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Recent Resources for Feminists
 
 By Arundhati Roy, April 2008
ISBN13: 9780670082070
Hardback, 288 pages
The Shape of the Beast is our world laid bare, with great courage, passion and eloquence, by a mind that has engaged unhesitatingly with its changing realities, often anticipating the way things have moved in the last decade.
In the fourteen interviews collected here, conducted between January 2001 and March 2008, Arundhati Roy examines the nature of state and corporate power as it has emerged during this period, and the shape that resistance movements are taking. As she speaks, among other things, about people displaced by dams and industry, the genocide in Gujarat, Maoist rebels, the war in Kashmir and the global War on Terror, she raises fundamental questions about democracy, justice and non-violent protest.
Unabashedly political, this is also a deeply personal collection. Through the conversations, Arundhati talks about the necessity of taking a stand, as also the dilemma of guarding the private space necessary for writing in a world that demands urgent, unequivocal intervention. And in the final interview, she discusses with uncommon candour her ambiguous feelings about success and both the pressures and the freedom that come with it.
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The Shape Of The Beast28 April 2008 by FabbiGabby
Eleven years after she won the Booker Prize for The God of Small Things, 14 conversations (2001-2008 ) with Roy on her social and political activism appear in a new book The Shape of the Beast.
Even before The God of Small Things hit the world of fame, this female Rushdie of India attracted lot of media attention when she criticised Shekhar Kapur’s film Bandit Queen, based on the life of Phoolan Devi, charging Kapur with exploiting Devi and misrepresenting both her life and its meaning. For sometime Roy was involved as film script writer as well. She even tried her hands at acting in films. Not many remember but Arundhati Roy played a village girl in the award-winning movie Massey Sahib.
(Click on the Image for a Video of an Interview with Arundhati Roy on The Shape of the Beast).
The Shape of the Beast finds Roy fulminating against the 2002 Godhra genocide, empathising with the adivasis of Dantewada in Chhattisgarh and venting against the military operations in Nagaland, Kashmir and Manipur.Through this book Roy has revealed both a personal and social journey.
“In India, people who are politically radical are socially conservative and those who are socially radical are politically conservative – and I’m torn between the two. It is about the same dilemma that I face as a writer. The book is somewhere between the spoken and the written word and answers fundamental questions”, says Arundhati, the architect turned writer.
In these conversations, Roy talks about the necessity of taking a stand, as also the dilemma of guarding the private space necessary for writing in a world that demands urgent, unequivocal intervention. ?
Five of the fourteen conversations are with David Barsamian, an American radio producer, who has also interviewed the likes of Noam Chomsky, Edward Said and Tariq Ali. Couple of years ago, Barsamian and Roy had co-authored a similar book "The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy"
Says Barsamian, “She is a strong, courageous woman and has strong thoughts, as do many of the others I have interviewed. She is also mischievous and has spoken candidly on a range of issues that have mattered to her, around her,” said David Barsamian, founder of Alternative Radio.”
 In these writings Roy describes her participation in a Narmada Bachao Andolan as, “absolutely fantastic.” She jokes that her Supreme Court charge for “corrupting public morality”-in the case of her novel The God of Small Things-should have been changed to “further corrupting public morality.” She calls on her training as an architect to explain what she means by the “physics of power.” Like a house of cards, she argues that “unfettered power . . . cannot go berserk like this and expect to hold it all together.”
Roy is a spokesperson of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement and a vehement critic of neo-imperialism and of the global policies of the United States. She is very critical of India’s nuclear weapons policies and the approach to industrialization and rapid development as currently being practiced in India.
Arundhati Roy who is also vying with Salman Rushdie for The Best of Booker, is popular for her searching and fierce prose. People do await another work of fiction from this celebrated author. Since The God of Small Things (which is now published in 32 languages), she has published two volumes of her non-fiction writing, The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2001) and An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (2005).
(The Shape of the Beast published by Penguin in hardback cover is priced Rs 499)
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 Wednesday April 30 2008
I am not an activist: RoyNew Delhi, PTI:
Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy says she wants to be known as a writer and not an activist. "I am a writer and want to be identified as a writer only," she says.
“One should not define me as an activist. I am not an activist,” she told reporters at the launch of her book The Shape of the Beast, a collection of 14 interviews conducted by her between January 2001 and March 2008.
Roy has voiced her opinion on many issues, such as on Narmada Bachao Andolan, India’s nuclear policy, US policies and the Gujarat riots.
In The Shape of the Beast, Arundhati talks about the dilemma a writer faces in taking a stand and guarding the private space necessary for writing in a world that demands urgent and equivocal intervention.
“A writer hones his or her language, makes it clear and private and individual as possible. And then you look around and see what’s happening to millions of people,” she said.
“You find yourself in the heart of the crowd, saying things that millions of people are saying and it’s not private and individual any more,” explains Arundhati, who won the 1997 Booker prize for her first novel The God of Small Things.
“How do you hold these two things down? These are very fundamental questions. This is why so many writers are frightened of political engagements. They feel it is a risk, and it is a risk, and yet I would rather do it than not,” she narrates at length.
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 London ~~ Monday April 28 2008
 Barbaric 'honour killings' become the weapon to subjugate women in Iraq
Murder of a girl who became infatuated with a British soldier highlights a disturbing new trend
By Terri Judd
At first glance Shawbo Ali Rauf appears to be slumbering on the grass, her pale brown curls framing her face, her summer skirt spread about her. But the awkward position of her limbs and the splattered blood reveal the true horror of the scene.
The 19-year-old Iraqi was, according to her father, murdered by her own in-laws, who took her to a picnic area in Dokan and shot her seven times. Her crime was to have an unknown number on her mobile phone. Her "honour killing" is just one in a grotesque series emerging from Iraq, where activists speak of a "genocide" against women in the name of religion.
In the latest such case, it was reported yesterday that a 17-year-old girl, Rand Abdel-Qader, was stabbed to death last month by her father for becoming infatuated with a British soldier serving in southern Iraq.
In Basra alone, police acknowledge that 15 women a month are murdered for breaching Islamic dress codes. Campaigners insist it is a conservative figure.
Violence against women is rampant, rising every day with the power of the militias. Beheadings, rapes, beatings, suicides through self-immolation, genital mutilation, trafficking and child abuse masquerading as marriage of girls as young as nine are all on the increase.
Du'a Khalil Aswad, 17, from Nineveh, was executed by stoning in front of mob of 2,000 men for falling in love with a boy outside her Yazidi tribe. Mobile phone images of her broken body transmitted on the internet led to sectarian violence, international outrage and calls for reform. Her father, Khalil Aswad, speaking one year after her death in April last year, has revealed that none of those responsible had been prosecuted and his family remained "outcasts" in their own tribe.
"My daughter did nothing wrong," he said. "She fell in love with a Muslim and there is nothing wrong with that. I couldn't protect her because I got threats from my brother, the whole tribe. They insisted they were gong to kill us all, not only Du'a, if she was not killed. She was mutilated, her body dumped like rubbish.
"I want those who committed this act to be punished but so far they have not, they are free. Honour killing is murder. This is a barbaric act."
Despite the outrage, recent calls by the Kurdish MP Narmin Osman to outlaw honour killings have been blocked by fundamentalists. "Honour killings are not actually a crime in the eyes of the government," said Houzan Mahmoud, who has had a fatwa on her head since raising a petition against the introduction of sharia law in Kurdistan. "If before there was one dictator persecuting people, now almost everyone is persecuting women.
"In the past five years it is has got [much] worse. It is difficult to described how terrible it is, how badly we have been pushed back to the dark ages. Women are being beheaded for taking their veil off. Self immolation is rising – women are left with no choice. There is no government body or institution to provide any sort of support. Sharia law is being used to underpin government rule, denying women their most basic human rights."
In August last year, the body of 11-year-old Sara Jaffar Nimat was found in Khanaqin, Kurdistan, after she had been stoned and burnt to death. Earlier this month, two brothers and a sister were kidnapped from their home near Kirkuk by gunmen in police uniforms. The brothers were beaten to death and the woman left in a critical condition after being informed that she must obey the rules of an "Islamic state". One week ago, a journalist, Begard Huseein, was murdered in her home in Arbil, northern Iraq. Her husband, Mohammed Mustafa, stabbed her because she was in love with another man, according to local reports.
The stoning death of Ms Aswad led to the establishment of an Internal Ministry unit in Kurdistan to combat violence against women. It reported that last year in Sulaymaniyah, a city of 1 million people, there were 407 reported offences, beheadings, beatings, deaths through "family problems", and threats of honour killings. Rape is not included as most women are too fearful to report it for fear of retribution. Nevertheless, police in Karbala recently revealed 25 reports of rape.
The new Iraqi constitution, according to Mrs Mahmoud, is a mass of confusing contradictions. While it states that men and women are equal under law it also decrees that sharia law – which considers one male witness worth two females – must be observed. The days when women could hold down key jobs or enjoy any freedom of movement are long gone. The fundamentalists have sent out too many chilling messages. In Mosul two years ago, eight women were beheaded in a terror campaign.
"It was really, really horrifying," said Mrs Mahmoud. "Honour killings and murder are widespread. Thousands [of people] ... have become victims of murder, violence and rape – all backed by laws, tribal customs and religious rules. We urge the international community, the government to condemn this barbaric practice, and help the women of Iraq."
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 April 21, 2008
DOES A REAL RELIGIOUS LEADER IGNORE ILLEGAL WAR & TORTURE?What About the War, Benedict?by Ray McGovern
 April 21, 2008Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the United States last week against a macabre backdrop featuring reports of torture, execution and war. He chose not to notice.
Torture: Fresh reporting by ABC from inside sources depicted George W. Bush’s most senior aides (Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice and Tenet) meeting dozens of times in the White House during 2002/03 to sort out the most efficient mix of torture techniques for captured “terrorists.”
When initially ABC attempted to insulate the president from this sordid activity, Bush abruptly bragged that he knew all about it and approved. That comment and the action memorandum Bush signed on Feb. 7, 2002, dispelled any lingering doubt regarding his personal responsibility for authorizing torture.
Execution: Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court, with a majority of judges calling themselves Catholic, was openly deliberating on whether one gram, or two, or perhaps three of this or that chemical would be the preferred way to execute people.
Always colorful prominent Catholic layman Antonin Scalia complained impatiently, “Where does it say in the Constitution that executions have to be painless?”
Scalia did not seem at all concerned that the pope might remind him and his Catholic colleagues about the Church’s teaching on capital punishment, i.e., the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.” ( Evangelium Vitae 56).
It was enough to bring this student of German history (and five-year resident there) vivid memories of frequenting those places where precisely these kinds of torture and execution policy reviews were conducted at similarly high levels by Hitler’s inner circle – yes, including judges.
War: Can the pope possibly be so suffused with his peculiar brand of theology that he is oblivious to what happened when he was a young man during the Third Reich.
Is it possible that papal advisers forgot to tell him that the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal described an unprovoked war of aggression, of the kind that the Third Reich and George W. Bush launched, as the “supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only in that it contains the accumulated evil of the whole?”
Could they have failed to tell the pope he would be hobnobbing with war criminals, torturers and the enabling cowards in Congress who refuse to remove them from office?
For this Catholic, it was a profoundly sad spectacle – profoundly sad.
Not since WWII, when the Reich’s bishops swore personal oaths of allegiance to Hitler (as did the German Supreme Court and army generals) have the papacy and bishops acted in such a fawning, un-Christ-like way.
With very few exceptions, the bishops (Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran) collaborated with the Nazis. Meanwhile, Hamlet-like Pius XII kept trying to make up his mind as to whether he should put the Catholic Church at some risk, while Jews were being murdered by the thousands.
Albert Camus
In 1948, in the shadow of that monstrous world war, the French author/philosopher Albert Camus accepted an invitation from the Dominican Monastery of Latour-Maubourg.
To their credit, the Dominicans wanted to know what an “unbeliever” thought about Christians in the light of their behavior during the Thirties and Forties. Camus’ words seem so terribly relevant today that it is difficult to trim them:
“For a long time during those frightful years I waited for a great voice to speak up in Rome. I, an unbeliever? Precisely. For I knew that the spirit would be lost if it did not utter a cry of condemnation...
“It has been explained to me since, that the condemnation was indeed voiced. But that it was in the style of the encyclicals, which is not all that clear. The condemnation was voiced and it was not understood. Who could fail to feel where the true condemnation lies in this case?
“What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man.
“That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today.
“It may be ... that Christianity will insist on maintaining a compromise, or else on giving its condemnations the obscure form of the encyclical. Possibly it will insist on losing once and for all the virtue of revolt and indignation that belonged to it long ago.
“What I know – and what sometimes creates a deep longing in me – is that if Christians made up their mind to it, millions of voices – millions, I say – throughout the world would be added to the appeal of a handful of isolated individuals, who, without any sort of affiliation, today intercede almost everywhere and ceaselessly for children and other people.”
(Excerpted from Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays)
Sixty years ago!
Perhaps the Dominican monks took Camus seriously; monks tend to listen. Vatican functionaries, on the other hand, tend to know it all, and to urge the pope to be “discrete.”
You saw that this past week with the pope in Washington and New York, as he forfeited the opportunity to follow the biblical injunction to speak truth to power – to speak out clearly, as Camus suggested, with moral authority.
Catholics All Around
Think back to last week and all the prominent Catholics who flocked to see the pope – many of them officials with considerable influence in the Judiciary and Legislature, with some important players in the Executive Branch as well.
There they were, with their families, the five Catholic Supreme Court justices, fresh from detailed deliberations on how best to implement state-sponsored killings, executions that are banned by virtually every civilized country.
Justice Scalia audibly salivated over how much noxious chemical should be shot into the veins of a “condemned,” and how quickly. (For those with strong stomachs, C-SPAN captured the proceedings.)
I am embarrassed to acknowledge that, like me, Scalia is the product of a Jesuit education (Xavier H.S. in Manhattan and Georgetown College). Despite his advocacy of “soft” torture techniques like driving nails under fingernails, Scalia continues to be lionized by many Jesuits and bishops alike.
In the House? Speaker Nancy Pelosi, erstwhile doyenne of the Archdiocese of Baltimore and now San Francisco, and minority leader John Boehner, R-Ohio – Catholics both – are about to allocate another hundred billion dollars to death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan for the most reprehensibly crass of political purposes – the coming election.
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts, last week tried to guild the lily, noting that Pelosi now insists that, in McGovern’s words, “We’re an equal branch of government; we’re no longer a cheap date.” Right.
Sadly, it appears that Pelosi’s key functionaries on House Appropriations (both of them Catholics) will cave in once again.
It is not as though they do not know the right thing to do. Just six months ago, Appropriations chair Dave Obey, D-Wisconsin, declared, “I have no intention of reporting out of committee anytime in this session of Congress any such [funding] request that simply serves to continue the status quo.”
Subcommittee chair John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, put it even more strongly a year before Obey did, and came close to calling the occupation of Iraq a lost cause – which, of course, it is. But it is not politic to say that before the election. Never mind the troops on the front lines.
Obey and Murtha caved last time. I will find it particularly devastating if Obey caves again now, for I have always considered him among the best legislators in Congress.
And since he is from Wisconsin, Obey recognizes better than others the McCarthy-ite demagoguery coming from the likes of Texas Republican Michael Burgess, to the effect that anything short of giving the president all the war funding he demands is “basically giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
Pelosi also has been unusually candid in admitting that it is electoral politics, pure and simple, that explain her resistance to holding President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney accountable for high crimes and misdemeanors via the orderly procedure given us by the Founders for precisely this purpose – impeachment in the House; trial in the Senate.
If, as widely expected, the war funding goes through, several hundred more American troops are likely to die before some common sense can be injected into U.S. policy next year – not to mention how many Iraqis.
Iraq is a shambles. Two million Iraqis have fled abroad; another two million are internal refugees. Am I the only one who finds macabre the raging debate as to whether the attack and occupation of Iraq has resulted in a million or “only 300,000” Iraqis dead?
Apparently, the pope did not have any opinion on the Iraq War. But Torture?
Surely the pope would speak out against the kind of torture for which our country has become famous: Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, CIA “black sites” – the more so, since Jesus of Nazareth was tortured to death.
The pope chose silence, which presumably came as welcome relief to four-star torturer’s apprentice, Gen. Michael Hayden, now head of the CIA.
The White House has made clear that Hayden is ready to instruct his torturers to waterboard again, upon Caesar’s approval.
Hayden proved his mettle when he was head of the National Security Agency. He saluted smartly when the president and vice president told him to disregard the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act and his oath to defend the Constitution.
One of Hayden’s predecessors as NSA director asserted that Hayden should have been court-martialed. Pelosi was briefed both on the illegal surveillance and the torture, but did nothing.
Having demonstrated his allegiance to the president, Hayden was picked to head the CIA. The general likes to brag about his moral training and Catholic credentials. At his nomination hearing, he noted that he was the beneficiary of 18 years of Catholic education.
All the while it was quite clear he was positively lusting to be in charge of waterboarding and other torture techniques – whatever you say, boss.
I was somewhat crestfallen after adding up my own years of Catholic education – only 17. Clearly I missed “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques 301.”
Keep It General; Focus on Others’ Sins
Saturday at the UN, the pontiff pontificated on “God-given human rights” and “massive human rights abuses,” but pretty much left it at that. The Washington Post reported that the pope was “short on specifics and long on broad themes.”
But there was one specific. Here in the U.S., the pope seemed to prefer to dwell on the pedophilia scandal – to the exclusion of much else. He is to be applauded for meeting with victims of clergy sexual abuse and expressing deep shame, but he got a free pass from the media in disguising his own role in trying to cover the whole thing up.
While still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he headed The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the Vatican office that once ran the Inquisition. In that capacity he sent a letter in May 2001 to all Catholic bishops throwing a curtain of secrecy over the widespread sexual abuse by clergy, warning the bishops of severe penalties, including excommunication for breaching “pontifical secrets.”
Lawyers acting for the sexually abused accused Ratzinger of “clear obstruction of justice.”
Very few American bishops have been disciplined. And when Bernard Cardinal Law was run out of Boston for failing to protect children from predator priests, he was given a cushy sinecure in Rome; many believe he should be behind bars.
In an interview with the Catholic News Service in 2002, Ratzinger branded media coverage of the pedophilia scandal “a planned campaign ... intentional, manipulated, a desire to discredit the Church.”
It is nice that the pope has now changed his tune. Nicer still for him, he found himself mostly in the congenial atmosphere of Washington, where very few powerful miscreants are held accountable.
So What Did You Expect?
I do wish my friends would stop asking me that.
While it was good that the pope addressed the pedophilia issue head on, it seemed as though he made a decision to devote time and energy to the issue.
The side-benefit, of course, was being able to speak in glorious generality on other major issues – war, torture, capital punishment – in all of which, as we have seen, many of “the faithful” are deeply engaged – embarrassingly engaged.
I had hoped – naively, it turned out – that the pope might encourage his brother bishops to find the courage to state plainly what 88 bishops of the Methodist faith, George W. Bush’s tradition, declared on Nov. 8, 2005:
“We repent of our complicity in what we believe to be the unjust and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. In the face of the United States Administration’s rush toward military action based on misleading information, too many of us were silent.
“We confess our preoccupation with institutional enhancement and limited agendas while American men and women are sent to Iraq to kill and be killed, while thousands of Iraqi people needlessly suffer and die.”
I thought that perhaps the U.S. Catholic bishops could adopt the kind of resolution that 125 Methodist bishops signed on Nov. 9, 2007. It called for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the reversal of any plans to establish permanent military bases there.
The Methodist bishops’ resolution noted: “Every day that the war continues, more soldiers and innocent civilians are killed with no end in sight to the violence, bloodshed, and carnage.” And Bishop Jack Meadors summed up the situation nicely:
“The Iraq War is not just a political issue or a military issue. It is a moral issue.”
Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem
Visiting Yad VaShem, the Holocaust museum in West Jerusalem last summer, I experienced painful reminders of what happens when the church allows itself to be captured by Empire. An acquiescent church, it is clear, loses whatever residual moral authority it may have had.
At the entrance to the museum, a quotation by German essayist Kurt Tucholsky set a universally applicable tone:
“A country is not just what it does – it is also what it tolerates.”
Still more compelling words came from Imre Bathory, a Hungarian who put his own life at grave risk by helping to save Jews from the concentration camps:
“I know that when I stand before God on Judgment Day, I shall not be asked the question posed to Cain: ‘Where were you when your brother’s blood was crying out to God?’”
According to former President George H. W. Bush, George W. has “read the Bible straight through – twice.” Perhaps he skipped by that passage too quickly; or maybe he is highly selective as to whom he considers his brothers.
No excuse for Benedict, though; he knows better. And yet he opted to squander his glorious chance to speak out and make a difference.
Methodist Bishop Meadors is right; the war is a moral issue. But President Bush has refused, time and time again, to meet with his Methodist bishops. And now he has the imprimatur of the pope.
The bottom line is challenging: to the degree that right and wrong, moral and immoral considerations are to be injected into discussions about war, executions, torture – well, let’s face it. There is only us.
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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer in the early sixties, then a CIA analyst under seven presidents. He is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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This article is republished in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.
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 April 16, 2008
BUSH HOSTS THE POPEThe Cowboy and the ShepherdBy Alexander Schwabe in Washington D.C.
The one relies on prayer, the other on military force, but US President George W. Bush and Pope Benedict XVI are bosom buddies. On many issues, they are on the same page -- and together they battle the relativists.
It is exactly 4:00 p.m. when the door of the Alitalia Boeing 777 swings open following its 10-hour flight over the Atlantic from Rome. Pope Benedict XVI steps out of the plane and extends his arms skywards -- and immediately, a crowd begins cheering and waving Vatican flags from their spot on bleachers set up for the occasion.
Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Washington D.C. on Tuesday afternoon. But it is not only pope fans who are on hand to welcome Benedict upon his arrival to Andrews Air Force Base, located 20 kilometers outside Washington D.C. As the pope waves to the crowd, US President George W. Bush strides along the red carpet, past the honor guard, to the gangway. Behind him, his wife Laura and daughter Jenny struggle to keep up. As he reaches the base of the steps he raises his hands in applause for the pope -- it is about as warm as a welcome can get.
The scene is also a first -- never before has Bush personally received a visitor at the airport.
The two leaders like each other. Bush has never been reticent about voicing his admiration for Benedict, almost to the point of fawning over him. After a June, 2007 visit, the president referred to the pope as a "very smart, loving man" and went on to say, "after six-and-a-half years of being president … I've been to some unusual places and met some interesting people, and I was in awe."
And Benedict, for his part, has the highest respect for Bush -- as the highest representative of a thoroughly religious country who is against abortion, gay marriage and the use of embryos in stem cell research.
Bush -- who has identified himself as a born-again Christian since he gave up alcohol at the age of 40 and who reads the Bible and prays regularly -- has himself profited from Benedict's praise of the US. The pope is fond of saying that the "dictatorship of relevatism" hasn't yet taken hold in the US to the extent it has in nihilistic Europe. In God's own country, values are still worth something.
Indeed, Benedict is visiting a country where religion belongs to the basic pillars of society. At the same time, the shepherd from Rome and the rancher from Texas are two entirely different characters: On the one side, you have a subtle intellect, who likes to write witty books and listen to Mozart; and on the other you have a roughneck who prefers to wear cowboy- boots, hats and blue jeans held up with a belt and an oversized buckle.
But those character differences mean little -- it's the alignments and the politics behind them that count. In America he sees an ally he believes shares his set of values that will support him in what he perceives as the real battle for the future. In his view, this battle will not result in the much-feared clash of cultures. The real front is not between world religions. Rather, it is a standoff between the real believers, whatever faith they adhere to, on the one side, and the worldly relativists -- or even the violent fanatics -- on the other.
Partly in order to prepare himself for this conflict, Benedict likes to surrounds himself with conservative politicians. He meets with Italy's Berlusconi rather than with Spain's Zapatero, with Bush rather than with Brazil's Lula.
He pays little heed to the business of day-to-day politics in his choice of who to meet. For example, two years ago he invited leading center-right politicians to meet him during the middle of a heated phase of the Italian election campaign -- much to the displeasure of many Italians. In addition to Silvio Berlusconi, he met with the Senate president and leading member of the conservative Forza Italia party Marcello Pera, with whom he had earlier published the book "Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam." In the recent Italian election campaign, Benedict did not shy away from upbraiding the (unsuccessful) center-left candidate Walter Veltroni. The pope publicly reprimanded Veltroni, a former mayor of Rome, over problems in the city.
During his six-day US visit -- his eighth trip abroad since being named pope in April 2005 -- Benedict will also be pursuing a political agenda, even if it the Vatican is trying to sell the trip as a purely pastoral visit. With this visit, the Holy See is breaking with a tradition of steering clear of the US during election years. Admittedly the pope is not directly intervening in the election campaign: no meetings are planned with the presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain. However Benedict will, just through his mere presence in Washington and New York, be subtly promoting the Republican McCain, who has a record of opposing abortion. Both Clinton and Obama have taken pro-choice positions in the abortion debate -- a position Benedict finds unacceptable.
Benedict's predilection for conservative politicians is echoed by Bush's affection for the pontiff. It's a sympathy which is partially based on personal reasons -- after all, Bush owes the pope nothing less than his second term. The Pulitzer Prize winner Jack Miles ("God: A Biography") wrote in 2005 that "arguably … Ratzinger won the election for Bush." In the last presidential election, the Methodist Bush ran against the Catholic John Kerry. But Joseph Ratzinger, who at the time was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, attacked the Catholic candidate, not the Protestant one.
During the election campaign, Ratzinger sent a letter to the American bishops, in which he said that all Catholic candidates who were not in favor of a ban on abortion should be denied Communion. In addition, anyone who voted for Kerrry "would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion."
The effect, Miles wrote in the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, was a "minor shift in public opinion" with "enormous consequences." It may even have decided the election.
"Without this shift, Kerry would have had a popular majority of a million votes," wrote Sidney Blumenthal, a political commentator and former Bill Clinton advisor, for the online magazine Salon.com in April, 2005. "Three states -- Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico -- moved into Bush's column on the votes of the Catholic 'faithful.'"
As such, the gigantic birthday party Bush is throwing for the pope on Wednesday can be seen as a gesture of thanks. Benedict will be turning 81, and at least 9,000 guests will gather on the South Lawn of the White House to celebrate. And even the differences between Bush and the pope -- disagreement on the Iraq war, on the death penalty, and on how to help the world's poor -- will not be enough to spoil the festive mood.
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 (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) ~~ Monday April 21 2008
Original Screening at:  UK Monday 08 October 2007
Ten years after the powerful film The Dying Rooms, about the neglect of abandoned babies in Chinese orphanages, Dispatches returns to a very different China where the infamous 'One Child' policy has had the horrific side effect of a boom in stolen children.
It is estimated that 70,000 children are kidnapped there every year and traded on the black market.
Untold thousands of other people are tragically affected by the trade… this film features remarkable access to those at its core: desperate parents searching for a stolen son; a trafficker who brokers deals and who sold his own child; a young couple having to give away their newborn daughter; a private investigator who hunts for stolen children; a boy rescued from traffickers.
In modern China, baby girls can be sold for as little as $500. Boys cost $1000-plus. "China’s Stolen Children" intimately reveals the depth of this tragedy and explores the connection between child trafficking, an alarming shortage of girls and the country's stringent birth control policy. It's a link the Chinese Government rejects.
This documentary shows a side of China that authorities would rather keep hidden – at any time, and especially in the long run-up to the Olympics. Its makers worked undercover, posing as tourists, constantly moving hotels and changing their telephone simcards.
"China's Stolen Children" recently won a Royal Television Society Award and its director has been nominated for this weekend's BAFTAs. Narrated by Sir Ben Kingsley, made for Channel 4 and HBO, "China's Stolen Children" airs on Four Corners at 8.30 pm Monday 21 April, on ABC1.
This film provides an intimate portrait of the crisis this stringent government policy has created among China's poorest people.
The Dying Rooms
In 1995 Brian Woods and Kate Blewett uncovered the systematic neglect of abandoned babies in orphanages in China. Watch The Dying Rooms. WATCH HERE
Help find Chen Jie and other missing children in China: 
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 London ~~ September 23, 2007
Chinese bid to stop ‘kids for sale’ filmRichard Brooks
The Chinese embassy in London is trying to stop Channel 4 broadcasting a documentary about the trade in stolen children in China.
The embassy is considering seeking an injunction to try to prevent China’s Stolen Children being shown on October 8. It has also been in touch with Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, and is expected to write to Channel 4’s board.
The Chinese are angry that they are not being given an advance screening of the documentary, which claims that the trade in stolen children is widespread. C4 says it is not its policy to show such programmes in advance.
However, the programme makers have provided the embassy with a three-page letter detailing their evidence. Professor Kevin Bales, a consultant to the United Nations programme on people trafficking, says in the film that at least 70,000 young children a year are sold or stolen in China.
Zhao Shangsen, press counsellor to the embassy, wrote to the programme makers saying: “The programme is deeply flawed, ignorant and simplistic.” He denies any link between child trafficking and China’s one-child policy, pointing to trafficking in other countries which do not have state-imposed birth control.
Shangsen wrote that China has made progress in trying to end child trafficking, which was on a far smaller scale than the programme suggested. “There is no good in finger-pointing at China,” Shangsen wrote to C4.
The programme makers filmed undercover in China, speaking to parents who had had a child stolen or had sold a child, and to traffickers. More boys are taken than girls because they will grow up to earn more money. Most are taken for childless couples, although some are sold into prostitution.
Channel 4 has already conceded a right of reply at the end of the programme to the Chinese embassy.
China’s Stolen Children is produced by the same team that made The Dying Rooms and Return to the Dying Rooms in the mid1990s which showed that many second-born children were dumped in orphanages and left to die.
The programmes led to a diplomatic row between China and the Tory government. Since then, trade links between Britain and China have strengthened considerably.
With the Olympics in Beijing next year, China’s human rights and environmental record will be scrutinised in the West.
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