“While many Indians have reacted with anger and shame, some responses have been either thoughtless, or given the impression of shameless male chauvinism that infects society. It is sad, though not entirely surprising, to see that several of these expressions have come from the higher echelons, including the country’s ruling class. Rape is a crime that has to do with power, exercised in a particularly brutal and humiliating manner on a fellow human. To blame the victim, or to be non-committal about the issue of personal safety, is surely to abandon public responsibility. Such behavior by responsible people, let alone elected officials, cannot engender confidence in the justice system, and society at large.

“A subdued atmosphere into the New Year was the least essential after an outrage of such enormity. It is not that the outrage was unique, for further cases of assault on women, even girls, have happened before and since….”

I would add that when the article was written the identity of the victim was not known to me, or very many others.

Please also be aware that this is a moderated forum. You raised a valid point about Dalits and tribals to which I have responded. I hope you will take note of it.

Deepak Tripathi

The absolute need to properly diagnose what is actually happening in the disguised evolution of this new, historically unique, and unprecedented, Global Empire is becoming more recognized and addressed by some leading edge thinkers like yourself, Hardt and Negri, Berman, and recently even Francis Fukuyama.

However, until the ‘framing’ and overt naming of this cancerous DGE (Disguised Globlal Empire) is explicitly called by its correct, accurate, and plain language name, ‘Empire’, and is repeatedly used in public dialogue with average people to educate them, we will have ZERO chance of gaining a broad favorable and popular movement to address this hidden and causal pathology that misuses all the ‘tools’ of government, economics, politics, media, technology, capitalism, etc. for evil (self-serving) purposes rather than good (public and popular) purposes.

The current Occupy movement has accomplished quite a bit in getting average people to think in terms of the 1% economically oppressing the 99%, but the absence of addressing the real underlying term of ‘Empire’ is continuing to allow the DGE to hide, and worse to ‘frame’ the issue as a matter of how the economy works, how economics works, how government works, and how modernization, politics, capitalism, etc work —- namely that all of these ‘tools’ must be utilized in a modern world, and that there is no specific (and specifically destructive) ‘actor’ or ‘pathogen’ behind the causes of such tools always working to the advantage of the elite, and to the detriment of the many/99%.

Currently the deluded (and under-educated) ‘Right can easily be recruited to the side of the 1% by simply repeating the mantra that “government is the problem”.

But average people on the left as well as the right must be educated to the fact that Empire is the problem, not government — just as was the case with the American colonies under the thumb of the British EMPIRE.

Empire is easily recognized, and universally understood to be bad, and if people are presented — often and repeatedly by emotive presentations — that Empire is the disguised pathology that no politicians, media, or certainly any at the top of the Empire will ever mention, then bringing Empire to the ‘top of mind’ in all discussions will quickly clarify the reality, and most importantly support broad anti-Empire emotional and rational attention to our current dilemma.

Just continuing to point out that there are many, many, many problems, ‘issues’, problems, and ‘symptoms’ of social ills with the current environment — as is being continually done by Common Dreams, truthdig, Occupy, and many other progressive sources — will never get beyond pointing at the ‘problems’ (like many blind men describing an elephant).

What is needed is an accurate diagnosis of the causal pathology, the disease, the core of the tumor.

Until this is done and identified as ‘Empire’, then Zygmunt Bauman’s warning has not been heeded of the essential need to “adequately diagnose” a disease which is guilefully hiding itself (as cancer does):

As a good doctor would do, we need to seriously consider the insight of Dr. Bauman who
Morris Berman quotes in his fabulous “Dark Ages America; The Final Phase
of Empire”:

As Zygmunt Bauman hauntingly puts it, “In the case of an ailing social
order, the absence of an adequate diagnosis…is a crucial, perhaps
decisive, part of the disease.”13

Berman, Morris (2011-02-07). Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire (p. 22). Norton. Kindle Edition.

The disease today is Empire, and the lack of an adequate diagnosis of
this hidden cancerous tumor within our nation, our societies, and our world can best be
appreciated by a doctor who brings an understanding of looking carefully
for the diagnosis to “first do no harm” and then to excise the tumor.

Best luck and love to the “Occupy Empire” educational and revolutionary movement.

Liberty, democracy, equality, and justice
Over
Violent/Vichy
Empire,

Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine