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

Tags: Saswat, War, Peace

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

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

As Lebanon bleeds, it kills.

It kills our conscience every single day,
as we carry on with our mundane plans
to further petty bourgeois career paths as usual.

Lebanon kills our ability to reason with truth,
as we carry on with our
CNN
and BBC
and New York Times.
Lebanon kills our faith in human good,
as we rationalize
that it is human nature to sustain warfare.
Lebanon kills our trusts in our own potential to rise up,
look into our comfortable shining mirrors on the walls,
and discover how unabashedly wretched we must look
if we smile to ourselves today.

Lebanon kills all that is beautiful,
all that is innocent,
all that is glorious,
all that is humane,
all that is kind,
all that is generous,
all that we mean by understanding for social good.

Yes, Lebanon kills, when it bleeds.

Lebanon kills our sense of empathy
when children of Beirut
are massacred in name of
democracy.
Lebanon kills our feelings of cooperation
when we indifferently watch
hapless humans murdered in name of
freedom.
Lebanon kills our pride in our identities
as we stoically listen to
blatant propaganda against Islam.
Lebanon kills our amicability
the moment we buy into
media definition of terrorism.
Lebanon kills our cognition
when we start believing
that there ever was a
kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.
That such kidnapping
has anything to do with the war
against humanity.

Yes, Lebanon kills, when it bleeds.

When we overlook Israel
as one of the biggest militarist regions
of the planet,
Lebanon kills.
Lebanon kills our intelligence
when we start assuming
a national defense establishment
is protector of anything human,
be it the armed forces of India,
America,
Pakistan
or Israel.
Lebanon kills our sense of proportion
when we mistake the grieving
agonized
and affected
peoples as the terrorists.
Lebanon kills our basic values of decency
when we have anger
at the defenseless
and support
for Abu Gharibs.
Because we think
the Iraqi prisoners
were terrorists
and invading military rapists
are victors,
Lebanon kills.

Lebanon kills our children
and their children
and theirs,
because we have taught them the history
invented by
Rupert Murdorch,
not history
relived by
Howard Zinn.
Lebanon kills our fathers,
and their fathers
and theirs,
because they did not teach us
not to discriminate people
or disown gods,
and Lebanon kills us,
because we have still not learnt enough.

Yes Lebanon kills, when it bleeds.

When the so-called world leaders call
their lavishly delicious meetings
and use profanities
to address the suffering people,
Lebanon kills.
When the leaders perpetrate military race
by aiding Israel’s quests,
Lebanon kills.
Lebanon kills our memory
when we conveniently forget
that Israel is the only country in the world
that practices Apartheid even today.
When its lost on us that Israel has not one,
or two,
but 11 different classes of people
who are required to carry identifications
with their ethnic categories
so that they can be officially discriminated,
Lebanon kills.

When its lost on us that Israel as a state
works to benefit its “first class citizens”,
whereas the rest are
condemned in different degrees,
most even not allowed
to own residence in
nine-tenth of the country,
Lebanon kills our knowledge
of contemporary racist history.

Lebanon kills our curiosity to know and grow,
when we conveniently ignore the fact
that Israeli citizens of the
lower classes are routinely arrested,
and tortured
without trial for indefinite periods,
by Israeli ruling class
just as the fascists ever did.
Lebanon kills our power to look beyond
when we do not think twice
even as Palestinians have been living under unethical
inhuman
military occupation since almost 60 years now,
without land,
without rights,
without hopes,
and any sense of belonging
in a land that rightfully belongs to them
and wrongfully occupied now.
That we do not pause
to think 60 years is a human lifespan,
Lebanon kills.

Yes Lebanon kills, when it bleeds.

We, the torchbearers of freedom
and trumpets of liberty
and voters of democracy
are fittingly comfortable
within our definition of these words
whereas using these words
we mandate our leaders
to go ravage millions of innocent women
and children
just because they do not want
our shallow words in their dictionary,
and that is why Lebanon kills.
We the killers of Edward Said
and annihilators of Mesopotamia civilization
are so proud of our conquering heritage
while leaving behind no history for “terrorist children”,
that Lebanon kills.
We visitors to mocking war memorials
and lying history museums
and readers of western civilizations
that validated slavery in name of gods
are so muted by our ignorance
that Lebanon kills.
We fanatic supporters of colonial
and imperial powers of Europe
that forced the Jews
and compelled the Arabs
and enslaved the blacks
and looted the working men and women
of the entire world,
are so happy to be psychologically numb,
and its so sad
that Lebanon kills.

Lebanon kills those that refuse to acknowledge
that revolution is the prerogative of the landless
against the landgrabbers,
just as
reactionary military occupation
is the prerogative of
the religious-military-industrial nexus.
And to those of us
who side by the authorized militarists
and take them for agents of freedom,
Lebanon kills.
Lebanon kills us
when we start believing in nationalities
as ends to human aspirations,
not as temporary means
to solve the question of bread,
so temporary
that after bread,
land
and peace,
we should know no nations
in order to embrace the worldwide working class.
And worldwide working class
should know
no national boundaries
and ethnicities
and religions,
because these are tools of the oppressors,
if it must come together,
and many of us refuse to believe this,
and hence Lebanon kills.

Lebanon kills us
when we blindly lend our support
to the orchastrators of global terrorism
in order to divide and rule our world,
and install their undivided Empire
those who for six decades
now in the name of war
against Communism
and “terror”,
had been working
to in fact cause wars
against working class humanity
in Korea,
in Vietnam,
in China,
in Italy,
in Greece,
in the Philippines.
Also
in Albania,
in Eastern Europe,
in Iran,
in Guatemala,
in Costa Rica,
in Syria,
in the Middle East,
in Indonesia,
in British Guiana,
in Soviet Union,
in Cambodia,
in Laos,
in Haiti,
in Algeria,
in Ecuador,
in The Congo,
in Brazil,
in Peru,
in Dominican Republic,
in Cuba,
when the militarist combines assaulted societies
and bombarded destabilization
in name of promoting “democracy”,
and yet we applaud their victories,
Lebanon kills.

Despite their illegal interventions
also
in Ghana,
in Uruguay,
in Chile,
in Bolivia,
in Iraq,
in Australia,
in Angola,
in Zaire,
in Jamaica,
in Seychelles,
in Grenada,
in Morocco,
in Suriname,
in Libya,
in Nicaragua,
in Panama,
in Bulgaria,
in Afghanistan,
in El Salvador
and now
against the American working class,
we keep silent
and worship their billionaires
and deride the working class communities
of immigrants
and the blacks
and the Muslims,
it really sucks;
and Lebanon kills.

Lebanon kills when it bleeds,
because through our callous indifference,
and our reactionary supports
to the national defense forces
that thrives on the military industrial complexes
owned by a handful of global capitalists,
we have allowed the free rein
to exploit the indigenous,
the poor,
the working class people
by infusing in us
vast sea of ignorance
so that we would not challenge
the structure.
In fact
Lebanon kills
our mere existence
as beings
as we so submissively let our minds
be colonized yet again,
by raising toast to their victory,
by worshipping their gods,
by using their profanities,
by playing by their rules,
by spreading their hatred
among ourselves
in the name of their religions,
their moral standards
and their male supremacist,
heterosexist,
individualistic,
self centered,
nationalistic,
oppressive,
religious,
capitalistic,
god-fearing,
inhumane
corporate orders.

Lebanon kills
because we live comfortably
in our racist,
anti-Islam
world of lies,
and we let our world leaders
orchestrate occasions,
deliberately neglect law and order,
and find reasons
to commit genocide
of innocent people
in months of
September
and July
and rest of the year,
in London,
New York
and Mumbai
and rest of the cities,
so that
they can carry on their own agendas
to conquer country after country,
oil fields after oil fields,
economies after economies,
peoples cooperatives after peoples cooperatives,
tribal lands after tribal lands,
indigenous peoples after indigenous people,
forests after forests,
and in fact declare our world as theirs,
as a capitalistic,
patriarchal,
conservative structure.
And hence Lebanon kills,
so that
when we are no more,
our children will at least
have got rid of us all
and a ravaged Lebanon
will guide a new world,
full of hope
because all despairs are getting rid of now,
each moment.

Lebanon must kill,
even as she bleeds.


-Saswat Pattanayak, Peoples’ Poet, 2006

Tags: Saswat, Lebanon, War, Capitalism, Imperialism, Israel

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

The “liberal-bias” of the media has again come to light. In the recent Los Angeles Times report “Doubts About Taking On Tehran”, the bias is evident. Clearly it’s a headline that works for the liberals. The headline exhumes that “About half those polled support military action if Iran continues its nuclear activity but don't trust President Bush to make the call.”

Throughout the widely circulated article, the substantiated assumption is that half of Americans doubt President Bush’s decision making potential and sense of good judgment when it comes to Iran.

For all the findings, please click the larger story here.

The article clearly posits a sense of comfort among the liberals that the President does not have support of even more than a half of people in this country. Good for the Democrats and other opposition blocs, if any. And in my view, bad for the world.

Media are the agents of sustainable interpretations in any western democratic regime. By that I mean, they play the role of the necessary critic. The necessary criticism of the existing political power is a necessary ingredient to promote the existing system; and media houses (which are essentially big corporate ventures) are the best bets.

Just as in a majoritarian democratic model, everything appears to be ruled by the “freely” elected representatives, their fourth estate, the Press, also make it appear that the news selection, placement and interpretations are done almost as democratically. Hence the press, just like the government, never hesitate to proclaim that they provide the whole truth in an objective fashion, because they know what’s good for the society to know (just as the state knows what’s good for the society to be governed by).

And so all that we know about how we are being governed is conveniently decided by the governors of our lives (the government) by letting the knowledge providers (the media) be the disseminators.

The only catch here, is that unlike in an “authoritarian”/peoples’ regime, where the press has the sole role of working as the official agent for dissemination of governmental news (and hence people are aware of the role already and make up their minds accordingly regarding the news source as clear “party propaganda”—and rise up against it in case it disbelieves in anything), in western democratic model, the press plays the subverted role of a propagator. To the extent, that the government in such democracies refuse to have their own propaganda Media. Because only then, the power structure cannot be challenged upfront. It needs to be challenged only through a comfortable space it has created between it and the people: the press. And this press, in return creates an illusion that it is actually with the people, not with the government. So it acts as a platform for “buffer opposition”.

LA Times provides no surprise through such articles. And the modern-day press system in any democratic regimes also knows how to eliminate any doubt factor that may creep in when it comes to evaluate their strategies. So the smart way is to involve some of the people to validate what they have been trying to say. So the press then go ahead and involve some people’s voices! In this article, there were 1,357 people who were polled! So by interviewing less than 1500 people “nationwide”, the paper has come to a conclusion that half of the people do not trust Bush.

Serious Issues:
1. The method of deriving at such finding is notoriously wrong. The sample needs to be way bigger. At least 50% people need to be asked the questions about “Iran War”, before coming to a conclusion. Secondly, if a national newspaper has branches all over, they need to interview people from all the centers, representing people from all geographical regions and specify the details. Clearly a person in the east-coast is more liberal than the person from the rural America, simply because of the quality of interaction people have with multicultural environment. The Republican states are thus ignorant because of the phobia of Muslims they live by. The liberal state residents are more enlightened because of the reality of Muslim friendships they preserve. These reflect on the findings. We need to be told about the disparities and of the suggested remedies. Thirdly, telephone polls are always tricky. With all the collaborations with polling agencies, they need to hire more interviewers who can go door to door in diverse areas (white, black and immigrant settings) and “talk with” people—conduct in-depth interviews if needed, and not merely quiz them.

2. The investigations into how much one knew about a topic before answering on the topic needs also to be taken into account. There are people in this country who still think Canada is a smaller neighborhood country, let alone knowing where Iran actually is on the map. One of these people on a chat with me once asked me where I was from. I said Maryland. She says, “You sound so funny. Where exactly are you from?” Because she refused to believe there was a place called “Mary”land. In such an environment, it will help to “know”, if not to explain (that education cannot happen without a propagandist tool, you see!), how much the people knew about Iran before responding. After all, we don’t waste time asking a 5-year child about effectiveness of Durex condoms and publish a finding. Why to ask people who don’t know anything about why Shah of Iran fled in 1979 despite American support, regarding why American needs to bomb the country today?

3. The News factor: I remember in my journalism school, how I was also taught about the news factor. When a “dog bites man”, its no news, the professor used to say. When the “man bites dog”, it’s the news. I always wonder why it needs to be so. Why should we look for sensations/exceptions and portray them as news, all the while ignoring the everyday life journeys. Mundane as they are, issues like poverty, ignorance and helplessness of people in democratic regimes are not considered news, as they are not sensational. What sells for corporate media are the shock value, and they will go any extent to even produce some of them. The current news in my view, SHOULD HAVE BEEN, that Majority of those polled Americans actually are war-mongers, shameful chapters in the world history. Come to think of it, half of Americans actually want war! Wow…I think that’s news in every sense. The headline should have read: “We interviewed sick warmongers who want to kill innocent civilians through airstrikes”. Yes, one question asked if people would support military action, if Iran continued to produce materials that could be used to develop nuclear weapons. 48% said, yes they would want military action, and only 40% opposed it. That’s news for me. Because hey, we all know India has even tested nuclear. And all western European countries have the same material resources. Canada is vast. France is winner. America leads. Now the common excuse even does not work. That the elite countries don’t use the materials for weapons is also false. And that nuclear energy can be used constructively is also a reality. To assume that western countries are the responsible carriers of energy (considering the bombing of Japan, and history of interventions of conventional warfare nature—ALL initiated by these countries, and also considering the hoax excuse called WMD to wipe out Iraqi civilization), and the rest of the world are irresponsible, amounts to blatant racism. Yet, the news of the LA Times indicates the good, (that Americans doubt Bush), but omits the bad (that Americans want the war).

4. Fact checking and priority of news: I think news is in the question when it’s asked: “Suppose George W. Bush decides to order military action against Iran, which action would you support”? And the choices were a) Airstrikes/no ground troops, b) Combination of airstrikes and ground troops, c) Ground troops, d) No military action and e) Don't know. The responses. Only 20% say “No military action”. 44% want to see action in the air! 19% want both ground and air strikes. Sick and more sick. Come to think of it: 80% of people did not want a peaceful dialogue, a change in stance, a removal of bias--all these are facts…The American media clearly choose to ignore these.

What’s important is not if people trust Bush. Clearly it’s a misnomer. Because it hardly matters. He cannot contest another time anyway. His tenure will be done with. So, will they trust someone else with the weapons. Of course yes. Because what’s at stake should not be which political party should come to power in order to annihilate Iran, the question ought to be: should we allow such a draconic thought even to pass our mind. The question is why the poll didn’t ask some vital questions as they come to mind..: Do you love to kill fellow human beings whose flesh you cannot eat? Or do you love to kill humans who have never damaged your life in any way (Iranians don’t impose taxes, they don’t even impose health insurances). If the answer is NO (which is the most logical answer), then the next questions should be: Do you then need to support the idea of a war as a solution? Do you want your tax money to be spent on killing innocent civilians in a foreign country? Do you want to lay down your children’s lives fighting for an ideal they have no idea about? Do you want to live lives in misery in memories of your children who died while killing someone else’s children on the front of the war? Do you believe that war is natural and human beings are natural murderers? Do you know if only way less than one percent of population in the world has ever committed murder in order to be called naturally violent and on many occasions they have killed for a personal reason? Do you have a personal reason in murdering any Iranian citizen? If not, then go have a good meal and we will spread the good word on your behalf: love others.

Its not that we don’t know the answers…its just that we need to know the right questions. It’s high time we asked the questions that matter to us, not respond to questions that help the power structure continue to use our responses to further its ends.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Capitalism, War, Bush, Iran

Did CIA create Osama bin Laden & fostered fanaticism? For those who never knew it already, Chomsky says, yes.

"A sensible person would try to ascertain Bin Laden’s views, and the sentiments of the large reservoir of supporters he has throughout the region. Bin Laden became a militant Islamic leader in the war to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan. He was one of the many religious fundamentalist extremists recruited, armed, and financed by the CIA and their allies in Pakistani intelligence to cause maximal harm to the Russians-quite possibly delaying their withdrawal-though whether he personally happened to have direct contact with the CIA is unclear, and not particularly important. Not surprisingly, the CIA preferred the most fanatic and cruel fighters they could mobilize. The end result was to “destroy a moderate regime and create a fanatical one, from groups recklessly financed by the Americans” (according to London Times correspondent Simon Jenkins).

Source: Interview on Radio B92, Belgrade Sep 18, 2001

Well, of course there are huge amount of apparent human beings just so opposed to everything Chomsky says! And equally sad, the way the secret operatives have been normalized, instead of being questioned.

So, I thought in the age of Fox TV and all accompanying television shortcuts, let's watch this short video of the secretive CIA.

Tags: Saswat, War, Terrorism, Media, USA

By Saswat Pattanayak

I was afraid of the hypodermic bullet effects of the Time magazine’s story on Hiroshima. In an earlier post I was apprehensive that people may not have reasons not to believe the myth that bombings on “Japan led to end of war”, since the magazine had orchestrated the story so well (with a Japanese victim-model actually heralding the bomb on the cover and “eyewitnesses” inside thanking the bombs)!

For me, the reading was a macabre humor. So I was wondering how would readers react. Just hope against hope. M-pyre had a brave story. Apart from them, I did not discover much on the blogosphere either on the issue. Finally, the Aug 22nd issue of Time has published the readers’ views. And my worst fears have come true. Unlike other issues where readers are at least partially divided on a cover story perspective, this time, not a single letter writer feels disgusted! And everyone (all 8 of the published letters talk about Hiroshima and all of them are happy that the bombing was done) has congratulated and thanked Time for the efforts to educate us about why bombing was a good thing. Here are a couple of reactions (statutory apology: If you feel slighted, insulted, hurt, hold Time responsible for publishing them. I do not personally agree with the views on the letters):

I hope the US servicemen know they are heroes. They helped end WWII and ensured that my grandpa and millions of other grandpas would go home instead of invading Japan. It was estimated that an invasion might have caused 1 million Allied casualties. There would have a lot fewer dads and grandpas of ours around today had that taken place.

–says one officer candidate of Illinois Army National Guard.

How much longer do Americans have to feel guilty about Hiroshima? By dropping the atom bombs, the US delivered millions of people from the jaws of the Japanese war machines.

-- says a reader from Hong Kong.

As a young Marine who would probably have played a role in the scheduled invasion of Japan, I cheered when I heard the news about the bombing. Since then, 60 years of reflection have tempered my enthusiasm

-- says a reader from California.

Sounds incredible, but each letter is a reflection of the war-mongering selves of the highly educated yet such ignorant minds. As one observed that he believes that bombing saved “our dads and grandpas”. OUR? Our people’s lives have worth and not theirs? The undercurrent is there has been no war since then to have claimed a large number of lives. The other advocacy suggests that we did not have to invade Japan since bomb helped us committing from the act. One other letter even thanks the Japanese for living the horrible effects of bombs, which helped us never to use the bomb again.

Each of these is not mere opinion emanating from innocent observations. These are well cultivated attitudinal issues. I don’t blame Time for having planted these propaganda in popular minds. Indeed no form of mass media is capable of carrying out propaganda. We are socialized in fashions (along with family, peers, teachers) that make us vulnerable to thinking in a way that gets reinforced by the mass media we choose to play the role of mediators. So whereas the needle theory may have been misplaced, the effects cannot be completely overlooked.

For a fact, war was not ended because of the bombs. The so-called World-War II had ended well before that. Secondly, there is no difference between Our Dad and the Japanese Dad. When human lives are lost such recklessly because one political leader wants to have a good time, then only ignorant fools seek nationalities of the dead (after deaths anyway the body does not belong to a country anymore. Then why kill because someone is Japanese?) Thirdly, Japan was definitely the evil country. But to blame its innocent civilians for it would be to suggest the most fallacious assumption. The bombs were never aimed at the evil ruling class of Japan, it was aimed as an experiment of mass destruction (which caused generations of deaths of people who were themselves oppressed under authoritarian rule). There is absolutely no logic behind an assumption that because “x” country is evil (which is so grossly wrongly phrased and overplayed by our cautious media, that it’s pathetic), its citizens need to be taught a lesson.

What happens in effect is for everyone to note. The dictatorial rulers ably supported by the ruling class of America including to name just a few, Batista of Cuba, Bolkiah of Brunei, Botha of South Africa, Diem of South Viet Nam, Franco of Spain, Hitler of Germany, Marcos of the Philippines, Pinochet of Chile, or Videla of Argentina have all lived well. Its another matter, even their lands were not attacked. But when it was, in case of former allies like Saddam or Bin Laden (Afghanistan is one of his playing fields) they were never sent to gas chamber anyway. Actually none of these dictators were ever punished. Only the people of the countries they ruled were subjected to unnecessary deaths.

The end of war was a myth. The world was in fact divided up in blocs soon after the bombs. And in name of cold-war, millions were annihilated systematically. American invasions never ended. In fact, it quadrupled. Vietnam continued for 11 years. Several countries went for nuclear bombs to “safeguard” their interests. The world is much more dangerous a place today because of the misuse of bombs. Just because an atomic bomb has not been used for the second time does not prove a thing. 60 years in the history of world is a short chapter. Too short to conclude predictions.

Moreover the lives lost last century (continuing draconically this century too, as if it were a logic) because of wars after the 1940’s should serve reminders of the evil of wars and those who perpetuate them. Not feel glad that we killed them, when in effect all that people have done is play the cards of the motivated politicians (who never send their kids to war front ever—and even if they were—still it would not make any sense for the child to play by the dad’s whims), and kill fellow human beings who have had no role in creating the prejudices.



The fact is that Hiroshima bombing was the most dastardly act ever committed. And not all Americans need to feel guilty about it. Only those must feel guilty irrespective of the countries they come from, who think American leadership made the right decision by going ahead with the bombs. Those who support the people who do business with these military-corporate nexus should feel guilty too. Those who think harboring bombs is a effective tool for whatever reason should feel guilty too. Those who kill people in the name of faiths and nationalities should feel guilty. And those who support these people on principle must feel guilty too. In conclusion, that’s not many people, if you count. Spare the rest of us the pain. Guilt is the last thing on the minds of the peace-loving citizenry of the world. They must work towards rewriting the history of the world so that the future generations are not misled anymore into the web of misinformation, lies, and anti-people propaganda.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Japan, Cold War, War, History

“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

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!

Tags: Saswat, Activism, War, Peace

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

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

By Saswat Pattanayak

Part of fighting terrorism, the British realize, is refusing to change a way of life, writes Andrew Sullivan, and he calls it the “Quiet Power of the Stoic” in the Time Magazine this week.

Well, one will wonder why I stoop to quote Sullivan on the same page where I quote Neruda. Not quite unreasonable considering that today’s media provide the sort of inspirations like Sullivan’s pieces, for a scribe like me to think as deep as Neruda to ruminate over problems which have only proliferated since. Hence instead of the painstaking love ballads, I have to create the apt rebuttal for the reactionary stoicisms.

How do I react to the reactionaries? To the politically correct? To the timely interventionists? To the anti-terrorism conscience keepers? To the crusaders against illegal aliens? To the wise interpreters of Islam?

To begin with, one of the most popular bloggers of all time, Sullivan sure knows the vulnerabilities of the print media like Time. First, in times of crises like the London Blasts, its easier to express popular sentiments, and two, in places like Time, he cannot expect immediate responses. Its another matter that with all the trumpets being blown by bloggers about the grassroots media being one where there is a scope for the readers to correct the blogger via comments, Sullivan is out of comments on his site!

In any case who expects contrary comments when the bomb blasts in London is the only political incident today in the world and standing by the aggrieved is the only politically correct thing to do. So Sullivan writes:

The English, as Orwell once observed, celebrate their freedom in small ways: gardening, sports, pets, pubs, stamps, crossword puzzles. Part of this is now patriotic mythology. But part is also the enculturated national DNA to see these things not as trivial but as integral to the life of a free people. These things didn't stop, even during the Blitz, when thousands lived through night after night with the prospect of being incinerated by bombs from the sky. Part of fighting the war, the Brits realized, was military. But part was also a refusal to change a way of life, however small its detail, however petty its peeves.

---

As long as some maniac wants to kill himself and others in a subway or supermarket, we will not be able to stop him. And so stoicism matters. Getting on with our lives matters. Spelling bees, college football, celebrity gossip, high school proms: the simple continuance of these things is integral to the meaning of freedom.

Or so the British have long proved. Their small-c conservatism can lead to errors of complacency--like appeasing Hitler in the 1930s. But it is also a deep strength, as self-effacing as it is unmovable.

I am rendered speechless and I do not know where to post comments. But here is what I thought Sullivan said and half meant.

Basically, do anything. Support Hitler. Gossip celebrity. Prom high schools. Invade Iraq. Stay conservatives. Let Tony Blair comment on how some Muslims got Islam wrong. Allow him to pass a stricter law now so that illegals can be filtered out. Call people maniacs, systems perfect and the celebrate indifference. Don’t reflect on actions, don’t contextualize. Just get going with life, as usual. Stay stoic. Don’t change yourself.

What Orwell forgot to mention was that the English celebrated their freedom in other small ways too: invaded the natives, raped their women, killed their ables, subjugated their economies, dried their resources, came back home peacefully without any damage, when they needed cheap workforce they got the natives to work as cobblers and slaves, treated them as dogs disallowing them to enter into restaurants, promoted racism, and when the natives forgot their language and became Englicised, refused them equal pay. After keeping them illiterate in their own cultures, got the natives to pay tuitions to study in English traditions, and when the students applied for jobs, asked them to go back home with a debt, and when few natives played by their rules and ran their industries and wrote their stories, they got them knighted so that they became to be known as English, not natives anymore.

If these are not exercise of unbridled freedom on part of the English, then I do not know what these are. And now what again so conveniently was forgotten by Sullivan was that alongwith the college football, the Brit ruling class has been perfectly innocently content about their sense of superior freedom when it comes to the debt trap they lead Africa into (some countries there have paid thrice the original debt only to suffer for the rest of the civilization trying to pay the guilt-ridden interests), about their realization of peace at inflicting deaths by the hundreds to the civilians in the middle east, over the Palestine crisis and the Iraq fiasco. When British personnel were exposed for prison torture, the English were at peace with themselves over such “small issues” too.

Who can afford to stay stoic? I cannot. I am enraged at the bombings. I am enraged at the bombings, yes prime minister, over the same bombings which killed Muslims too. I am enraged at the stoic take on the heinous bombings that killed ordinary lives, the British working class lives which never agreed with the Queen’s stance on Diana and Blair’s stance on Iraq. I am enraged at this whole thing about “Pakistani descent”, when all of the alleged bombers were British citizens. I am enraged at the whole lectures of the PM about Islamic extremism when it is partly a case of British security failure. I am enraged about the way its being dismissed as individual acts of terrorism, whereas the main bomb makers are largely amiss, their motives overtly unknown. Instead of looking at it as a social byproduct of modern capitalism, I am enraged at the way the narrative speaks only of the religious bigotry (itself a product of modern capitalism). I am enraged about the way distinction is being done among people of faiths basing on this incident which has to do more than religious sentiment.
Clearly no religion preaches violence. Why should the Muslims be singled out? When a Christian lobbyist cheats the Congress, does one blame Christianity and tries to dig its textual interpretations? Or when Mandela suffered for 27 years in the islands, was Christianity revisited?

Stoicism, my dear Andrew, is the opium of the British. And the ruling class of Britain wants it to stay. So that they can now tighten the immigrations a little more and claim to have solved the case with four dead men as providing evidence. And in the process the bigger questions will be purged: Who harbored the criminal intents? Who encouraged the situation? Whose education called for social distrust among promising youths? Who were they born and brought up amidst the British neighborhoods?

From nationalists in the 1850s, to being called patriots in the 1920s, to announced radicals in the 1960s, to call terrorists in the Bush era, individuals have been branded. Sullivan dismisses them as maniac individuals this time. The issues have changed, the enemies have changed, the causes have been reversed. Yet the violence persists. When the state machineries have gone violent, we have called them war, when individuals have chosen violence they are now suicide bombers. We do not know why these people have behaved this cowardly as they did now. One thing for sure, we know that many people all over the world have been converted into suicide bombers since at least three decades now. To dismiss their acts as manic acts of random nature would be to stay stoic and fail to bridge the gaps that exist between us humans. For one, going by the massive protests at all the meetings of world leaders (and we do not see many Muslims at all, remember!), we know that the rulers are not very much welcome by the ruled and their principles or lack of them are being vehemently opposed. What we need is a deep appreciation of contrary interests and constructive dialogues to understand the oppositional chords rather than being violent (which is easy for a police state anywhere to cause and generate), being stoic (which is easy for the i-pod generations and Disney theme park visitors in the developed world to enjoy and mock with), being dismissive and accusatory (which is easy considering the might and the wealth of the developed economies which never hears of the bombs in the quarrelling poor nations but goes deafeningly reactionary when any singular incident takes place and attributes religious and international tones to it to vitiate the atmosphere further).

With time, we shall know what circumstances we have created in a world we no more love, which have led many youths astray—from being socially productive, and individually progressive, to emerge as self-obsessed reflections of a warring imperialistic individualistic world divided by flags, religions and countries.

Between the mad people and the scared people (and scared people don’t remain stoic, remember), the situation may not be managed well. But by taking pride in a stoic citizenry instead of encouraging them to become alert international human beings, we are taking steps backwards.

Tags: Saswat, Media, Terrorism, War, Christianity, Philosophy

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.

Tags: Saswat, Philosophy, Peace, War, Cold War, History

By Saswat Pattanayak

In March 2000, US President Bill Clinton made a noteworthy visit to India (that loathed nuclear power..), the first by a sitting U.S. president in 22 years! It was followed up by Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee who visited the US in September that year, addressed a joint session of Congress, and became the chief guest at the largest-ever state dinner hosted by the America. So much ado about nuclear non-proliferation!

The tragedy about America and India are not their peoples (who by the way have from time to time shown promises of peace efforts, only to be truncated by five-year democratic rules changing norms). Its their self-proclaimed leaderships. Misleading people into believing in anti-Arab or anti-Pakistan rhetoric, the leaders, irrespective of whether they are from Republican/Democrat or BJP/Congress, have been willing pawns in the hands of the defense lobbies.

The popular narrative has always focused on how the innocent India is always bullied by the US in matters of its defense priorities. Vajpayee even had famously spoken at the UN (yes that Hindi speech for which Indians were told to feel proud about) to stress on “India’s commitment” to nuclear non-proliferation and how countries were making it difficult for India. It was the same Vajpayee who sadistically was laughing his guts out after secretly declaring India a nuclear power. Many Indian politicians over the time have thrived only by denouncing the double speak of the American treadmill (like the famous anti-cola Goerge Fernandes who became defense minister and lured to American defense principles had to resign in shame following Tehelka). This was very noble, except that all throughout, the Indian secret defense establishment (the holy cow which was exposed by Tehelka for its willingness to sellout for sleaze, sex, money and a hoax American company’s letterhead) has only served the American military-industrial interests.

So when in November 2001 in Washington D.C., PM Vajpayee and President Bush reiterated their “commitment to transform India-U. S. relations”, they were basically bullshitting. Their excuse: “The common democratic traditions of our countries remain the bedrock of their relationship and the foundation for long-term strategic cooperation.” Neither of them of course would talk about all those “non-democratic” countries they are oh-so-friendly with (we know who they are of course). And this bedrock of relationship between democracies anyway just emerged recently. India did not talk of Kashmir and Pakistan, because that’s such an old story. The new one was Bin Laden in Afghanistan (yeah those days when Saddam was still not the public enemy number 1) and I remember how I was forced to stop my car on the road because we were required to condemn 9/11 terrorism. It seemed to us on the road that day that terrorism was some alien thing our leaders never approved of!!!! Of course to prove that, leaders came up with Patriot Acts and what not. The patriots!

By the way before I forget, the meetings between US and India are of “Defense co-operation”, not “Peaceful existence co-operation”. There is a crucial difference here too. So the fruitful meet between Vajpayee and Bush concluded that the Joint Technical Group under the US-India Defense Policy Group (DPG) were to meet in February-March 2002 to discuss the promotion of bilateral ties in the field of defense production and research. The U.S. Joint Staff and the Indian Chief of Integrated Defense Staff were to meet in spring of 2002, before the next DPG, and regularly thereafter to discuss tri-service institutions, military planning, and tri- service doctrine. And a new structured dialogue between the U.S. Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment and its Indian counterpart were to develop exchanges between the defense research and analyses communities in both countries.

The Indian player: Vajpayee. That ironic symbol of nuclear disarmament whom Nehru trusted to be a world leader of peace, and who of course subsequently betrayed an entire country by hiding from its billion population that he was secretly testing nuclear bombs with another secretive scientist who he plans to catapult to the post of an accomplice President.

So logically, quite contrary to that popular narrative of how much US despised the third world nuclear countries, what followed was another meeting of India-U.S. Defense Policy Group during May 2002 in Washington, DC. Broadly they discusses issues for which both the parties involved should have been tried in International Court of Justice (but of course they don’t give two hoots). These “broad” areas included how to improve the security environment in Afghanistan, including reconstruction efforts and building of the Afghan National Army. Not only were these disgusting talks about other sovereign nations not brought into media headlines, even the specificities which should have been enough to cause a riot were played in an ah-so-noble manner that the democracies celebrated their democracies without taking their people’s opinions (What’s new?).

They discussed the combined naval patrols in the Strait of Malacca. For the uninitiated, the 621 mile long Strait of Malacca links the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and thereby becomes the shortest sea route between three most populous countries of the world-- India, China, and Indonesia. Another attack on sovereignty? Come on, these are so hot romantic hunks of Baywatch. How can they go wrong?

The other aspects dealt with the resumption of defense trade, beginning with the "Firefinder" radar sale (why else the talks, if no billion dollars commitments are involved). Firefinder by the way literally means something which tracks down the “Agni”, India’s defense experiment icon. Of course the sale would not find any opposition anywhere. In American history, no foreign military sale formally presented by the Defense Department has ever been rejected by lawmakers!

Not just some forlorn oceanic area, combined special forces (read American interventionism) airborne exercises in Agra were planned. There was to be a U.S.-India Ballistic Missile Defense workshop in Colorado Springs (of course!), and the signing of a General Security of Military Information Agreement to facilitate cooperation in defense technology (so that we know, so that people won’t know).

It was also planned that specialized training programs and joint exercises were to be carried out by the armed services of the two countries during the next year. This was to be carried out with a resumption of technical cooperation in defense research, development and production, following the meeting of the Joint Technical Group in New Delhi in early March.

And finally, they decided to develop a defense supply relationship, including through the Government-to-Government Foreign Military Sales program. The two delegations agreed on the need to work closely for speedier approvals of export licenses in the United States. (we know what it means: it’s a vertical agreement where US is the seller. Of course India does not sell its junks to America unless the US generous capitalists put up few sweatshops across where they can exploit the poor workers who have by now learnt how to change their pronunciations anyway. Earlier, they were British apes. Now they are American copycats. After they produce junks, US can then sell them to Turkey).

Come 2003, the group reviewed what they had “accomplished”. Of course they don’t do these regular reviews about hunger and homelessness. Awww….that so boring. Lets review interesting things. Bombs, missiles, the television crew. Well here we come, the patriots, the worthy sons!

Among the things they had already achieved were formation of combined special forces for counterinsurgency exercise in Northeast India (yeah those seven unfortunate children of lesser Indian God). There were complex naval exercises on the East Coast of India and Alaska, the "Firefinder" radars had been delivered already, senior-level missile defense talks and master information exchange agreement to facilitate cooperation in research and development of defense technologies had been concluded.

They hoped further to conduct specialized training programs and joint exercises to be carried out by the armed services of the two countries, including an air combat training exercise. The suitable development of a defense supply relationship was to be continued, through the Government-to-Government Foreign Military Sales program. A U.S. team was to travel India in September to discuss the details of a possible sales of P-3 maritime patrol aircraft. (wow!) Now that sale was legal and welcome, the U.S. was also to sale to India the training materials and specialized equipment to support India’s peacekeeping training capabilities (peacekeeping is the name of the game).

This ongoing process of love and cooperation between one military giant and another ardent supporter continued to January 2004 even with a new government in India. How do the parties matter when they are all part of the same free market democracy? Clinton or Bush, Manmohan or Atal Behari, they are made of the same stuffs—same military-industrial mentality. Suddenly the sophisticated Congress Party which replaced the rightist party BJP, acted out that it was clueless about how to response radically different to the DPG which was formed under the BJP. And it said it to itself: oh come on, we don’t care about principles. We are the principles. Look at how we buried Gandhi and Nehru. What’s the deal?

The deal came in June 2005, when we had the continuation of the Indian rightist program when India and the United States signed a 10-year defense pact agreement that takes the relationship to “unprecedented levels of cooperation”. Unprecedented, in terms of television ratings. Here today, gone tomorrow. But mind you, tomorrow there will be even more vulgar shows. More ratings. More wars.

Tags: Saswat, Pakistan, India, USA, War, Cold War, History

By Saswat Pattanayak

The recent India-US defense pact was not as “unprecedented” as being hyped. Indeed the collaboration (read US surveillance) has been going around for quite some time now.

With the fallout of a state stable economy and emergence of irresponsible globalization, defense deals became one of the fallouts. It was only natural that India’s declaration of itself as a Nuclear State in 1998 was less to affirm some nationalistic pride, more to buy into a defense market of the future. The step only benefited the Western defense contractors since India was going to show the roadmap to Pakistan (which was equally equipped to flaunt its consumerist power at the war mall) eventually and the third world was going to be vulnerable to the war mongering bazaar.

Little wonder then that following the nuclear states status of India and Pakistan, their relationship with the US only has “improved” substantially. Never in the history of these countries was US at the forefront of decision making as it is the case today. Indeed in the past, Indo-Soviet relations, India's espousal of nonalignment and refusal to join U.S. alliance during the Cold War had only earned ire. Even though Pakistan was supported by the US, the aim was only to get India to submit under pressure.

Post-1998, with the right wing Indian government in power, India played its game to satisfy the US defense lobbies. For all the anti-nuclear hypocritical talks that the leaders of the West engaged in (and they excel with it anyway, considering the NATO history), India far from being penalized started being celebrated as a “global major power”.

India is indeed a major power of widespread unemployment and poverty. But to the defense lobbies, like the media industry they partner with, a free market democracy like US or India only need to be glamorized into being touted as potentially viable markets, more than anything else.

So after India disgustingly went nuclear, few events too place. Five months after the test (November 1999), the first round of consultations took place between India and US regarding weapons of mass destruction (that tragically funny phrase as we know it today) export controls. Of course we were told that America was bossing around, interfering etc. What eventually took place was of course further strengthening of their relationships. The “fabled enemies” as I see them, India and Pakistan two months after that (Feburary 2000), had a friendship dialogue called “Lahore Summit” to express to each other about how much they were common, now that they had the same boss!

In March, US again talked about the export controls issue with India (basically implying that kill yourselves in Asia, just don’t experiment in Pearl Harbor. Clinton actually went on to say, "Only India can determine its own interests.” With such moral supporter of India in regards to bombs, who can oppose US, except some creepy leftist peacenik propagandists). Result of all these friendly talks between India-US-Pakistan: The “undeclared Kargil aggression” which took place just after two months (May 1999). It was as undeclared as was the N-Test at Pokhran! The world was led to believe that US did not know if such a war was coming.

When India and Pakistan went nuclear, US could not guess! When they went on war, US could not guess! So much for American defense intelligence. Is a link missing in the chain? You bet. Who wins when wars take place? Who profits? We know the answer. How many politician’s children fight at the borders? We know the answer to it too. So who wants the war to take place? Of course we know it. We know it. We know it. The point is how much do we want to stop it.

But of course the assumption is that we don’t stop wars. It’s the visionary leaders like Powell and Bush who stop war, terrorism, violence!

So what happened after 2000? Did the wars stop?

Tags: Saswat, Pakistan, India, USA, Cold War, War, History

People who want peace at any cost are increasingly becoming rare. This, notwithstanding an inherent human necessity for survival. Possibly because of the way, “war” as a word has been normalized by the media as not one aberration, but one natural everyday process, that folks don’t pay much attention to necessity for survival.

Well, yet another war story, depending on where one comes from. For those of us who can’t stand war, its not just inhuman, but grossly unacceptable. Let not the protests begin after a thousand American working class youths are murdered on the front. The protest has to begin now. Not to “bring the boys back home”. But not to send them at the first place to the frontiers of war. We have seen enough of the sadistic pleasures of cowardice heads of the states. And now we got to show them (the global allies of imperialistic defense manufacturers) the might of resistant and organized peaceniks. Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Activism, Iran, War, Terrorism, USA, Imperialism

By Saswat Pattanayak

Well what does one learn from the defection of a senior operative Rabinder Singh from Indian’s covert overseas intelligence-gathering agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), to the US with the help of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)?

Nothing new that one did not know of. The so-called Cold War phase which left millions dead or stranded in haplessness, was replete with such activities. Destabilizing “other” countries is a well played pastime for some. And US dollar paves the way.

But what surely baffles is the so-called secrecy maintained around the covert operations in India, of which the then right-wing power at the Indian center was so proud of while claiming that the US could not even guess when India went nuclear. The US also feigned shock at the event and declared it had nothing to do with the same act and indeed went ahead and imposed sanctions (and later withdrew too!).

If India were so independent a country with its internal secrecy mission in place so as to fool the international community into believing that it was a peace-loving democracy (or whatever that word is), then there should be no reason to worry for P K Hormis Tharakan, the newly appointed head of RAW. Apparently Tharakan is tensed that Singh might have recruited many ‘moles’ in the sensitive departments of India before fleeing to his destination. Well, part of the game, one would suspect. Except that the Indian investigating agencies claim that they did not know of the defection until after a year! Whereas Singh fled to US last year around this time with US papers during the right-wing power after recruiting other potential ‘defectors’ into the RAW and other wings of Indian intelligence, the news breaks only now.

So much for intelligence and counter-intelligence. Leaves little doubt in minds that the Indian N-test was done so covertly that the US bigwigs came to know of it through media reports! Sounds incredible. Yes, In-Credible. I am sure, US of America well knew of the Indian plans to hatch the nuclear eggs. And that of Pakistan’s too. And all the escalating tensions as well. And the ideas of help to fight the wars.

Wow. And who gains? Only the militarists. And their fraternity of power elites.

Tags: Saswat, Capitalism, War, India, Pakistan, USA

By Saswat Pattanayak

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience…therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

- Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950

Time for folks to organize and act according to the call of conscience, not out of fear or fervor.

As we emerge more and more as police states, with police actually solving all the crimes in the country as shown on the Law and Order, the reliance has just grown stronger, and in a frightening way, justifiable.

Apart from ceremonious protests of a dozen of students holding placards showing never changing figure of 900 American troop deaths, there is not much of an organized action.

Of course the larger events (and girl, they really are many) are often not reported in the press and hence if I write as a blogger about them it will sound incredible. At the same time, if the realization is that the media cause near absence of awareness, why do we take the media for granted anyway?

Resisting war needs to be peaceful of course, but very pressing as well. And when one presses well for a cause, the domestic laws which proclaim serenity may get shaken up. The governmental forces may get alarmed, the people for a worthy cause may end up in unworthy cells.

But one wonders if we act on the contrary, are we not by spirit merely repeating the stoic silences of the erstwhile Germans?

Tags: Saswat, War, Capitalism, Activism

Click here to keep tab and get concerned

Tags: Saswat, Iraq, War, Capitalism

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.

Tags: Saswat, War, Capitalism, Peace

By Saswat Pattanayak

"...We only wish we had more cameras to show the world their true defeat...." The Iraqi Resistance speech videotaped on December 13 2004 has been released, titled Title: Communiqué Number 6. I do not know how many of you saw the video or read the transcript, but I am certain that the knowledge of it will help.
The dangers of not acknowledging that things as terrible as inflicted by American administration on Iraq can also happen to American people, is one of no less magnitude. Comfortable psychological numbness has its temporary relief. But not to pay heed to the Resistance Speech may result only in the great disbelief. I wonder why the mainstream press would not publish the transcript in detail. And when the press here talk about the resistance movement in Iraq, why the interpretation is to the effect that ‘we’ are now under a threat of terrorism and hence we need to deploy more forces.
Elsewhere I had brought up the news of sending more troops. I will talk about the perils in another piece. But for now, every American and the world citizen has a right to know what the resistance speech contains.
The perception that certain speech can cause problems for the American people is like claiming that certain television shows are the cause behind all the crimes. Quite the contrary I believe the average American has to be sensitized enough by the knowledge that the plot is thickening now and hence will be either more prepared to send the children to warfront or resist the war itself.
In doing the resistance, the speech here may not inspire, but for sure inform that there is a need here to stop the ongoing war for good.
We need to panic more. The proud administrators who claim that there has not been an attack on America after 9/11, obviously do not believe that the thousands of deaths of young Americans on Iraqi soil is not the staging of the video games, but a reality that the attack on Americans is going on. Only this time, we know for sure who has ordered the attack. You are right, not Iraq.

Here is excerpts from the speech...(so that we all panic a bit more. and put a stop to this madness called war. And yes, war will not end war like it almost used to. Because unlike ever before in history this time, we-the United States at least, have the weapons of mass destruction—And mass weapon knows no nationalities. The illusion is that some children–not our children, or at least not us (sic!)–are dying to make us safe in our land. But the reality is the struggle going on in that far away land to declare otherwise. Excerpts from what Islamic Jihad Army claims:

"It is our duty, as well as our right, to fight back the occupying forces, which their nations will be held morally and economically responsible; for what their elected governments have destroyed and stolen from our land.
We have not crossed the oceans and seas to occupy Britain or the U.S. nor are we responsible for 9/11. These are only a few of the lies that these criminals present to cover their true plans for the control of the energy resources of the world, in face of a growing China and a strong unified Europe . It is Ironic that the Iraqi’s are to bear the full face of this large and growing conflict on behalf of the rest of this sleeping world.
We do not require arms or fighters, for we have plenty.
XXX
We ask you to form a world wide front against war and sanctions. A front that is governed by the wise and knowing. A front that will bring reform and order. New institutions that would replace the now corrupt.
Stop using the U.S. dollar, use the Euro or a basket of currencies. Reduce or halt your consumption of British and U.S. products. Put an end to Zionism before it ends the world. Educate those in doubt of the true nature of this conflict and do not believe their media for their casualties are far higher than they admit.
XXX
The enemy is on the run. They are in fear of a resistance movement they can not see nor predict.
We, now choose when, where, and how to strike. And as our ancestors drew the first sparks of civilization, we will redefine the word “conquest.“
This conflict is no longer considered a localized war. Nor can the world remain hostage to the never-ending and regenerated fear that the American people suffer from in general.
We will pin them here in Iraq to drain their resources, manpower, and their will to fight. We will make them spend as much as they steal, if not more
And to the American soldiers we say, you can also choose to fight tyranny with us. Lay down your weapons, and seek refuge in our mosques, churches and homes. We will protect you. And we will get you out of Iraq , as we have done with a few others before you.
XXX
Go back to your homes, families, and loved ones. This is not your war. Nor are you fighting for a true cause in Iraq .
And to George W. Bush, we say, “You have asked us to ‘Bring it on’, and so have we. Like never expected. Have you another challenge?” XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

If this does not make people conscious of the perils of war in general, nothing ever will. Its time to take a stand. And the stand cannot be for indifference. We cannot be indifferent any more, as I have discussed,the numbness will not help.

Tags: Saswat, Iraq, USA, Terrorism, War, Imperialism

Fox 5 news commentary:
“After much criticism of the US Government for not sending enough troops to Iraq, the President has finally increased the troops number. From 138,000 now, the number will increase to 150,000 coming week.”
Now, who criticized the US for not sending troops?
Just a pointer home: to make sure that the protests around the country to “bring the troops back home” continues: the statistics shows that 150,000 is more than 148,000–number of soldiers who were sent to Iraq at the peak of invasion in May 2003.

Tags: Saswat, Media, USA, Imperialism, War

Here is another news one can use.

Brenda Norrell (Southwest Staff Reporter/Indian Country Today) writes on how U.S. tortures elicit painful memories in Indian country.

American Indians said apologies would not erase the tortures in Iraq and President Bush should be held responsible for leading America into a groundless war.

"It seems like white people are the worst savages," said Bessie Taylor, Navajo from Ch'ooshgai Mountain on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico.

After viewing the photograph of a female soldier holding a leash tied around the throat of a naked Iraqi, Taylor said the female soldier should be dragged in the same manner. "She probably doesn't know what it feels like to be tortured."

After Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized for the abuses in Iraq, Taylor said, "An apology is nothing. What does an apology do for you - nothing."

Taylor said Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld should be held responsible for the tortures in Iraq. "They were so eager for this war, now look what has happened. President Bush is responsible for leading America into this war. He is responsible for this. This war was about oil and making Bush's friends rich."
Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Indigenous, Iraq, USA, Bush, War, Terrorism, History

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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.

Tags: Saswat, War, Communism, History, Peace

Strange bedfellows at a crucial juncture.

China and South Korea have agreed that the "Korean peninsula should be nuclear (weapons) free'' and see it as the importance of the "dialogue process'' to "push the situation on the Korean peninsula towards a positive direction''.

Will North Korea follow suit?

Wait and watch what the big brother United States (ruler, father, you name it and US is the male personification of the war zone. Pacifists are feminists of course) does.

Tags: Saswat, Korea, USA, War

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).

Tags: Saswat, India, Pakistan, Peace, War

India says, almost!

In its June 28-29 issue, the International Herald Tribune carried a New York Times report that India was "split" on the issue of sending troops to Iraq. "Indian officials say their soldiers will not serve under direct U.S. military command and have asked for the creation of a joint command structure. Citing concerns that Iraqis will view them as occupiers, officials have also asked for a specific time-table for forming an independent government.

"U.S. officials have declined to give specific dates. Previously, they said it could take as long as two years," the report said.

Tags: Saswat, India, Iraq, War, Media

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….

Tags: Russia, USA, Saswat, War, Peace, Imperialism