[But we can’t get away with the contradictions. There are still policemen who hit couples in parks or force them to marry if spotted together on Valentine’s Day. There can’t be the slightest mention of the word sex in any programme meant for family viewing or else the censor scissors are ready to gnaw the word down. Hypocrisy rules when it comes to India’s relationship with the 'forbidden' three letter word - SEX. When will the people grow up and behave maturely? Is it the same land of Kamasutra or did it happen in some distant land? It is a question to ponder upon.]
When ‘The
Dirty Picture’ hit the
box office last Friday, it made a whopping 8 crores on the first day. It is said that in
India only two ‘Ses’ sell - one is Shahrukh Khan and the other being Sex-the
three letter word with which this country shares a very juvenile relationship.
Anything that is connected with this word has found some objection in one form
or the other. Sometimes it is the extremity of a ban or at times censorship.
This kind of treatment is quite unbelievable in the land of Kamasutra- an ancient Indian Hindu text
widely considered to be the hallmark on human sexual behaviour in Sanskrit
literature.
There has been a sudden growth of a section of people who
believe that it is their divine right to ‘clean up’ this society.
They can do anything from beating up women to humiliating
couples in the name of ‘moral policing’. Today
when the need of the hour is proper implementation of sex education,
it has become a hush-hush word. It seems like the slightest mention of this
word is enough to cause the deadly HIV/AIDS!
So when last month the movie hit the box office where was the
morale police? Have they taken an off or even better, retired? With the rise of
movies that show gritty sexual encounters, annual gay parades,
homosexual couples in mainstream Hindi movies – this country has come a long
way and so has the moral policing also On every occasion, they come up with
some innovative ideas to dress the public up like putting a dupatta over Kareena’s bare back in Kurban or censoring DelhiBelly’s song. But this time there is not a whimper of protest. This kind of
acceptance may kindle some hope that there has been a shift in perception of
the aam janta (read the moral police). Maybe the notorious
Indian hypocrisy is tired of its own weight.
But we can’t get away
with the contradictions. There are still policemen who hit couples in parks or force
them to marry if spotted together on Valentine’s Day. There can’t be the
slightest mention of the word sex in any programme meant for family viewing or
else the censor scissors are ready to gnaw the word down. Hypocrisy rules when
it comes to India’s relationship with the 'forbidden' three letter word - SEX.
When will the people grow up and behave maturely? Is it the same land of Kamasutra or did it happen in some
distant land? It is a question to ponder upon.
IRAN THREATENS U.S. SHIPS, ALARMS OIL MARKETS
[The Obama administration brushed aside the threat, but the increasingly bellicose tone — coupled with new economic sanctions on Iran expected to take effect in the coming weeks — helped cause the price of oil to jump more than 4 percent during a day of upbeat economic news. Gold markets closed at their highest level in 10 weeks.]
By Joby
Warrick and Steven
Mufson
Iran
escalated its war of words with the United
States on Tuesday with a warning to Navy ships to stay out of the strategic Strait of Hormuz,
remarks that rattled commodities markets and helped send oil prices soaring.
The latest in a series of provocative statements
by Iranian leaders was delivered by the Iranian armed forces commander, Gen.
Ataollah Salehi, who appeared to threaten a U.S. aircraft carrier that steamed
out of Persian Gulf waters last week.
“We warn this ship, which is considered a threat
to us, not to come back, and we do not repeat our words twice,” Salehi said,
according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency.
The Obama administration brushed aside the
threat, but the increasingly bellicose tone — coupled with new economic
sanctions on Iran expected to take effect in the coming weeks — helped cause
the price of oil to jump more than 4 percent during a day of upbeat
economic news. Gold markets closed at their highest level in 10 weeks.
The threat against U.S. ships was the latest in
a series of aggressive moves by Iran, which within a week has tested new
missiles, boasted of breakthroughs in nuclear technology and vowed to shut down
shipping in the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for Western sanctions over its
nuclear program.
U.S. officials attributed Tuesday’s harsh
language to Iran’s growing frustration over its faltering economy, which they
say is suffering under the weight
of several rounds of Western sanctions adopted
in the past three years.
Rial at unprecedented lows
The Iranian currency, the rial, slipped
to unprecedented lows against the dollar Tuesday,
prompting the Central Bank of Iran to flood the local market with dollars.
Currency traders have been dumping the rial in advance of even tougher
sanctions, including measures signed by President Obama on Saturday targeting
the central bank itself.
In addition, the European Union is expected to
approve new sanctions at a meeting Jan. 30, including curbs on imports of
Iran’s main export commodity, petroleum.
“Frankly, we see these threats from Tehran as
just increasing evidence that the international pressure is beginning to bite
there,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters Tuesday. She
said Iranian officials were “trying to divert the attention of their own public
from the difficulties inside Iran, including the economic difficulties as a
result of the sanctions.”
Iranian warnings Tuesday were directed
specifically at the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, which
departed the Persian Gulf with its battle group last week in advance of a
10-day military exercise by Iran. Salehi, the Iranian general, boasted that
aircraft and drones had shadowed the warship as it left the region and that
Iran was prepared to block its return. The Stennis is based at U.S. 5th Fleet
headquarters in nearby Bahrain.
U.S. officials and military analysts dismissed
the threat as a bluff, noting Iran’s reputation for empty rhetorical threats. A
Pentagon spokesman said the Navy would continue to deploy its ships in the gulf
“as it has for decades.”
“These are regularly scheduled movements and in
accordance with our long-standing commitments to the security and stability of
the region and in support of ongoing operations,” said the spokesman, Cmdr.
Bill Speaks.
Still, within hours of Salehi’s threat, Iranian
news media reported similar comments by Hossein Salami, the deputy commander of
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps. In a speech covered by the state-owned
Fars News Agency, Salami said Iran’s confrontation with the West had “reached a
sensitive and critical point.”
“Our position against the enemy has moved from
strategic to operational,” he was quoted as saying.
Outside Iran, the prospect of even a temporary
disruption in the flow of oil from the region sent shivers through global
markets. The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s main choke points for crude
oil shipments, a corridor through which an average of 17 million barrels of
crude oil is shipped daily. The strait linking the world to the oil fields of
Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia is also the main
portal for 2.5 million barrels of Iranian oil each day.
Iran has tried to disrupt shipping in the
Persian Gulf before. In 1988, it mined the waterway. After a mine blew a 21-foot-wide
hole in a U.S. frigate, the United States responded with Operation Praying
Mantis, its largest surface-fleet engagement since World War II. The U.S.
Navy destroyed three Iranian warships, several Iranian speedboats and two oil
platforms.
Many analysts say Iran is unlikely to risk
another direct confrontation with the United States. But they say Iran could
seek to disrupt oil supplies through indirect action, such as dispatching one
of its proxy militia groups to anonymously blow up oil pipelines in neighboring
Iraq. Iraq’s largest fields, where international companies have been
successfully boosting production, are close to the border with Iran.
Already, fears of conflict with Iran have
inflated global oil prices by $5 to $10 a barrel, according to Robert McNally,
an oil expert at the Rapidan Group, a Washington consulting firm. He said
Tuesday’s surge in crude prices was a response both to Iranian saber rattling
and to upbeat economic news, which generally puts pressure on oil prices.
‘Iran premium’
McNally said an “Iran premium” could grow much
bigger, depending on how events unfold over the coming weeks.
The United States could soon have three aircraft
carriers in the region: the returning Stennis, the USS Carl Vinson and the USS
Abraham Lincoln.
“The wheels have begun moving,” said McNally,
who served on the National Security Council and the National Economic Council
under President George W. Bush. “What’s different” about this situation from
earlier sanctions, he said, “is that there are real sanctions touching Iran’s
oil jugular.”
