mention Japanese-Americans specifically, it targeted virtually all the Japanese Americans living on the West Coast.

A US flag flies at a Japanese-American internment camp, circa 1942

There are certainly differences between the internment of Japanese-Americans and the detention of migrants at the US-Mexico border, said Simeon Man, an assistant professor of history at the University of California, San Diego.

Japanese-Americans were deemed an "enemy race" and incarcerated, while migrants at the US-Mexico border are fleeing their home countries, being apprehended at the border and detained.

But there are some fundamental similarities.

"In both cases, the military was used to warehouse people in a time of emergency in the name of national security, and they were both framed as benevolent acts in which the US government is providing care for the people," Man wrote in an email to CNN. "But as we know, all that has obscured the fact that people are being held against their will in prison-like conditions -- they are not receiving proper medical care, and they're malnourished."