Halo Halo / Tiny Tips
Halo Halo
Now supposing there was such an entity as a god, what would you think of a supreme being who demanded that males, while still a baby, were compelled to have their reproductive organs mangled, maimed, mutilated and chopped about?
‘God says, “This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised”. The act of circumcision is to be performed on every male child on the eighth day after birth, whether born into the household or purchased from a foreigner, and it serves as a physical sign of the covenant between God and Abraham’s lineage’ (Genesis 17.10.).
Male circumcision is not mentioned in the Quran but it is practised by followers of Islam too.
Unless you’re a misandrist feminist there is nothing at all humorous or jokey in the act described above. And there’s nothing funny about the mangling, maiming, and mutilating carried out on females in the name of religion either.
A UNICEF report issued in March 2024 on the subject of FGM (female genital mutilation) noted that 230 million females, young and adult, had been subjected to FGM. The report noted that over an eight year period, from 2016 to 2024, 30 million more individuals, a 15 percent increase, had had FGM imposed upon them. The report said that there were grounds for believing that FGM was being carried out on girls at even younger ages, ‘often before their fifth birthday’.
A little like the creationists in the USA who are always trying to get rid of Darwinist teachings in schools there are those who use the judicial process to maintain the continuation of FGM. In Gambia at the end of 2025 its supreme court heard from ‘religious traditionalists who are hoping to topple the country’s poorly enforced ban on female genital mutilation.’ Apparently, ‘The Gambia has one of the highest rates of FGM in the world, with 73 percent of women and girls aged 15 to 49 having undergone the procedure (Unicef). FGM was outlawed in 2015 in the West African nation by then dictator Yahya Jammeh, who branded it outdated and not a requirement of Islam. The ban was subsequently upheld in July 2024 when lawmakers rejected a controversial bill… plaintiffs filed an appeal with the Supreme Court in April, arguing that the procedure is a deeply rooted cultural and religious practice’.
In Kenya, The Standard reported that attacks had been carried out on church property and personnel and on girls and male church associates and that some of their members had been forcefully re-circumcised. The report gave no indication as to who was carrying out these attacks.
A December article at LBC is unequivocal as to FGM: ‘FGM/C is not a cultural ‘practice. It is not a medical ‘procedure…It is not an “ethical dilemma”. It is violence against women and children.’
DC
Tiny Tips
In almost all regions of the world, the top 1% of the population is richer than the combined 90%. Wealth inequality increases further with each passing day, mostly due to the lack of political will to stop it (Popular Resistance, tinyurl.com/2p3j5msm).
In China, inequality remains high… The top 10% of earners capture about 43% of national income, while the bottom 50% receive just 14%. Wealth disparities are particularly large, with the richest 10% holding nearly 68% of total wealth and the top 1% about 30% (World Inequality Report, tinyurl.com/59xvyvjt).
Nearly half of Kenyans live in extreme poverty, i.e., on less than KES 130 [£0.75] per day. Yet a few have amassed enormous wealth. The richest 125 Kenyans have more wealth than more than three-quarters of Kenyans, about 43 million people (Oxfam, tinyurl.com/kfnu7zs8).
We celebrate the ‘recovery’ of fish populations that are stabilized at 5% or 10% of their historical population, mistaking the management of ruins for conservation. To understand the magnitude of what has been stolen, we must look back before the industrial age. In the 17th century, the ocean was a different planet. When Christopher Columbus sailed through the Caribbean in the late 15th century, he described the seas near Cuba as being ‘thick with turtles’, so numerous that it seemed his ships would run aground on them… in numbers estimated between 33 and 39 million adults in the Caribbean alone. They were a biological dominance that defined the seascape. Today, those populations are a shadow of the ‘mother sea’ that once existed. This report is an autopsy of the decline. It is an investigation into the specific species that the fishing industry has sacrificed on the altar of commerce (Sea Piracy, tinyurl.com/mryburf8).
As both the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) monitor and Reuters noted, Poland is among multiple state parties in the process of ditching the Mine Ban Treaty. Citing the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the news agency reported that “antipersonnel mine production could begin once the treaty’s six month withdrawal period is completed on February 20, 2026” (Common Dreams, tinyurl.com/53fy6msu).
Greenpeace is a strong example, having emerged from ecological protest movements in the 1970s and 1980s, but having eased into largely cooperating with capitalist corporations and governments over time and giving legitimacy to their propaganda about individual lifestyle choices being the way to solve climate change (Counterfire, tinyurl.com/4w65sru2).
The Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, which has previously slammed vaccine skeptic Kennedy as a ‘paranoid kook’ whose ‘tinfoil hat is blocking out all sense’, tore into the Trump Cabinet member for his war on what it called ‘one of the biggest public health wins of the last century: the widespread use of disease-eradicating vaccines’ (HuffPost, tinyurl.com/kcd3jhrb).
Therefore, we do not offer any support to wars waged by any capitalist state or any faction aimed at creating or strengthening a new state, whether aggressor or aggressed, whether or not they describe themselves as ‘socialist’ or ‘democratic’ (Internationalist Perspective, tinyurl.com/bp5ntx55).
(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)
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