By Saswat Pattanayak

At the crux of the divided opinion regarding Chavez’s decision to take control over a private TV channel is the ever-elusive concept of human ‘freedom’.

Freedom, although is being defined purely from a consumerist-capitalist lens than from a socialist perspective. And hence what we see is demise of individual liberty, the status of savior in form of Youtube and an international condemnation of Venezuelan crisis.

People across political spectrum are quick to draw conclusions. Most from the politically right are obviously thrilled at the prospect of noticing the deterioration of “democracy” in Venezuela. Even as they would not go their graves confirming that the goal of communism has anything to do with western democratic ideals, they still would condemn Chavez for failing to stand ‘their’ tests.

More baffling is the responses from many of the left-wing comrades. There is an attempt to portray RCTV as the evil incarnation of conspiring media that deserved to die. How could Chavez even allow it to exist for five years since he came to power? Many from the progressives are perhaps still in a stage of denial. This is a classic case of denial that permeated throughout during the Stalinist days when the Soviet leader exercised his cultural controls. For a long period, there was silence among the communists over the “high-handedness” of Stalin. After his death followed the last testament of Khrushchev, and the international condemnation of Stalin from most people even from the left.

Perhaps little too early to draw a comparison here, but it would be apt to indicate that “threat to life of the leader” has been the common grounds on which censorships worked in both Soviet Union and now in Venezuela. Chavez feels and rightly so, that there were attempts on his life by the forces supportive of the private channels, and the RCTV anyway was part of a coup to oust him from power before. So in all good sense, he would rather have the station shut down. Similar parallels can be found in the lifetime of Joseph Stalin who promulgated censorships in lieu of security to his own life and maintenance of socialist order in Soviet Union.

Just as Stalin was credited with improving Soviet industrial economy, so is Chavez with his ability to pay off the Venezuelan debts and making the country a strong contender for a role in the UN. Just as Stalin had a “personality cult” theory to haunt him after his death, Chavez and his comrade Castro have personified enough of their respective countries for the personality cult to emerge and dominate the communist worldviews too.

Let me make it quite clear that the act of Chavez in Venezuela in banning the one or two television stations is an act of gross censorship that’s unparalleled in world history. RCTV was no joke (although its programs were famous for their bad humor). It was the most important television channel to have been there in Venezuela for over six decades now. It was a major pillar media estate that drew viewership of majority of people in Venezuela. To shut down RCTV would be to shut down CNN in America or Zee TV in India. Isn’t it a big violation of human rights?

To confirm that it is, so far, even the liberal watchdogs have proclaimed their hasty judgments on Chavez. Amongst those who have condemned the closure of RCTV are not just the US Senate, or Chile’s Congress, but also the Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists and members of the European Parliament. The potential allies of Chavez have not just become distanced from him. With the closure of Globovision, his enemies have even started to grow.

Chavez has unleashed state power also to throttle opposition in his homeland. His police forces have confronted protesting crowds. Even one student is claimed to have been dead in firing.



More Pictures here.

The world media, and certainly the bloggers have been taking quite some notice of what is happening in the backdrop of a new media world. How much of control can be exerted on the traditional media when there are newer avenues still open out there in the forms of YouTube and weblogs? Indeed RCTV is now online already.
Moreover, what logic can be justified in a decision to shut down the messengers? And in our age of television, as a blogger rightly asks, indeed what could be the worst that can happen: shutting down of a TV Station!
Wait, there is even more. The Drudge Report says Chavez may shut down yet another station and readers are aghast.

Its becoming a field day for the right-wing media actors who have now left no stone unturned to poke fun at everyone else including the unassuming democrats.


What defense has Chavez got?
Chavez has very weak defense, if at all. Unfortunately, unless he stands up to declare what this whole thing is all about, speculations will not stop. And fuel for an uninformed audience can prove to be extremely dangerous for the future of world progressive thoughts.

What I mean by this is, Chavez has chosen to defend him. One weak way of doing that is by claiming that he was a victim of a coup and this is merely unacceptable to allow the disturbing elements. Those supporting Chavez are merely repeating his words. According to Chavez there can be no argument on his decision since that’s a sovereign matter of his country and is legitimate.

A portion of American Left, Democratic Underground has a theory that substantiates some of his sentiments in a more informal sense. One thread reads:

“President Hugo Chavez is shutting down a RW CIA operation mistakenly called a "TV" station and not only does he have a perfect right to do that, it's his patriotic DUTY to do so. For six years this RW nest of snakes has been trying to overthrow a DEMOCRATICALLY elected leader. This so-called TV station helped the coup in 2002 and they have never stopped aiding covert US forces since then. He gave them plenty of warnings but they just kept up their SHIT! It is time for the FASCIST media to get it thru there head that everybody is getting sick and tired of their FAKE NEWS CHANNELS which are being used to overthrow governments by creating FAKE CIA protests. This tactic which started in 1953 when it was used against Iran, has caused nothing but trouble for US credibility. In other words IT'S NOT WORKING ANYMORE! Hugo Chavez was legally elected and he has duty to protect his people from covert attacks by other countries. RCTV is a threat to Venezuela's national security. Personally I think just shutting it down was being WAY TO NICE! The "reporters" cough cough, should be THROWN IN PRISON FOR TREASON! This should be a message to all in the FAKE MEDIA and their counterpart organizations...
YOU ARE CRIMINALS and you are not getting away with this crap anymore. If any "REAL" people are upset with the shutting down of the CIA front TV station it's only because they will miss their soaps. That can be fixed and I'm sure Chavez plans to do that. Hugo Chavez is doing a bang up job for his people. He's paid off their debt. and for that alone he needs to be supported by all good people. All you SELFISH GREEDY RW CRIMINALS can go right to HELL! GOD BLESS HUGO CHAVEZ!”


The same form of defense goes on with another usual Left Spin: Jo Swift says, This TV station is a company that would not get a license in other democracies, including the United States.
Swift even says the story is “framed” as a simple matter of censorship and that the US Media has a Spin to it in order to accelerate the opposition against Chavez. (Ironically, at the same time, the right-wing bloggers are saying the US Media has a liberal spin that decides not to cover it as much as it should be).


The language of revolution:
The defense of both Chavez as well as the leftwing bloggers are indefensible simply because the way they are argued. Chavez is a wonderful human being by the way he deals with his people and their pressing issues. At the same times he is infinitely humble as a politician, and one can even recollect the manner in which he paid rich tribute to Chomsky’s works on the floor of the UN in the recent past. Whereas all this is good, he is still way short of declaring what his actions constitute in the sense of revolutionary actions.

Just as many a Chomsky’s speeches end with his declaration that America is indeed the freest country there is in the world (because the privileges of a MIT professor are lost to the Manhattan homeless lots), many left scholars and activists begin from an ideal assumption that exists in the world, than needs to be carved out. In that exercise they use languages such as “sovereign”, “legitimate” as Chavez uses or “God Bless Hugo Chavez” as the DemUnderground uses, or “not a censorship” as Swift uses. Or the overall sentiment for this instance that the justification for terminating a “license” is the coup.

All the above phrases and feelings are defined within the context of a specific class that we all are aware of, but most of us are unable to challenge due to the collective fixation with the normatives associated with this class function. For example, what Chavez did is indeed part of exercising the prerogatives in the interest of majority of people of the entire world. This doesn’t have to be “democratic”, or “sovereign” or anything to do with a “coup”. In fact, Chavez himself was involved in forming a coup, according to mainstream historians.

And so far as democracy, freedom and sovereignty are concerned, they are languages of one class of people today that enjoys the tools to define these words. To assume that Chavez will not fall into this trap is dangerous for the future. For now, Chavez is powerful enough to combat a reactionary image of his personality cult. But once the Left even disowns him for having failed the test of capitalist word-lists, he will end up being another Stalin from the grave.

Where Stalin had made clear his principles was in his declaration of his actions as part of a class war that was waging during his days. “Class War” is the phrase that can alone describe the struggle between the propertied classes and the ones who are in favor of emancipation of majority of people from the chains of private control. In this politically correct world it may be sounding naïve to call for a war, and that is what holds back most progressive people everywhere. And of course humanity has seen enough bloody wars to learn a lesson that we don’t need violence any longer to live in peace. Whereas one premise is material (that is, the struggle between two classes), the other is strictly ideal (that let the struggle be peaceful).

History is witness to the property relations of privileged classes that have perpetrated their oppressions against the working class in the name of enjoying “freedom”. Rarely do people ask “whose freedom”. When we talk about media in the world, rarely we ask “whose media”. What Chavez has done in action is possibly the most brilliant work of a leader that answers these questions as well. Through his actions alone, Chavez says, the freedom for the majority. And he says the Media for the People.


This is Class War!

The Class War is going on everywhere in the world today. At some places its more implicit than at others. Some get due news coverage, and some never get it at all. From Mexico to India, the class wars of the landless against the propertied are going on perpetually. Such struggles will invariably involve things like “coup” that will be staged at times by the communists, at times by the capitalists. There is no telling how many times such “coup” has taken place in history. However, for all the records in the past, only a very few times the poor working class coup has emerged successful. And with RCTV, possibly the first time that a major media coup has taken place that is people-driven than property-driven.

It is not the biased coverage of RCTV that should be a cause of censorship. Indeed as NewsBusters responding to a LA Times article says: if the “crime" of RCTV was its supposedly biased coverage, then by that reasoning, even the ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS should be shut down because of their biased coverage of the Bush Administration.

And its not going to be easy defending oneself as the torchbearer of freedom, liberty and democracy if Chavez allegedly plans to change the constitution to permit infinite reelection. It will not be long before he is denounced as another Stalin: personality cult, continued reelection, media censorship.

The answer lies in defiantly declaring the events of the world of marginalized against their oppressors as part of a larger class war. Before the narrations of the feminists and the environmentalists and the gay activists and the civil rights advocates and the communist parties in power fall into the traps of defending themselves against the yardsticks of “individual freedom” established by capitalist ethos, it is imperative to learn and accept that the personality cults and reelections and censorships and identity wars are perfectly within the acceptable norms only if they are orchestrated by the leaders and peoples that are opposed to maintenance of private property relations.

Dictatorship is not a term to be despised, as long as it’s the dictatorship by the proletariat. Its not censorship per se that needs to be condemned. It’s the censorship by the private elitists that stifles the voice of the majority that needs to be condemned. Its not a class war that needs to be avoided at any point in the human civilization. It’s the imperialist war against the people for greedy profit motives such as oil and gold acquisitions that needs to be attacked. Its not permanent reelection or one-party system that needs to be a concern so long as the party in power is able to look after the poorest and offer them top priority. It’s the farcical “democracies” that changes their bottles every five years or so while toasting to the same vulgar display of disproportionate wealth disparity among its classes of people that needs to be focused on.

This is an opportunity to reclaim the class struggle and declare it as such without moralistic pretensions of being freedom loving or being any more politically correct than we have mostly been by condemning former communist control/command economies. The fact of the matter is the initiatives by the revolutionaries must not be limited to the personal impacts in a local sphere but must extend to international future roadmaps.

And it is in this spirit of consolidation of international progressive movement that the RCTV acquisition must be looked from. It is not a battle against the owners of RCTV, rather is part of a larger class war waged against exploitative private propertied class of the whole world.

To end with Che Guevera (who called himself “Stalin II” and had an unwavering support for revolutionary goals without getting perturbed by the first world cultural definitions and never felt ashamed of his warring radical declarations that have been the most vociferous ones we have ever heard) once said:
“The revolutionary, the ideological motor force of the revolution within the party, is consumed by uninterrupted activity that comes to an end only with death, unless the construction of socialism is accomplished on a world scale. If one’s revolutionary zeal is blunted when the most urgent tasks have been accomplished on a local scale and one forgets about proletarian internationalism, the revolution one leads will cease to be a driving force and sink into a comfortable drowsiness that imperialism, our irreconcilable enemy, will utilize to gain ground. Proletarian internationalism is a duty, but it is also a revolutionary necessity. This is the way we educate our people.”

Let not Che’s education go wasted. And certainly let us not romanticize Chavez by either claiming him to be a victor or a loser. Its his bold step at striking at a corporate media interest that needs to be hailed without conditions, or justifications. This is not a closure of a TV station. It’s a war against the private monopolists.

The Class War is continuing. And as brother Scott Heron would have said, the revolution still will not be televised. And yes, we don’t need a a bunch of private TV channels making people laugh at insanely sick jokes during our most trying troubled times.

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Venezuela, Activism, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

[Originally published in
Radical Notes, 18 March 2007]

Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, The New Press, New York, 2007. Hardcover, 384 pp. Amazon/NP

The Darker Nations is a critical historiography of the Third World. Vijay Prashad's deeply instructive as well as occasionally mordant looks at events and processes that made up the history of oppressed peoples in the 20th century comprise this brilliant work. It is a book profound for being peremptory, and absolutely necessary for being so relevant today that it is imperative for activists and researchers alike.

For one, the various assumptions that form a dominant paradigm of Eurocentrism need radical reproving. Yet that would merely amount to a criticism of the thesis itself. Prashad goes beyond that and proposes an alternative narration to the history - not just of the Third World, but also through its lenses, the peoples' history of the world during the last century. Darker Nations in some ways could be appositely used to speak for aspirations of the oppressed everywhere. In this sense, the book is a celebration of collective hope, even as it traces the demise of a grand project based on it.

I

The thesis of the book circles around the Third World as a unique project on its own. Even as there have been far too many usages of "First" and "Second" Worlds in contrasts, the reader is never lost darker nationsto the main point: that is, the Third World was not merely in response or reaction to the prevailing 'cold war' grand narration, but it was more importantly an independent culmination out of unique historical necessities to combat neocolonialism and to promote internationalist nationalism.

To that extent, the author has conducted painful researches and unearthed valuable and often less quoted documents. The book thus does justice to the Suez Canal nationalization controversy and credits Nasser for his motives beyond cold war considerations. It brings Nehru alive through his letter drafted for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that argued against nuclearism, appealing to both Kennedy and Khrushchev. The book researches Che Guevara's UN speech that assumed a necessary political standpoint for all oppressed countries: "As Marxists, we maintain that peaceful co-existence does not include co-existence between exploiters and exploited, between oppressors and oppressed."

What, then, was common to the Third World? For the nationalist leaders, the fact that they were all colonized. Prashad writes, "For them, the nation had to be constructed out of two elements: the history of their struggles against colonialism, and their program for the creation of justice....The Third World form of nationalism is thus better understood as an internationalist nationalism." (p.12)

Prashad's assessment of "neopatriarchy" and domestic capitalism in the third world is quite worthwhile. This book is clearly a critical document for collective introspection of the oppressed peoples than an empty glorification of a united umbrella. In this sense, it is a necessary and long awaited work, which while marking the sites of struggle does not lose sight of the continuing struggles.

The author has cleverly named the chapters after the various sites of significance. Clever, because the chapters (Paris, New Delhi, Bali etc.,) have less to do with specific descriptions of the cities of those times than they have to do with bringing these otherwise disparate places together in context - at times stretching the contexts well out of bounds of the chapter title; at times celebrating the specificity with a poem by Neruda. One would be tempted to verify the header of the page several times while going through the texts just to make sure that she is in the right page. Yet such deliberate discursions are wisely scheduled to make for chapters that elucidate points contextually, rendering Prashad into a master narrator.

Illustratively, the author makes clear the intent of the book at the end of "Paris" chapter and perhaps leading one to wonder how much of the chapter was actually devoted to Paris. Of course that's the idea of a project, the professor would convince us: each section needs to have scope for a flow into the next without exhausting every specific reference. It's a project after all. A process, not a few events.

The book covers all that it promises to: Brussels meeting of "League against Imperialism", Afro-Asian gathering at Bandung, Women's conference at Cairo, NAM at Belgrade and Tricontinental Conference at Havana.

Prashad unearths the role of international communists in formation of the Brussels conference - a landmark event patronized by Einstein and attended by 37 countries/colonies. He writes about Pan-Africanism, Pan-Americanism, and Pan-Asianism in the context of colonial dominations, along with deconstructing the Kuomintang massacres of communists that might have contributed to severance of the ties between the Comintern and several nationalist leaders.

Prashad quotes W.E.B. DuBois in relation to Pan-Africanism within the Brussels context, although he omits Paul Robeson's solidarity with the colored peoples at Bandung. It was in 1955 that Robeson sent his famous greetings to Bandung: "...peoples come from the shores of the Ganges and the Nile, the Yangtse and the Niger. Nations of the vast Pacific waters, greetings on this historic occasion. It is my profound conviction that the very fact of the convening of the Conference of Asian and African nations at Bandung, Indonesia, in itself will be recorded as an historic turning point in all world affairs." Heralding it as a history-making conference, Robeson expressed, "Indeed the fact that the Asian and African nations, possessing similar yet different cultures, have come together to solve their common problems must stand as a shining example to the rest of the world."

Prashad aptly summarizes what Bandung achieved: "a format for what would eventually become Afro-Asian and then Afro-Asian-Latin American group in the UN." He also takes a stab at the inherent weaknesses of the member countries that lost moral grounds because of several reasons, from murdering communists to hoarding weapons, despite agreeing on some basic precepts of "cultural cooperation".

"Principle Problem" of Raul Prebisch is explained in context to economic policies, in the crucial introduction to the role of UNCTAD, of which he was the founding general secretary. If Buenos Aires is visited for economics, Tehran is the metaphoric site of cultural struggles. Khrushchev's betrayal of cultural workers in face of opposition to Shah regime is well articulated in a chapter that describes "roots of the Third World intellectual's quandary was how to create a new self in the new nations", thus reinforcing nationalism, democracy and rationalism.

Prashad's political argument that the relationship between Third World and Second turned tumultuous after the demise of Stalin may draw some criticisms, but he amply demonstrates its foundations. He argues that the "new leadership led by Khrushchev and Bulganin adopted peaceful co-existence and pledged their support to the bourgeois nationalist regimes (often against the domestic Communists). The unclear situation suggested that the USSR seemed keener to push its own national interests than those of the national Communist parties to which it pledged verbal fealty" (p. 97).

Prashad makes a point that is vital to understanding of the Third World formation and crisis. In the Soviet Union, the Second World indeed "had an attitude toward the former colonies that in some ways mimicked that of the First World." But this did not necessarily require pitiful stance at the Third World recipients. Prashad argues quoting Sauvy and Nkrumah that the Third World was not "prone, silent or unable to speak" before the powers. It was an independent political platform on its own, which according to Nehru stood for "political independence, nonviolent international relations, and the cultivation of the UN as the principle institution for planetary justice."

So he asks, "What about the two-thirds who remained outside the East-West circles; what of those 2 billion people?" The narration of the author is instructive in a poetic sense. As obviously gigantic is the scope of such an inquisitiveness, he offers a plethora of factors/voices that could have been representing this Third World.

The book analyzes the various complexities of state politics in the Third World countries. It correctly mentions the several betrayals of communist workers in the hands of Moscow and Peking leaderships in the aftermath of Stalin and Mao. The book describes accurately the growing militarization of the developing nations. Prashad, while upholding the vision of the Third World, well encapsulates the elements of utopianism inherently present in some of the documents.

As an instance, the Arusha Declaration validated the twin principles of liberty and equality, individual rights and collective well-being. Prashad argues, "The main problem with the Arusha-TANU project, however, came not in its goals but in its implementation." Though defying academic limitations, he does not give away credence to neoliberal economists/politicians like Rajaratnam of Singapore. Even as he describes the feud between Singapore on one extreme and Cuba on another, Prashad instructs us wisely about the pitfalls of economic liberalization. "The abandonment of economic sovereignty lost the national liberation regimes one of their two principal pillars of legitimacy. When IMF-led globalization became the modus operandi, the elites of the postcolonial world adopted a hidebound and ruthless xenophobia that masqueraded as patriotism", Prashad writes.

Succinctly enough, Prashad encapsulates the present scenario: "The mecca of IMF-driven globalization is therefore in the ability to open one's economy to stateless, soulless corporations while blaming the failure of well-being on religious, ethnic, sexual, and other minorities. That is the mecca of the post-Third World era."

II

Prashad's ending of the book with an obituary to Third World would have perhaps perplexed the writer he invokes in the beginning of his work: Franz Fanon. He even quotes the prophetic statements from The Wretched of the Earth: "The Third World today faces Europe like a colossal mass whose project should be to try to resolve the problems to which Europe has not been able to find the answers."

Prashad's persistent declaration in the book about demise of the Third World may bring back nostalgic chords, but would not undermine Fanon's question. Have the problems that bore out of colonialism been resolved? The answer is no. Has Europe or the USA been able to find the answers yet? The answer is no.

In that case, is it not too early to declare the Third World a dead project? Moreover, is the author at times tending to air the lost leaders' voices over the struggling peoples'?

No doubt, Prashad's book is unique in its stress on women's movements in the Third World - an aspect that's comfortably overlooked when such taxonomies are applied to political texts. In his Cairo chapter, Prashad examines the role of women in Third World liberation struggles - from Rameshwari Nehru to Aisha Abdul-Rahman. This is significantly noteworthy, as women have joined the guerrilla wars as well as street protests in almost all of the Third World countries. And yet many progressive forces have difficulties in understanding gender relations, thereby resulting in mere "state feminisms". However, was this chapter written because Cairo had women members on its podium necessitating a mention/discussion, or because a tribute to women activists is necessary to understand the Third World project? In either way, the book does not employ a lens of the women to understand the movement, although does a commendable job at understanding women struggles through the lens of the Third World. Considering that only this chapter has a portion devoted to a few women activists in context to Cairo, while the rest of the book mostly quotes the three "titans" or famous "fives" in explaining the history, I would say there are quite a few questions unanswered still.

The chief criticism against this work would primarily come from two quarters: One, from a strictly Third Wave (interesting how the growth of Third Wave coincides with the recognition of the Third World) feminist critique: independent struggles by women could have been much better encompassed within this book, given its scope. Prashad does a cursory mention of the alternative movement (considering that third-world women had a movement within, and against the larger movement) limiting it to a chapter and focusing on a couple of eminent speakers. Would the Third World have been different had the precepts for it not written by the "titans" and "giants", but by women comrades who were voices of resentments against the hierarchies of nationalist and communist parties? Prashad does not dwell on this aspect.

Two, the criticism may become more scathing from the perspectives of militant activists. Third World, like Rome, was not built in a day. And certainly not through some leaders of few countries. Prashad is arguably right in crediting the giants and bringing forth the canons, but at the same time, these very leaders certainly rode the wave of success utilizing the larger unrest that was recognized by the anti-status-quo forces, often united through guerrilla wars, and almost going unnoticed after making vital impacts. Would the Third World have been different had the precepts for it not written by the giants, but by the larger oppressed peoples engaged in organized and otherwise struggles? We do not know for sure, but it would have been worthwhile to ponder over that a bit more than the book does.

The more crucial question then, is if such precepts were actually already written (or worked on with) by the peoples who did not find mentions in the historical documents that Prashad cites towards the book's end spanning 60 pages. The focus of the book, although is in continuance of Prashadisque tradition of Afro-Asian unity, is slightly away from Africa. In fact, Mandela is mentioned just once in the book (that too as a pure travesty - citing a Ruth First memorial). The truth is Third World texts had been written in South Africa as well as in Nepal. However, such underground struggles went largely amiss from the work. Sure, the book by the author's admission is inexhaustive and merely illustrative, but even a 300-page work could have inculcated some unknown peoples' movements than chronicling lesser known leaders' engagements.

Ironically enough, before proceeding to Havana chapter, Prashad mentions "From the early 1960s to the late 1970s, the rhetorical denunciation of imperialism reached its apogee even as the Third World began to lose its voice". This is a dangerous statement to make if one considers that indeed from the 1970s onwards, the peoples voice in the Third World had immensely proliferated. No doubt the leaders - those giants who we find exalted throughout the work - had fallen to deaths or arrests, but the period thereafter also signaled the end of dominant and diplomatic voices, and somewhere alongside highlighted the obscure and powerful ones.

People who spoke truth to power were the people on the streets that challenged the nationalist parties which came to power in the pretext of newfound freedom from the foreign rulers. The growth of domestic capitalist classes in comfortable alliance with these nationalist parties were indication enough that the new powers were no less different from the old ones, except in their make-up and "patriotism". In fact, these illusive weapons of nationalism and patriotism helped strengthen exploitative capitalism on basis of trusts of the "own" people. Such betrayals of faiths, notwithstanding goodwill of the famous leaders, were also being fought against on a daily basis in the Third World. Beyond the conferences and meetings and gatherings of Third World leaders under different names, there were large-scale protests of poverty and unemployment. Beyond the famous rhetoric of anti-nuclearism (while proliferating conventional weapons domestically) and socialist development (while harassing voices of dissent at home), people had on their own formed two classes in the society. The haves went to the ruling elites that apparently "voiced" the Third World for few years, and the have-nots remained with the unknown millions of peoples whose only commonality was their resentment against the power-grabbers. Be it Nehru or Indira in India, Sukarno or Suharto in Indonesia, the popular imagination went beyond such leaders that treaded the careful path all the while claiming to be representing the Third World.

Third World was neither the name of a place nor merely a documented project. And certainly it did not die. Considering that its origin was a necessity in itself, a necessity borne of conditions of colonialism, about which Sartre (another contextually grand omission from the book except for one mention - his writings on neocolonialism were far more instructive) writes in the preface to Albert Memmi's 'The Colonizer and the Colonized': "Colonialism denies human rights to people it has subjugated by violence, and whom it keeps in poverty and ignorance by force, therefore, as Marx would say, in a state of 'sub-humanity'." This sub-humanity does not see its history changing with the midnight bells of colonialist departures. It takes quite a while for the real freedom to be conquested for even after the colonialists are gone. This is why South Africa's period of struggle just began after Mandela came to power. South Africa's Third World status will not die anytime soon.

So the assumption that "the Third World began to lose its voice" may have been made a little too early. Keeping in line of the eloquent narration of events as Prashad has done (for example, referring to revived "armed struggle not only as a tactic of anticolonialism but significantly as a strategy in itself"), the book perhaps wished away the Third World before examining its overbearing presence today. Do we have a Second World? I have no answer to that. But if the name Third World was admittedly accepted by the oppressed people of several continents basing on their historical heritage, then the phrase is as relevant today as it was before. Perhaps some countries would want not a place in it. Earlier, China was a question. Today, Singapore is. All the same, for the rest of the countries, nothing much has changed, except that the capitalist exploitation has intensified and expanded manifold, the national regimes have lost faith and people are more politically conscious.

If the Third World was imagined out of former colonies and if the colonial problem was chiefly an economic one, then the Third World has become even all the more relevant today. Simplistic as it may sound, there is a greater need for Afro-Asian-Latin solidarity today in the world than ever before. And Prashad, a remarkably profound scholar who gave to us treasures of arguments through his previous works about the need for alliances of the oppressed, would be among the firsts to acknowledge the necessity of such unity.

III

However, apart from remaining in want of more comprehensive analysis of women's movements and of peoples' liberation movements (both-dually oppressed by former colonizers as well as the nationalist rulers, and more importantly conflicted between the both - male and female comrades), the book also offers cursory looks at the external roles played by the First World in maintaining indirect subjugation of the Third.

Prashad rightly critiques the predominant views held by leftists about the role of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He argues that such a minimalist assumption renders people of the Third World insignificant and often passive audience in the larger world stage. Whereas he is absolutely correct in this critique - largely identified by the radical feminist movements worldwide - there is no harm in going through the roles of the CIA that have been well documented in a work that does chronicle interactions of the Third World "leaders" with the First World instigators. Many conflicting situations have been initiated and fuelled through CIA interventions in the Third World politics and that should have found a deserved mention. For instance, a critique of the Nixon administration vis-à-vis the Third World (including the recently released notes with Kissinger) is found lacking.

One need not subscribe to conspiracy theories to gain insights about how the First World allies in the "neocolonial" period have acted towards the Third World: less through coercion, and more through lucrative measures such as economic aids, western education and religion. Prashad misses out on the role of the Catholic Church that was the first body to significantly recognize the Third World as an entity worth pondering over. The large money, the pool of debts that would crumble the economic backbone of the Third World came from the consent of the Vatican during the early 1960s.

Prashad mentions religion quite casually, when he describes how "Mother Teresa would soon get more positive airtime as the white savior of the dark hordes than would the self-directed projects of the Third World nationalist governments." Immediately following this, he goes on to make references to military invasions and embargoes.

Here the book could have made a crucial connection between the recognition of the Third World by the First World through the Catholic Church decisions. Mother Teresa's airtimes were neither incidental nor were to be seen only through a liberal critique. The missing piece is that Vatican Council II which was the 21st ecumenical (general) council of the Roman Catholic Church was crucial to recognition of the Third World in an official manner.

In fact this council brought the most far-reaching reforms within the Catholic Church in 1000 years. This most significant reform movement in the world's leading religion was brought forth during its four sessions in Rome during (the first Council after its suspension in 1870). The idea was to aim for aggiornamento (renewal and updating of Catholic life and teaching). Such a vital step was taken by the Vatican as a result of emergence of the Third World. This council altered the nature of the church from being a European-centered institution to become a worldwide one so as to acknowledge the Third World countries, where it counted most of its followers. Mother Teresa and her likes were thus byproducts of this acceptance of the third force in the world.

Prashad says that Nehru, Sukarno and Nasser among other leaders did not use Third World to describe their domains, but does not corroborate their reasons, if any. For the framework of this book, the constant usages of "First World", "Second World" and "Third World" is imperative, but considering that Prashad is eager to lash out against the "camp mentality" or "East-West" conflicts, he does avoid a critical exposition of the limitations that such three "Worlds" may bring for the readers.

One way to understand why the three "worlds" were not sufficient explanations (although necessary at many junctures) is to detail how the three worlds could not be thus compartmentalized either in degree or by their types. More importantly, the countries thus categorized under such headings definitely had uniquely different histories (colonial and otherwise), treated differently by their respective partners in their perceived specific worlds. On the one hand, Singapore had a different colonial experience than India. On the other, China's Security Council membership put it on a unique platform, and there is no comparing between Soviet Union and Hungary. What is vital to this discussion is also the fact that there was not a yardstick that was used to specify categories either for the First, the Second or the Third. As much as the Third World was a movement against colonialism, such a usage of categories would still render it as a site affected by Eurocentric worldviews.

Prashad says Nehru et al., instead of calling themselves to be part of the Third World, "spoke of themselves" as the NAM, G-77 or the colonized continents. Although accurate, here the author's own argument that kickstarts the book will be subject to questioning. Prashad says in the first line of the book, "The Third World was not a place. It was a project". And yet he compares the project with some conferences and places (continents) to bring home the point that the leaders evaded "Third World". Certainly there were other reasons why all Third World titans did not prefer the phrase (if at all). And that, we are still unsure of.

The author writes: "The phrase 'East-West conflict' distorts the history of the Cold War because it makes it seem as if the First and Second Worlds confronted each other in a condition of equality." He contends that the USSR was socially and economically way behind due to its unique recent history. "The dominant classes in the First World used the shortages and repression in the USSR as an instructive tool to wield over the heads of their own working class, and so on both economic and political grounds the First World bore advantages over the Second." Whereas this could be one truth, it does underscore the fact that more countries on the earth joined the Second World than they could be declared as the First World also because of the lacunae starkly evident in the First World. Whereas massive racism was predominant in the First World, economic depression and political censorships in the capitalist countries also contributed to popularity of the Second World.

A connection between the third world "project" and the United Nations (UN) is well established in the book. What perhaps amiss is a discussion on manners in which either of them might have contributed to the downfall of the other. Prashad says, "Today there is no such vehicle for local dreams". The larger question then would be if the United Nations played a role in obliterating its dependant. On the other hand, a stark reality in the post-Iraq scene is the redundancy of a forum such as the United Nations today that effectively has no role either in shaping a collective conscience or implementing a pro-people agenda. Least of all, the UN has failed to safeguard the sovereign nations from external aggressions. It has failed to overcome the elitism of its Security Council, almost unquestionably letting the powerful countries to run their own little League of Nations inside the UN. Amidst such cynicism that the UN has contributed to, what responsibilities must the Third World project shoulder.

Amidst several responsibilities, the Third World still has to its credit a Non-Aligned News Agencies Pool (NANAP), a fact that is missing a mention in the book. Over 40 news agencies in non-aligned countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe have pooled their resources for the exchange of news reports and information to defy the vertical information flow of corporate media. The "Pool" was adopted at the Fourth Summit Conference of Non-Aligned Countries, held in Algiers in 1973. During that period, the New World Information and Communication Order was also proposed to democratize the knowledge domain of the world. No doubt, UNESCO was criticized by the American and European intellectuals, but the MacBride Commission succeeded in recognizing the divergent voices of the Third World in order to challenge the media hegemony world over. Responsibilities of the Third World still include an informed opposition to militarization, providing alternative channels to western corporate media, campaigning for need-based distribution of world resources, and most of all, representing the popular voices of dissent, opposition and celebrations. One wonders if the struggles to attain the above has waned any bit, if looked from the peoples' perspectives. And in this context, the Third World still holds hopes, possibilities and victory. One is perhaps disappointed if the Third World is perceived to be voicing only a limited elite constituency - often opposed to the peoples' dissents.

IV

Hence, finally, the book questions not the constitution of the Third World itself. If it was brought around through its various leaderships under certain historical period, what expectations should we have of this "project"? Were such leaders to be expected to play the truly internationalist roles, and to what avail? In the preliminary draft thesis on the National and the Colonial Questions, for the Second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin wrote: "Petty-bourgeois nationalism proclaims as internationalism the mere recognition of the equality of nations and nothing more. Quite apart from the fact that this recognition is purely verbal, petty-bourgeois nationalism preserves national self-interest intact, whereas proletarian internationalism demands, first, that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a world-wide scale, and, second, that a nation which is achieving victory over the bourgeoisie should be able and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital." Between the elite internationalism founded on peaceful co-existence and peoples' internationalism based upon rejection of the international capitalist order, did the Third World got somewhere hijacked or we refuse to acknowledge its existence because we already defined its proponents?

Needless to state, the criticisms above demand for more literature for inclusion into the book, than specifically target the author's works. Such a case arises only because the book is an extraordinarily brilliant effort that is bound to encourage readers to plunge more into the relevance of the subject. All of that credit goes to the humanely written, accessibly crafted work that shuns academic elitism and genuinely attempts at a peoples' history of the oppressed world.

Tags: Saswat, History, Third World, UN, Communism, Cold War, Literature

By Saswat Pattanayak

"Violence against women has yet to receive the priority attention and resources needed at all levels to tackle it with the seriousness and visibility necessary."

UN Secretary-General’s in-depth study on violence against women (2006) (A/61/122/Add.1)

Before we reach another consensus on violence against women, let us examine the existing differences. For, whereas it is far easier (because it is pacifying) to share the knowledge that violence against women continues to exist, it is rather discomforting (because it is agitating) to throw lights on why it is so.

Like every year, academic and administrative reports of all kinds will be generated to commemorate March 8. After all, since we have a non-profit United Nations and we have corporate profiteers, we will eventually need to reach a consensus on issues such as violence against women. And amidst the thousands of articles and hundreds of televised tear-jerkers we will encounter in the coming month, the information overload would have done the damage, if we do not stay alert about few conditions that need addressing:

1. Suspect the Messengers: The kinds of messages about women may be misgivings. Indeed, most channels that provide news about women’s progress and violence are owned and controlled by men. Whereas it is undoubtedly true that many men are truly understanding of their gender positions and many women are too willing to play the assigned roles, it is still wise to suspect the men in the month of IWD message boards.

2. Women’s Rights are Universal Rights: Some will talk about women’s rights as a domain that applies to women only. Indeed, women’s rights are women’s prerogative only as a practice, but everyone’s concern as a scope. Just like they fool us by writing different history books for African-Americans, and the Americans as though American history does not include the minorities, it is highly suspect that women’s rights are not matter of concern for men.

3. Workplace for women vs Women for workplace: Most arguments about women’s rights focus on necessities to prepare the women for the workplace. Its like Amartya Sen saying that the question should not be if democracy is good for a country, but it should be directed towards making the country good for a democracy. Well, frankly speaking, he could be wrong. Just as JFK was while demanding that people give to the country without asking what the country can do for them. That’s the populist tone. The reality is women don’t need to be prepared for workplace. Workplaces need to be geared to serve women.

4. International Woman has a meaning: It means, women identify with each other across different boundaries. This identification has an undertone: that is, they accept the differences across cultures. To be truly international means understanding that there are differences across nations, and hence across women from different nations. There is no place for homogenization of women as one entity. So yes, White women are different from Black women are different from Asian women are different from Latina women are different from Muslim women are different from Hindu women are different from Swahili-speaking women who are different from Greek women. Women have different social locations among themselves, and hence understanding them holds the key. Let no one lead us into an essentialist notion of women’s problem. Different women face oppressions of different nature. The similarity is the most striking: that women are oppressed simply because they are women.

5. Are women human?: MacKinnon’s question is still valid. No amount of cultural excuses (from first world pornography to third world dowry) makes all women full human today. Ruling classes of the world still consider women as accessories to either their power ladder, or to their social justice tokenism. Their domestic adornment or cheap working class market value. Their television anchoring revenue system or their make-up kit industry. Just as Aishwarya Rai cannot be allowed to cry in public because Revlon will probably run into losses, Tamara MaidenName cannot challenge her greedy boss for uneven wages because he will merely retaliate.

International Women’s Day must not be allowed to promote card and gifts companies to indulge in exhibitionism of annual love to the mothers and sisters and wives and friends. It is rather a day to remind all of us in the world that a separate battle is on. This one is a battle of all. A battle that is waged by the true majority of the world, the women. A battle, that addresses the core inconsistencies of capitalism.

Originally written for Womens Rights Blog.

Tags: Saswat, Feminism, Communism, Capitalism, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

Ironies in the post Soviet days surpass those that characterized it. Despite longueurs of economic progress that “Tsar Putin” has made an exhibition out of, it must appear to be ironical that every publication worth its name declares there is more poverty and less equality in Russia these days than they ever were during Soviet days.

But what’s even more satirical are the suggestions from the concerned quarters that see this as an essential problem of the formerly controlled economy, than as an obvious aftermath of the presently capitalistic one. Considering that the crisis is evident (and multiplying) after the collapse of communism, it should come as no uncommon sense to perceive the root of disarrays. And yet the more populist and political correct accusations are aimed at the former era than the present regime.

Well, that’s not such a surprising finding if we traverse back at the hundreds of thousands of myths that the private capital masters have spread over past few decades about the merits of capitalism. In such ways the myths have been reinforced that even the biggest apostles of capitalism would have to pause awhile.

Its over 15 years since the USSR dissolved in its political form, and yet the only path that its economy has taken for the majority of people is downwards. This, despite absence of any capricious elements in an otherwise compromised economy. Apart from a few oligarchs who have been prosecuted, the country has seen one of the more stable forms of capitalistic expansions by business interests. Despite talks of nationalization or renationalization, only sectors affected thus far have been oil and gas. International currencies, free market and prosperous middle classes are characterizing the country in its free-est market condition in its entire history.

And yet, inequalities of wealth among the population are greater. Poverty, unemployment, crime, and prostitution are way higher. Social security is nearly absent and “terrorism” is at the highest. The country is struggling even to hold bilateral talks, its Nato membership pleas challenged by its own people.

Kremlin is gaining notoriety for “getting rid” of its enemies: Murders of eminent people include journalists (Anna Politkovskaya), research scholars (Indologist Grigory Bondarevsky), scientists (Alexander Krasovsky and Viktor Frantzuzov), security service agents (Alexander Litvinenko), and top officers (Andrei Kozlov- vice president of Central Bank, and Alexander Plokhin, director of Foreign Trade Bank), to mention only a few.

Chechnya crisis, high corruption rate, growth of the Russian “Mafia”, racism by “skinheads”, ban on Communists to conduct parades are not the only features that characterize a fragmented country unable to celebrate its national and cultural diversity. According to the Reporters Without Borders, Russia ranks below many African countries in terms of its press freedom ranking, indeed out of 168 countries, its rank is 147 (worse than Mugabe’s Zimbabwe)! In terms of corruption, Russia is the top most corrupt country in the world, according to Transparency International’s global corruption reports. Lets not even bring up the controversial but almost accurate Amnesty International which maintains horrific databases.


“The Road Ahead”:
And yet, most economists suggest that even greater private investments hold the key for a country like Russia to gain a foothold. Putin has been acclaimed on one hand for raising the nationalist level among the people so as to take back the country to the days of Tsarist glory (implying the biggest feudal society in the contemporary times where private capitals will be concentrated in the hands of selected domestic business houses). This is the more popular choice considering the general anti-Americanism prevailing among the people and unduly being milked by the Americanized leaders of Europe themselves to further their political (read: democratic) ambitions.

And on the other hand, from the critics’ quarters, he has been advised to opt for greater concentration on capitalistic expansion so as to make way for a truly “free market” (implying the establishment of a neo-American society where money will engage people as a commodity, and take away the human elements that are needed for any progressive dissent).

The third front is, alas an alternative, least explored. While visiting Borders book store, I usually chuckle at the sections such as History and Government & Politics. Several racks of books are collected under different sub-headings for easy perusal. It is there that one understands how silently, and effectively the alternatives are purged. You will surely find subheadings such as “Russian History”, and “Russian Government”, but under parenthesis they have carefully typed out phrase: “Non-Soviet”.

Somewhere between Tsarist oppressions and Capitalistic expansions, the Soviet intentions are conveniently buried. And it’s most ironically absent in Putin’s Russia.

Tags: Saswat, USSR, Economics, Communism, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Call me superstitious, but somehow I always tend to hope for the maxim that speaks: All’s well that ends well. And hence, certainly in the last week of this month, I had not imagined the year 2006 would leave such bitter memories behind.

It all started with one death: Gerald Ford’s. And ended with one execution: Saddam Hussein’s.

What has Ford got to do with Hussein? I would probably have not wondered aloud such an analogy on another occasion. After all, one was the celebrated president of world’s oldest democracy, and the other was the disgraced president of a dictatorial regime. For celebration of Ford’s legacies, there are museums, schools, world leaders and history books. For Hussein, only condemnations follow from all above quarters. We are observing memorial services cherishing the memories of Ford beginning Friday, whereas the global condemnation ceremonies to mark the former Iraqi head have started from Saturday. New York Times while pouring in rich tributes for Ford churned out a news story out of an obituary, headlined its editorial as “Gerald R Ford” to portray the legend on Thursday. And yet on Saturday, the liberal paper had made an editorial out of a hard news piece, and headlined its lead story of the day thus: “Dictator Who Ruled Iraq With Violence Is Hanged for Crimes Against Humanity.” Yes, that’s the headline from world’s most respected newspaper, not a sentence from some kangaroo court.

And yet, amidst the word-games of the colonial language that accentuates the stark differences perpetuated by its mainstream media masters, I am struck by few similarities between the two dead former leaders.

Both climbed the ladders of politics not through legitimate elections, but by assuming power. Ford quietly succeeded a corrupt tax evader Spiro Agnew to become the vice president, and with a lot of pomp and show, inherited a corrupt war criminal Richard Nixon’s throne to become the president. Similar “corrupt bargains” were made in Iraq for Saddam to remain in power. Hussein quickly ascended Ba’ath Party ladders without the credentials, political, military, or otherwise. And earned his fame and glory in his attempt to assassinate the then Iraqi head Abdul Qassim. Ironically, just like Ford who rose to power without any mandate except merely with approval from the US Congress, Saddam’s claim to fame was reached through the American interventions in Iraq to fund the Ba’athists to get rid of left-leaning Qassim. In a sure manner well recorded, but seldom quoted, the US war machine created both Saddam, and Ford.

A New York Times columnist in an editorial piece had done some elaboration, at least about Saddam, a few years back:

“The Iraqi leader seen as a grave threat in 1963 was Abdel Karim Kassem, a general who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. Washington's role in the coup went unreported at the time and has been little noted since. America's anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely substantiated, however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and in the work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the C.I.A.

From 1958 to 1960, despite Kassem's harsh repression, the Eisenhower administration abided him as a counter to Washington's Arab nemesis of the era, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt -- much as Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush would aid Saddam Hussein in the 1980's against the common foe of Iran.

Then, on Feb. 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television. Washington immediately befriended the successor regime. ''Almost certainly a gain for our side,'' Robert Komer, a National Security Council aide, wrote to Kennedy the day of the takeover.

As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.

According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite -- killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.”

The US war mongers funded the Iraqi despot to continue murdering communists and innocent civilians. At the same time, back home, they got Ford to continue the same legacy. Not surprisingly, Ford became not just the only unelected president, but even the most unpopular one at his time. He pardoned without any conditions whatsoever the biggest war criminal of recent times: Richard Nixon, the officially recognized disgraced president. Like Hussein, Nixon was a zealot anti-communist, a massive war and hate proponent. And Gerald Ford whose six day national mourning continues with half-mast flags, was the greatest supporter of Nixon. He provided all the support that Nixon required to save face, and his life. And no, all thanks to Ford, Nixon was not hanged.

Times have changed. But times do not change philosophically on their own tunes. They change just the way the ruling classes decide. And as predicted, after an initial hue and cry by the marketplace of ideas, Ford continued to be cherished for having pardoned Nixon and saved America’s image. Saddam, soon after the demise of communist powers, was brushed off as forgotten legacy that could have otherwise tarnished America’s image.

Today, alas, if we recall history accurately in its sequence and reasoning and ruling class motives and working peoples resentments, there is just one fallen guy between the two. And not surprisingly, Ford has been pardoned.

But there is worse in store. Now that Saddam is not there anymore, perhaps true to the nature of obituaries, true to the nature of support lent to Ford’s legacies after his death, many of us would invariably see light in Saddam as well. In the battle of ideologies, perhaps it would seem as though Saddam fought a different battle than that of American power elites. And after much accentuation of these differences, the corporate media would have succeeded in establishing a hyper reality of virtues and vices. And the reification of historical insanities may again begin when we either pay rich tributes to Saddam to posit him against America or vice versa. Or like the European allies in the war, when we take the moralist positions against capital punishment in order to oppose Saddam’s death.

Saddam’s death should have been quite predictable. After all, those that stop serving the masters, are condemned to harsh course. It’s the masters that we need to beware of. The masters that enslaved Africa, colonized Asia, and impoverished majority of world population through global capitalism. If they kill their disobedient agents, that’s not a bother. We didn’t ask for the agent anyway. The point is we need not take the masters any longer either.

And neither do we want any more of their agents. Some of them may rally behind the masters, like Pinochet who died a natural honorable death recently. And some may yet go pose a challenge, like Bin Laden who may end up in Saddam’s shoes one day soon. But any indulgence in positing the agents against the masters is well playing into the plans. Its like supporting the European leaderships today who are their virtuous best in the criticism of American punishment degrees. Or listening to New York Times declaring how the criminal against humanity is our man no more.

Either way, we would miss the boat. The issue is not in differences between two such elements borne out of greed, competition and oppressions. Not the difference between Ford and Hussein. It’s the similarities among them that should make us shiver.

Brother Malcolm X used to open his address with: “brothers and sisters, friends and enemies.” If we succeeded in identifying the categories, we hopefully would have left the worst of times behind as we start marking a new year tomorrow.

(Originally published in Radical Notes)

Tags: Saswat, Iraq, USA, Capitalism, Cold War, War, History, Communism

By Saswat Pattanayak

So the CNN poll says that most Americans feel no one is winning the war in Iraq. Apart from the statistical tables drawn from little more than a 1000 people who were telephoned, the CNN forgets to mention one more word in its headline: Ignorant.

Only when people are deliberately kept ignorant about the state of affairs, can they make any such claim. CNN, after perfecting the art of mediocrity and disparaging neutrality during periods of great crisis, has been able to contribute to the pool of mythmakers who lull the population. The fact of the matter is that the Bush administration is winning the war.

Because the war is not being fought in Iraq. The war is being fought right here inside the United States. It’s just that this is the war that the corporate media would not like to talk about. Just as in any other capitalist country in the world today, media in the US have decided to bury the hatchet after digging the graves.

Colors of the Wars

Why is it that we call it a war only when a western country involves itself in external aggression? Be it the so-called “World Wars”, which were nothing but capitalistic battlefields for profits, or the “Cold War”, which was nothing but hot pursuit at destroying civilizations through barbaric American interventions, or the “Gulf War”, which continues in various names the showmanship of white masculinity despite international condemnations—the war is the game that men play, and worse, the game that the dominant ruling class men play.

Is it any coincidence then that the real colors of the war are shoved to obscurity through deliberate dislocation of the locale—geographical and psychological? Since the massive acquisition of world power following the world wars that led to obscenities such as G-7 and NATO, by color, wars are now being attributed solely to irresponsibly dangerous people of color. And by locales, they are always being fought only outside the Euro-American soil!

Omissions and Psychological Warfare:


In a recent exhibition to sensitize the American public about what it feels like to be in a war-ridden territory, Doctors without Borders had organized artificial refugee camps in the heart of New York City. I was struck by a world map that welcomed the visitors who were spoon-fed distorted history of warfare by a very able NGO propagandist. The physical/political map depicted the countries that had internally displaced population in the world today. Two kinds of refugees were enumerated: those who are foreigners to the warring country, and those that are resident aliens. Much careful planning must have gone through in preparing this exhaustive map, as the small group audience gasped at the reality.

The gasps of disbelief! Photo by Saswat.


Whereas people—mostly European-Americans--were clearly disturbed at the glaring map, they were visibly comforted as well. Reason: Each and every country in the world seemed to be depicted on the map as having displaced refugees, except for the country of United States and continent of Europe! It was as though the entire world was dotted with crisis, except for these two western regions that are entirely without a problem!

The Doctors without Borders expert then went ahead to narrate her personal experience in African countries and Muslim countries. Audience roared at first with laughter at the model of toilet that ‘those people’ use. And when the narrator said that some Muslims would not use the toilet when it would be faced in the direction of their mosque, some in the audience sneered at the preposterous audacity of ‘those ungrateful people’. It was not merely shocking for me to go through the public mockery at the toilet design that I had grown up with most of my life, but even for an atheist like me, the entire lack of religious sensitivity was quite disgustingly unpalatable an experience.

...and the vacuum of indifference Photo by Saswat.


The kind French doctor then took us around more to the way camps are set up, the hardships that NGOs face while saving the lives of the war-torn people and while distributing bare minimum food supplies to cornered people. And all the while, the exercise seemed like a self-congratulatory exercise of sizeable measure. Worse, it was the victory of sorts for the actors in global psychological warfare.

Acts of genocides caused by repressions by colonialists and imperialists in Africa and Asia were suddenly dismissed by the well-meaning reformist activist circles of organizations like Doctors Without Borders as processes to stop “civil wars” brought forth by “infighting” and “tribal clashes” and “Muslim conflicts”. The international organization even went to the extent of celebrating the beautiful, noble and charitable roles that European countries were playing in rehabilitating the greedy, fanatic and needy infighters.

In fact, nowhere in the narration at any point were the people told of the role of the “safe countries” that lead to the ravages in the affected countries. No where were we reminded that the safety in the western front is only a swelling mocking silence at sheer indifference that comes with luxurious ignorance. That’s because the reformists work to depict the wretched, torn, poor in a neutral way, after remaining silent at the continuous supply of arms by the militarist yet ‘safe’ countries to the warring sides. The war against Lebanese people is a case in point. It was depicted as though Middle East is a crisis. Not us—not even if we in the first world actively remain silent when our leaders negotiate arms deals with militarist regimes that we support actively through money, germs and warfare.


Revisionist Reactionary History Retold:

What the Doctors without Borders were essentially doing was continuing the legacy to distort the reality by replacing them with lasting impressionist images that are value-laden.

First off, the reassuring idea that Western World has no refugees and no war inside the countries is a blatant white lie. The kind French doctors should only have looked at war-torn (in their language ‘rioting&rsquo Paris. The New Yorkers should have only looked at war-torn (in their language poverty and homelessness) Bronx. And the map could have been altered and the definitions of genocides and wars could have been revisited, as also attributions of perpetrators and victims.

Secondly, the perpetrators themselves have always become the largest preachers. In the name of church, they sanctified holy wars. In the name of charity, they legitimized unholy alliances. Unable to contain the mass resentments at colonial expansionist motives to force Africa to debt trap, the Euro-American alliances have now resorted to throw rice bags at warring tribes who have been forcefully devoid enough of their lands to the extent that staying sane has become an unknown privilege for them.

Thirdly, the preachers and moralists of the first world liberalism have helped themselves in getting rid of a guilty conscience that sure would have popped up, if not for sheer inaction and lack of imagination. So, the well-meaning doctors and journalists and peaceniks get together once in a while to pat each other’s back in their hard-earned efforts to hail the British sophistry to claim civilization, to herald Europe as the well-meaning citadel of freedom and continue the Nirmala (of Missionaries of Charity fame) doctrine: Poverty is the gift of God. Then, war must indeed be a perpetuating gift to be treasured as well, that continues to spin the money, influence and moral sense.


What’s the war about?

Plain and simple: the war that’s being fought now is a misnomer. Its just another scale of capitalistic perversion indulged in by the Eurocentric liberals. A sudden sense of powerlessness that engulfed the white ruling class world impaired its confidence to such a great deal that out of the vacuum came many a pseudo liberal and conservative movements. From safeguarding church sanctity, to curb communism, to attack sovereign lands, and to pose peace marches to oppose such attacks by terming them as wars: we have seen the hegemonists staking claim on both sides of the mainstream politics.

All along, what these reformers and reactionaries alike have consciously refrained from doing is to recognize the kind of war that’s the need of the hour. There is only one war that is needed to be fought today, and that is the Class War. In my view, the class wars have the following inherent features. (Bestselling works have different --often spiritual-- types of Seven Laws. But that’s merely because they have a different population in mind):

1. Class wars are not fought outside the ‘national’ boundaries. Indeed, class wars do not recognize any divisions other than Class.


2. Class wars are organized attacks on global capitalistic economic system. They are not peaceful reform movements based on appeals and petitions and requests and preachings.

3. Class wars are not fought by recruiting working class people to fight on behalf of the imperialist masters. Quite the contrary, class wars force the capitalists out onto the street to fight their own battles and in fear or new found knowledge, many from capitalist classes join the working class people, and out of the enslaved mindsets, many from working class prefer to join their former masters. Apart from Bolsheviks, one could find instances in Black Panthers and Weathermen Underground, where people of all classes came onto the streets, many changed their class loyalties and consciously chose sides and fought the battles on principles.

4. Class wars are organized through radical education of the youths, by disavowing old reactionary knowledge, by replacing canonic texts and reactionary history and colonial languages with brand new narrations by the oppressed, language of the dispossessed and writings of the agitated. Vladimir Mayakovsky and Che Guevera and Maxim Gorky would come to mind who replaced the old texts with the new.

5. Class wars are fought against the entire lot of class elites, including the scientists who make bombs, doctors who pimp expensive drugs, teachers who teach classics, students who benefit from nepotisms. But since the class wars cannot be exclusionary in nature, the peoples sides always invariably accept those from different classes and backgrounds as long as they willingly change their statuses by giving up adamancies, class characters and superficial hierarchies.

6. Class wars always are organized, although outbursts are always spontaneous. It is the duty of the educated and privileged who feel oppressed, to heed to the call of the most dispossessed, and thereby help form the class in solidarity. In class wars, there are no gradations and levels and degrees. It’s an absolute war against the tiny minority of controllers of global resource, not against the exploited workers, mid-level managers or even those from the bourgeois class who are willing to consciously switch positions.

7. Class wars are not dogmatic, they do not follow arbitrary wishes of despots, and yet certainly do not entertain any reformist, and liberal understandings that look for intra-system micro changes. Class wars are about grand visions, great leaps and global single union of all workers.

It is only important for people of the biggest empire in world history to recognize that the war has to be brought home. With due apologies to Doctors without Borders, refugees are not outside of Europe or America. It is the majority of people in these countries that are the refugees within the ruling class boundaries. Just for an example, to take a leaf out of last month which was observed in the US as Domestic Violence Awareness Month, one needs to only redefine the scope of internally displaced people: Acts of domestic violence occur every 12 seconds in the U.S. – making it the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the country – more than car accidents, muggings and rapes combined. More than 4,500 women are killed each year in the U.S. by abusive husbands or boyfriends. This is the state of women’s rights in the country that goes on preaching morals to China about human rights abuse and along with its European counterparts like UK, and France—which are even worse performers on human issues--issues warrants to Muslim countries regarding the freedom that ‘their women’ deserve and to ensure that, they declare wars on poor people. Largest undertrials, and biggest military-industrial complexes, fraud elections that steal the polls, education system working for the rich, healthcare industries at the call of the privileged---on almost every count of human dignity, the majority of people in the so-called first world are living in no better condition than the working class lives in the victim countries. And yet, the wars--to enforce a standard of governance that has invariably failed to deliver everytime—continue against the poor people of the world and crocodile tears are shed by the enlightened liberals at their plights. Its almost in charity towards the poor that the emotions are misspent, instead of asking the crucial question regarding who leads to their plights and thereby organizing them on an international economic class basis.

These utter hypocrisies of the elitists have led the world to believe in the external aggressions as some kind of feasible war, whereas the truth of the matter is, this is just a genocide being caused against the working poor of the world by the moral pundits of the first world who spread their neo-colonial tools of culture, media and redundant, privilege-ridden talk-shows laced, media-hyped, bogus talks about equality and liberty and freedom and all other superficially diverting values of plutocracy.

The real war needs to be brought home, and the demarcations need to be made. We did let go of the Katrina disaster that brought out the class dynamics because there were not enough among us who identified with the suffering black people of America who would like to give up our knowledge about issues defined by the structure as ‘issues’. Hence we looked at race dynamics, we looked at geographical dynamics, we looked at political dynamics. We entirely missed that it is the class that creates the divides across, geography, race, gender, religion, sexuality, disabilities, nationalities, political systems—to name but a few. Not the other way around. Yet again, this month, let us not allow the farcical elections blind us to a system that just doesn’t seem to be working for the people. This election is another reformist tactics to get rid of one ruler while upholding the structure that will seat just another. The absurdities surrounding these imposters are so well known that their media bombard us with multitudes of news only to force us to forget things we should have noticed. For example, John Kerry disgraced himself after talking about who gets stuck in wars. Sure, I don’t think it was a disgrace because Kerry was wrong in content. Just that he forgot to say he got out of Vietnam not because of education alone. But ironically he disgraced himself again for a second time (truly in sync with Democratic Party tradition of eating words) by apologizing: implying that it’s a good thing to be conscripted after all… Whose bickerings are we even choosing our sides for: These are not even worthy fights!

We don’t need militarists to misspell imperialism as some necessary war. We also don’t need peaceniks to preach against all sorts of wars. The fact of the matter is, we have submitted to these jargon jugglers for a long time now. And the need of the hour is for the ongoing class wars to be recognized and organized and brought back to homes—to every place of this planet and unionize our class identity before they move the focus to their media machines and central parks.

Tags: Saswat, War, Peace, USA, Communism, Capitalism

A complete depiction of events that unfolded during 1917. In six parts. Original texts and artworks belong to Progress Publishers, Moscow.

Tags: Saswat, USSR, Communism, Cold War, History

By Saswat Pattanayak

Amidst the impending war on people of Iran, and the ongoing oppression of peoples everywhere through military and financial means, we have limited choices.

One, we could claim refined patriotism that needs validation through the bumper stickers proclaiming, “I support my troops”. This will make some of us look politically correct, since the attacks are apparently not on civilians, but on terrorists (although for most of those among us who profess this first choice, the difference between civilians and terrorists is a matter of our stereotypes based on artificial dissonances—race, religion, nationality—than anything else). Our definition of terrorist is of course one that is rhetorically the most agreed upon, although politically it is the most disagreeable. Despite all the finer questions that complicate our lives, these among us will always root for the troops. Killing, raping, vandalizing, infiltrating, promoting ethnic violence, are all fine, so long as our troops are fighting their terrorists. In fact, the more violence there is, the more legitimacy, our troops gain. As Sister Nirmala implied for Missionaries of Charity that since poverty was God’s gift, it was required to be preserved.

And two, we could go on marching on the streets with pro-peace placards, be called crazy, and court arrests, hog headlines, and be butt of television narratives which pride on being liberal—they harp on the fact they manage to bring two opposing voices to engage in a debate cut short by ad industry’s dictates. But hey, since we are the liberal ones, unlike Fox TV, at least we have the voice of the Democrats on the television. Move on, shall we? So how did we stop the war in Afghanistan? Well, the liberals among us engage in congratulating each other for having persuaded the American troops to be out of the country. Its alright if we staged a stooge there who will play diplomacy with Pakistan and balance the power in our favor in the subcontinent. And how did we stop the war in Iraq? Why, of course we exposed the lies about the WMD. You see, there was no WMD, and the republicans lied about it, and we exposed that. And now, America is isolated.

Clearly, the first group of people who support troops and claim their brand of patriotism as genuine are psychically numb, and the lesser said about their glories and successes, the better it is. But at the same time, one would notice, that the second group, the liberal ones among us, are actually a bunch of opportunistic idealists with no sense of historical conditions.

Why I say that, is because it’s not the war against which we need to worry about so much. Rather we must identify the perpetrators and oppressed in a war situation and mobilize activisms accordingly. The moment we feel elated about WMD myth, we are accepting two prepositions to be valid: one that we are surprised at a politician telling a lie, and two, that if there were actually some WMD, then we would have anyway maimed the future Iraqi generations of children. Likewise, the moment we feel good about Afghanistan, or any other victim of the ‘cold’ war saga, we just look at the consequences (the installation of our favored man as a victory for the dissenting people), and never at the cause (that we might have produced a situation for the conflicts, and to prevent further deterioration, we must get the hell out of these places and let a world body decide a course of action).

Slogans against war are helpful in a society whose main ideology is peace. That’s a society where the state funds peace marches, and signature campaigns against nuclear war. Such informed agitation among the people is necessary to drive a people’s state through necessary checks and balances. Unfortunately, our overworking intelligence sources have already relegated such states to history’s dustbins.

But if we are talking about the elite democracies like the US today, assembly by peace-loving people will only be met with what they face ultimately. Peace activists court harmless arrests, their groups are infiltrated by police informers and yes afterwards, they are ‘allowed’ to continue with their job of opposing the regime. In a way it helps politicians of all kinds in this country to claim that this is not a country made up of kangaroo court, and that since citizens have a right to protest, this is indeed the best form of government that the people deserve.

In the end, the protesters are counseled by the state apparatus that the regime is serious about granting of freedom that enable the protest to go on within the stipulated rules. For example, it is alright to silently hold a placard of protest, but not to disrupt normal activities of other people on work. If you are the peace activist, then you go do your work, just the way your neighbor who is a business executive, does his/hers. Interesting, how the state controls the scopes within which ‘protests’ can take place, its expression dynamics, and the limitations (temporary arrests, and permanent FBI files).

Such a tactic of ‘allowance for opposition’ is so germane to western democracies that it works as a double-edged sword to further the governance mode. It declares the system as the most valid form of governance with active ‘help’ of the opposition. And at the end of the day, when the protestors are as free as they ever were, they come back home satisfied with their opposition tactics and claim the way even Chomsky does: that America is the freest country on the planet.

Behind the simplistics:

When played out, both assumptions confirm with the one-liner “Either you are with us, or with the terrorists.” Its like saying, “Either you support us/join us in war, or oppose us on the street.”

The dominant assumptions on the pro-war front are the following:
1. There is a war going on in Iraq/Iran
2. War is being waged against the terrorists
3. We need more external armed forces
4. We need more internal security
5. We should not stop our attacks till we have eliminated all terrorists off the world map


The dominant assumptions of the anti-war coalitions are the following:
1. War is evil
2. All wars should be opposed on principle
3. We should not break international law
4. We should save our children from dying in the war
5. War costs enormous human lives and money

I have run out of patience in coming down on the war mongers and their ‘classic’ arguments. These are blatantly racist, sexist, militarist people who would use any kind of excuse to either support the national armed forces, or join them and emotionally support those that join, out of pure guilt conscience at times owing to their equalizing the military with morality. More often than not, they will use moralist position to defend the indefensible, and introduce hysteria of necessity. For example, even if they will acknowledge that the military is doing something grotesquely insane (like prison torture) they will still carry on with it arguing that ‘without’ defense forces the country will be even more insecure anyway. Warning of such reactionary trends, the former president of America, Abraham Lincoln had said, “Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure. If today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.’”

Coming to the anti-war movement, there are some issues that need urgent addressing. Firstly, not all war is evil. Indeed, there is a categorical difference between imperialist war and war against the imperialists. Hence, not all wars need to be opposed. Having said that, it’s important to stress not on the ethics of international law, rather energy should be focused on making it mandatory to accept the international laws of sovereignty. Any country violating the aggression-related international law must be prohibited from taking part in the UN proceedings and must be stripped off its security council privileges if any. This alone may just rouse the consciousness of the country’s citizenry.

Lastly, the disgusting drama of “Bring our boys home” must be stopped. It’s highly sexist, since it assumes that there are no women among the troops. Secondly, its too self-centric, since it cares only for the troops of the aggressor country, at the cost of overlooking the various rapes and murders “our boys” commit while having field days in the war. It also unnecessarily sympathizes with the military brutes who are not necessarily innocent little creatures. We can perfectly understand a mother’s cry in wake of her son’s sacrifice at the war against Iraqi peoples, but what we must not encourage is the trend of glorifying the troop at the expense of such shallow patriotism.

(What's the Alternative?
Next: Bring the War Home, Part II)

Tags: Saswat, War, Peace, Communism, USA, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

I am unsure if Shakespeare had such premonitions engulfing his worst tragedies, but the Hindu superpower India with its proud “economic growth rates” has been forcing me to wonder if we are missing the coming signs of the times. The tell-tales are here, the hints of misfortune are looming large, the sustained oppression by the Indian state on its peoples with “foreign aids” is rampant. And yet somewhere since last couple of years a major chunk of world’s geographical region is dancing away at a maddening pace, drinking the drink of its blood and dancing the dance of its death.

The world’s largest democracy is also the biggest booming free market economy. With exception to no other land today, the enthusiasm of the urban youths of India has emerged pure, and unbridled. The mass popular culture of subservient bollywood films, inferior diaspora literatures and profit hungry mainstream media have a projection of jubilance, of multifarious vibrancy in social lives that’s almost instantaneously appealing. In no contrast, the elite high class societal circles are doing their Manhunts, race courses and business parties, relatively different in degrees since they were upto the social mischiefs even decades before the educated mass had its date with ‘freedom’.

Far too often this comfortable dichotomy of mass/class paradigm finds entry into the social consciousness. Whether the cart drives the horse or the horse does it becomes a redundant issue so long as the movements occur for both. In economics, its called a trickling down effect of the riches of the rich which the rest have a privilege to enjoy depending on which ladder of the hierarchy are they located at the time of the rain.

What’s super ironic at such junctures of “progress” in any society based on the premise of those who define the progress is that the ladder is usually placed upon a pedestal to begin with. That is, the hierarchy of profiteers does not begin with the ground, but with the elevated first step that misses the dirt and the wretched entirely before the stepping up can take place.

These dirt of India, entirely absent from global long-term memory are the peasants of the country who hold the ground, but who do not feel the trickles falling on them. Remember how during the natural disasters, helicopters throw relief goods targeted at some places which are usually devoid of women and children. And even when the women and children are present, somehow they don’t succeed at running for the food packets because they are busy holding the grounds under thatched roof, doubly oppressed by the central governments and their oppressive patriarchal custodians. Case against the peasants is almost similar. In a predominantly agrarian economy like India, ever since its “independence”, the ruling class has acted like patriarchs while overstepping and conveniently ignoring them on its way to new heights of power.

Not that, anything else was expected of the ruling elites class characters. Systematically suppressing every peasant rebellion in India during the British rule, the rulers (kings, british, and Indian elites) promised non-violent glories in place of revolutionary emancipation. Although the different strands of national struggle for liberation against the colonialists needed to find support among the larger revolutionary masses, the people were half sensitized about the nature of the national struggles engaged in by a faction of elites who surely fought the foreign power, but also because they wanted to hold onto their own.

Five year plans in India were formerly known to be based on a socialistic desire to industrialize the country soon after the British were shown the door. But instead, the plans with every phase systematically were fine-tuned to improve the lot of the secondary and tertiary sectors at the cost of the primary. This suited the class characters of the ruling elites of course, but what’s more distressing is that it was accepted almost unequivocally as a “progress” for the country which housed more than 80% peasants, that constituted as much percentage of below poverty line populace for the whole country.

Agrarian Crisis Continues:

Agrarian crisis in India are nothing new. Indeed, without any effort to bring the peasantry back to cultural fold, the homegrown capitalists of India have only heightened the crisis with every passing phase. As a result, what we have today is indiscriminate murders of peasants of India. Forcing them to lead lives without a sense of human dignity or basic standards of life, they have been forced to take extreme steps. While some have invariably joined the naxal movements to raise up arms against the Indian state, many are killed by the state power structure.

The media, the maneuvered toy of the Indian capitalists plays the corporate tune at such mass genocide committed by Indian state. More than 800 peasants have been killed in this kharif season alone. The Indian media not only portray these heroic submission to state atrocities as “suicides”, it also pities the deaths. The world must remember that the peasants who are dying every day in India are not committing “suicides”. Indeed, suicides are reactionary steps taken voluntarily by people weak by their willpower. Indian peasants have been among the most brave lot of all peoples of the world when one considers the British oppressions and Indian government atrocities upon them. Despite that, the peasants have carried on with unmatched courage to face the “man-made” disasters perpetrated upon them by the ruling class. If now there have been deaths subsequent to this, just as there are everytime following artificial famines, its not because of their inability to pay off debts, its because of the state power machine inflicting deadly repressive measures against them in particular.

Suicide Pathology of the Elites:

Indian intelligentsia, pathetically devoid of critical reflections have been allowing the corporate media to thrive on assumptions about the citizens. Firstly, there have been no suicides in Vidarbha. Suicides are caused by people themselves. These deaths of peasants are state-aided murders.

Ramu Bhagwat’s report in an unforgivable mistake of Indian fourth estate called, The Times of India, is headlined “3 farmers kill selves; toll 200 in 2 months”. Even after an effete shame of a prime minister by the name of Manmohan Singh visited Dhamangaon village with empty rhetoric which made him famous at Oxford last year, these farmers died because they were unable to repay Rs 13,000 to State Bank of India. That’s how much for two farmers lives? Remember its less than $300. Or in Indian urban class value today, less than half of what a first IT job gets a teenager in a month.

The government of India gleefully enjoying its power trip has not resigned following hundreds of murders it commits on its poor by forcing them to death, because it clearly has no morality. Its opposition, the absolutely brazen right wing coalitions, who at the first place assisted their private business funders to cause price hikes is also unabashed in its hypocrisy. But the worse, the Indian media and the watchdogs of so-called democracy are continually harping on their masters’ tunes by calling deaths as suicides, as though it were the fault of the farmers, and lulling the rest of India into web of ignorance.

That, people have expressed disgust at Manmohan Singh’s promises which has not even helped them to gather little money to sow seeds after saplings were washed away by rain, has been completely lost on the mainstream perception. That if one contextualizes the background of peasant crisis in India, one will realize that this is no sudden aberration on part of teeming millions of peasants but a continuation of systematic exploitation unleashed upon them specifically during the days of the British and during anti-people regimes of Indian state which decidedly started favoring private industries at cost of public cooperatives. And most importantly, that the Indian journalists and researchers are not entirely ignorant of the agrarian crisis and the stoic silence around the issue which is a great socio-political crisis of neo-liberal India.

Despite the social significance of the struggle of the peasants against the Indian state, the self-professed enlightened young and old analysts have decided to treat the deaths as some personal deviance. Indeed, since suicide is a cognizable offence under the law, perhaps the peasants have been declared as criminals by the media experts.

Pathetic pity of indifferent experts:

Take a look at NDTV. Just like Times of India, this mainstream grapevine has a report by Supriya Sharma who proposes that the “suicide epidemic of this scale should be seen and treated as a crisis of mental health”. Indeed she goes on to interview a psychiatrist to trace the etiology. Whereas psychiatry is not such a despicable path to solutions, after all, that the media have a habit of finding problems elsewhere than where it is most obvious is something worth reflecting over. Dr Patil, the subject of Sharma’s study says of a farmer “patient”: “He lost his crop due to the rains. Last year he lost his crop because there were no rains. So for the last 2-3 years he consecutively lost money. So he got depressed.”

She goes on to report:

"When a farmer is in distress, if we could call doctors from Akola or a government official, he feels someone is there to listen to him. And if no one listens, he may feel ignored and contemplate suicide," said a local.

All the cases are a grim encounter that reinforces the fact that the sprt in suicide cases in the region should be seen and treated as a crisis of mental health.

Journalists like Sharma are no simplicists, indeed no reductionists either. They are even literate to the point that they find a need to complicate the situation further to understand it better, in a perfectly academic fashion. But what happens in the process is that their limitations guide their intuition than their grounding in social history of the people they survey. As a result, the superficial flourishes, the blame-game continues at the most trivial manner and the headlines surge them to promotions since they systematically let the system go do its own brutalization even as people are “treated” for mental illnesses.

Oppressors’ aids for the brutalized people:

I will not delve into the other pathetic media stances where the need for peasant revolution for today’s India has been dismissed abjectly to the extent that there is no such mention to begin with. The kinds of questions that are being raised are only sufficiently complimenting the kinds of answers the corporate nation of India today seeks. For example, the conscientious journalists like Rajdeep Sardesai through their media request donations to help farmers by using heart-rending pictures. Tax-exemptions for the rich are obviously on the offing. Sardesai and his likes receive huge accolades for their so-called social concern, to “help the needy”. And the guilt-free doners go back to business of furthering their oppressions.

The cyclic amnesia of the Indian elites while it comes to dealing with their own crimes, (which they translate as peasant suicides) is beyond mere reproach. These are punishable offences that the elites must be taken to task for. Equitable distribution of wealth is not a role of some politicians sitting high on an elected platform. This takes place only through organized revolution by the oppressed classes against the feudal lords of India (who by mistake presume they are some advanced capitalist class, even as they continue to practice the most extreme form of casteism,—Karan Thapar was pronouncedly against the Dalits when it came to reservation issue, for example—sexism,--corporate houses washed their hands off for the murder of HP female employee at the dead of the night, and class society—the division between the rich and the poor has never been so widely marked ever before in the history of India—some people talking of donation of crores of rupees, and most other sell their children for paltry sums on astonishingly regular rate as in states like Orissa.

What we need at the moment is to organize the farmers to demand not aid, but reparation. The peasants of India in the past have upstaged the royal families, they have forced the colonialists out through mass uprisings, and now they need to get rid of the new feudal class of India, the class of oppressors who have been systematically making way for capitalism in India, to make gains for their own class interests, and detrimentally working against the farmers who have been rendered without food, housing and education, far too much, far too long. The feudal ruling elites of India did not demand reparations from the British and facilitated their comfortable exits so that they would continue from where their masters had left. But the peasants and farmers and working class of India must gather up all their might to ensure reparation for the exploitation they have been unleashed upon. And nothing less than an organized revolution by the most oppressed will replace the course of history.

Do not call their sacrifices suicides as yet. They are the martyrs of a feudal India in protest against the elitist rule in their name carried on by confessed agents of imperialism. And these ruling class of liberal politicians, conservative religious cults, their police, military, nuclear regime, and media stooges will be forced to tremble.

Watch out for the wrath of the wretched!

Tags: Saswat, Economics, India, Capitalism, Communism, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

As reproduced from the Women's Rights Blog (Tuckner, Sipser, Weinstock & Sipser, LLP)

With due apologies to Bryan Adams, the Summer of ’69 was the summer of Stonewall. New York City became a beacon for social justice in the otherwise hostile world when for the first time, the gays—ever oppressed as non-masculine—organized their confrontation against the American police and legal order—ever privileged as the symbol of masculinity.

In more ways than one, Stonewall rebellion is the single most valiant act of resistance of the oppressed against the oppressors in the recent history. And the many marginalized resistors of New York City stood at the helm of this progressive activism.

However, this path of defying the towering institutions of Big Apple has been strewn with many struggles. The latest one unfolded today at the court. Even as almost four decades have passed, the Summer of ’06 has exhibited how backward, how oppressive, and how conservative our law and order system still continues to be. How adamantly ignorant, and how repulsively inconsiderate the human judgments are till date proving to be.

With its legal verdict against gay marriage, New York State could not finally secure a position as the second enlightened state in the US (the only one is Massachusetts). One hoped, sincerely hoped, the city famous for peoples’ movements against the existing unjust orders, would have also acknowledged this one struggle by the people marginalized because of their sexual orientation. But that was not to be. Rather, the city, post-Stonewall, has now reverted back to conservatism of a shameful order and perhaps now has been turned into a beacon for social injustice—to declare gay marriage as illegal everywhere!

A Mockery of Justice:
Judge Robert S Smith on behalf of majority view rationalized Thursday:

“Until a few decades ago, it was an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be marriages only between participants of different sex. A court should not lightly conclude that everyone who held this belief was irrational, ignorant or bigoted.”

While opining these callous statements, Judge Smith has not brought in the slightly alternative and hugely profound perspectives that until a few decades ago, it was also an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived in any society in which human beings existed, that we had only a few elite white privileged men ruling over the majority in most inhumane manner imaginable, and it used to be considered that they were the ones to decide the definition of civilization and the barbaric. Not very long ago, everyone assumed that it was perfectly judicious to enslave people of color as it was considered that people who were not white, and people who were not men, were indeed not full humans.

Despite all trumpets that ‘Greek democracy’ exemplified, for centuries until only a few decades back, it was well taken for granted by everyone who ever lived that only a small number of ‘free men’ were qualified to conduct elections and define democracy in the world. Till then it was considered only so normal that people needed to be segregated to study in different schools basing on their skin color so that only some elite white men ended up owning all three branches of governance and left the manual works for the slaves.

So Judge Smith’s brilliant exposition to justify decision against gay marriage lacks this small authenticity of history fact-sheet.

Mockery is the norm?
On an even closer perusal, it will be well noted that Judge Smith was actually correct in his assumptions, only that the present era needed to be integrated in the historical perspective that he has taken. The fact is, its not “until a few decaded ago”, but even today under this current legal structure, we have widespread unjust social practices. White men are still being paid dozen times higher than Latina women for the same work. Poor workers are being retaliated against by their employers for bringing up harassment charges. And gay people are still being denied their basic human rights. Immigrants are being called ‘illegal aliens’ in the ‘modern’ country founded solely by immigrants. Poverty, homelessness, lack of access to basic healthcare are formidably overbearing upon the American society in 2006 Common Era.

The judgment against gay marriage in New York is a blot in the history which will be invariably questioned generations later and all of us will be held responsible for such irresponsible and apathetic sensitivity. Law is at times based on conventions, but if going by Judge Smith’s summarizations, law is solely based on conventions, then we do not need a court of justice to demarcate the norms. We only have to look at the utterly racist, sexist, homophobic society of today for solution. When the courts of justices are approached, it is done in want of judgments that are absent amidst conformism, not to seek vindication of unjust conformities that have been present “at all ages” or being practiced by “all human beings that ever lived.”

In what could be blatantly misinformed opinions, the court has passed verdicts to uphold traditional monogamous heterosexist marriages, in the following manner:

“It (the legislature) could find that an important function of marriage is to create more stability and permanence in the relationships that cause children to be born. It thus could choose to offer an inducement - in the form of marriage and its attendant benefits - to opposite-sex couples who make a solemn, long-term commitment to each other. “

Some of us could be highly amused by the naivety of these thoughts, springing as they are, from prepositions that are invalid. The judgment that decries the gay marriage citing scientific evidence (“Despite the advances of science, it remains true that the vast majority of children are born as a result of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman&rdquo is itself unscientific insofar as the fact remains that the world has not seen so far many cases where “child benefits from having before his or her eyes, every day, living models of what both a man and a woman are like.” The point is not whether children without parents have done progress (which the judge dismisses as exception), but the fact is the “living models of men and women” are actually thousands or million times more outside the family than inside it. The judgment is unsound; basing as it is on unscientific claims.

What lies beneath?
If we shift from the amusement, one can note that the more serious side to this exercise lies in the systematic perpetuation of historical injustices by the oppressive class.

Sociologist and critical political theorist Frederick Engels while challenging the status quo of monogamous marriage had said (in “Origin of the Family Private property and the State”, p 218):
“What will most definitely disappear from monogamy…is all the characteristics stamped on it in consequence of its having arisen out of property relationships. These are, first, the predominance of the man, and secondly, the indissolubility of marriage..”

Engels way back in 1880 said,

“Marriage based on sex love is by its very nature monogamy. We have seen how right Bachofen was when he regarded the advance from group marriage to individual marriage chiefly as the work of the women; only the advance from pairing marriage to monogamy can be placed to the men’s account, and historically, this consisted essentially in a worsening of the position of women and in facilitating infidelity on the part of the men.” He said in a socialist economy alone, the women would have “regained the right of separation, and when the man and woman cannot get along they would prefer to part. In short, proletarian marriage is monogamian in the etymological sense of the word, but by no means in the historical sense” (ibid p. 209-210).

Alas, the judgment of the US court has acknowledged the aspect of marriage only in the historical sense. Only in the dominant historical interpretation of monogamous heterosexist marriages that prevented a) the women to refuse domestic oppression, and b) people from practicing their different sexual orientations or refusing assigned gender roles. A history that has denied self-expression to majority of people who have either not found solace in the preaching of the Church or in the actions of the elite ruling classes. A history that speaks the dominant narrative of the establishments, not of the peoples’ version of how the establishment thrived on exploitation legacies. A history that has hitherto stood by the side of the unjust conventions of war as a solution, oppression as a ruling tool, and fraud as a valid tactic of gaining powerful positions.

Although the mainstream history would be funded to picture New York City through the lens of its founding ‘fathers’, its mayors, its judges, and the owners of the ‘Statue of Liberty’; the peoples’ history of the city will not forget this day as one of shame, and of systematic sham.

Tags: Saswat, LGBT, USA, Communism, Law

By Saswat Pattanayak

Gandhism and Leninism surely intersect at interesting crossroads. And they could be more pivotal than merely interesting. At the macro level they intersect at their common abhorrence towards militarism. At the micro level, they are one with the advocacy for community cooperatives. At both stages though, interests are similar: promote peace, for it is at this situation alone that cooperatives can exist. In every conceivable way, Gandhism and Leninism stressed on peace and cooperation because of their stress on workers’ welfare.

The question which naturally arises then is, if Gandhi believed in social emancipation of working class who worked in cooperatives. The answer is clearly yes, but the methods he would have employed would be different, some of the arguments follow. But I feel, relating Gandhi to working class struggle is as moot a question as relating need of violence to further state’s interest in Stalinist Russia.

I have always believed that Gandhi and Stalin (or you may say Lenin) both used the long-term goals of revolution as primary objective and immediate concerns as secondary. Gandhi’s call for tolerance in face of brutal murders of thousands of Indians was as stoically violent, as was the communist path to emancipation of working class in face of gory class wars.

How then were the goals in liberating Indian masses and emancipating Russian working class similar? The answer is, by the yardstick of labor. By the recognition of working tools. This is where the weapons of the masses come to focus. And Gandhi intersects with the Left.

Gandhian philosophy: From Hindu-centric to Workers-centric:
The critical question here, then is not to the extent that Gandhi respected working peoples’ tools, but how did he acquire this knowledge of need. Whereas Gandhi’s relation with the Left could be an inferred one, in oblivion to his own knowledge (although he has admired Lenin several times in his life and he had only great words to describe the revolutionary), his understanding of working peoples’ aspirations to self assertions is clearly an acquired knowledge.

The educated and well-off Gandhi upon his entry into India saw things similar to South Africa in terms of racism, but not in terms of economic class of peoples. This is important to understand because in South Africa, Gandhi stood for the interests of Indian trading class, not the most poorest economic class (who incidentally were the Blacks of Africa, not so much the browns of India). The only way he could get away with that slant of social justice was to claim to his nationalistic role, and his subsequent inevitable arrival in India to pursue that cause to his death.

What then, led to the transformation in Gandhi from being a Hindu nationalist, to craft a radical talisman; his core belief that he had to work for the ‘poorest of the poor’? What led to his famous declaration that every step that we make must be made towards welfare of only the Poorest of the Poor (the proletariat)? Obviously, his exposure to Gujarat did not do Gandhi any enlightenment. His association with industrialists and trading class of India (just like in South Africa) would have again led him astray into supporting the Indian bourgeois cause of petitioning in the Indian National Congress than walking across all villages to mobilize the greatest mass movement in the world history. What brought him the change, the new worldview?

It was Orissa, a state of India, that continues to be the poorest and most underdeveloped state of the vast country. And the chief architect of Orissa’s struggle for independence, Utkal Gaurav Madhusudan Das, whose birth anniversary was celebrated last week.

Teachings of Madhusudan Das:
Gandhi came to learn from Madhusudan Das that two things afflicted India the most: poverty and superstitions. Basically, the lack of class consciousness and adoption of religious practices. (Interestingly, those days, these two were also the primary motivations for the Bolsheviks to cause revolution in Russia.)

And the real life enactor of those struggles in India was Madhusudan Das. Gandhi knew of two postulates: that India was not poor historically, and its Gods were not discriminatory historically either. The ancient rich state of Orissa, and the most universally worshipped Lord Jagannath were the biggest riddles for Gandhi to solve. And in doing so, Gandhi would change his entire course of action, from representing the Congress (his initial interests in presiding it) to representing the people (his growing attachment to causes of peoples in daily lives). Gandhi wanted an end to religious chauvinism, to Hindu supremacists, to Brahminical casteists and to economic exploitators. For him, the role model was an Oriya of great eminence, Madhusudan Das.

Talking of how he started his struggle for freedom of his self and others, Gandhi pointed at both Jagannath culture and Orissan poverty as the eye-opening experiences. He said, “You know that in the whole of our country the land of Orissa is the dearest to me. As soon as I returned to India I began to hear of Orissa’s poverty and famine. We raised an amount and sent over Thakkar Bapa in the capacity of a servant of this afflicted province and organized famine relief.”

Those were the days when Orissa was really afflicted. Her Lord Jagannath was hijacked by the conquerors of the land who spoke different languages, pretended to be representative of Orissan people and instead forced opium addiction on the poor peasants, and the non-Oriya traders used their lobby to force brahminical supremacy over a large indigenous population of Orissa that were either highlanders or just forest dwellers. In a way, the poverty of mineral rich Orissa was brought on it by the ruling classes of adjoining states who also blackmailed some native Kings into forcing cultural seclusion (attempts to make Hindi a state language in Sambalpur, Bangali as language in rest of the state etc), religious dogmatism (project the Lord Jagannath from a universal goddess of peasant class, a black god representing the working class aspirations and the most secular one, for some of whose greatest followers came from religion of Islam too—the most famous being Bhakta Salabega, to a male god who banned entry of non-hindus and the oppressed), and enforced poverty (the spread of opium—literally in Orissa to keep it economically weak).

Few Oriya leaders who were educated and exposed to international working class movements took up the challenge to fight these three pronged reactionary overbearings of language-religion-economics issue. The primary of them was Utkal Gaurav Madhusudan Das, who went on to inspire Gandhi to lead national struggle against religious dogmatism.

Gandhi's struggle against the Hindu Conservatives & Reformists:
Gandhi said he could not give up his struggles against the Sanatanists (the hindu practitioners). Indeed, he went on to say, “I also realized that if I could serve Orissa somewhat I would by so doing serve India. Thus Orissa became for me a place of pilgrimage—not because the temple of Lord Jagannath was there—for it was not open to me, as it was not open to the Harijans—but because I thought of a novel way of touring the country for the sacred mission of the abolition of untouchability. I had heard that the so-called sanatanists were enraged at my mission of removing untouchability and would even try to frustrate it with violence. If they were really so minded, I said to myself, I should make their work easy by discarding the railway train and motor-car and trekking through the country. Moreover, people don’t go on a pilgrimage in cars and trains.

And if there was trouble in Puri because of the anger of the sanatanists, we could not flee from their wrath. It does not behove a satyagrahi to run away. We must face it. I could not do all this in a car or a railway train, and so I decided to perform the rest of the Harijan pilgrimage on foot. The temple of Lord Jagannath has the reputation of being the most famous in India, for there all human distinctions are supposed to vanish, and all sorts of people, Brahmin and pariah, brush shoulders with one another vying for the darshan of the Lord and even eat His prasad out of one another’s hands. But evidently it had outlived that reputation and the description had become a fiction, for the priests would not admit Harijans, but throw them out of the doors of the Lord of the World. I said to myself that so long as these distinctions of high and low endured before the very eyes of the Lord of the World, that Lord was not my Lord, that He was the Lord of the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas who exploited his name and kept Harijans out, but certainly not the Lord of the World. My ambition of restoring its old reputation to the temple is yet unfulfilled, and you have to help me in fulfilling it. So long as the doors of the Jagannath temple are closed to the Harijans, they are closed to me as well.”

This struggle of Gandhi against the Sanatan Dharmi or the Hindus, was inspired by Madhusudan Das of Orissa, who had himself, out of sheer disgust at Hindu supremacists had adopted Christianity, even if just to demonstrate that untouchability was not going to be practiced by him at any level and nor be tolerated.

Madhubabu's progressive roots:
If Gandhi learnt the lessons in racism at South Africa, he learnt the ways to deal with it, from Madhubabu (fondly so called). Madhubabu had set before Gandhi an example, which the latter would continuously refer to, while defining essence of what a human being should aspire for. Madhubabu, despite his high qualifications as a lawyer, not only opened a tannery in Cuttack, Orissa, but also worked there himself. He invested his own money, worked by his own hands and exemplified at least few core virtues that were to guide Gandhian philosophy in future: self-reliance, non-discrimination (since until then, only the “untouchables” were relegated the work of tanning), and relentless perseverance.

Gandhi was so moved by this living example that he wrote to industrialist GD Birla on September 27, 1925 (during his first series of struggles itself), to lend a helping hand to Madhubabu in his loss-making venture.
“Shri Madhusudan Das owns a tannery at Cuttack which he has developed into a limited company. I feel like acquiring a majority of its shares…. The tannery’s liabilities amount to Rs. 1,20,000. It is necessary to rescue it from this dead weight. The tannery uses only the hides of dead animals….; I would also like you to undertake its management. If that is not practicable, I shall find someone else who can manage it. The tannery has a few acres of land which I have seen myself. Shri Madhusudan Das has spent a considerable amount on it out of his own pocket.”

Gandhi acknowledged that there was a need for the country to be sensitized in the direction of thought that was pursued by Madhubabu. Indeed, he thought Madhusudan Das was showing light in the direction of future that India must strive towards: use of hands and feet to abolish class society (yet another Marxist principle) and establish an industrial climate based on vocation (a Soviet measure during that period). In “Navajivan” of September 23, 1928, Gandhi wrote an editorial, “This country needs an industrial climate. In the education of this country, the vocational aspect should constitute its dominant part. When this takes place, the students who will go on learning a craft will support their schools through it. Shri Madhusudan Das had conceived such a plan with regard to his tannery in Cuttack. The plan was a fine one. But it did not materialize as the prevailing atmosphere in the country provided no encouragement to vocational training or a tannery. Why should not carpentry be an indispensable part of our higher education? Education without a knowledge of weaving would be comparable to the solar system without the sun. Where such trades are being properly learnt, the students should be able to meet the expenses of their own schools. For this scheme to succeed, the students should have physical strength, will-power and a favorable atmosphere created by the teachers. If a weaver could become a Kabir, why cannot other weavers become, if not Kabirs, at any rate, Gidwanis, Kripalanis or Kalelkars? If a cobbler could become a Shakespeare, why cannot other cobblers become, if not great poets, at any rate, experts in the fields of chemistry, economics and such other subjects?”

Not just blatant untochability, but also the reformist Hindu argument (some quote Swami Vivekananda to substantiate it) that caste division is a necessity to maintain division of labor was completely quashed by Madhusudan Das in his own trade and by Gandhi in his following Madhubabu’s examples.


Need for Public Sector:
Madhusudan Das was not only the greatest fighter against caste and class society, he also enlightened Gandhi about the need to preserve the ethnic living arts of the peoples by welcoming industrialization on national terms (public sector industries). In the editorial on “Swedeshi vs Foreign” in Navajivan on June 19, 1927, Gandhi paid glowing tribute to Madhubabu for his works in words and deeds: “Raw materials worth crores of rupees are produced in this country and, thanks to our ignorance, lethargy and lack of invention, exported to foreign countries; the result is, as Shri Madhusudan Das has pointed out, that we remain ignorant like animals, our hands do not get the training which they ought to and our intellects do not develop as they should. As a consequence, living art has disappeared from our land and we are content to imitate the West. As long as we cannot make the machines required for utilizing the hide of dead cattle, worth nine crores, available in our country, I would be ready to import them from any part of the world and would still believe that I was scrupulously keeping of the world and would still believe that I scrupulously keeping the vow of swadeshi. I would believe that I would be only discrediting that vow by refusing, out of obstinacy, to import those machines. Similarly our country produces a great many things with medicinal properties, and those come back to us in the form of a variety of drugs or other articles. It is our duty to import any machines, and obtain any help, which will enable us to utilize these things in our own country. Swadeshi is an eternal religious duty. The manner of following it may, and ought to, change from age to age. The principle of swadeshi is the soul and khadi is its body in this age and in this country.”

Talking of “Deadly march of Civilization”, Gandhi said in Young India dated May 10, 1928, that “Under the guise of the civilizing influence of commerce the innocent people of Burma are being impoverished and reduced to the condition of cattle. As Sjt. Madhusudan Das has pointed out, people who merely work with cattle and forget the cunning of the hand by giving up handicrafts are impoverished not only in body but also in mind.”

Tolstoy and Madhusudan Das:
In support of workers’ unique contributions, and the needs for intellectuals to stand in solidarity and their participation in workers’ movements, Gandhi compared Madhusudan Das to Lev Tolstoy: “The late Madhusudan Das was a lawyer, but he was convinced that without the use of our hands and feet our brain would be atrophied, and even if it worked it would be the home of Satan. Tolstoy had taught the same lesson through many of his tales.” (Speech at a Marwari Shiksha Mandal on October 22, 1937)

Even as the British were busy creating the class society of high-paying bureaucrats and “lowly” peasants, Gandhi remained unruffled because he always had Madhubabu as the example to follow. At Birbol, in a village industries exhibition on March 25, 1938, Gandhi stressed again, “Man differs from the beast in several ways. As the late Madhusudan Das used to say, one of the distinctions is the differing anatomy of both. Man has feet and hands with fingers that he can use intelligently and artistically. If man therefore depended wholly and solely on agriculture, he would not be using the fingers that God has specially endowed him with. We will be worthy of being called human beings if we utilize our fingers. Moreover, mere agriculture cannot support us, unless it is supplemented by the work of the hands and the fingers.”

Khadi and genesis of the Mahatma:
Likewise, Gandhi’s core realization for stress on Khadi as a village industry came from Madhubabu’s legacy that he left behind. In a speech at a public meeting in Nagpur, Gandhi said on March 1, 1935, “It was during my walk in Orissa, in the course of my Harijan tour, that it was clearly brought home to me that the village industries must be revived if khadi is to be universal.
I could not have realized this in any tour by rail or car. As the late Madhusudan Das had said, our villagers were fast being reduced to the state of the brutes with whom they worked and lived as a result of the forced idleness in which they passed their days. If they continued in that state, not even independence would improve the state of India. I, therefore, decided that I must, even in the evening of my life, make a heroic effort to end this idleness, this inertia.
……..We have to employ all these crores of human machines that are idle, we have to make them intelligent machines, and unless cities decide to depend for the necessaries of life and for most of their other needs on the villages, this can never happen. We are guilty of a grievous wrong against the villagers, and the only way in which we can expiate it is by encouraging them to revive their lost industries and arts by assuring them of a ready market.”

Similarly at another public speech at Ramgarh on March 14, 1940, Gandhi said, “The true Indian civilization is in the Indian villages. The modern city civilization you find in Europe and America, and in a handful of our cities which are copies of the Western cities and which were built for the foreigner, and by him. But they cannot last. It is only the handicraft civilization that will endure and stand the test of time. But it can do so only if we can correlate the intellect with the hand. The late Madhusudan Das used to say that our peasants and workers had, by reason of working with bullocks, become like bullocks; and he was right. We have to lift them from the estate of the brute to the estate of man, and that we can do only by correlating the intellect with the hand. Not until they learn to work intelligently and make something new every day, not until they are taught to know the joy of work, can we raise them from their low estate.”

Workers' tools of freedom:
Workers’ self-reliance, their pride in their own hands and feet, their resistance to superstitious deviance, their need for correlation of intellect with the hand—Gandhi followed Madhu Sudan Das in his footsteps throughout in the struggle for peoples’ freedom.

The tools of the oppressed, according to Madhubabu were their own hands and feet. The tools of the oppressors were the opiums—religious and otherwise. Gandhi understood these basic tenets of human service from his great teacher-Madhusudan Das.

Today, in an increasingly sophisticated machinery world, as we inch more toward monopolistic corporate societies, lessons of Madhusudan Das should not be lost on us. And the dignity of each work, as Madhubabu used to preach and practice, should remain a hallmark in our collective thinking. For, only when we have learnt to appreciate the workers, can we distinguish the seeds of exploitations. Only when we acknowledge the contributions of the working class of the entire world, can we differentiate the ruling class of the unipolar world. Only by realizing that the part-time workers are exploited in the name of non-exemptness, in the name of disguised employment, in the name of unauthorized working permits etc, can we acknowledge that without these so-called low class workers, we would not even exist today as a human race. Workers deserve the rights they demand, in every parts of the world, and we must acknowledge that they deserve equal pay for equal works, no matter the nature of the work, as long as the hours are the same. For a change, like Madhubabu, we must prepare ourselves to undertake any kinds of works, just to be in solidarity with the working class interests, without any discriminations!

Tags: Saswat, Orissa, India, Communism, Colonialism, Capitalism, Racism

By Saswat Pattanayak

"Yes, the celebration of May Day has truly been made official. It has been celebrated by the state. The might of the state was evident in many ways. But is it not intoxicating to think that the state, until recently our worst enemy, now belongs to us and has celebrated 1 May as its greatest festival?
And yet, take my word, if this festival had only been official, it would have produced nothing but coldness and emptiness.
But no, the popular masses, the navy, the Red Army all true working people put their efforts towards it. And we can therefore say that this festival of labour has never been so beautiful."

Extract from A. V. Lunacharsky's diary for 1 May 1918, describing the May Day festivities in Petrograd.



When some Australian workers in 1856 first decided to organize and celebrate a no-work day on May 1, they had no idea how much they deserved it. Hence, despite their intent of participating in the event just one time, the day gained such prominence, not out of a media publicity or government endorsement, but because of the growing needs of the times for the workers to assert themselves.

During those days, the average work hours per week was 70 hours! No wonder May 1 celebration touched the lives of millions and immediately followed the Americans. Early in 1886, the Chicago employers were filching away from their employed, the privilege recently unreasonable length than ten or eleven hours. Against this familiar device of the masters, many meetings of the men were held in Chicago in the earlier months of 1886. One of these meetings was called in the Haymarket, for the evening of May 4th. It was called by the anarchists. A special protest was to be made against the killing of seven unarmed workers a few days earlier, outside McCormick's premises, by Pinkerton detectives. The speeches of the Anarchists before this particular occasion had been of the "sound and fury" type. There had been talk of bombs and the like. (To-Day, Nov 1887).

Even before it, on May 1 that year, working men mobilized in support of the eight-hour workday in cities across the United States. According to New York Times of May 2, 1886, in Chicago, “one good-sized procession, one small one, two small meetings, some gatherings too feeble to be called meetings, and less than 30,000 laboring men taking a holiday, either willingly or unwillingly, represent the first day of the era in which, it has been declared, eight hours shall constitute a day's work and 10 hours' pay shall be gotten for eight hours' work. The red flag has bobbed up here and there, some incendiary speeches have been made.”

NYT reported that the furniture manufacturers of St. Louis formed an association and unanimously resolved to operate their factories on the eight hours per day system after that day, on a basis of eight hours' wages. All the plumbers in the city, 200 in number, quit work that morning. They made a demand of the bosses that they adopt the eight-hour system without decreasing their wages, beginning to-day. Similar reports were filed from Indianapolis, Detroit, Milwaukee, Louisville, Washington, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, Troy, Hartford, New-Haven, Boston And Portland.

Soon after, the Resolution introduced by Raymond Lavigne, International Socialist Congress, Paris, July 20, 1889 summed up the intent for a truly International Labor Day. The International Socialist Congress in Amsterdam calls upon all Social-Democratic Party organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on May First for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace. The most effective way of demonstrating on May First is by stoppage of work. The Congress therefore makes it mandatory upon the proletarian organizations of all countries to stop work on May First, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers.

And as Leon Trotsky put it in 1924, the fundamental May Day demands were threefold: the eight-hour working day, for which generations of the working class have fought, the international solidarity of workers and the struggle against militarism.

And the visions, demands and struggles associated with May Day continue to reverberate in the collective hope of the entire working class of the world as they move from one form of industrial society to another! Long live, May Day!

Tags: Saswat, Communism, History, USSR, Academic, Literature, USA

By Saswat Pattanayak

May 1 has always been special to me. I am sure it is the same for many of my friends. More than 18 years ago on this day, we organized efforts to create an association of neighborhood children of Jayadev Vihar, Bhubaneswar. We must have been young and innocent then. Rakesh (Sabir Mohammad), Mituna (Mitrabhanu Mohanty), Jaji (Jayajit Dash), Munlu (Spandan Biswal) were few of the driving forces. Back then, world was not yet unipolar. Misha magazine printed at Soviet Union was widely adored. Beautiful cartoon narratives in this colorful magazine were always a big draw. Books like Situational Grammar and Eleven Stories for Boys and Girls formed part of the library we created over the years. Most households proudly and yet most unassumingly read great number of books for children and adults, published in the USSR.

The Children’s Library of Fancy Club indeed was a culminating collective. The collective had few rules. We would pay a minimum monthly due and spend it towards organizing quizzes, buying comic books, English classics, Soviet books and organizing some periodic events. Of course we would play Cricket and badminton and hockey and football and chess…!

Three years after, we changed the name to Pacific Club and expanded the base to include other fellow students from different neighborhoods. Pacific, to us, of course meant a change in direction. “Promote peace and reduce conflict.” This was in 1990-91. By this time, world was leaving us behind. We knew an essential component of our childhood—the association with Soviet literature—would no more be a visible part of daily life. Indeed with the ‘failure’ and ‘demise’ of the ideology, we would no more find similar books any longer at the book fairs. Where some stores would have the old copies, they would be sold at such dirt cheap prices that even purchasing them would seem burdensome. After all, if they are this throw-away, then they must indeed be.

Pacific Club, despite changes in the world political shiftings, started on a May 1 morning too! And we did not exactly know why, except that this was still the day we identified with as the dearest for us. Two years hence, when we again revisited how we were naming ourselves, we thought a transition from Fancy to Pacific was a necessity. And hence a transition from ‘Club’ to Aces would possibly be logical too. So we abandoned any remaining elitism to make ourselves (expanding membership bases still all the more) become more organized. By this time, computers started making their presence. Hand-written and typewritten membership forms were replaced by desktop publishing. Monthly dues increased slightly. We were in the high-schools already and needed to discipline ourselves more into maintaining catalogues, entries, monthly updates of magazines and books. The library continued to make impacts nevertheless. Weekly quizzes continued to happen.

Into colleges, and some of us still were in schools, other changes were promising to happen. Perestroika and Glasnost were two familiar words by now. For good or worse, the world was changing rapidly and a third-world country children were slightly feeling the tremors. Some amount of cooperativeness still prevailed. Suicides among students were still low. More children still smiled at Chacha Chowdhury than they did few years after.

When we all found ourselves in a hostile and oftentimes indifferent world, Tanjug helped conceptualize a Red Peace Movement while in Delhi, in 1998, and May 1 was still the date of its inception. When three years later, work on the Ego Magazine started as a collective editorial process, May 1 again launched the journal. Only last year when Whosemedia started to offer alternative tidbits, how could I not start on a May 1?

In one individual life, or in several of ours (Amarendra Paital, Ziauddin Ali, Biswanath Patnaik, Tanjug Singh, Hemant Rohella, M Ravi Kumar etc etc….), May 1 continued to impact. Just incidentally…Or intentionally as well..

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I am not sure if it was political. Or could it be at all political, when we were as young as 10 (and some of us were even younger!). But the only thing we could connect with May 1 was a word called ‘International’. It was the only international day of observance we ever knew. Among all the regional, religious and ethno-centric festivities that marked Indian society, May 1 was the single most international observation we could celebrate. And I guess, with the desire to know the world of Misha and Robinhood, we had somewhere fallen in love with the world itself. And May 1 stood out as the day of love.

With the resounding laughter of silent Charlie Chaplin, we were learning what an internationalist he was. With a Japanese-sole, British coat, a Russian hat, and an Indian heart, when Raj Kapoor died in 1989, we were too young to feel the loss. Or too international already to celebrate his legacy. Doordarshan (the Indian peoples TV) was not then corrupted by mythologies yet and it had great educational programs and solidarity serials. Biggest hit of the period was still Maine Pyar Kiya-one where the hero rejected his class society status and worked as a proletariat to prove his qualification as a worthy man. The 80’s India was a transitional period. One that killed Indira Gandhi, witnessed transfer of power in Soviet Union and one that paved the way for 90’s liberalization.

With globalization, one would have assumed that May 1 would become all the more celebrated. Ironically, the more liberalized we became, the less we felt passionate about international causes! African Fund or Non-Aligned Movement or SAARC—all lost relevance in the post-1991 era. Disarmament, Olympic Games or Parallel Cinema—all lost charm in the liberal age. The identification with worker’s movements in the local trade unions or in the larger understanding of 8-hour days were lost on us as we gradually entered the new era of free capital. And the sheer romanticism associated with peoples of the world was replaced by pragmatic failures of the utter money-market hardcore stoicism.

Today May 1 is a symbolism. Not a movement. In different parts, different strikes are being organized. Protest marches for variety of reasons. Just arbitrary dozens speaking-out and hundreds of people way scared to leave their workplace to come out. There is nothing international about the May 1 of 2006. Indeed the spirits are no more. Or are the spirits only there?

I don’t know about the future. For me, May 1 is a big day of introspection. May 1 spoke of the worldwide connection that we had. The Penpal friends we made out of intention. The postage stamps we collected to know the colors of the different lands. In the entire gamut of understanding how we were related to our families, our families to the society, the society to the state, the state to the country, the country to the continent, the continent to the world. May 1 connected us to possibilities of uniting with this world all the time, all the while. Not to connect superficially as hero-worshippers of western soaps or shopping malls. But to connect with other people “like us” who wanted peace and happiness for all.

May 1 helps me this year to think of what happened over the years. To connect the several associations and clubs and community organizations we formed while we were young, to the understanding of our global values. By recognizing ourselves more, we could identify with others all the more. The possibilities, and hopes for a better “world” was the mantra then. For a better world, we tried to learn of the world from the oppressed lenses. We never forgot we belonged to the third world. We never assumed the rest of the suffering population of the world as anything other than our dear friends.

What happened to the dreams of yesteryears when we all dreamt of equality of opportunities for all of us. When we talked of free housing, medical care and primary education. When we planned about free time to watch movies or read a folk story. When we thought of one world, one people, one public property sphere. When we envisioned there would not be some people too rich and too many people too poor. When working people will not live in fear of losing jobs, or getting underpaid or work as slaves in firms owned by slaveowners. When we dreamt we would respect each work with dignity, and not pay mental workers abnormally higher than we pay manual workers. When we thought we would not bomb countries endlessly, we would not destroy ecology mindlessly, and not make commodities off everything ceaselessly. We dreamt as much in the 80’s when we grew up in our early childhood and teens. With May 1 by our side!

Tags: Saswat, India, Orissa, Communism

Forthcoming events for May Day in the United States of America!

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Activism, USA

By Saswat Pattanayak

Fellow blogger Mahesh Poudyal sent me a link indicating a hope that Nepal’s big brother might at last, have decided to take peoples’ side now! I went carefully through the Indian foreign secretary Shyam Sharan’s statements that he was alluding to. And although I certainly stand by Mahesh’ sentiments and support his enthusiasm, I may have to disagree with some of his optimism.

What Sharan says in regards to Nepal is two-fold. One, he offers an apology for a diplomatic faux pas. Yes, India had officially chosen to support the twin pillar of ‘monarchy and democracy’. At least one element, the monarchy, was something that huge majority of Nepalese people had got thoroughly fed up of. And Sharan’s recent statement that everything should be rather left for people of Nepal to decide is a poor rejoinder to correct the official stance. Two, even as he said it, this was an apology that was not meant to be. Because Indian administration still continues its big-brotherly demeanor towards Nepal, even within this narrative. I will explain the stances.

Apology:
The twin pillars of constitutional monarchy and multi-party democracy is a hoax. Sharan, and every matured Indian strategist knows that no place can have both a democracy and a monarchy at the same time. Or at least when they are together, the existence is based upon dominance of one over another. In Sweden, the monarchy is a misnomer. And in Saudi Arabia, the democracy is.

The reason why Government of India officially lends support to the twin pillars is to maintain the status quo. For the alternative, long struggled for by the militant leftists, has simply not been an acceptable position for India. So India would rather have a Hindu royal killer call the shots, than have godless landless communists take over.

It was this apprehension that always led India’s cautious stance towards its neighbors and dealing with them through its Shark (spelled SAARC) diplomacy. The ruling elites of India, forever afraid of its own peoples’ movements clearly have never understood the resentments of peoples of neighboring countries against their own ruling elites. Except for a brief period when Indira Gandhi decisively stood with Bangladeshi peoples, India has always continued its apathy towards neighboring peoples’ struggle against their ruling class. And so, the administration’s ‘welcoming’ Nepalese King’s suggestions should not have left Indian foreign secretary chuckling after a day. India rendered a rather much delayed reaction only after the consistently engaged active resistance led by brave Nepalese peoples on the streets that invited global attention.

And Sharan, chose the biggest diplomatic line that’s never practiced, as the quick fix remedy: We have nothing to do with another country’s problems. Let their people decide.

Not an apology:
It’s well known that Indian administration welcomed Nepalese monarchy, even though it did not have a necessity to lend a supportive ear to a brutal anti-democratic regime. And yet, at the same breadth, upon this realization, India has officially never condemned the monarchy for its anti-people stances, even as now, there is a necessity to offer some constructive criticisms, at the very least. When India mouths ‘words of support’ to the unjust regime, then Sharan does not see it as an interference! Only when despite pricking conscience, India decides to remain silent, then the bureaucrat justifies it on grounds of non-interference policy! Nice for the dynasty. Unfair to the people who are braving police atrocities just so that someone will take notice and come to aid.

But with due respects, Mr Sharan’s sentiments are suspect. “Not accepting or refusing” King’s offer does not amount to “not taking sides”. Every diplomat of any worth should know that indifference means taking sides of the present ruling class. By not “condemning” in strongest possible words the police atrocities of Nepalese monarchy, its inhuman curfew impositions that has claimed more than a dozen civilian lives in the hands of perpetrators, and its continued state of emergency that has paralyzed peoples’ liberties –India has actively demonstrated its role in letting things remain the way they are, in effect, in favor of the monarchy.

Not only India has chosen sides to support the monarchy, simply by not supporting the people who are on the streets now, it has also chosen to amplify its anti-people stance too, by condemning the Maoists. Sharan says, “When we said India stands for multiparty democracy and constitutional monarchy, we were reflecting nothing more than what the people of Nepal themselves and the political parties themselves had committed to. So, you should not take this as something that was prescribed by the Government of India.”

This is the classic case of double-talk. Obviously, for Sharan, ‘people’ must be a different breed. For he and his likes have always conveniently overlooked the people who have been oppressed and murdered because of anti-people regime in Nepal. For, these are not the people who have ever welcomed “constitutional monarchy” as much as Indian administration has fancied.

Naturally enough, Sharan says, “We are in touch with the political parties and we have been in touch with the Palace as well essentially to try and play as constructive a role as we can to defuse the situation. We have not been in touch with the Maoists.” That the Government of India is in touch with the Palace and yet not in touch with the main opposition, the Maoists, says a lot about the governmental bias. For more than decade, Maoists have been the only group of people protesting monarchy on matters of principles, and Indian administration has not just ignored them, but also condemned them from time to time. Within its own territory, Indian government has outlawed any such outfit too. Sharan knows only too well, that unlike anywhere else in the world, Maoists have a huge support base in Nepal among common people. So is there an official line?

Sharan says, “If there are negotiations through which the Maoists can be brought into the political mainstream, but on the basis of the principles of multiparty democracy and on the clear abandonment of violence as a political tool, I think this is something that should be welcomed. So, yes, certainly there is a need for them to be brought into the political mainstream but it has to be on the basis of the principle of multiparty democracy and the renunciation of violence.”

It’s another classic case of big-brother arrogance. First to think that “multiparty democracy” is the solution, is to address the event, not the issue. India, the greatest multiparty democracy in the world, is a cruel joke in the name of participatory governance. Of course the bureaucrats gain the most from such system in India, and hence Sharan may not see the problem as yet. But people in Indian subcontinent know only too well, the fallacies of multiparty democracies in countries that do not have basic living amenities. No country is yet ripe for a true electoral democracy, simply because the developing economies (and large parts of first world as well) are just full of ignorant people devoid of any critical knowledge to distinguish one party from another. In so-called democracies, they merely end up voting one rogue or the other. And because enticing words like ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ are so addictive, and have a subsuming power to overwhelm people to sense of inaction, they are the least challenged terms as well. They are the most effective way to maintain ruling class status quo and ruling elites everywhere always benefit from such rhetoric.

Secondly, Sharan knows he is beating around the bush deliberately when he talks of bringing Maoists to “mainstream politics” through clear abandonment of violence as a political tool. First this is deliberate because he knows that left wing political activists are not “mainstream” politicians, and neither are they going to preach Gandhism (nor does nuclear power state India does, btw). Second, Sharan needs to remind himself that India is cozily in touch with the “Palace” which is owned by a violent oppressor of the first degree, who is a trigger-happy police-state ruler. Before actually “interfering” with Nepalese peoples’ aspirations of supporting the so-called violent Maoists who get killed every now and then, over the Palace, (out of the 14 deaths, Maoists did not kill a single person. 13 were killed civilians killed by ruling power!), Indian administration needs to mend its own ways.

Tags: Saswat, Nepal, Communism, Third World

So who do the largest democracies of the world recognize? The power of the monarch, or the power of the people?

Who do the India, USA, EU listen to? The Nepali royal's roars, or the Nepali subjects' pleas?

Whose ways and manners the so-called civilized approve of? The gun-trotting police hounds; the abusers of basic human rights; the murderers of hapless civilians; the killers of women, children, the unemployed youth; the police dogs of a royal murderer-aggressor; the oppressors of teeming unheard millions?

Or

the marginalized voices long silenced; the women who refuse to anymore tolerate; the children with the non-violent weapon of protest; the organized unemployed; the unduly browbeaten; the peoples who remind the rest of the world that if not for 'advanced' world's stoic privileged indifference, they would be also be enjoying lives of dignity.

More power to the Nepalese peoples for freedom, liberty, and ‘real’ democracy—-none of which is ever bestowed, nor negotiated, nor offered as a compromise.

The white American freedom was not ‘granted’ through negotiations with the Kings of England, the elite French liberty was not attained via cowardly compromise either, the bourgeois Indian democracy was not gifted by well-meaning British—each of them were snatched, and millions sacrificed their lives in protest against the oppressors.

‘Tis time, the preachers of today realized the only options they have left the Nepalese (and so many indigenous peoples in India too) are sense of frustration, alienation and revolution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More pictures here....

Tags: Saswat, Nepal, Communism, War, Third World

By Saswat Pattanayak

“This is our function. Our Founding Fathers understood that government by its nature tends to oppress those it has power over. Our Founding Fathers decided that there must be, there had to be, there should be and there is, an institution that keeps an eye on government. That is what we do. There is nothing in the Constitution about the freedom to practice law. There is nothing in the Constitution about the freedom to practice medicine. There is nothing in the Constitution about the freedom to engage in commerce. There is nothing in the Constitution about teaching or learning. But there is something in the Constitution about the freedom of the press. Our Founding Fathers understood that it would be necessary to have a watchdog on government, and that is our role: to keep a watch out.”
--Jack Anderson (1922-2005) in a speech at Utah State University six years ago.

Even the legendary Anderson was under the illusion!

And as the documents of one of the greatest investigative journalists, are now being accessed by FBI for editing, his thundering words of trust in the freedom of press falls short of vindication.

Anderson’s family wants to donate his papers to George Washington University. And NPR reports that the FBI wants to review the archive and remove items it deems confidential.

Question is not about the onus of ownership. It’s certainly neither about the authenticity of what should be considered ‘confidential’. It’s not even about respecting the right of Anderson’s family to put forth the request.

What’s at stake is what’s being excavated. What’s at stake is the nature of materials that Anderson had access to, both as the friend of McCarthy, and subsequently as his nemesis. As being member of the then American President’s notorious list. As arch-enemy of the then FBI’s director, possibly the most illustrious director of all time. As someone constantly distancing himself from the powerful and always aligning himself with the working class sources. As an example, today completely lacking among mediocre media showbiz.

Anderson attested how the so-called ‘cold war’ has been fraught with several hot-blooded wars that have caused millions of deaths. And Anderson’s contribution to exposing at least parts of that cannot be undermined. Recently official documents released by White House showed America’s active role in destabilizing Indian subcontinent. It confirmed the Nobel Prize for Peace winner Henry Kissinger’s actual Warmongering motives. It showed how misunderstandings were being deliberately created between Vietnam, China and USSR, for gains that would cause genocides in Bangladesh.

And coming into light of these knowledge is no mean achievement. For one, it clearly demonstrate that so-called democratic regimes are not governed either by its peoples (most Americans are peace-loving working class people), or for its peoples (most Americans suffer the burdens of international terrorism). And most importantly, Anderson’s documents clearly deconstruct the larger narrative of North-South, First World-Third World dichotomies, where traditionally, even according to primary textbooks, people from the “underdeveloped” economies are mean-minded savages. Anderson’s documents prove quite an upset to that.

Anderson also exposed CIA conspiracy to assassinate Fidel Castro. He too exposed threadbare the FBI Hoover’s various dubious, and often monstrous links. He traced to core the position of Mafia in American political circles. As the longest running and widest read political commentator of the country, his readers believed he and his team investigated daily, what Woodward and Bernstein did just once in Watergate.

And many of the papers, apart from their gory portrayals of sinister cold war period, could actually educate the entire country on more authentic history of the peoples, from the lens someone who stood in the circle of the people, than basked in the glories of the official press lobby. And for these acts of conviction, during his lifetime, his murder was attempted by top political agents. And today, after his death, its way ironic, that he would even to this day haunted by the people in power for his documents.

For in his lifetime, he would not have let anyone take possession of the papers, in order to hide them. For an investigative journalist, the entity lies in “exposing” the findings to the public and “concealing” the source. Not, exposing the sources, and concealing the findings. No matter, the intentions of the founding fathers, as Anderson quotes, the foundation understanding of press functions lack authenticity today.

Tags: Saswat, Media, USA, Academic, Communism, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.


Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
(Bob Dylan (1963). His anthem for the American Freedom Movement of the 60's!)

Class societies thrive on racial discriminations. And Europe provides the recent most glaring example.

In November 2005, when a huge number of young people from the minority communities protested in France, it was being called a riot. The race-blindness that afflicts the privileged French exhibited its true color when the Blacks and the Muslims were being systematically deprived of what has been their overdue.

Of course the skepticism was thus because the protestors were immigrant youths who took to the street to register their discomfort against mass-scale discriminations. Although it continued for weeks, there were no signs of organized violence or even sporadic assaults. They could not yet be termed as the so-called “terrorists” for acts they never committed. But they were treated as just short of it. The French government did not care a franc for their demands. The elite people of the mainland France turned their cheeks to the “Other France”—the France which we rarely read about, the France that is suppressed beneath the sleaze and neon of perfumes and Eiffel Tower.

In November, the official statements coming from France dismissed the protests as riots that needed to be controlled by the police state. And control they did. Towing the democratic norms, the country went back to business as normally as possible. The resisting voices were silenced. The media changed headlines and the protestors were detained mass-scale.

I talked to some of my friends from Europe who professed complete ignorance regarding consequences of such vandalism. They claimed it was just a minority work and is probably a race thing, but since the government says France has no race issues, then it must be just some kind of agitation. It will be over very soon, just like the strikes at Charles de Gaulle.

Well, undermining the race factor came easy for the administration the last time. But the embarrassing fact is that Muslims still constitute the largest proportion of unemployed youth in that color-blind country.

This time, more than a million French youths are on the streets! They have actively and vociferously supported the just demands of the “immigrant youths” who took to the streets last November. Not only that, a huge majority of French youths, of all colors have decided to follow the examples of the minority protestors. This must be really awkward for the administrators to know, but historically, every race based conflict has culminated into a larger class warfare where majority of working class people have always lent their support to the discriminated social minorities.

The elites, who are elites both in terms of their inherited race privileges and acquired class privileges must be on guard now, because they are now going to combat not just some small group of disciplined protestors who are too scared to harm anyone, but a huge majority of disenchanted, alienated organized youths who are not scared to topple the power structure.

Hundreds of youths have already been involved in violence that saw bottles and rocks hurled at the police and journalists and left at least two cars burned, three others overturned and dozens damaged. Railways have been blockaded, airports disrupted, and up to two thirds of France's universities and schools have been occupied or disrupted. Clashes with police have been occurring throughout the country.
Some of the Indymedia pics demonstrate the facets that the mainstream media is gleefully ignoring: That it is a united effort by people of all races who are affected economically. This is a large scale Class war, and it can happen anywhere in today's world!

The so-called democratic state will obviously not wake up. It has proven what a zilch it cares for labor laws when it proclaims that young people can be fired anytime without any reason! The Union-bias of French administration sounds as shallow as the Liberal-bias of American media. The lip-service has been done for way too long now. The reality is that no law in the world has ever been passed in favor of the working people anywhere until and unless the people have taken to mass demonstration to demand for fair treatment. The French students, just like the American students in the times of Dylan in the 60’s, are demanding for social justice, anti-war stances, pro-minority treatments, and secured pro-labor laws. France is reeling under huge unemployment rates, starting from 10% for the Whites to 50% for the minorities. 80% of all education institutes are under-funded and in even worse shape than the equally less-talked about public schools in Washington DC. Only a small elite population, just like in the days of the royals (not that it has withered away anywhere from the enlightened Europe), keep enjoying the privileges of secured life.

Vilgot Sjöman had created I am Curious-Blue and Yellow, to showcase the class society of Sweden even at the prime of its so-called claim to petty bourgeois socialism. And the film revealed in multi-layers the utter hypocrisy that exists among Swedish society that claims to have socialist pro-labor stances and yet thrives only upon a class society assumption. People everywhere in Swedent were shown justifying why manual workers need to get paid much less than the thinking elites.

In France of today, the situation is no different. All these underfed schools are producing students in an atmosphere that does not respect manual labor works. French government not only projects its elitist biases in promoting the cultures of France as that of a monolithic sophistication, it even looks at the societal unrest issues from that very lens (of elitism). Unfortunately, the governments in such hoax democracies that do not give two hoots even to its future (the young insecure students) will always be run by the elites, for the elites.

Race war, it could have avoided despite Algerian crisis, but the class war is one the whole of Europe will need to watch out for; for the crisis rests not in Africa, its actually nearer home. Right outside the windows.

Tags: Saswat, France, EU, Capitalism, Colonialism, Racism, Communism

By Saswat Pattanayak

As an initial conversation with the Unrepentant Marxist Louis Proyect regarding the Indian revolutionaries, I produce in full a letter written by Bhagat Singh to his father Sardar Kishan Singh, who in the eve of judgment submitted a petition to the trial judges for permission to produce a defense witness to save his son.

I have typed it out from a chapter written by Bhagat Singh’s friend and comrade Bejoy Kumar Sinha. For reproducing this work, I am thankful to the Delhi-based People’s Publishing House for the book “India’s Freedom Struggle: Several Streams”, edited by Sarkar, Bardhan, & Balaram, 1986; and to my dear father who introduced me to this work of eternal significance.

The letter is being published online for the first time to commemorate March 23, 1931-- the date that saw Bhagat Singh’s martyrdom. I am sure readers will go beyond the sentiments to view a glimpse of India’s freedom struggle, and yet understand that the deep seated well meaning sentiments do affect revolutionary goals negatively at many times. The line between professed selfish love and practiced social goals need to be one of the bold revolutionary nature, sans which it becomes quite easy to tow the line of individualistic aspirations and solely personal freedoms.

There are too many distractions in the world today, from Ayn Rand to God Blessed Flags; from salary hikes to Friday parties; from getting an Oprah ticket to being ticketed for drunk driving; from life on the celebrity fast lanes to life on edge of thrilling video games; and it’s quite easy to fall prey to the “good family”, or “happy couple” theories of the heterosexist preachers and the model minority status of the aspiring educated urban youths. Too many temptations, I am sure.

However, there are just a very few goals in order to attain social justice for the most, and despite that, its often invariably less taken. And they are not so difficult to head towards, if one knows that individual life is as precious as one’s convictions would lead one to believe. Bhagat Singh as an instance, clearly overlooked, ignored and trampled the individual yardsticks (and came down heavily on his ‘good-family’ background in the following letter) when it came to deciding between the individual liberty and social equality principles, and clearly upholding the need of social equality, he took the road less taken.

At the same time, its important to remember that he never acted alone, and never on an impulse. Never as a terrorist. Never as a trigger-happy war-monger. Never as a violent reactionary.

He was a great organizer and agitator, and to educate his own self and that of his comrades, he looked into oceans of progressive literatures. His was a planned commitment to attainment of freedom from imperialistic designs, not just a national liberation that would have transferred power from the colonialists to petty bourgeois. As this following letter would amply show: he was “pursuing a definite policy”.

I am always deeply moved by Bhagat Singh’s sacrifices and so have at times found his death was in vain. There have been such occasions while looking at the state of affairs among today’s youths when it has seemed so very hopeless. Yet, revolutionaries do not look backwards to proceed, they look back only to learn so as to march forward even with greater vigor. Hence the reality is that Bhagat Singh must continue to be an inspiration to many of us in our different worlds and we must feel the resonance every time there is a struggle against religious fundamentalism, against irrational superstitions, against orthodoxy, against conservatism and against narrow nationalists. Every time there is an uncompromising battle against the warlords, the police states, the rogue powerholders, a battle that has international sentiments echoing with the courage of Che Guevera and valor of Salvador Allende. All of them have represented the need of global unity against forces of injustice, against mighty powers of economic and social exploiters.

I am sure the following letter is a good prologue to the example we need to exemplify:

“Respected dear father,
“I was astounded to learn that you had submitted a petition to the members of the Special Tribunal in connection with my defense. This intelligence proved to be too severe a blow to be borne with equanimity. It has upset the whole equilibrium of my mind. I have not been able to understand how you could think it proper to submit such a petition at this stage and in these circumstances. In spite of all the sentiments and feeling of a father, I don’t think, you were at all entitled to make such a move on my behalf without even consulting me. You know that in the political field my views have always differed with those of yours. I have always been acting independently, without having cared for your approval or disapproval.

“I hope you can recall to yourself that since the very beginning you have been trying to convince me to fight my case very seriously and to defend myself properly. But you also know that I was always opposed to it. I never had any desire to defend myself and never did I seriously think about it, whether it was a mere vague ideology or that I had certain arguments to justify my position, is a different question and that cannot be discussed here.

“You know that we have been pursuing a definite policy in this trial. Every action of mine ought to have been consistent with that policy, my principles and the program. At present the circumstances were altogether different but had the situation been otherwise, even then I would have been the last man to offer defense. I had only one idea before me throughout the trial, i.e., to show complete indifference towards the trial in spite of the serious nature of the charges against us. I have always been of opinion that all the political workers should be indifferent and should never bother about the legal fight in the law courts and should boldly bear the heaviest possible sentences inflicted upon them. They may defend themselves but always from purely political considerations and never from a personal point of view. Our policy in this trial has always been consistent with this principle. Whether we were successful in that or not is not for me to judge. We have always been doing our duty quite disinterestedly.

“In the statement accompanying the text of the Lahore Conspiracy Case Ordinance the Viceroy had stated that the accused in this case were trying to bring both law and justice into contempt. The situation afforded us an opportunity to show to the public whether we were trying to bring law into contempt or whether others were doing so. People might disagree with us on this point. You might be one of them. But that never meant that such moves should be made on my behalf without my consent or even my knowledge. My life is not so precious – at least to me – as you may probably think it to be. It is not at all worth buying at the cost of my principles. There are other comrades of mine whose case is as serious as that of mine. We had adopted a common policy, and have so far stood shoulder to shoulder, so shall we stand to the last—no matter how dearly we have to pay individually for it.

“Father, I am quite perplexed. I fear I might overlook the ordinary principles of etiquette, and my language may become a little bit harsh while criticizing or rather censuring this move on your part. Let me be candid, I feel as though I have been stabbed at the back. Had any other person done it, I would have considered it to be nothing short of treachery, but in your case let me say that it has been a weakness—a weakness of the worst type.

“This was the time when everybody’s mettle was being tested. Let me say, father, you have failed. I know you are as sincere a patriot as one can be. I know you have devoted your life to the cause of Indian independence; but why at this moment have you displayed such a weakness? I cannot understand.

“In the end I would like to inform you and my other friends and all the people interested in my case, that I have not approved of your move. I am still not at all in favor of offering any defense. Even if the court had accepted that petition submitted by some of my co-accused regarding defense etc., I would have not defended myself. My applications submitted to the Tribunal regarding my interview during the hunger-strike were misinterpreted and it was published in the press that I was going to offer defense, though in reality I was never willing to offer any defense. I still hold the same opinion as before. My friends in the Borstal Jail will be taking it as a treachery and betrayal on my part. I shall not even get an opportunity to clear my position before them.

“I want that the public should know all the details about this complication and therefore, I request you to publish this letter.
Yours obediently,
Bhagat Singh”

Tags: Saswat, India, Colonialism, Communism, Literature, Atheism

By Saswat Pattanayak

The lesson that China provides is simple, yet very revealing. True that the old guards of the left haven’t had a say in decades, during which periods, puppets of free markets, like Jiang Zemin have only created a “privatized” communist party by allowing business houses to have a say in the country’s governance. It’s also true that the current president Hu Jintao has proved no better with his pro-market initiatives whereby China allows FDIs worth billions in its continued commitment to the World Trade Organization, the single biggest global testament of capitalism.

Alongside, Wen Jiabao, who can be called the Manmohan Singh of China, in that both the prime minister are famous for their constant adoration of a brand of liberalization that promotes national growth only to increase rich-poor divide, has also kept the official policies of China in line with free market than socialist economy.

Clearly it signals two things: after its official differences with the erstwhile Soviet Union following Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in early 60’s and of the Soviet-Chinese border clash in the mid-60’s (following Czech crisis), the US of A has grown to be a bigger player in determining Chinese future courses. It became apparent also recently with the unfolding of Nixon archives , where it was found that the US was clearly subverting the subcontinent region by playing China and Pakistan against India in Indira Gandhi’s pro-Soviet decision to liberate Bangladesh. If not in relative types, in certain degrees more or less, the bipolar world (highly ideology driven, and entirely governed by conspirators who were no mythical then as active they are today) has continued to exist.

I would argue that from an entirely Eurocentric view, the end of cold war may have signaled an end to bipolarism and hence led to the demise of the ideological battles. But from an international peoples’ viewpoint, this is entirely untrue. First, the cold wars were never cold—the obsession to contain communism from spreading caused to numerous mass-scale wars initiated by the pro-capitalist lobby of western militarists in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Secondly, after the demise of Soviet Union, the philosophy and practice of communism never withered away. Rather quite a few places in the world started grappling with the fact that the power of capitalist lobby that they were in constant tussle with, in cooperation with the erstwhile Soviet Union, were looming yet larger without the union. It led even Fidel Castro to buckle under pressure, letting Cuban economy go liberal (a topic not often discussed, lest it becomes another classic case of study to see the disparities in economy during and after a socialist economy). Likewise, just about the same time that his long time friend Nelson Mandela had declared emancipation of working class in the South Africa, to avoid a further escalation of peoples’ armies, the world body “granted” immediate power to the African National Congress, not to lead a revolution by no means, but to conduct structural adjustments with the oppressor class of the country and simmer down the power of its revolutionary peoples forever by singing the garb of newly declared (and never found) freedom. The 90’s heralded the so-called liberation of Eastern European economies too—Czech, long considered as occupied (by the western media), the Poland of its Pope, who never lost interest in ranting his anti-communist views in every trip to his land, and in his enthusiast trips to all lands the then communistic. In other words, the economic pressures, after the systematic downfall of the Russian communism definitely led to (in)voluntary end of many socialist economies in the world. The capitalism had succeeded to intervene in many countries, by sheer intervention, blackmailing, and economic hijacking.

But what had not ended was the bipolarity of the world. What had never ended was the battle of ideologies. With the much less publicized, way less talked about hundreds of events of protests against the world trade organization (the holy cow of capitalism, considering the fates of people who voiced anything undesirable about it) in several countries of the world, where millions of protestors clearly represented the unified voices of the billions of underrepresented people of the world, the private media industry refused to acknowledge these contradictions of its ‘free world’.

With the homegrown crises of capitalism rocking its world, increasing the poverty circles in the so-called western societies, the ruling elites (who also call themselves G-7) decided to shift focus from their unique needs (a la Nato) to massive onslaughts on the economies that still refused to partake in its expansion mode (a la Wars). What we saw in the early 90’s throughout the world was a with-the-enemy-or-with-us approach to free trade agreements. By the mid 90’s, several of those poor yet dignified countries of the so-called third world had already succumbed to the papers. Those who did not, or did so partially, (like India’s yes to markets, and no to NPT), there have been pressures which would eventually make them do so. Recently, Indian PM’s overly enthusiastic agreement to everything that was on the offing is one indication. Not only during the late 90’s, the partners in crime of global militarist lobby, the Indian right wing party BJP was allowed to conduct the N-test, thus leaving behind a corpse of past glories of disarmament advocacies, but with the present Singh government, the unabashed partner in crime of the global capitalist lobby, it was allowed to enter into nuclear pact –very soon it will also sign the NPT. Ha! Don’t be surprised—and go have a dance of death on the debris.

Again, not to say that the entire country of India was dancing on the deathbed of its dignity. Indeed a huge majority of people in China or India –that comprise the majority of people in the world, by the way—work in agrarian sector (if that helps to shatter the myth of a “great Chinese consumer class”, a “great Indian middle class” or “the hi-tech India/China&rdquo and they did not dance to the tunes of mantras that would bereft them from whatever they still have—a home in the forest they do not want to give away to the industrialists, a village by the river they do not want to sacrifice, a low rent apartment in the cities they do not want to let go for their inability to pay higher on the same, a medical bill that continues to spiral by global price rise, a grocery bill that rises in price for essential commodities. This refusal to buckle under pressure to the high price rise of essential commodities, a avowed disapproval to any moral deviation from the disarmament pledge, an economic decision to live cooperatively, a social rejection of the conditions leading to disparities between the elites and the poor—this is an ideology that’s shaped to counter its only one opponent—the high priests and missionaries of corporate capitalism.

The most glaringly obvious example today can be found in China today. The introduction of a bill to usher in right to privileges to the private property owning class, has been challenged highly and mightily by the minority left law makers, making it almost difficult to bridge away from the main question. The question, that was being taken for granted for so long as a non-existent one. A question when answered will show not the predictable fall of communism, but the predictable trends of market economy that result in greater divide between the rich and the poor. In the resurgent neo-capitalist China of 10% annual economic growth, the disparities between the rich and the poor has in fact grown in the proportion of 3.3:1. The case for every capitalist economy is more or less same or worse today in the world, with the flagship country US reeling under economic crises of the poor majority which it refuses to officially acknowledge. But the crack, beginning with China, has started to show and the pundits of market reforms better watch out.

The national economic growth does not have anything to do with the poorest section of the society, purely because the line of development, until taken in the direction of cooperative economic emancipation, will not broaden its base to be inclusive; rather from a purely economic sense of competitive market economy in a capitalist or neo-capitalist society what will prevail are monopolistic trends, bringing in more profits alone, to stay exclusively elitist. For all we know from our basic standards of education, profits are differentiated from welfare in that, they are hoarded for personal greed, not distributed for social benefits.

Tags: Saswat, China, Economics, Communism, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak

With February being declared and celebrated as the African-American Month in this country, it is only apt that we need to reflect upon the history a bit and evaluate for ourselves where we are up until now, and if this actually tantamount to celebration.

A couple of years ago, on my journey to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, I did a small survey of the personalities, events and processes that are given due recognition and the tones attached to them. Specific to my interest was the reception to the most brilliant African-American by any yardstick: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.

Since a couple of weeks now, I have been again approaching few students to get an idea of what they know of Du Bois and how they came to know of it. The students I interacted with came from different races, they studied various subjects and are well-educated in American schools.

The findings are predictable: there is an official version of telling history. We know it when we have the flawed historical account of Columbus (that he was a great sailor who discovered America!) or of Helen Keller (that she was a blind girl who lived the American Dream of demonstrating how anyone can do anything if one sets her mind at it). In case of Du Bois, it is no different at all. So the acclaimed Museum or the educated youths have the official history: that Du Bois was a great African American leader (some also hesitatingly add, “Pan-African” leader who founded NAACP and edited The Crisis).

What the official version never gets into is the roots. In case of Columbus, the history books don’t tell us that he was a greedy, inhuman oppressor who took pleasure in leading the murder trials and silencing thousands of indigenous peoples who had discovered America long before he even chanced upon it. In case of Helen Keller, the history books don’t tell us about her life spent amidst trade unions, calling for socialist revolution and standing up for the working class, and actually challenging American Dream by saying that it’s not an individual’s talent, but the overarching socio-political structure that creates standards of living.

Likewise, what most scholars today do not mention, let alone describe, is Du Bois’ firm rejection of the American capitalism (including the Black Capitalism) and how very emphatically he has proposed alternatives to the same. Most young people are clearly not aware of his political standpoints. And the text book biographies, when I was going through, never mentioned Du Bois’ politics either.

As though to celebrate him as a Black success in America, the extractions applied relate to his undeniable founding of an organization that encouraged people of every color and races to join force. That sounded to the mainstream historians as one cause of celebration that might have dawned upon the man in his American dream. Indeed, one book taught at the graduate level in the universities declares that Du Bois was in fact recipient of privileged education because of absence of racism in his school! (It conveniently misses out the discriminations he faced in Fisk University.) The books also take much pleasure in describing in detail the differences he had with Booker T Washington. The texts are full of grander narrative of a biographical sketch which is at its best, little informative, and in its worst, plain misleadingly boring.

Du Bois’ lifelong quest to improve the lot of humankind through active resistance to war-discrimination-capitalistic greed, to educate majority of people of their own shared histories of oppression by minority rulers, to enlighten us of our abject ignorance of social complexities, to encourage the pursuit of scientific outlook at understanding historical inequalities have all been omitted.

Omitted from essential readings are his indictment under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (where due to lack of evidence, he was subsequently released)! Omitted are refusals of the US Govt to grant him his passport when he was abroad, and so omitted are how he and his wife renounced the citizenships and became citizens of Ghana. After all, to create a legend, to put him on postage stamp (30 years after his death) demands that certain pages of his life be publicly censored. Unfortunately, the leaves of his life that have been trampled over contain the essence of all that he stood for. For social justice everywhere. None of the students I talked to could even guess that Du Bois had anything to do with the Left. And for them, and also because today marks his birthday, I reproduce the letter he wrote to CPUSA justifying why he must choose his side. His dreams may have been unfinished. But the reminders sure buzz:

The letter appeared in "The Worker" on Nov. 26, 1961:

“On the first day of October, 1961, I am applying for admission to membership in the Communist Party of the United States. I have been long and slow in coming to this conclusion, but at last my mind is settled.

In college I heard the name Karl Marx, but read none of his works, nor heard them explained. At the University of Berlin, I heard much of those thinkers who had definitively answered the theories of Marx, but again, we did not study what Marx himself had said. Nevertheless, I attended the meetings of the Socialist Party and considered myself a Socialist.

On my return to America, I taught and studied for sixteen years. I explored the theory of Socialism and studied the organized social life of American Negroes; but still I neither read or heard much of Marxism. Then I came to New York as a official of the new NAACP and editor of the Crisis Magazine. The NAACP was capitalist oriented and expected support from rich philanthropists.

But it had a strong Socialist element in its leadership in persons like Mary Ovington, William English Walling and Charles Edward Russell. Following their advice, I joined the Socialist Party in 1911. I knew then nothing of practical socialist politics and in the campaign of 1912, I found myself unwilling to vote the Socialist ticket, but advised Negroes to vote for Wilson. This was contrary to Socialist Party rules and consequently I resigned from the Socialist Party.

For the next twenty years I tried to develop a political way of life for myself and my people. I attacked the Democrats and Republicans for monopoly and disenfranchisement of Negroes; I attacked the Socialists for trying to segregate Southern Negro members; I praised the racial attitudes of the Communists, but opposed their tactics in the case of the Scottsboro boys and their advocacy of a Negro state. At the same time I began to study Karl Marx and the Communists; I read Das Kapital and other Communist literature; I hailed the Russian Revolution of 1917, but was puzzled at the contradictory news from Russia.

Finally in 1926, I began a new effort; I visited Communist lands. I went to the Soviet Union in 1926, 1936, 1949, and 1959; I saw the nation develop. I visited East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland. I spent ten weeks in China, traveling all over the land. Then this summer, I rested a month in Romania.

I was early convinced that Socialism was an excellent way of life, but I thought it might be reached by various methods. For Russia, I was convinced she had chosen the only path open to her at the time. I saw Scandinavia choosing a different method, half-way between Socialism and Capitalism. In the United States I saw Consumers Cooperation as a path from Capitalism to Socialism, while England, France, and Germany developed in the same direction in their own way. After the depression and the Second World War, I was disillusioned. The Progressive movement in the United States failed. The Cold War started. Capitalism called Communism a crime.

Today I have reached a firm conclusion:

Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction. No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.

Communism--the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute--it has and will make mistakes, but today it marches triumphantly on in education and science, in home and food, with increased freedom of thought and deliverance from dogma. In the end Communism will triumph. I want to help bring that day.

The path of the American Communist Party is clear: It will provide the United States with a real Third Party and thus restore democracy to this land. It will call for:

1. Public ownership of natural resources and of all capital.
2. Public control of transportation and communications.
3. Abolition of poverty and limitation of personal income.
4. No exploitation of labor.
5. Social medicine, with hospitalization and care of the old.
6. Free education for all.
7. Training for jobs and jobs for all.
8. Discipline for growth and reform.
9. Freedom under law.
10. No dogmatic religion.

These aims are not crimes. They are practiced increasingly over the world. No nation can call itself free which does not allow its citizens to work for these ends.”

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Black Power, Racism, USA, Capitalism, History

By Saswat Pattanayak

India’s economy is now fully liberalized. With the retail market open to international competition, the economy that was once predominantly agrarian is now fully capitalistic.

I spoke to few fellow Indian bloggers over the past week and found out that the scene is so euphoric that there seems to be no need to challenge even the mainstream coverage of this issue. After all, the argument goes: more flow of capital eventually helps in more residue of capital.

According to the proponents of this school (which is as varied from purely libertarian school to overtly capitalistic), the rich not only get richer, even the poor get rich. The ‘rich’ poor now own television sets at most homes, and they understand well enough to distinguish the fine products from the rotten. So why deprive human beings from their right to choose? The arguments in favor of the blatant liberalization in India run from philosophical quarter (freedom from the angst) to social (right to aspire) and economic (privilege to own).

Freedom from angst:
I have been brooding over this for a long time now. Very ironically, the market was fully liberalized on January 26 of this year. This piece of news was announced on the 56th year commemoration day of India turning a Republic. The tone that accompanied it was significantly cheerful. Just like the day when former PM Vajpayee waved a victory sign to a surprised Indian people after declaring India as a Nuclear-state (whatever that is).

My well-meaning friends resist that comparison, because unlike the secretive nature of the N-test (when no one had an inkling of it, CIA claims it had no idea either), the liberal nature of Indian markets has been a welcome news in India since 1991, if not before. Some even wonder, what’s the news here? “Didn’t you anticipate this?”

Oh no, I at best, was not anticipating. At worst, was apprehensive. Because the people that Friedman writes about, or we talk about in the talk shows with celebrities are the people who are always visible on the radar screen of the active world audience. And this miniscule minority of India is represented as the public opinion makers.

The angst of the majority people in India are hardly accounted for. The way with which the farmers, the mill workers, the poor students, the unemployed youths, the debt-ridden ‘middle class’ (what a sardonically thing to celebrate this class every now and then), the blackmailed employees, the downtrodden women and children and the indigenous peoples perceive these hype around liberalized economy of their land is never projected in the media.

But the downside of the private economy that has been able to almost obliterate a governmental responsibility to tend to its people is never played on the channels. Where there was a right wing government in power, there used to be a disinvestment ministry selling off the public undertakings. With the advent of the centrist party, there is a prime minister who loves to flaunt how much he can sell off what remains of it.

Between these self-proclaimed intellectuals (Arun Shourie and Manmohan Singh), there is no scope for the views of the largest labor force. There is hardly any discussion about the angst of the 60% of the labor force which is working in the agriculture sector (only 17% are in industries, and 23% are in service sectors). The talk is about the growth rate of Indian economy (which basically means rich become richer), but there is hardly any talk about the budget deficit at 9% of GDP (which basically means the welfare sector for the poor receives the worst treatment)! There is always the talk about the software engineers and English speaking educated youths India has been churning year after year, but there is scarcely any projection of the innate disinterest of the majority to be technocratic and the loss of culturally rich languages due to sheer atrophy.

Freedom from the angst is definitely happening, but just as it suits the ruling elites of the country, it suits the serving elites quite well. And the comfortable conversation among this small group of people must not be misconstrued as beneficial to the people as a whole.

Right to aspire:
It is said that the aspirations of a country changes with its economy. Naturally so, because the goal-setting takes different shapes. For India and most third-world countries, the goal of most part of the 20th century was to free themselves from colonial rule. Upon hard-earned freedoms, the countries then formed alliances whereby mutual cooperation would bring the next desired results of the planned economies. Sectors were prioritized, peoples’ strengths were assessed and economies were developed at times to cater to unique potentials, and at times to reinforce the existing abilities. For example, there were cooperative societies formed to take stock of agrarian sectors dealing with poultry, milk, and varied crops. To allow vent of industrial potentials, adult education schemes, trade unions, and minimum wage standards were fixed.

At this point it is always crucial to recognize that unlike many European nations which thrived on colonizing different cultures, most Afro-Asian nations never went beyond their territories to commit the loots. This was so, not out of any predisposed prosperity of any country, as often projected by revisionists (some like PM Singh, say India was really a rich country before the invasions…obviously forgetting that only the royals were the rich lot, anyway..), but because the prevailing natural settings provided for all the needs to be met with. The people could sow and reap, could cultivate and exist, and were largely worshippers of nature for this very reason. Of course as an alibi to exploit the lands of the indigenous, European savages declared they had a burden to civilize these people and went on draining all the resources exploiting the native masses.

Fast-forward, and with revolutionary shifts in the ownership of world territories, and with the balance of power for the first time shifting in favor of the oppressed people (than the greedy monarchies or the ruling elites of political democracies) after the successful October Revolution of 1917, most countries aspired to be free from the shackles, of both the imperial rulers and their domestic lords.

In the countries where the agriculture workers led the revolution, the scenario brimmed with progressive plans for the sector of the underprivileged, the uneducated, the farmer-at-large. In the countries like India, where agriculture workers were not allowed to dominate the national scene of struggle, the plans were laid out in favor of the privileged, the educated, the engineer-at-large.

Hence no wonder, every educated family demanded its children to aspire to be educated further (not in the history of slavery, casteism, African peoples or French misadventures), and become doctors or engineers (not because, India has one of the worst industrial infrastructure and medical facility anywhere) so that they can make individual financial progresses (of course doctors and engineers are highest paid in the Indian class society, be they live in the country or abroad).

The levels of aspirations of elite Indians continued to be the same. They produced the elite engineers in the 60’s, and they became elite engineers in the 21st century. The students of humanities, of social sciences, fine arts and regional literature remained in need of constant assistance. If individuals have rights to realize their potentials, Indian youths had lost them since quite some time now. Frustrations, constant peer pressure and looming unemployment in every other sector had been forcing most youths to take up studies that required them to work for others, not to pursue their instincts. Now, they have been normalized into a sense of achievement. Only that they have lost their rights to aspire; it is only their occasion to despair.

Privilege to own:
The biggest myth of modern times is that there is such a thing called a Middle Class. So much so that there are bestsellers being written about the great Indian middle class etc. In every way that can suit the entry of multinational profiteers into a third world country, a sizeable population is being declared as middle class. This class is always seen with much applaud, as one which is the backbone of the economy, as one where people should be proud to be part of. This middle class is educated (sic!), well-informed (sic!) and going places (sic!).

Let’s deconstruct. Liberal economists point out that the middle class is the driving force behind a successful economy. Because they consume. In order to consume, they need to be informed. To get their information, they need to be educated.

Precisely! I could not agree more. In other words, there has indeed been a constant effort at creating a middle class, in India or elsewhere. This is very much needed for the multinational businesses flourish. Up until 50 years back, we knew that there was the class of rulers which were minority (landlords, kings, presidents), and there was the class of subjects (the rest of the people). The prime distinction between the two was the right to own. The former had the privilege to own (they owned palaces, lands and virgins). The latter was the dispossessed, always working hard on the land that was never their own!

Come the great equalizer, the proponents of market economy, the torchbearers of French freedom, of American capitalism, of individual liberty hallmarkers. They not only destroyed the feudal societies that came on the way of market competitions, but they also slowly killed the competitions themselves forming market monopolies. So we had giant supermarkets and retail chains, not confined to any specific lands. The first world flourished with such unadulterated exploitation of the market, clearly creating a consumer class whose only work was to buy things, because they had no resources left to challenge the elite producer class whose only work was to invest money to earn more capital. The European capitalism thus produced the largest class societies the world has ever witnessed. To succeed with this mission, they produced huge amount of propaganda materials, we know today as business management, marketing management, advertisement and public relations etc.

As happens with any propagandist move of necessary illusions, the torchbearers of the utopian dreams converted their political traits (of geographically annexing territories) to economic characteristics (doing business extra-territorially). But for that, the obvious obstacles were the large poor yet progressive people of the colonies who never got tired fighting the political elite class. The only way to win them over, then was to woo them over. For India, it started with declaration of Indian middle class people as the “smartest consumers”.

The reality, as opposed to the myth stated, is however slightly different. The much-touted middle class in India or anywhere else is a hoax. This class in question is actually very much part of the dispossessed class. Heavily into debts, much into speculations, far from their own lands with urbanizations, uneasily suffocated amidst uncertain jobs, chronically ill, nuclear families, living in shacks of filthy apartments and constantly feeding the insurance companies. The so-called middle class in the world is the biggest curse of the 20th century. The largest segmented population in the of this planet creates the biggest profit for the business houses and unfathomable loss for its own aspirations. That’s the class which is said to be privileged to own, where actually all it does is the unenviable task of falling into debts and several obligations to operate with. When the ruling minorities owned palaces, no one challenged them to show proof or credibility of purchase. But this class pays a property tax on everything it consumes. It pays for the competition it imagines to be fair. It pays for any endeavor it takes up, to earn basic standards of living with daily struggles that are unknown to the elites. It then is encouraged to compete with its neighbors and when the competition is saturated with both parties in debt, the monopolists take them over using their principles of fair competition.

Indeed, competition is a sardonic term. In the process of competition, the entities always let go of their own progress. The aim is to win the race, not to develop the self. Just as no race is ever equal, no self is similar. For example, India’s unique self demands that it builds itself, its political leaders recognize that the country’s development does not depend on foreign investment that produces large deficit budgets, but on domestic endeavors to plan the pace of its progress and work towards it alone (this may not be the same needs for another country today). To lose focus on this means to be subservient to interests of the global capitalists who know no country, no nationality, no people: they know only profits, at any costs.

Third world developing economies need not compete. They just need to cooperate with each other in delving deep into their own unique human resources and strengthen them. In the case under consideration, with optimal development of agriculture, there can be improvement of environment as well as growth of economy. It’s never too late to save the countries from ecological disasters. And it’s never too late to have economic growth at one’s own terms. It’s never too late to look back at history and learn a lesson or two, that colonies were once divided and ruled. That cannot be allowed to happen again.

Being fully liberalized is a truth. But this truth applies to the owning class. They are now free to operate in whichever way. Not to promote competition. Just like in the US, where only four big business houses killed thousands of media outlets and now own every means of mental production, in the republic of India, a handful of business houses have in the past killed all indigenous products and the accruing benefits to the locals. Needless to state, with the retail market open to multinationals, we shall soon see the demise of anything remotely associated with an independent economy.

My well-meaning friends have a last arsenal. It blasts: if market has helped many western economies, why can’t it help India? To that I have just one spontaneous response: Market matters in a country laid down by marketers (or even the black-marketers). Just like race matters in a racist society (and so we need demographics of races), and caste matters in a casteist society (to figure out why some castes in India are still downtrodden), market matters in a market society. For a country like India, where a huge majority of people are still working in the agricultural sector, the economy needs to be recognized as agrarian in nature and every step must be taken to benefit the farmers. Agriculture matters in an agrarian society. The sooner we realize this, the better it is.

Tags: Saswat, Economics, India, Capitalism, Communism

That time of the year again! Let's revisit (and re-read) the inimitable Arundhati Roy:
(text of her speech at the opening Plenary of the World Social Forum in Mumbai on January 16, 2004):

Do turkeys enjoy thanksgiving? Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Colonialism, Indigenous, USA, India

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Finally, the Communists in India (both CPI and CPI-M) have come out in open support of Khushboo as the only parties to have done so! And the Madras High Court has stayed defamation proceedings against Khushboo (so far 14 cases have been stayed. Five more charges are still against her).

CPI state secretary D. Pandian said the agitations were conducted with political motives (indirectly referring to Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and Dalit Panthers of India (DPI)) and had been led in ‘‘undesirable dimensions’’ and thus had degenerated to the ‘‘low level’’ of dictating what kind of dress tennis star Sania Mirza should wear on court.
Now its the turn of the prime minister to stop appeasing the reactionaries.

Tags: Saswat, Communism, India

By Saswat Pattanayak

It was only natural that Rosa Parks received the unprecedented recognition, as the first woman in American history to lie in state at the Capitol, an honor usually reserved for Presidents of the United States.

After all, as the conservatives would have liked to put it: She was the perfect American woman. Securely married, well settled, employed and was a quiet, patient, spiritual woman. The American dreamer. One whose dream could be retold by Martin Luther King Jr. years later.

In the revisionist histories, there have been at least two versions of the same story. One that portrayed her as a humble woman, a seamstress, who got tired of segregation one day in December, 1955 and refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her individual action then led to a whole nationwide movement like magic. This led to the non-violent leader Martin Luther King, Jr., to lead the people down the long road to freedom, which was established with the end of segregation. And the world became free of discrimination in the United States.

Following this story, people wonder what would have happened to MLK if Parks would not have boarded that bus that day. And what would have happened of all of us. Yes, by all of us, I mean ALL OF US. Asians in America as well (We owe it all to the mutual freedom struggles, dammit. Else, today the Indian and Chinese software engineers would not be negotiating salaries in the States. I wonder if most of the American born kids of Asian heritage have any idea of the connections. Or if all the temporary workers realize the saga of exploitation amidst the glory of dollarizations.)

This version also relates to the idea that the trip was not planned. Indeed, Rosa Parks has said on various occasions that she had not planned to be arrested. She had boarded the bus to reach home.

The second version takes a stab at the first and claims, well, you see, Rosa Parks was not tired (indeed Park has said this too). And that she was not the first one to do it anyway. She was required to be there. That she was the perfect case for the NAACP and all plans were underway. Time magazine wrote of her: “Parks was not the first to be detained for this offense. Eight months earlier, Claudette Colvin, 15, refused to give up her seat and was arrested. Black activists met with this girl to determine if she would make a good test case — as secretary of the local N.A.A.C.P., Parks attended the meeting — but it was decided that a more “upstanding” candidate was necessary to withstand the scrutiny of the courts and the press. And then in October, a young woman named Mary Louise Smith was arrested; N.A.A.C.P. leaders rejected her too as their vehicle, looking for someone more able to withstand media scrutiny. Smith paid the fine and was released.”

Hence this version demystifies the previous version and basically says, the trip was well planned. And that MLK was anyway going to lead the movement since he knew it was coming. And that the legendary trade union leader E. D. Nixon apparently said, “My God, look what segregation has put in my hands!” Parks was the ideal plaintiff for a test case against city and state segregation laws.

Both versions do not tell the story. Because they claim to be the stories themselves. Rosa Parks was an event, not a process. And the event is being confused as being the process. After all its easy to recall an event, celebrate and normalize it. MLK has become a national event today. Malcolm X and Paul Robeson are today featuring on the postage stamps. And Rosa Parks is an icon today—of righteousness, humbleness and generosity.

Let’s reset the contexts. The prepositions:
a. Rosa Parks was married to Raymond Parks. Actually after her husband’s death in 1977, she even co-founded an organization named after both of them. And yes, Raymond Parks was the force behind her. We shall soon need to discuss who Raymond Parks was since no one pretty much discusses him.

b. Rosa Parks was a social activist long before the bus event. She was involved in a process that culminated in the event. We shall need to understand the processes that led to her actions.

What do we know about Raymond Parks? Well, the official foundation named after both “The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute” says the following about Raymond:

"Raymond Parks married Rosa McCauley December 18, 1932. He was a barber from Wedowee in Randolph County, Alabama. He had little formal education but a thirst for knowledge and a no nonsense approach to life. He supported his wife's "Quiet Strength" and encouraged youth to get a good education to sup-port themselves, their families and to eliminate discrimination in this country.”

If you notice the page, there are just two pictures of Rosa. Nothing about Raymond.

Wow!

Part I:

Well, to begin with, Raymond was a barber alright. But he was an activist way before Rosa had stepped in. So much so that he was raising funds for the National Committee to Save the Scottsboro Boys! Does that sound a bell? So the story begins from here. What has been conveniently forgotten in the recent recalling of history is that the case of Scottsboro Boys was the first event that actually put the process of struggle in place.

It involved the alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on the Southern Railroad freight run from Chattanooga to Memphis on March 25, 1931. And yes, this was a case that the NAACP then during the 30's refused to take up.

“The NAACP, which might have been expected to rush to the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, did not. Rape was a politically explosive charge in the South, and the NAACP was concerned about damage to its effectiveness that might result if it turned out some or all of the Boys were guilty. Instead, it was the Communist Party that moved aggressively to make the Scottsboro case their own…. The Communist Party, through its legal arm, the International Labor Defense (ILD), pronounced the case against the Boys a “murderous frame-up” and began efforts, ultimately successful, to be named as their attorneys. The NAACP, a slow-moving bureaucracy, finally came to the realization that the Scottsboro Boys were most likely innocent and that leadership in the case would have large public relations benefits. As a last-ditch effort to beat back the ILD in the battle over representation, NAACP officials persuaded renowned defense attorney Clarence Darrow to take their case to Alabama. But it was by then too late. The Scottsboro Boys, for better or worse, cast their lots with the Communists who, in the South, were “treated with only slightly more courtesy than a gang of rapists.”

Scottsboro Boys thus rejected NAACP’s offer and sought the help from the more radical leftist activists. And Raymond Parks was working in support of the Boys and promote radicalism within the NAACP. (For a short time much later, under Nixon, the radicalized NAACP worked together with the ILD to call for anti-lynching laws.) Rosa Parks got involved with the case of the Boys by marrying Raymond in 1932. Raymond was at that time collecting money to support the Scottsboro Boys. After marrying, Rosa took a number of jobs, ranging from domestic worker to hospital aide. At her husband’s urging, she finished her high school studies in 1933, at a time when less than seven percent of African Americans had a high school diploma. Despite the Jim Crow laws that made political participation by blacks difficult, she persevered in registering to vote, succeeding on her third try. This was made possible because both of them were members of the Voters’ League.

Part II:

In December 1943, after 11 years of marriage with Raymond who was a radical leftist activist, Parks became active in the American Civil Rights Movement, joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, and was elected volunteer secretary to its president, Edgar Nixon. Lest we forget, Nixon was a renowned trade unionist of the time. He became president of the Alabama NAACP only in 1947 and radicalized it. He was a close associate of Philip Randolph, the renowned labor leader (again whose stories are hardly discussed). Nixon naturally came in problems with the moderates. He resigned qith disgust from the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) which was being headed by Martin Luther King, Jr., as its president.

Nixon died unsung, although he was the one without whom the bus boycott could never have taken place as a process. Remember that Nixon put up his home as security to post the bond for Parks!

Not only Nixon, who was on the political left of the things and was conveniently shoved to the history’s closed pages, but we need to remember Clifford Durr (1899 – 1975) who was an Alabama lawyer who defended activists and others accused of disloyalty during the New Deal and McCarthy eras. He was the one who represented Rosa Parks in her challenge to the constitutionality of the ordinance requiring the segregation of passengers on buses in Montgomery that launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Who was Durr? He was branded as a communist and was put under FBI surveillance in 1942, because he had defended a colleague accused of left-wing political associations. His wife’s vigorous support for racial equality and voting rights for blacks and their friendship with Jessica Mitford, a member of the Communist Party, made both of them even more suspect. The FBI stepped up its interest in Durr in 1949, when he joined the National Lawyers Guild. He subsequently became the President of the Guild! And yes, hold on, Durr's wife had employed Rosa Parks as the seamstress.

Durr called the jail when authorities refused to tell Nixon what the charges against Parks were and he and his wife accompanied Nixon to the jail when Nixon bailed her out. Nixon and Durr then went to the Parks’ home to discuss whether she was prepared to fight the charges against her. Parks was then as aforesaid, working as voluntary secretary to Nixon.

They had together waited for a politicized Parks to come to the scene. For 23 years now, Rosa Parks had support of her husband who was involved in several progressive struggles including Scottsboro defense, the campaign against lynching, and the struggle for voter and citizenship rights. When she did not give up her seat on that bus, it was culmination of the long process of revolution by resistance.

It's another matter, this third version of progressive saga-- of active involvement of left wing leaders and activists, always disgraced by both the mainstream white liberals and the cautious black leadership in the US-- has been hijacked and replaced as an odd event for national celebration--by moderate activists and revisionist historians.

It must have pained her, but in her book “Quiet Strength”, Rosa Parks is categorical about one thing, that she did not change anything alone: “Four decades later I am still uncomfortable with the credit given to me for starting the bus boycott. I would like [people] to know I was not the only person involved. I was just one of many who fought for freedom.”

And yet this one of many has been canonized. For it helps to canonize than to contextualize. The dangers, as the establishments notice are not the heroes themselves. It is their heroic acts as part of a larger process that inspire generations. It is not individual acts of pacifying moderate church leaders, but radicalized moves by barbers like Raymond and lawyers like Durr and angry seamstresses like Rosa Parks who had taken to the streets to join worldwide radical movements addressing cases like Scottboro Boys or Labor Unions.

But if we go back to those pages, we will be flooded with gory images, not legendary icons. History of struggles have been fought with political aims and those aims of yesteryears conflict with the political agendas of today's. Hence the attempts to iconize the angry freedom fighters.

After all, all icons look good on statues—they always put a smile on their lips.

Tags: Saswat, Black Power, Feminism, Communism, USA, History

By Saswat Pattanayak

In a world driven by infotainment, the dividing line between what has been written and how they have been interpreted becomes blurred by the day. Although a critical scholar, by no means I claim a post-modern critique of illusory truths. There indeed have been revolutionary struggles for the better and there indeed have been reactionary efforts to suppress them. Avoiding mind contact with the same not just amounts to an intellectual privilege, but also leads to callous indifference.

Let’s then visit the original documents. You may not find them anywhere else on the web. But I am sure my romance with the keyboard to bring back what might have been forgotten in a deliberately fast-paced world of ours, will surely be a small contribution towards the continuing struggles. In understanding that the freedom struggles in India was not as exotic as is often portrayed. That it was a gory revolutionary war on the imperialists, the homegrown reactionary landlords and the alien capitalists. It was violent. Despite pleas from the reformist pacifists, the peasants, farmers and mill workers fought back with every might to rebel against the landowners, privileged classes, and the British imperialists.

The following appeal refers to the trial of a number of Indians who, on 4 February 1922, had taken part in an attack on the Chauri-Chaura police station, in which all except two of the policemen were beaten to death. International appeals came from the leftists all over the world who wanted justice for the condemned peasants. At a time when the reformists withdrew from the mainstream struggles in face of such uprising, which went against their ethos of tolerance, the workers from many parts of the world got united to defend the ones who had openly defied the brutal capitalists.
The following letter was drafted on 14th March, 1923:

Read More...

Tags: Saswat, India, Colonialism, Communism, UK

Alright. So who are the top 10 authorities cited in American academic journals?

They are in the following order:
1. Karl Marx
2. V. I. Lenin
3. William Shakespeare
4. Aristotle
5. The Bible
6. Plato
7. Sigmund Freud
8. Noam Chomsky
9. Hegel
10. Cicero

I chanced upon this while viewing the video Rebel Without a Pause. What struck me most was I almost always believed that it was Marx, Bible and Chomsky in that order. It still is in that order. But well, I had no idea some others too went in between. Especially, Lenin at No. 2!

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Philosophy, Communism, Academic

Well, finally here is one lesson that Bush learnt from Chavez and he has adopted quickly. Sounds like trivial, but it is not.
Despite what the pundits say about impossibility of Global Warming, its right here and its to stay if we dont conserve energy.
On September 16, the communist model envisaged by Chavez in his country felt disgusted at the Capitalistic extravaganza. Associated Press writer Kim Gamel mentioned: Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Environment, Venezuela, USA, Bush

“Until we go through it ourselves, until our people cower in the shelters of New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere while the buildings collapse overhead and burst into flames, and dead bodies hurtle about and, when it is over for the day or the night, emerge in the rubble to find some of their dear ones mangled, their homes gone, their hospitals, churches, schools demolished — only after that gruesome experience will we realize what we are inflicting on the people of Indochina...”

-William Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 1973.
Read the complete article here.

Tags: Saswat, Communism, History, Vietnam, War

A song on the singer! A radical lyric about the radical poet. Adrian Mitchell has written to the tune of Arlo Guthrie!
Revolutionary songs were always meant to be simple. Straight. Honest. About unsung peoples. And heroic Fights. Jara led the exemplary life. Guthrie, son of the legendary Woody, pays tribute… Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Music, Communism, Chile, Cold War

Complexities within the South Asian communities are generously explored, Dinesh D’Souza and Deepak Chopra are loudly bashed, and the “model minority suicide” is critically examined. I am yet to come across anyone who is anywhere close to Vijay Prashad in terms of analyzing the “Brown Folk”.

The Karma of Brown Folk is masterly narrated, well researched, originally argues and mustly recommended.

And Vijay Prashad who teaches International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT, has indeed produced this classic to challenge classical myths. More power!

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Communism, Racism, Black Power

Counterpunch has the news to muse today.
Tom Barry's story about Inside Bush's "World Movement for Democracy" shines!

The “world’s democratic movement” is not another one of the transnational citizens’ movements, like the anti-globalization or anti-war movements, that prides itself on having no central structure, no dogma, or even an office.

This movement is highly organized, better funded, and even has its own “secretariat.” Unlike other leaderless but world-shaking transnational citizens’ networks that emerged after the end of the Cold War, the “world’s democratic movement” is not a product of global civil society but a quasi-governmental initiative based in Washington, DC.

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Cold War, Activism

Jacob the Liar (1974) is the film about a poor Jewish worker who overhears a radio broadcast about Russia’s march towards defeating Germany. The Nazi would not of course rest until they find out who among the Jews have been spreading the words. Jacob becomes such a source of hope for the Jewish workers that he says he has a radio in the Ghetto. And then when the troubles begin.

A film about exclusive media, official propaganda, mass hope for survival and subsequent defeat of dreams. The film made in East Germany, is a masterpiece about how we have withered with time. (this German movie is different from the more famous comedy made in the 90's in English by the same name)

Tags: Saswat, Film, War, USSR, Capitalism, Communism

Noam Chomsky has written the introduction to the book on Anarchism skillfully crafted by Daniel Guerin.

Guerin is an early opponent of Fascism, a prominent gay activist, political theorist, historian and someone who propounded a hybrid of Marxism and Anarchism. A committed Leftist, his work Anarchism-- From Theory to Practice is a must-read to understand the most often misunderstood political movement.

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Communism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Welcome to the world of History-telling. American ishtyle.

Time on its cover story (anniversary special) educates the readers about Hiroshima, with a Japanese witness on its cover holding a picture postcard.

The essay by Michael Elliott says:

The atom bombs dropped over Japan ended a terrible war and persuaded the world never to use nuclear weapons again. Time quotes Van Kirk on the B-29 remembering that "somebody said—and I thought so too--'This war is over.'"

Eight days later, Elliot says, it was over. According to him, if the first bomb was not enough justification to call it over, the second must have been, since Nagasaki was attacked on August 9.

Ever since, there has been controversy over when the war would have ended had the bomb not been dropped on Hiroshima--a second was detonated over the city of Nagasaki on Aug. 9—and how many Japanese and Americans would have died before it did.

Not only the war was presumably over, the act of throwing the bomb was a beautiful act also. As Elliot has a Japanese eyewitness describe the greatest disaster to have ever caused as something, “like a burst of light from an unearthly photo shoot, big enough to cover the sky, "blue-yellow and very beautiful."

Time goes on:

But, plainly, the most terrible war ever known ended earlier than it would have because of the Enola Gay's mission. The bombs cost tens of thousands of lives—perhaps 120,000 were killed immediately in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with many more dying later from the effects of radiation—but they saved lives too.

More celebrations!

When he heard the news of Hiroshima, writer Paul Fussell, then a 21-year-old second lieutenant leading a rifle platoon in France and mentally preparing for the hell that an invasion of Japan was bound to be, thought, "We were going to live. We were going to grow up to adulthood after all."

And the aftermath, according to Time:

An awful weapon had saved lives; a terrible instrument of war had brought peace…..

Buried in silos in the wheat fields of North Dakota, tucked into the torpedo tubes of Soviet submarines parked in the North Atlantic, slung in the bomb bays of B-52s, the American and Soviet nuclear arsenals mutually assured the destruction of both sides if hostilities commenced. The cold war turned into a long peace.

Sounds sick to my stomach. Such narrative that proclaims that the world war was over because Japan was bombed (nay, even more sophisticatedly, detonated, not attacked!). For, some of us who are among the rest of those who don’t subscribe to this narrative know for sure when and how the war was ended. And if we still wondered why US had to bomb Japan even after the war was over, now we know the news: that the war was not actually over. It needed one Hiroshima and then again, one Nagasaki to call it over!

What logic does Elliot has in saying Hiroshima was not enough to call it over, if at all in his weirdest philosophy, all we need is some bombings to end wars? Why did we need another bomb after 8 days? No logic, just plain statement: “An awful weapon had saved lives; a terrible instrument of war had brought peace…..”

Brought peace? For whom? For the generations of Japanese who lived with the scar and became numb enough to traverse from royal monarchies to economic imperialists without an utter?

The underlying theme of the Anniversary Special (see the celebratory tone! Calling it an anniversary special than maybe a Guilt-ridden Summer Remembrance) of the magazine is to say that we needed to bomb Japan so that we shall have peace. Moreover, it was not a bad thing to bomb after all. Hey, we got an eyewitness to say that the after-effects of the bombing was “blue-yellow and very beautiful”!

Such sick!

And finally Time declares that the bombs (which are bad in the hands of the “terrorists”, it concludes too) led to nuclear arsenal competitions leading to cold war which brought long lasting peace!

Notice the web of lies: First, that the war got over because of the bomb (whereas in actual, the war had long ended after which US surprised everyone by bombing Japan mercilessly, first Hiroshima and then again Nagasaki), second, that the after-effects of bombing was beautiful experience (whereas the gruesome truth is that all of us know what happened to generations of people, even as Time could manage to get an old man stand with a picture of the bombing as to show how beautiful event it was to celebrate), third, that the bombings saved lives (whereas we know that millions have died for no good reason at all), fourth, that the people after all grew up to live well (whereas we know the systematic tortures on Japanese-Americans which go largely untold for several suppressive reasons), fifth, that cold war brought peace (whereas nothing could be further from the truth).

Cold war was not that cold. We know millions of innocent civilians who have been systematically annihilated in the name of protecting them from Communism (even within the country, McCarthyism was such a reality) with active interventions in third-world countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa. That was the hottest war series ever continued. And thanks to the whole suspicion trail of nuclear arsenal acquisitions of rivaling blocs.

And today, after the end of so-called Cold War, we know that the same bomb greed has led many countries to feel insecure, join the arms race, whereas they could involve in developmental works they have drained out resources to build arsenals to join the club, we know of the numerous nuclear plant leaks and disasters--most of which are so embarrassing that they are not discussed, we also know that many misguided youth and deliberately led religious fanatics are in quest of the formula too, not to be left out of the race.

And the world is most unsafe than ever before. We are having televised wars and children are bombing neighbors on their video games. More bombs don’t make the world safer place. I am sure the readers of Time know of this. Or I doubt. I am still waiting to read few letters to the editor.

Tags: Saswat, Cold War, Imperialism, USA, Communism, War, Media, History

The rebel-poet of a bygone era. And his spell.
Why a poet must choose a side. Even as Dylan himself would dispute his activism. A generation or two stayed awake. Thanks to him. Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Communism, Cold War, USA, Imperialism, Atheism

Long Walk to Freedom
Mandela's commitments towards the oppressed cause--in defining and achieving a sense of freedom for self, by trying to gain it for everybody else. How fortunate are we that Mandela's own words are available for us to inspire us for all times to come!
Most of this autobiography was written secretly while Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years on Robben Island by South Africa's apartheid regime.

Tags: Saswat, Africa, Colonialism, Communism, Black Power, Literature

A movie based on the assassination of the prominent leftist doctor Grigoris Lambrakis, that led to the military junta in Greece.

Simply one of the greatest political thrillers. A must-see for anyone interested in the cold-war, red-scare, CIA interventions, Costa-Gavras, Oscar nominations, pacifism, socialism, press freedom, democracy, the letter Z (he is alive!).

Tags: Saswat, Film, Communism, Cold War, Greece

By Saswat Pattanayak

Let’s revisit Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, the man who did the Capitalism proud. The only person whose accounts in form of two books, are the sacred texts so far to have been used by the West to attack the Soviet history.

He was a Cossack intellectual, meaning a Cossack elite.

Who is a Cossack? In the 15th century, the Cossack society was a loose federation of independent military units, entirely separate and sovereign.

The two states they represented, Cossacks of Zaporizhia and Don Cossack State had a unique warrior culture, whose main source of income was the pillaging their neighbors although they didn't shy from plundering other neighbors. They were famous also for their raids against the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman Empire, led by a Sultan was one of the mightiest empires in Europe, whose fight against the Russia in Crimean War was notable.

The Russians initially had used their advanced defense mechanisms and out-maneuvered the Ottomans using their Armenian allies within the empire. They of course subsequently persecuted the Armenians in a genocidal fashion. It was not until the Communist revolution in Russia that the Russian forces retreated, leading to Ottoman victory on this front.

Not only was he a Cossack intellectual who supported the interests of the elite section of the ruling regimes in the pre-revolution period, but his prerogative was in highlighting the glories of Tsarist period! In presenting alternatives to the Soviet regime, Solzhenitsyn tended to reject Western emphases on democracy and individual freedom and instead favored the formation of a benevolent authoritarian regime that would draw upon the resources of Russia's traditional Christian values.

Authoritarian traditional Christian rule!

In other words he represented the counter-revolutionary ethos that wanted Tsar regime back. For whom the communists were infidels. The primary resistance to the Holocaust is well known silence of the Vatican since Hitler was fighting Stalin and the Church wanted the ouster of Communism at any cost, even if it would mean the Jewish extermination. Solzhenitsyn of course was not in any way opposition to the Vatican’s silence. Far from it, at first notice, America’s silence over Jewish question was welcomed by him, a country he would make home for 20 years.

On the contrary, what had been provided in the USSR then? Lenin (and please…not Stalin) had while categorically espousing the interests of the revolutionary class of peasants and workers, had clearly stated, “confiscation of all properties”. Majority of people who were in spirits with the movement of course did allow for the confiscation to take place. Several countries in the world indeed went ahead for wealth distribution. Mythically Robin Hood still continues to do so.

But what was happening was contrary to everything Solzhenitsyn believed in. A purged Christianity was unacceptable to the largest groups of believers in the world. Solzhenitsyn became their voice. He helped them compare the Gulags with the Nazi Holocaust. Of course the plights of the Armenians, Africans-Americans, Japanese-Americans of those days also were excused. For the plights of the Jews in Germany, a supremacist country whom Soviet Union contributed the most in defeating, there were none among the Allies who would stand up. Solzhenitsyn remained blind to the reality out of his desire to overthrow the Communism and replace it with traditional Christian values. Apparently after he wrote a letter to Stalin, he was sent to the camp, which formed the base for two of his books: Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. These books apparently rocked the world!

It led the media to focus on the new victims: the Gulago. Nazis were called even subtler than the Soviets! Of course contextualizing it, it will seem natural that they felt it the same way all along. One side Hitler supported by the Christians (yes the Catholics), whose common enemy of course was Communism. And on the other Stalin and the non-believers. And of course the Red Army famously defeating the White Army of the imperial Russia and nullifying every White Order.

Solzhenitsyn, unfazed by the divided ideologies, and possibly because of it, authored a fiction “One Day in the Life…”which was widely targeted for the American audience. Naturally! And the other book “Gulag ..” whose most compelling chapter was claimed to have been a recollection of incidents by fellow prisoner Georgi Tenno, who was invited by Solzhenitsyn to be the co-author. Tenno refused the offer.

And what happened to Solzhenitsyn at the labor camp which has been used by the western critics of communism to be of even more gruesome than the Nazi camps?

He was political prisoner after war years for 8 years, for his criticism of Soviet policies, and holding talks with religious forces. 8 years? Yes.

After that, the same draconic system produced a fine mathematics teacher of him and he began to write. Leading Soviet literary periodical Novy Mir ("New World") also published his short novel “One Day in the Life..” Soon after he could publish his works abroad thanks to the interests generated by this novel. In 1960’s he had several foreign publications of ambitious works including V kruge pervom (The First Circle). Rakovy korpus (1968; Cancer Ward) talked about his hospitalization and successful treatment for terminally diagnosed cancer during his forced exile in Kazakstan during the mid-1950s.

Something interesting happened in 1970. He was awarded Nobel Prize, but he did not go to receive it claiming that he shall not be allowed to re-enter the country. But at the same time, he was quite conveniently publishing his works abroad. He went on to publish a celebration of German military in Avgust 1914 (1971; August 1914), a historical novel treating Germany's crushing victory over Russia during World War I, the Battle of Tannenburg!

In December 1973 he published first part of Arkhipelag Gulag (The Gulag Archipelago) in Paris! The news circulated that he was arrested and was being tried for treason. According to his logic, the punishment should have been death! Like previously under Stalin, people believed millions were killed in the camps he was at. Only he was saved to tell the story?...like previously it was believed that he would be killed in exile in hospital. Cancer and he was cured? So that he will tell the story? And now what happens? On Feb. 12, 1974, he is charged. And the next day, on Feb 13, 1974, he is exiled? Where to and how long? Still unharmed by the most evil empire?

Sounds incredible? Well, in December he goes and gleefully received his Nobel Prize! In 1975, he produces another novel Lenin v Tsyurikhe: glavy (Lenin in Zurich: Chapters). He settles in the Unites States, especially aware that he was, of America’s role in the Holocaust. Of course he mentions nothing about America and Holocaust.

Then on, he surges forward. Two more series of Gulag comes up. He refuses to call it his landmark book. Instead says history of Russia as he was working on was. And safely returns to his country of dreams, the Christian Russia in 1994.

So much ado about Gulag!

Two things emerge in this discourse. History as we all have studied thus far, can be a very twisted text, and sometimes sacred at that. Leading us not to question the upfront issues. First, comparing Gulag with Nazi camps is horrendous. That’s missing the whole point, actually. The people who kept silent during Nazi extermination were among the people who were sent to the camp in Soviet Union. No logic of passivity can work if one advocates pacifism by claiming that we could allow the Hitler to go on mass murdering people on gas chambers by calling Jews, Negroes and Communists did not deserve to live. To such claims many world leaders did not openly oppose and the Vatican too remained stoic. All aided this process only because they were scared of the spectre of Communism.

We live today to reflect much of bogus that have been taught to us as sacred. We were told Columbus discovered America! That Native Americans were Christians. And that the religious leaders all pray for peace. That the greatest democracy was greatest democracy even when its presidents owned slaves. That color of the skin could determine the intelligence of human beings. That intelligence was to be measured by a Binet Scale. That Communists were out to destroy the world. And what if the Russians Came?

Secondly, what was Gulag? And why were people so shocked by it? And who were the people at the Gulag? Do people even talk if there are 100,000 people at the Gulags now, in 2005? What were they traditionally doing? What do they continue to do? Is the Church against the Gulags now? Or as they as stoic as they were in case of Jews? Are these people in Gulags not Jews now? Or are they the converts? One can read about them now and imagine, what a fateful twist in history is this.

Tags: Saswat, History, USSR, Cold War, Communism, Capitalism

By Saswat Pattanayak



“He is a Communist since he is loved by women”, says the postman Mario Ruoppolo (late Massimo Troisi). “No, no, he is loved by the people,” corrects the telegrapher friend (Renato Scarpa).

Loved, he was throughout, as the movie “Postino Il” so flawlessly depicted. It just could not have been otherwise, when it came to the peoples’ poet Pablo Neruda. Not just the greatest living poet of the 20th century in any language, as the great novelist Gabriel García Márquez called him, but also one of the most outspoken Communists of the age, Neruda represented the unsung, unheard and unwept. Leftwing activism to free love, surreal philosophy to existential angst of the atheist, Neruda symbolized the brilliance as far as brilliance could be.

Today he would have turned 101. And perhaps a bit sadder at the way world events have changed. After succeeding in actively supporting the first democratically elected Socialist government of the world in Chile, Neruda denounced in no uncertain terms the US-supported military coup to destabilize the region (as vocal as he was during Cuban missile crisis and Vietnam War). When his house was ransacked, he remarked “Look around — there's only one thing of danger for you here — poetry”.

Salutes, Comrade Neruda.

And here are four of my picks from the legendary words. When Mario used Neruda’s poems to impress upon his love, Neruda said he could not help the rebuff since they were his words, not Mario’s anyway. Mario quipped: “Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it; it belongs to those who need it.” Neruda fully agreed with his new friend.

When the postman asked of the metaphors, Neruda could not explain well, “when you explain poetry, it becomes banal. Better than any explanation is the experience of feelings that poetry can reveal to a nature open enough to understand it.” And our postman finally got the most beautiful woman in the town, by singing to her that her smile spread like a butterfly and her laugh was a sudden silvery spoon. His inspiration: Pablo Neruda. Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Communism, Film

By Saswat Pattanayak

Air Supply performed in Cuba for two days!

Nothing surprising to Havana. Cubans were enthralled, floored and they very warmly welcomed Russell Hitchcock and Graham Russell.

It was yet another surprising event for the Western mainstream media to digest. Of course, no one covered it live or even secondarily. Mostly, they got the news off the Associated Press brief. And even at that, they said they were astonished. (Remember, the narrative of how some sort of freedom is limited to the proverbial land of the free!)

The media were also astonished when Audioslave performed in Cuba in May. The astonishments appear to be not so original discoveries after all. On a closer glance, both the Canadian Press and the Associated Press said the same thing! And now we are astonished! Yes, the western media propaganda machine runs overnight so well that they even copy the exact languages! Check out the following two stories:

This one is from the Canadian Press

And this one is from Associated Press

Also check this one from the Washington Post. Story bylined. From AP.

Using precisely the SAME words to express surprise over how much the Western press were shocked at Air Supply being invited, one wonders if the ghost writers are the one and the same? And does it not violate copyright or whatever they call it. Who cheats from whom? Or are they the same!

What more does it tell? Well, the same mill produces stories of how perverse Cuba has become, it’s investing on tourism, it’s a place where women are publicly dancing and wearing jeans and smoking pot. So the theory which is almost written on stone of the mainstream press is that, with the rock groups and the lowly women, its goodbye communism!

To such frivolous arguments, I have no rejoinders. But its so hilariously degrading bunch of logic that I need to react. To begin with, rocksters, starting from the Beatles to the Dylans, have always been progressive in their orientation. In fact the underground punk have been one of the most vocal political outbursts of our times. On the contrary, the censorships issued to artists like The Roots and Arrested Development are incidents not taking place in very farther lands. And with the Clash and Rage Against the Machine, do we need to say the words?

As for the women, Janet Jackson is not an issue abroad. Plus free love was never born out of capitalistic endeavors. And Ayn Rand or Ann Coulter never developed the Smoke Pot movement. And we know who has the biggest cigars.

Hypocrisy sees the light of the day amidst capitalistic contradictions. Air Supply while performing in the Karl Marx theatre must have sensed it.

More power to the ones who made “love out of nothing at all……”

Tags: Saswat, Music, Cuba, Communism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Why is only a penny brown and got Lincoln on it?
Is that why they leave it on the ground.
-Amiri Baraka

The update about Baraka, the poet of the oppressed, is that he is not much talked about anymore. The sudden silence around him is a tragedy of our times. But it should come as no surprise. Going by a trend of how the system engulfs the same talents who once adorn its progressive horizons as cultural icons (albeit, countercultural icons, but icons nevertheless) it should come as no surprise that Baraka, the once emulated and idolized hero of the revolutionary times is not even reduced to a legend any longer.

LeRoi Jones, as he was known during the Beat period of early 1960’s, Baraka was companion to Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, and Gilbert Sorrentino. After the death of Malcolm X, Baraka became the Black cultural nationalist founding the Black Arts Repertory Theater School in Harlem. Till 1975, Baraka was well adored as the forerunner of black nationalism and culture.

Pause.

Lets get back to Paul Robeson. Or farther down the times to WEB Du Bois. As these brilliant minds served the interest of the groups that believed in the binaries of race stratification, they were hero-worshipped. Du Bois was looked at as the epitome of black intellect. Robeson was perceived as the epitome of black vigor. Towards the end of their lives, both of them had famously joined the world revolutionary struggles to condemn any form of global imperialistic designs. They reported that peoples of the world, if worked in unison, would change the face of the world, given the shared oppressed history of the colonized and the enslaved. That peoples of the world wanted peace at any cost and that was to come only by combating the world capitalism. As the world was becoming more visibly devoid of territorially encroached and was emerging as economically subjugated by interest groups, no narrow agenda of nationalistic fervor was going to do the trick. On the contrary, narrow racial agendas were going to be played up well by the ruling class to fight one against another by showering favoritism and encouraging suspicions among the oppressed groups.


As Du Bois, the greatest of all Black scholars ever, formally joined the Communist Party and Robeson, the greatest of all Black athletes ever, supported the cause of international communism, all hell broke loose. The avowed religious Blacks, the comfortable leaders of the civil rights movement who wanted to work with the system (and not against it) and the politically correct ones belonging to the minorities whose families started reaping benefits (however silly that might be the case) started distancing themselves from these erstwhile heroes, even as they were still alive. Du Bois died tragically in Ghana, his revolutionary writings hardly honored and remained a literary icon in library corners of diversity loving campuses. Robeson died unwept, unknown and unsung.

Amiri Baraka after 1975 shunned the nationalistic struggles, called it fascist in nature, called for world unity of oppressed people in identifying and combating the class enemies. He became a pronounced Third World exponent, cried freedom for the majority of the world who suffered under tyrannical rules disguising as democracies. Once the focus shifted, like it happened with both Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X during their last few years of life, there was concern from three different quarters: the black nationalists who were not willing to budge from their agenda, the white racists who oh-so-hated Communism and the politically correct mix of different races who felt offended by such shifts that did not further their interests in their stronghold of media, military and state machinery. Baraka said, "I see art as a weapon of revolution. I define revolution in Marxist terms. Once I defined revolution in Nationalist terms. But I came to my Marxist view as a result of having struggled as a Nationalist and found certain dead ends theoretically and ideologically, as far as Nationalism was concerned and had to reach out for the communist ideology."

As the poet laureate of New Jersey, when Baraka recited his poetry “Somebody Blew Up America” (reproduced here), he was accused of anti-Semitism. Of course he was asked to relinquish his position. Not just the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), but even many black so-called leaders came forward to ridicule him. Such is the irony of the times that the beat poet, the radical free voice who lent his creative voice to all peoples of color of the world had to come down with an explanation to prove his authenticity. http://www.amiribaraka.com/speech100202.html After that period of gloom, I saw him on an interview at a Sundance documentary called “The First Amendment Project” and noticed that his works are being sold on his own site for $5 onwards!

The entire poem written by the revolutionary poet Amiri Baraka is reproduced below. If allowed to add, I would only suggest an additional line: “Who are these ungrateful peoples of a contented era? Who forgot their own poet, the fearless poet who called a spade a spade, a violence a violence, a revolution a revolution?” Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Black Power, Literature, Racism, Communism, USA

By Saswat Pattanayak

My newest poem entry. Not meant to soothe hearts, or make an evening pleasant. The time to stop feeling comfortable is Now.

A revolutionary knows
the national boundaries are made up to divide, not unite peoples
hence believes in none of that, not to raise the flags, nor to unite banners

A revolutionary feels
true service to earth is working for fellow beings, not worshipping false Gods
hence rejects the notion of imposed God, of different brands, various religions

A revolutionary affirms
the continuation of progress has nothing to do with statutory movements
hence works to make laws work for people, not let people suffer owing to laws

A revolutionary condemns
the racist, communalists, capitalistic superstructures that work out divisions
hence recalls historical assaults lest folks repeat; yet doth not manipulate tensions

A revolutionary forwards
the notion of collective workloads, to share, not to compete, to enjoy not to own
hence advocates workers’ rights to unite for strength, not be vehicles for reaction

A revolutionary minces
no words as a communist, for the mission is to work towards goals despite many an obstruction
hence realizes that struggle with fascists will continue even after the battle is half-won

A revolutionary upholds
sense of social equality even at the cost of individual liberties, for duties hold more than rights
hence propagates the messages of selfless sacrifices even to the face of content reactionary elites

A revolutionary learns
that teaching in schools are always thought control, but need to be so for the betterment
hence sides with of the oppressed in the world, not result in joys of personal advancement

A revolutionary visits
churches, mosques, temples, all religious shrines to register the torture on hapless workers
hence perceives those who built the edifices did as slaves to the Gods or Kings, not to benefit fellow sufferers

A revolutionary dedicates
life for fellow women, children, and peaceniks; for environment and peaceful co-existence
hence militarily opposes any oppression on so-called weaker sections of societies of essence

I am a revolutionary who experiences
time running out, for the onus lies on the revolutionary to cause revolution
there is no such time as the present which provides the most sufficient condition

Tags: Saswat, Communism, History, Philosophy

By Saswat Pattanayak

As a continuation of an earlier debate yesterday, I still have the question fresh. Who is a hero? Do we have one? What are the criteria for choosing a hero? How does one distinguish between a leader, a hero, an icon, a legend? Is it possible to make the divisions? Is it desirable?

Are heroes needed in the society? If so, why, at all? Do they fill in the same void for folks as religions do in one way (religions enslave feeble people who can’t articulate for themselves, even to distinguish on their own what is contextually correct and what is not)?

Or are heroes actually needed so that people have something good to look back to? We have had worst phases of our inhuman legacies, of causing war and depression, of deliberate perpetuations of exploitative saga and firm refusal to replace existing systems.
At least we had some heroes also to look back at (you want to talk of Bhagat Singh and Malcolm X…. Netajee Subhas and Patrice Lumumba).

Well not anymore. First there was systematic suppression of heroic feats (like they banned Paul Robeson and Mohammad Ali). Next, there was systematic and legalized infiltration of anti-heroic commodifications (like the Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and all the obvious honors including the bob dylans of the times getting the tastes of market). Then there were mortification of heroes where people were made into legends (suddenly the atheist Buddha was made into a God, and Gandhi was a huge statue and a story to be challenged every now and then for anyone who wanted to sound different). Of course lastly there came a time when all these sounded dated and came a new genre of heroes—the television celebrities.

British accused Americans of their obsession with popular vulgar culture of paris hiltons. Americans accused the Brits of their obsession with elite vulgar cultures of a dormant prince-lover cuckoo love in royal kingdoms. As they all fought with each other, they discovered the common minimum factor: the hero-worshipping driven by media zeal. And yes Paris and Prince Charles continue to be the heroes.

And at most times too, teenage girls aspire to become the heroes even if it means they have to become desperate housewives. For apparently the desperate housewives every Sunday night are about heroes too.

Pathetic culmination of human civilizations.

And if this is civilization, I demand barbarism now!

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Communism, Media

Todd introduced Jared and I to the journalist-activist and a wonderful human being Don Rojas.

Leading an extraordinary life with myriad blend of experiences which I shall detail in near future, doth not come easy. But what keeps him still way up there for all of us to emulate is his undying spirit to listen, articulate and educate us at the crossroads.

Thank you.

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Black Power, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

The contentification (well that’s due to my lack of vocabulary), of dissident communities is nothing new. It takes place by sheer force, or implicit persuasion. The sheer force is very visible, very unacceptable, for our double standards to consume. How can after all, we civilized human beings accept the ‘undemocratic’ practices?

Hence folks fought against the British in India, and fought against British against South Africa. In India they succeeded in throwing the colonialists out. In South Africa, they threw the imperialists out of power, if not out of the land.

Very visible were the Nazi invasions. We all hated Hitler to call ourselves civilized. We even hated Stalin who wiped out our object of hatred, the Hitler. Because Stalin was also visibly controlling. In fact we ended up hating Communism as much as Fascism. In fact, we hated Communism more, because Fascism did not contradict our own senses of racial superiorities like we perceived under our very own democracy. Our democracies neglected women, minorities, the people with disabilities, old people, children in schools, men in military. Fascism was no different.

But Communism which was speaking against Fascism and our own types of democracies, was the real threat. Hence we needed to hate Communism for at least four more decades. First we were afraid of Hitler. But Stalin took care of that. And since we need to look good, this year (this week in fact), we visited the Soviets to celebrate the death of 32 million Commie bastards. Between Fascism and Communism, we needed to acknowledge the latter’s contributions. Hence when we needed to bomb Japan, we needed to love Stalin. In fact our most loved Prez FDR (who was power hungry to his fourth term! even as we condemn third world dynastical rules) came back to proclaim Stalin was our friend. But Stalin did not feel the need to kill more Commies in the name of democracy. So we had to hate Stalin. After all, either you are with us, or you are doomed to be proclaimed dictator in rest of our history books. Even in our friend Khrushchev’s history books.

We are civilized folks. How can we accept anything visibly disturbing? In India, the Gandhi had three monkeys. One had its ear closed—not to listen to evil things. One had its eyes closed—not to see anything evil. One had its mouth shut—not to speak evil.

We are civilized. We need to close our ears, eyes and mouths.

How else can we not see the war Operation Matador going on at the Syrian border today? This morning, the U.S. offensive have pounded the area with airstrikes, artillery barrages and gunfire and a man exclaimed to the Associated Press Television News in Qaim "They destroyed our city, killed our children, destroyed our houses. We have nothing left". But this quote came toward the end of the stories. The main story as presented by AP was this: “American fighter jets flattened a suspected insurgent safe house near the Syrian border, the U.S. military said Friday, as hundreds of U.S. troops searched remote desert villages house by house for followers of Iraq's most wanted militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.”

Indeed, what is visible here is the most wanted militant leader being hounded. Invisible are the cries of the residents whose houses have been targeted, whose family members killed for none of their faults and who have unwelcome visitors speaking American slangs at the mid of the nights.

These are times of struggle between the visible and the invisible. And invariably the visible has won. The visibles, very elite minority, own the media houses and they own 80 per cent of world’s capital. The visibles today get to tell their stories and suppress the majority’s. The visibles have converted the world into a police state and controlled the stories we come to hear of others to such extent that my immigrant friends exclaim: poor in America? You must be kidding!

Because the poverty, homelessness, illiteracy, prison population, prostitution, per capita debt, defense spending etc etc are falling in the invisible category.

Reprinted from Austin Chronicle, City Pages of Minneapolis had an article by Michael Ventura on February 23, 2005. Ventura had put down many scribbles together so that factoids start making meaningful themes. I am stating it here completely, lest it disappears from public memory and internet archives:

No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled "un-American." We're an "empire," ain't we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We're No. 1. Well...this is the country you really live in:
• The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
• The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
• "The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
• Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
• "The European Union leads the U.S. in...the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
• "Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
• Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
• Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We're not the place to be anymore.
• The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
• "The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.
• Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That's six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)
• "U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it's the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
• Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
• The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
• Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
• The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
• "Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
• "Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world's 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European" (The European Dream, p.69).
• "Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European.... In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world's leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European.... The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world's top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies...are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top ten. Only four U.S. companies are on the list" (The European Dream, p.68).
• The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005).
• U.S. employers eliminated 1 million jobs in 2004 (The Week, Jan. 14, 2005).
• Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million--one in five--unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).
• Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40 percent of our government debt. (That's why we talk nice to them.) "By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom" (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.
• Sometime in the next 10 years Brazil will probably pass the U.S. as the world's largest agricultural producer. Brazil is now the world's largest exporter of chickens, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Last year, Brazil passed the U.S. as the world's largest beef producer. (Hear that, you poor deluded cowboys?) As a result, while we bear record trade deficits, Brazil boasts a $30 billion trade surplus (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• As of last June, the U.S. imported more food than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn't show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That's more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don't show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.
• One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).
• "Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined" (The European Dream, p.28).
• "Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable" (The European Dream, p.32).
• Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).
• "Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available" (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).
• "The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever" (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).
No. 1? In most important categories we're not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.
The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.

Ventura has indeed quoted the mainstream press (not some conspiracy media) to substantiate a claim.

And after having said this, it’s important to note that the tidbits here are not part of the larger discussions still. The press after quoting figures has left the interpretation part out, in the true tradition of the objective media! So with dry disjointed figures, one hardly sees the picture. And proving Lincoln wrong, we have been fooled for all the times to come. After what we have done to the rest of the world, if we go into believing that we have not been fooled into the assumption that we are going to remain the Top (sic!) country…..

Else, we should have shut up and not fucked (over and over again) the peace of the peoples of China, Italy, Greece, the Philippines, Korea, Albenia, Eastern Europe, Germany, Iran, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Syria, the Middle East, Indonesia, Western Europe, British Guiana, Soviet Union, Cambodia, Laos, Haiti, France/Algeria, Ecuador, the Congo, Brazil, Peru, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Ghana, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Australia, Angola, Zaire, Jamaica, Seychelles, Grenada, Morocco, Suriname, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Bulgaria, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and the peoples of the Americas.

You will wonder, unlike the countries named above who were all attacked within the last 50 years, India does not figure. Still, why the hell am I cribbing?

Well, precisely, that is why. Rest of the world has been bundled. And waiting. And one doesn’t have to be an Indian or Greenlander to keep quite. You just have to be the well meaning, god-fearing American who keeps electing the war mongers to power, to keep quite. For the rest of us world citizens, we need to ask of our land and future.

Whose land is this anyway? Like my fellow immigrant population, I am being asked to go through the process of contentification—of believing and proving that through a smile, that all is well in the Jesusland and I should feel fortunate that I can now stay in the America and watch Desperate Housewives (which has not yet been translated for the third world yet&hellip.

But, damn, how long will I laugh at the televised comedies in the world of neighborhood tragedies?
Have a painful weekend.

Tags: Saswat, History, Capitalism, Communism, Academic, Activism

By Saswat Pattanayak

What an irony that Adriana Bosch, producer of PBS documentary on Reagan and author of American Experience: Reagan had to write, direct and produce the latest Castro documentary.

I watched it tonight with disbelief as the documentary went on to describe four-decades of Cuba as a one-man show, thereby undermining a huge people’s participation. Moreover, flawed perceptions and lack of in-depth knowledge of Soviet Union's relationship with Cuba were conspicuous in this PBS documentary.

In contrast was last year’s HBO documentary made on Castro (titled Looking for Fidel) by Oliver Stone, which at least attempted at a judicious blend of opinions.
Bosch should not surprise viewers, going by her core beliefs. In June last year in an interview with Washington Post, she had expressed her interest in both Reagan and Castro (in contrasting terms).

“..the idea being that Reagan rocked the world on which dictators such as Castro stood on and to me that captured Reagan's contribution to humanity.”

I wonder what are these public broadcasting efforts directed to: seeking layers of truths or covering up by government mouthpieces?

To a question as to what did Bosch think of the fact that Reagan never referred to “AIDS epidemic”, she had this to say:

“I think by the time that the AIDS epidemic broke, Reagan's mind was primarily focused on the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War. At the same time, he was also dealing with the Iran Contra scandal, so it just didn't register on his radar and that was enough for him at that time…….I don't think it was lack of compassion but it was lack of energy and attention to handle more than just a few major issues in his presidency.”

Sounds like quite an activist-imaginative-journalist. Considering that Bosch never had met with Reagan during his lifetime. And yet she could make all such favorable assumptions.
PBS documentaries are used as primary History documents for school children, I am told. If that is the truth, how many more lies our teachers gonna tell us in future?

Tags: Saswat, Communism, History, Media

Speech given by commander in chief Fidel Castro Ruz,
President of the Republic of Cuba at the International
May day celebration in Revolution Square on May 1, 2005

http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2005/ing/f010505i.html

(Cheering)

Listen, hold on for just a bit longer, because today you will be lucky and I won’t be speaking at great length.
(Cheering, and shouts of "No!")

Nature is on our side, look at the breeze
and the clouds; everything is on the side of our noble cause.
Dear personalities and fighters from more than 60 nations who are sharing this historic May Day with us;

Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Imperialism, Capitalism

May 1 went past. And I hoped for some media coverage of the May 1 celebrations in the US. And why should I not? After all, this is the country where May 1 kicked off for the first time and the class divisions among peoples are most clearly evident here than anywhere else.

But guess what CNN, that liberal contestant of Fox, had to say: May 1 is celebrated in some parts of the world today as International Labor Day. And they went on to show the Soviet (of course), Germans and later on China.

Unless of course the assumption is that US is not part of that International world. Just look at the pending UN proposals...

In any case, Long Live May 1

and Yes, finally got the Whosemedia.com up and running. More to spirits of the peoples' media!

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

"Yes, the celebration of May Day has truly been made official. It has been celebrated by the state. The might of the state was evident in many ways. But is it not intoxicating to think that the state, until recently our worst enemy, now belongs to us and has celebrated 1 May as its greatest festival?
And yet, take my word, if this festival had only been official, it would have produced nothing but coldness and emptiness.
But no, the popular masses, the navy, the Red Army all true working people put their efforts towards it. And we can therefore say that this festival of labour has never been so beautiful."

Extract from A. V. Lunacharsky's diary for 1 May 1918, describing the May Day festivities in Petrograd.


When some Australian workers in 1856 first decided to organize and celebrate a no-work day on May 1, they had no idea how much they deserved it. Hence, despite their intent of participating in the event just one time, the day gained such prominence, not out of a media publicity or government endorsement, but because of the growing needs of the times for the workers to assert themselves.

During those days, the average work hours per week was 70 hours! No wonder May 1 celebration touched the lives of millions and immediately followed the Americans. Early in 1886, the Chicago employers were filching away from their employed, the privilege recently unreasonable length than ten or eleven hours. Against this familiar device of the masters, many meetings of the men were held in Chicago in the earlier months of 1886. One of these meetings was called in the Haymarket, for the evening of May 4th. It was called by the Anarchists. A special protest was to be made against the killing of seven unarmed workers a few days earlier, outside McCormick's premises, by Pinkerton detectives. The speeches of the Anarchists before this particular occasion had been of the "sound and fury" type. There had been talk of bombs and the like. (To-Day, Nov 1887).

Even before it, on May 1 that year, working men mobilized in support of the eight-hour workday in cities across the United States. According to New York Times of May 2, 1886, in Chicago, “one good-sized procession, one small one, two small meetings, some gatherings too feeble to be called meetings, and less than 30,000 laboring men taking a holiday, either willingly or unwillingly, represent the first day of the era in which, it has been declared, eight hours shall constitute a day's work and 10 hours' pay shall be gotten for eight hours' work. The red flag has bobbed up here and there, some incendiary speeches have been made.”
NYT reported that the furniture manufacturers of St. Louis formed an association and unanimously resolved to operate their factories on the eight hours per day system after that day, on a basis of eight hours' wages. All the plumbers in the city, 200 in number, quit work that morning. They made a demand of the bosses that they adopt the eight-hour system without decreasing their wages, beginning to-day. Similar reports were filed from Indianapolis, Detroit, Milwaukee, Louisville, Washington, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, Troy, Hartford, New-Haven, Boston And Portland.

Soon after, the Resolution introduced by Raymond Lavigne, International Socialist Congress, Paris, July 20, 1889 summed up the intent for a truly International Labor Day. The International Socialist Congress in Amsterdam calls upon all Social-Democratic Party organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on May First for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace. The most effective way of demonstrating on May First is by stoppage of work. The Congress therefore makes it mandatory upon the proletarian organizations of all countries to stop work on May First, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers.

And as Leon Trotsky put it in 1924, the fundamental May Day demands were threefold: the eight-hour working day, for which generations of the working class have fought, the international solidarity of workers and the struggle against militarism.

Tags: Saswat, Capitalism, Activism, USA, Communism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Does freedom mean different things to different people. I would say yes. And which is why, blog freedom is still not worth a dekko for most people at this point.
But if we look before we leap to this conclusion, it will be indeed foolish.
There are at least two resulting conclusions:
One, freedom is necessary
Two, It is not.

I think both ends of the freedom spectrum have some values. How much freedom is “necessary”? I would say, minimum freedom is necessary. Just like the minimum sources of sustenance.
Lets start from the minimum: With basic freedom of speech and expression and of all things necessary, the world can live a happy life. There are oppressed people and suppressed voices world over who need to be heard. Folks burdened with the task of teaching the untamed quite a few lessons need to find a stage and platform. For, the unheard are not voiceless. The unheard are just plenty of noises yet to find a channel. The united voices will emerge sooner or later.

And when the majority will speak, the voice will no more be suffocated under any obligations, will not be marred by moral prospects, will not stay quite for sake of civility. The outcry for freedom from colonialists and imperialists have found its ways of expressions in the past and it will in the future. Difficult is the process, for the majority indeed are the marginalized in the world today.

But the time is not far ahead. I am sure its going to take place during my lifetime. During this lifetime. Institutional norms will be challenged. Classics will be revisited. Values long kept holy will be tarnished with specks of multiple truths only to reje