Saswat Blog
All that's Left!
Lest We Forget
Lest We Forget
A cruel time this was, the year of 2007
An unholy mix of hell and heaven
America target Somalia in January
No respite for Darfur in February
Ides of March sanctions Iran Civilians
In April, 200 killed by US-Iraqi militants
Lebanese die in dozens during May clashes
Come June, Israeli prez free of rape charges
India enslaved in US nuclear umbrella in July
August on, more power to American wire spy
Germany joins so-called terror war in September
Blackwater guilty of civilian murders in October
Suicide bombing in November’s Afghanistan
December marks post-Bhutto rioting in Pakistan
Where’s heaven, my friend, if you are curious to find
--In the name of God, we maimed the human kind
---Saswat Pattanayak, Peoples' Poet, 2007
A cruel time this was, the year of 2007
An unholy mix of hell and heaven
America target Somalia in January
No respite for Darfur in February
Ides of March sanctions Iran Civilians
In April, 200 killed by US-Iraqi militants
Lebanese die in dozens during May clashes
Come June, Israeli prez free of rape charges
India enslaved in US nuclear umbrella in July
August on, more power to American wire spy
Germany joins so-called terror war in September
Blackwater guilty of civilian murders in October
Suicide bombing in November’s Afghanistan
December marks post-Bhutto rioting in Pakistan
Where’s heaven, my friend, if you are curious to find
--In the name of God, we maimed the human kind
---Saswat Pattanayak, Peoples' Poet, 2007
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Bring the War Home (Part II)
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):
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.
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.
Bring the War Home! (Part I)
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)
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)
Why Resisting War is Memorable?
05/08/05 11:28 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Reference
Amidst times of such war obsessions, often times the history of the war resistance is not told. http://www.route-one.org/ tells the story one location at a time: University of Maryland College Park. Event: a reunion tomorrow of the resisters!
A Child's Picture of the World
04/08/05 06:11 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Reference
A poem from Tina Morris, the English poet, former
co-editor of poetic journals. Morris along with Dave
Cunliffe had proposed the British Poetry Revival in
the eighth issue of their underground magazine
Poetmeat around 1965.
Read More...
Read More...
War and Peace
By Saswat Pattanayak
The questions on war need to be repositioned. I do not think the ethics of peace can ever invalidate the reasons for war.
The conflictual and often contradictory separatism existing between the war mongers and the peaceniks is one of no useful consequence. Extremisms that characterize both the cases make them ineffective. “War at any cost” or “Peace at any cost” lend themselves to the fallacy of self-contradiction, because “any cost”, when attached to the “events” such as war or peace is militarist in nature. Instead, “any cost” can be suitably applied to the “process”. By this it is implied that “progress” can be made at any cost—a progress that does not smack of opportune rise of one interest group to the exclusion of the most others, rather just the other way around.
Often the arguments of the day have sided with Peace and War as binaries and there where lies the inherent source of flaws. Peace may just be the time to prepare for war and war may just be teaching the lessons of history. In both the ways of extreme sense, they are dangerous. Because what we often forget to ask are, “Peace for whom” and “Whose war”.
Contextualizing the situations of peace and war can help shape the way we can lead better lives. The war mongers always serve the interest of a business group which intends to sell its goods. That’s just about it. There is no other rationale for the war mongers to be existent. The sole cause is money making for a few. To validate it, they go any extent and as histories are witnesses, nationalism, internal security, anti-communism, religious intolerance are among the few excuses that the military-industrial complex have always utilized to thrive.
As for peaceniks, it has been a utopian journey all throughout. When Lennon proclaimed the End of the War, all he asked was of people was to imagine. “The War is Over – If you want it”, ran the billboards across Canada during John and Yoko’s bed-in peace demonstrations. What they and the peace marchers forgot to mention was that the War was actually not over and it had nothing to do with people wanting it. In a subtle unintentional way they were implying that people did not want the war to end. This was far from the truth. It was a certain section of capitalists who wanted the war business to go on in the name of protecting Vietnam from the “monstrous Communism”. The catchline should have been “The War must begin—Against the war mongers”.
This was the feeling which so classically embedded in case of the Soviet defense against the Nazis. It was very important to defeat Hitler in a bloody war, for the entire earth to survive. Almost exhausting majority of its able men force of the country (more than 6 million deaths and millions of families affected), the Soviets contributed their biggest lot to the rest of the world, by relentlessly fighting the gory battle to stop the expansion of the radical right wingers. Today no one even among the most politically correct would denounce the defeat of Hitler. The war was not such bad after all.
In the post-cold war phases, the danger subsequently was in a school of propaganda which equated freedom with anything that ran a so-called democratic form of government and called everything else authoritarian dictatorships. In other words, a false claim was made to justify the subsequent phase of the cold war period, which took millions of lives all over the world in the name of defeating the spread of communism. And what we had was a prevailing situation of intolerance with anyone who differed from the mainstream model of electoral governance (howsoever fraud it might be owing to the various vote scams). All socialist governments fell pray. Almost all Islamic regimes over the world were attacked. The ones who agreed to do business at the terms of the democratic warriors were of course spared.
As the wars escalated, the peaceniks among us cried out against all forms of attacks. The paradigm shifted to discuss the dangers of wars. Nobel laureates attributed lack of democracy as a necessary cause for breeding grounds of war. To spread democracy, wars were validated. And civilians who had no need and idea of ballot boxes were forced to see their houses bombed if they were lucky to survive. All in the name of democracy.
The question of “who caused the war” shifted to “why we must stop the war”. In the process of course that big joke, the United Nations called every step by sovereign countries to protect themselves as “aggression” and every step by the militarist nations to attack foreign lands as “peacekeeping”.
With such peacekeepings, of course who needed wars?
The burden of the peace man goes on today without questioning if these are the ones who need to be fought against? Are not the arms dealers and racketeers the worthy causes for active resistance? It’s not the war which is at fault. It’s our inability to distinguish the elements who should be targeted at. The question needs to be turned on its head: for once we need a war—against the original perpetrators who had no business to start it.
The questions on war need to be repositioned. I do not think the ethics of peace can ever invalidate the reasons for war.
The conflictual and often contradictory separatism existing between the war mongers and the peaceniks is one of no useful consequence. Extremisms that characterize both the cases make them ineffective. “War at any cost” or “Peace at any cost” lend themselves to the fallacy of self-contradiction, because “any cost”, when attached to the “events” such as war or peace is militarist in nature. Instead, “any cost” can be suitably applied to the “process”. By this it is implied that “progress” can be made at any cost—a progress that does not smack of opportune rise of one interest group to the exclusion of the most others, rather just the other way around.
Often the arguments of the day have sided with Peace and War as binaries and there where lies the inherent source of flaws. Peace may just be the time to prepare for war and war may just be teaching the lessons of history. In both the ways of extreme sense, they are dangerous. Because what we often forget to ask are, “Peace for whom” and “Whose war”.
Contextualizing the situations of peace and war can help shape the way we can lead better lives. The war mongers always serve the interest of a business group which intends to sell its goods. That’s just about it. There is no other rationale for the war mongers to be existent. The sole cause is money making for a few. To validate it, they go any extent and as histories are witnesses, nationalism, internal security, anti-communism, religious intolerance are among the few excuses that the military-industrial complex have always utilized to thrive.
As for peaceniks, it has been a utopian journey all throughout. When Lennon proclaimed the End of the War, all he asked was of people was to imagine. “The War is Over – If you want it”, ran the billboards across Canada during John and Yoko’s bed-in peace demonstrations. What they and the peace marchers forgot to mention was that the War was actually not over and it had nothing to do with people wanting it. In a subtle unintentional way they were implying that people did not want the war to end. This was far from the truth. It was a certain section of capitalists who wanted the war business to go on in the name of protecting Vietnam from the “monstrous Communism”. The catchline should have been “The War must begin—Against the war mongers”.
This was the feeling which so classically embedded in case of the Soviet defense against the Nazis. It was very important to defeat Hitler in a bloody war, for the entire earth to survive. Almost exhausting majority of its able men force of the country (more than 6 million deaths and millions of families affected), the Soviets contributed their biggest lot to the rest of the world, by relentlessly fighting the gory battle to stop the expansion of the radical right wingers. Today no one even among the most politically correct would denounce the defeat of Hitler. The war was not such bad after all.
In the post-cold war phases, the danger subsequently was in a school of propaganda which equated freedom with anything that ran a so-called democratic form of government and called everything else authoritarian dictatorships. In other words, a false claim was made to justify the subsequent phase of the cold war period, which took millions of lives all over the world in the name of defeating the spread of communism. And what we had was a prevailing situation of intolerance with anyone who differed from the mainstream model of electoral governance (howsoever fraud it might be owing to the various vote scams). All socialist governments fell pray. Almost all Islamic regimes over the world were attacked. The ones who agreed to do business at the terms of the democratic warriors were of course spared.
As the wars escalated, the peaceniks among us cried out against all forms of attacks. The paradigm shifted to discuss the dangers of wars. Nobel laureates attributed lack of democracy as a necessary cause for breeding grounds of war. To spread democracy, wars were validated. And civilians who had no need and idea of ballot boxes were forced to see their houses bombed if they were lucky to survive. All in the name of democracy.
The question of “who caused the war” shifted to “why we must stop the war”. In the process of course that big joke, the United Nations called every step by sovereign countries to protect themselves as “aggression” and every step by the militarist nations to attack foreign lands as “peacekeeping”.
With such peacekeepings, of course who needed wars?
The burden of the peace man goes on today without questioning if these are the ones who need to be fought against? Are not the arms dealers and racketeers the worthy causes for active resistance? It’s not the war which is at fault. It’s our inability to distinguish the elements who should be targeted at. The question needs to be turned on its head: for once we need a war—against the original perpetrators who had no business to start it.
Education-Military-Industrial Complex
By Saswat Pattanayak
A cursory look at the higher educational institutes (more prestigious, the more trenchant in their case) shows the future. And even the past.
A university is usually always isolated from the community. In physical space, it is beyond the areas where people live. The excuse: people in academic scene need more tranquility than traffic. So always in the outskirts of the hustle and bustle of the “madding crowd”, the universities help form their own quite cheap but alienated townships.
Students are encouraged to use their own school buses, buy books from their school bookstores, shop from their co-op stores and sport their school uniforms (well, to some extent with the school logo jerseys with pride). In essence, form a distinctly different culture from the masses and stay away from their vicinities.
The classrooms are always figuratively well maintained. The corridors are high and vertically rising. The stairs leading to the college buildings are intimidating. The campus celebrates its own occasions for celebration. Awards salutations and distinguishes the achievers. Recognizes the students who have excelled and faculty who have bagged grants. All without any knowledge of the people outside. Even the campus newspaper caters to the campus.
Universities host their own games, students chant their own war cries, in order to show their allegiance and support, they shout “down down” to the guest school participants. There are almost always a tension between the faculty, the graduate students and the undergraduate students. Among the teaching assistants and the ones who are not. Among the interns and those ones who are not. Among the C graders and the A graders. Between the assistant professors and the associate professors. Between the associate professors and the full professors.
In the competitive yardsticks that it has institutionalized, the ideal university values funds more than anything else. Because the competition is then between universities themselves as structures. Universities compete to become news in elitist magazines as top schools. They actually are now functioning as followers of magazine protocols than guarding interests of disadvantaged students.
However, in the larger gamut of the killer games, the education in its pristine form never is neglected. Education is always the priority. Only issue with education being the gradual augmentation of thought-controls.
If conforming to the norms of university regulations and peer reviews which lead to faculty promotions, they in turn expect students to conform to their respective schools of thoughts as invisible grounds of favoritisms. Researches begets researches and the tools used in it become crucial. Apart from students being used in furthering the researches, it is also institutional resources which are called to task. The university on its part, promotes one unit over another for fund allocation. More often than not, few technical and management schools bag the prizes, and among them some faculty members who conform to the ideology of the project become awardees.
In effect, not only do the universities become ivory towers, but within them, certain units/schools are more ivory than the others. This naturally enough, promotes feelings of inadequacies among the neglected units. Most of them try to declare themselves to be either professional or scientific, in order to claim some authority for future grants.
As the race continues, far from the “madding crowd”, the university does not seem sane enough. By the time students graduate they face a life outside campus to be one for which they were never prepared for. If the distinctions between the world outside the university and the world within be revisited, the faults then squarely lie not on the community, but the classrooms that teach alienation from the community. The desirable and acceptable languages used (research terminologies), the methods of inquiry (fast surveys), the project goals (to produce peer-reviewed –who are themselves academic elites--brilliant works than relevant works with an agenda for people’s actions), the classroom teaching techniques (top-down vertical instructions or diplomatically speaking suggestions about what is acceptable if one needs an A) are all instruments in the hands of the university to clearly delineate the alumni from everyone else (the “they” ones).
Education, unlike any other pursuit, is idealism in another word. But with buildings named after rich donors and professors subservient to funding agencies, students have to be more than willing to sacrifice idealism.
More easily than I state this, university, then emerges as breeding grounds for future miscreants. Only it makes them smart enough and rich enough to know how to evade charges. And someday when one looks back at the world leaders of the developed world, one wonders why all of them studied at the top schools and yet desired wars with civilians more than peace with the oppressed. Their education not only encourages them from calling mass scale war shots owing to their superiority complex (ingrained from the university days), but it also enables them to become comfortably numb at the consequences (owing to educational indifferences) and work against the interest of the people at large (who they were prevented from mingling with, by the university towers).
A cursory look at the higher educational institutes (more prestigious, the more trenchant in their case) shows the future. And even the past.
A university is usually always isolated from the community. In physical space, it is beyond the areas where people live. The excuse: people in academic scene need more tranquility than traffic. So always in the outskirts of the hustle and bustle of the “madding crowd”, the universities help form their own quite cheap but alienated townships.
Students are encouraged to use their own school buses, buy books from their school bookstores, shop from their co-op stores and sport their school uniforms (well, to some extent with the school logo jerseys with pride). In essence, form a distinctly different culture from the masses and stay away from their vicinities.
The classrooms are always figuratively well maintained. The corridors are high and vertically rising. The stairs leading to the college buildings are intimidating. The campus celebrates its own occasions for celebration. Awards salutations and distinguishes the achievers. Recognizes the students who have excelled and faculty who have bagged grants. All without any knowledge of the people outside. Even the campus newspaper caters to the campus.
Universities host their own games, students chant their own war cries, in order to show their allegiance and support, they shout “down down” to the guest school participants. There are almost always a tension between the faculty, the graduate students and the undergraduate students. Among the teaching assistants and the ones who are not. Among the interns and those ones who are not. Among the C graders and the A graders. Between the assistant professors and the associate professors. Between the associate professors and the full professors.
In the competitive yardsticks that it has institutionalized, the ideal university values funds more than anything else. Because the competition is then between universities themselves as structures. Universities compete to become news in elitist magazines as top schools. They actually are now functioning as followers of magazine protocols than guarding interests of disadvantaged students.
However, in the larger gamut of the killer games, the education in its pristine form never is neglected. Education is always the priority. Only issue with education being the gradual augmentation of thought-controls.
If conforming to the norms of university regulations and peer reviews which lead to faculty promotions, they in turn expect students to conform to their respective schools of thoughts as invisible grounds of favoritisms. Researches begets researches and the tools used in it become crucial. Apart from students being used in furthering the researches, it is also institutional resources which are called to task. The university on its part, promotes one unit over another for fund allocation. More often than not, few technical and management schools bag the prizes, and among them some faculty members who conform to the ideology of the project become awardees.
In effect, not only do the universities become ivory towers, but within them, certain units/schools are more ivory than the others. This naturally enough, promotes feelings of inadequacies among the neglected units. Most of them try to declare themselves to be either professional or scientific, in order to claim some authority for future grants.
As the race continues, far from the “madding crowd”, the university does not seem sane enough. By the time students graduate they face a life outside campus to be one for which they were never prepared for. If the distinctions between the world outside the university and the world within be revisited, the faults then squarely lie not on the community, but the classrooms that teach alienation from the community. The desirable and acceptable languages used (research terminologies), the methods of inquiry (fast surveys), the project goals (to produce peer-reviewed –who are themselves academic elites--brilliant works than relevant works with an agenda for people’s actions), the classroom teaching techniques (top-down vertical instructions or diplomatically speaking suggestions about what is acceptable if one needs an A) are all instruments in the hands of the university to clearly delineate the alumni from everyone else (the “they” ones).
Education, unlike any other pursuit, is idealism in another word. But with buildings named after rich donors and professors subservient to funding agencies, students have to be more than willing to sacrifice idealism.
More easily than I state this, university, then emerges as breeding grounds for future miscreants. Only it makes them smart enough and rich enough to know how to evade charges. And someday when one looks back at the world leaders of the developed world, one wonders why all of them studied at the top schools and yet desired wars with civilians more than peace with the oppressed. Their education not only encourages them from calling mass scale war shots owing to their superiority complex (ingrained from the university days), but it also enables them to become comfortably numb at the consequences (owing to educational indifferences) and work against the interest of the people at large (who they were prevented from mingling with, by the university towers).
The Other War Photography
Four years back I ran into a public debate
(click here to read the first scenario) with a
Border Security Force officer who was the guest
speaker at a university in India. Amidst other views,
one of his arguments was that we needed to see the
war photographs. The students went ahead and did some
paintings on the black and white boards depicting the
huge tanks and the brave fighters.
Such portrayals of course did not include the human costs of war. Nor did it arouse any sentiment for sanity. More the tanks, more the aggression. Psychological Warfare by other names.
The argument was in favor of an abstract patriotism and a holistic battlefield resulting in a war even though founded on fake grounds. And over the years, thanks to the journalists or the embeded ones, we were refused to see what all horrible things used to happen to people after the war, no matter their sides.
The apprehension that graphics of post-war blues would send wrong signals was right in its place. What if people rebel and refuse to join the war. After all who wants such damage to the body and mind in a no-return investment of time and resources.
Well, if a picture paints a thousand words, these ones speak millions. Click here for the updated pictures.
The words are Millions which decry the wars and indeed encourage us all to realize that we do not need to let the future generations go through this torture in the name of our f**ed up convictions aka historical blunders.
Such portrayals of course did not include the human costs of war. Nor did it arouse any sentiment for sanity. More the tanks, more the aggression. Psychological Warfare by other names.
The argument was in favor of an abstract patriotism and a holistic battlefield resulting in a war even though founded on fake grounds. And over the years, thanks to the journalists or the embeded ones, we were refused to see what all horrible things used to happen to people after the war, no matter their sides.
The apprehension that graphics of post-war blues would send wrong signals was right in its place. What if people rebel and refuse to join the war. After all who wants such damage to the body and mind in a no-return investment of time and resources.
Well, if a picture paints a thousand words, these ones speak millions. Click here for the updated pictures.
The words are Millions which decry the wars and indeed encourage us all to realize that we do not need to let the future generations go through this torture in the name of our f**ed up convictions aka historical blunders.
More power to the Other World
16/01/04 18:43 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Political
The World Social Forum is starting today at Mumbai,
India.
It proclaims that it’s not an organization, nor a united front platform, but "…an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and inter-linking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo- liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a society centered on the human person".
The first WSF was held in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001. Then 25000 participated. This time there are 85,000 dreamers/activists who believe another world is possible. More power!
It proclaims that it’s not an organization, nor a united front platform, but "…an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and inter-linking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo- liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a society centered on the human person".
The first WSF was held in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001. Then 25000 participated. This time there are 85,000 dreamers/activists who believe another world is possible. More power!
Bombs are made in Earth
So, so
you think you can tell? That bombs are made in
hell? Think again my friend. They are all
god-send. The most fervent believers in religions
have made the most anti-human weapons. Conservatives
of the world have firmly placed faith on need to go
nuclear. What happens if the haves of the bombs
declare war on the have-nots?
The question won’t be any longer, who is right in that war, but who would be left to answer. The faith system that it wont happen to us, has to go. The war against armaments has to begin. It takes Pavlovian conditioning to tame us into forgetting the history. Before its too late, it has to be never.
The question won’t be any longer, who is right in that war, but who would be left to answer. The faith system that it wont happen to us, has to go. The war against armaments has to begin. It takes Pavlovian conditioning to tame us into forgetting the history. Before its too late, it has to be never.
Flagging off irrelevance
So much ado about nothing.
As if flagging off buses across the border meant any thing. Between India and Pakistan, the drama continues. The rightist power claims that solves the problems which persisted throughout the five decades of the existence of the countries as political democracies (or whatever).
The drama has reached a stage when its painfully funny. People are clearly missing from the pictures since the ministers are eager to credit themselves for this new era of friendship (or whatever).
Apparently, a bus would be flagged off at 6 a.m. IST from Lahore today. About the same time a bus from New Delhi would start for Pakistan. (for the records, it takes 11 hours to cover the distance of 500 kilometres including immigration and customs clearance).
A fortnight ago when the Indian side claimed that the bus would be seen off by the External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, Islamabad dropped the idea of seriously pursuing it. When asked, Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman, Masood Khan reportedly told press that from Pakistan, the Tourism Minister would flag off the bus. He would not say whether the minister was "reluctant" to do the needful because of their collective feeling that the peace process was heading nowhere.
So much for a feeble Vajpayee claiming strength at bridging gaps (or whatever).
As if flagging off buses across the border meant any thing. Between India and Pakistan, the drama continues. The rightist power claims that solves the problems which persisted throughout the five decades of the existence of the countries as political democracies (or whatever).
The drama has reached a stage when its painfully funny. People are clearly missing from the pictures since the ministers are eager to credit themselves for this new era of friendship (or whatever).
Apparently, a bus would be flagged off at 6 a.m. IST from Lahore today. About the same time a bus from New Delhi would start for Pakistan. (for the records, it takes 11 hours to cover the distance of 500 kilometres including immigration and customs clearance).
A fortnight ago when the Indian side claimed that the bus would be seen off by the External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, Islamabad dropped the idea of seriously pursuing it. When asked, Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman, Masood Khan reportedly told press that from Pakistan, the Tourism Minister would flag off the bus. He would not say whether the minister was "reluctant" to do the needful because of their collective feeling that the peace process was heading nowhere.
So much for a feeble Vajpayee claiming strength at bridging gaps (or whatever).
Yet another aimless Treaty!
One has heard of the SALT and NPT and the CTBT.
Here is yet another one: MTSOR.
Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions.
And the following is a lesser known joint statement passed early this month:
On May 24, 2002, we pledged to build a new strategic relationship between the United States of America and the Russian Federation. We declared our partnership, and our commitment to work together to advance stability, security, and prosperity for our peoples, and to work jointly to counter global challenges and help resolve regional conflicts. We also declared that where we had differences, we would work to resolve them in a spirit of mutual respect.
We have met again to reaffirm our Nations’ partnership and our commitment to meet together the challenges of the 21st century.
With the completion of the ratification procedures by the United States Senate, and the two houses of the Russian Federal Assembly, we have been able to exchange instruments of ratification for the Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions. The Treaty takes effect immediately. The deep reductions of strategic nuclear warheads that it codifies are another indication of the transformed relationship between our two countries.
We will intensify efforts to confront the global threats of terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, that threaten our peoples and freedom-loving peoples around the world.
In this regard, we declare our intention to advance concrete joint projects in the area of missile defense which will help deepen relations between the United States and Russia.
How long shall things stay on the paper? As long as it results in Russian reductions….
Here is yet another one: MTSOR.
Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions.
And the following is a lesser known joint statement passed early this month:
On May 24, 2002, we pledged to build a new strategic relationship between the United States of America and the Russian Federation. We declared our partnership, and our commitment to work together to advance stability, security, and prosperity for our peoples, and to work jointly to counter global challenges and help resolve regional conflicts. We also declared that where we had differences, we would work to resolve them in a spirit of mutual respect.
We have met again to reaffirm our Nations’ partnership and our commitment to meet together the challenges of the 21st century.
With the completion of the ratification procedures by the United States Senate, and the two houses of the Russian Federal Assembly, we have been able to exchange instruments of ratification for the Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions. The Treaty takes effect immediately. The deep reductions of strategic nuclear warheads that it codifies are another indication of the transformed relationship between our two countries.
We will intensify efforts to confront the global threats of terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, that threaten our peoples and freedom-loving peoples around the world.
In this regard, we declare our intention to advance concrete joint projects in the area of missile defense which will help deepen relations between the United States and Russia.
How long shall things stay on the paper? As long as it results in Russian reductions….
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