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Lucy Parsons :: Revolutionary Feminist

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:42:55 -0500

By Saswat Pattanayak

No legal case in American history has been more cited than The Scottsboro Trial. Nine young African American men, aged 13 and up, were jailed in Scottsboro, Alabama to await trial over an accusation that they had raped two white women on a train in the Spring of 1931.

The nature of racism in this instance was not the novelty - indeed, American society was witness to countless false charges brought against the black people. However, The Scottsboro Trial became a landmark via the manner in which racism for the first time was fiercely and openly challenged in the United States.

When the entire country was refusing to take side of Scottsboro Nine, it was the Communist Party which came to aid the young men. International Labor Defense - a coalition formed by the communists to defend Scottsboro Nine benefitted from the active involvement of a black woman on their national board - a pioneering champion of labor classes in America - Lucy Parsons (1853-1942).

Class, Race and Gender

Parsons’ commitments towards freedom of the young Black Communist Angelo Herndon in Georgia, Tom Mooney in California, and for the Scottsoboro Nine in Alabama were unflinching. Parsons recognized the class system in America as the prime factor in perpetuating racism. She was the foremost American feminist to declare that race, gender and sexuality are not oppressed identities by themselves. It is the economic class that determines the level of oppression people of minorities have to confront. Notwithstanding her social location of being a black and a woman, Parsons declared that a black person in America is exploited not because she/he is black. “It is because he is poor. It is because he is dependent. Because he is poorer as a class than his white wage-slave brother of the North.”

Lucy Parsons was a relentless defender of working class rights. To contain her popularity, the media portrayed her more as the wife of Albert Parsons - a Haymarket martyr, who was murdered by the state of Illinois, while demanding for eight-hour working day on November 11, 1887. While identifying her with Albert’s causes, history textbooks - both liberal and conservative - seldom mention Parsons as the radical torchbearer of American communist movement.

Communistic Commitments

Parsons’ commitment to the cause of international communism often embarrassed the United States administration. FBI confiscated her library comprising over 1,500 books and progressive works soon after her accidental death - thus preventing the country of having access to her radicalism. But those that witnessed Parsons‘ oratory and benefitted from her skills of organizing labor knew of Parsons‘ disdain towards anarchism which she felt was not capable of leading the masses onto revolutions.

Following Bolshevik Revolution in Soviet Union, IWW would witness several of its main organizers joining the Communist Party. Parsons, along with Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Flynn were among the pioneering American communists. Parsons not only had officially joined the Communist Party of the United States, she was also vocally opposed to distractions within revolutionary movements.

Parsons condemned celebrated anarchist Emma Goldman for “addressing large middle-class audiences”. Whereas Lucy Parsons‘ feminism considered women’s oppression as a function of capitalism, Emma Goldman was clearly not in favor of a vanguard party taking up feminist causes. Parsons in her dedication towards working class liberation movements never lost sight of her goal, never compromised on her principled stands on the side of the working poor, and never aspired for mere social acceptance or glory.

Voice of Dissent

Parsons was among the first women to join the founding convention of IWW. She thundered: “We, the women of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it. But we have our labor. Wherever wages are to be reduced, the capitalist class uses women to reduce them.”

In The Agitator, dated November 1, 1912 she referred to Haymarket martyrs thus: “Our comrades were not murdered by the state because they had any connection with the bombthrowing, but because they were active in organizing the wage-slaves. The capitalist class didn't want to find the bombthrower; this class foolishly believed that by putting to death the active spirits of the labor movement of the time, it could frighten the working class back to slavery.”

She had no illusions about capitalistic world order. Parsons called for armed overthrow of the American ruling class. She refused to buy into an argument that the origin of racist violence was in racism. Instead, Parsons viewed racism as a necessary byproduct of capitalism. In 1886, she called for armed resistance to the working class: “You are not absolutely defenseless. For the torch of the incendiary, which has been known with impunity, cannot be wrested from you!”

For Parsons, her personal losses meant nothing; her oppression as a woman meant less. She was dedicated to usher in changes for the entire humanity - changes that would alter the world order in favor of the working poor class.

Even as a founding member of IWW, she was not willing to let the world’s largest labor union function in a romanticized manner. She radicalized the IWW by demanding that women, Mexican migrant workers and even the unemployed become full and equal members.

With her clarity of vision, lifelong devotion towards communist causes, her strict adherence to radical demands for a societal replacement of class structure, Lucy Parsons remains the most shining example of an American woman who turned her disadvantaged social locations of race and gender, to one of formidable strength - raising herself to bring about emancipated working class consciousness.

Remembering Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010)

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:32:26 -0500

(For publication in Radical Notes)

By Saswat Pattanayak

"To be neutral is to collaborate with whatever is going on, and I as a teacher do not want to be a collaborator with whatever is happening in the world today.” (Howard Zinn)

In the grossly unequal world that we inhabit, it is always tempting to remain apolitical, especially if one is an academician materially benefiting from the status quo system of education. It is only logical to separate classroom instructions from political activisms, since teachers are desired by the system to enhance employability of students within the social framework, not to agitate their conscience to challenge the social order. In a world of established, codified and professional knowledge, it is required on part of historians to promulgate official narrations of national heroes and victorious wars; not overthrow ruling class histories to replace them with versions of the oppressed subjects.

Howard Zinn’s aspirations to become a teacher were also founded with similar convictions. But unlike most people in his times, he was fundamentally a radical thinker. When he heard Woody Guthrie’s song on Ludlow Massacre, he wondered why he never read about it in history books. He questioned the omission of labor struggles in historical manuscripts. When for the first time he joined a mass demonstration at the age of 17 to strengthen the Communist Party of the United States of America on Times Square, he questioned the claimed neutrality of barbaric police and brutal government orders. Unlike most people of our times, he decided he must choose a side, and he chose his side early on. A side of the toiling masses, and mine workers, of protesting students and peaceniks, of marginalized sections and conscientious objectors. A side, which he never left, not even in his death. For the world of the oppressed, Zinn shall always remain alive as the working class professor who dedicated his life in challenging the system of education by getting the world to enter the university and letting the university enter into the world.

University was not to be merely wasted in academic pursuits. As a white professor in Atlanta-based predominantly black Spelman College, Zinn organized students around issues of desegregation and racial justice in manners which led FBI to enlist him. Bringing to national attention the remarkable acts of resistance orchestrated by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he redefined nonviolence: “Non-violence does not mean acceptance, it means resistance. Not waiting, but acting. It is not at all passive; it involves strikes, boycotts, non cooperation, mass demonstration, and sabotage.” Zinn’s involvement in black liberation struggles cost him his job, led to his arrest and raised questions on his acceptance as a historian. His Vietnam coverage as a journalist to uncover the Operation County Fair - the systematic killings of Vietnamese men and torture of women and children - added to his disrepute for the administrations. For the free American society, he had unbridled rage: “We grow up in a controlled society. When one person kills another person, that is murder. When a government kills a hundred thousand persons, is that patriotism?”

Subjective Historian

When he finally authored A People’s History of the United States, it was boycotted by American Historical Review - the foremost American academic history journal. Zinn was accused of taking sides of the indigenous, in his authoritative and foremost assessment of Columbus as an anti-hero. He silenced the objectivists: “There is no such thing as impartial history. The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lie. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data. The definition of important of course depends on one's values.” One’s values often metamorphose with changing times. But Howard Zinn’s never did. He remained a radical throughout, his capacity for moral outrage remaining unparalleled.

He wrote, for instance, “There is no objective way to deal with the Ludlow Massacre. There is the subjective (biased, opinionated) decision to omit it from history, based on a value system which doesn’t consider it important enough. That value system may include a fundamental belief in the beneficence of the American industrial system. Or it may just involve a complacency about class struggle and the intrusion of government on the side of corporations. In any case, it is a certain set of values which dictates the ignoring of that event. It is also a subjective decision to tell the story of the Ludlow Massacre in some detail. My decision was based on my belief that it is important for people to know the extent of class conflict in our history, to know something about how hard working people had to struggle to change their conditions, and to understand the role of the government and the mainstream press in the class struggles of our past.”

Discovery of Columbus

If the world was certain about one American knowledge, it was the discovery of the continent. Columbus had discovered America, until Howard Zinn discovered Columbus through the latter’s diaries. Zinn contended that a people cannot be discovered by their class enemies. They can only be brutally murdered, captured and subjugated. With thoroughly fundamental researches, Zinn proceeded to conclude on Columbus and the foundation of America which was hitherto unknown. “What did Columbus want? In the first two weeks of journal entries, there is one word that recurs seventy-five times: GOLD,” the historian revealed. Zinn’s infusion of people’s history in America inspired similar Marxist interpretations of indigenous histories throughout the globe. In popularizing the possibility of telling history from the lens of the oppressed, Zinn virtually legitimized the subject as a progressive weapon.

Pacifism as a Necessity

Zinn did not oppose wars because doing so was in fashion. In fact, his kind of opposition has never been in fashion. He has been a steadfast pacifist who saw no merit in wars. There was no such thing as a good war in our times, he would conclude after using chemical weapons during the Second World War as a fighter pilot. His was an imagination that has not been fully expanded so far, but its merits are experienced daily as the American power continues its “just wars” on the “axis of evil”. Suffice it to say, if history is a great lesson, Zinn’s pacifist stances are certainly among the greatest ones. Zinn wrote in his Just and Unjust Wars: “What war does, even if it starts with an injustice, is multiply the injustice. If it starts on the basis of violence, it multiplies the violence. If it starts on the basis of defending yourself against brutality, then you end up becoming a brute.”

Disobedience to Law

Ruling class always uses ‘national security’ as the potent excuse to suppress mass rebellion. Zinn instigated students and young people to question such tactics, especially during the times of wars. In his essay, Second Thoughts on the First Amendment, Zinn wrote: “The First Amendment has always been shoved aside in times of war or near war. 1798 was near war, 1917 was war. In 1940 when the Smith Act was passed the country was near war. In those trials against the Communist and Socialist Workers Party the courtroom was full with stuff the prosecution had brought in. What had they brought in? Guns, bombs, dynamite fuses? No, they brought in the works of Marx, Lenin, Engels, Stalin. That’s like a bomb. So people went to jail. For national security.”

Throughout his academic and journalistic career, Zinn maintained that progress of the society depended not on the premise of abiding the law of the land, or to uphold “national security”, but through demonstration of mass disobedience towards unjust laws. He would enlighten students and readers on how Supreme Court never changed the course of American freedom path. No well-meaning jury ever changed any law for the better. People on the streets have always forced the judiciary system to reform itself. Even to the last days, he wrote how President Obama was incapable of bringing fundamental changes, unless mass participations against his power status quo forces him to radically different directions. Zinn’s capacity to comprehend potentials within the masses as opposed to within the leaders is what distinguished him from many progressive thinkers.

Progressive Storyteller

One remarkable aspect of Howard Zinn was his lack of professionalism. Zinn, despite belonging to the world of academics, was an anti-academician. He never waited for academic peer reviews or approvals by purist committees. He was not a historian with any astute sense of proportion or dignified scholastic languages. He was never one to claim for fame or stick to major publications glorifying inaccessible texts. About his greatest work, A People’s History, he once said, “I wanted to tell the story of the nation’s industrial progress from the standpoint not of Rockefeller and Carnegie and Vanderbilt, but of the people who worked in their mines, their oil fields, who lost their limbs or their lives building the railroads. I wanted to tell the story of wars, not from the standpoint of generals and presidents, not from the standpoints of those military heroes whose statues you see all over this country, but through the eyes of the G.I.’s, or through the eyes of “the enemy.” Yes, why not look at the Mexican War, that great military triumph of the United States, from the viewpoint of the Mexicans?”

If Zinn wrote, he did so in order to reach out to the masses that had no inkling of theoretical underpinnings or paradoxical paradigms. Zinn wrote in order to tell the lesser told stories. He wrote biographies of unknown strugglers of the past. He made accessible the speeches of the striking miners. He edited books that were entirely collections of radical writings. As though an enthusiast, a sucker for historical trivia, Zinn became the greatest medium for radical messages for people of all ages and walks of life.

Reclaiming Marx

Zinn was never afraid of being labeled a Marxist in the world of hypocritical academia, but he wondered if Marx would have been pleased with such an epithet reserved for a genuine activist. Many of his contemporaries immensely borrowed from the works of Marx and Lenin, but steadfastly refused to acknowledge. Zinn brought Marx alive within historical realm, not just through the framework with which he studied history, but also by penning down Marx in Soho. Not just was it a satirical take on the current pseudo-Marxists, it was also a grave reminder on how Marx was possibly the most relevant text in contemporary times.

Class analysis formed the core of every historical research Zinn conducted. He had an impeccable ability to discern illusions. Zinn vehemently opposed the capitalistic propaganda around freedom of speech as a moral injunction to gain respectability in contemporary world order. He turned the question on its head for American freedom: “Freedom of speech is not just a quality. It’s a quantity. It’s not a matter of do you have free speech, like in America we have free speech. Just like, in America we have money. How much do you have? How much freedom of speech do you have? Do you have as much freedom of speech as Exxon?”

Critical questions alone have guided the world to progressive historical interpretations. Employing radical perspectives, Howard Zinn has not only left behind issues that have legacies of progressivism, but also equally powerful tools for future reinventions of the current world. "We the people" are stricken by the grief of his passage, but enriched by his enduring imaginings.

First Year Costs of Obama's Illusions

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:16:28 -0500

By Saswat Pattanayak

Despite his constant denial of race dynamics necessary to dissect American political roadmap, Barack Obama is going to be the first American President to be judged, also by his color. During his first year, several cartoons, news articles, political mentions - both innocent and deliberate - have brought up the issue of race, associating with him. Senator Majority leader Democrat Harry Reid’s reference to Obama as a “light-skinned” black man “with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one” is the latest in the series, rejuvenating the race debate towards the end of Obama’s first year at White House.

What has remained a constant, however, is the manner in which Obama has classically ignored the racists. For him, they really do not exist. For his one-God-one-freedomland-America, people simply cannot be racists, let alone him being a potential victim. When he did candidly refer to a despicable law and order situation in the country and called the Cambridge cops “stupid” for having arrested African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates, he immediately had to apologize through a beer party hosted in honor of the white police officer. Despite this, Fox News’ Glenn Beck threw racial slurs at the president. Rupert Murdoch came out to support Beck. Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh threw racial slurs at Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. New York Post came up with a cartoon depicting the author of the stimulus bill as a rabid chimpanzee, largely perceived by Americans as an ugly portrayal of Obama. Congressman Joe Wilson shouted “You lie” to the President on his face inside the Congress, deeply reminiscent of “you lie, boy” usually used to shout down slaves. Yet, the President nonchalantly kept thundering silence over all the racial uproars.

The president preferred to stand by the media image of “post-racial America” he projected to have wooed, and replaced the reality of race relations with it. In Obama’s first year at office, his worldview dictated that it was not the United States which had the systemic problems of socio-economic patterns, it was the world outside. And to address the world outside, he stormed into Afghanistan in an unforeseen ferocity, ordered bombings at Pakistan, allowed for escalations in the Middle-East. America’s ecological concerns continued remaining as indecisive as its official stand on Gitmo detainees. In Africa, Obama continued to blame black people for their own plights, clearly absolving neocolonialism’s roles. Most of Latin America remained Obama’s NAFTA scapegoat.

On the domestic front, Obama offered 12 trillion dollars to the Wall Street and promised another 12 trillion for bailouts of the very companies that caused the gravest American economic crisis. He addressed the middle class, made the poor invisible, mocked at the Special Olympics, hired tax-evading disgraced bailout mastermind Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary, promoted several Goldman Sachs lobbyists to oversee the Treasury, and hired Citigroup’s failed billionaire Robert Rubin and a pronounced sexist Larry Summers as his economic advisors. Several of his nominees and appointees including Bill Richardson, Tom Daschle, and Nancy Killefer withdrew from power after their tax evasions were exposed. Under the President’s watchful eyes, America’s official unemployment rate reached double digits while the rich class became richer than ever before.

During Obama’s first year, the anti-war movement has almost disappeared into oblivion. Democratic Party that most profited from peacenik fundraising events has already closed down protests. Right-wingers could not be happier under any other administration. Anti-war sentiments and protests against Afghanistan invasion are scarce, with successful public relations campaign launched by “Brand of the Year”. While keeping his friends at Human Rights Campaign in gay spirits, Obama has continued flip-flopping on same-sex marriage rights. States are reversing legal rights and Mr President is vocally anti-marriage. His doublespeak on gay rights have confused all, but the liberal media. Liberal press are certain if there ever was a champion of equality rights, it is Mr Obama. Media sycophancy has reached a new height, with Obama taking stock. All his failures are declared as “inherited legacies”. All his abuses are declared as goof-ups. All his leadership struggles are covered in the name of hostile colleagues. So, if there is no sight for a universal healthcare, media depict the “struggle” of the president to convince others of the good. The fact that Obama never had a plan for it, the fact that he really wanted a small “public option” affecting 5% of Americans that would remain to “compete” with private insurance giants, is totally lost on the informed press.

Just as Obama was not bothered by a racist society that does not spare even an elected head, he was not moved by the onslaughts of capitalism. His single greatest achievement during the first year at White House has been his Audacity of Hope: a hope that everything will emerge brighter from the corridors of American power. A power that he fervently desires, and with “all the president’s men” around him, certainly deserves.

Have We Been Silencing Dr King?

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:18:42 -0500

By Saswat Pattanayak

Whenever a progressive leader of the masses, a politically fundamental agent of change, a spirited revolutionary demands replacement of existing social order, the oppressive ruling class never dares confront the person; instead it iconizes him/her after stripping off the necessary radical components. Through an utopian mythification of the leader, the courage to challenge power structure is politically assassinated; and a social validation is granted. In sustaining Martin Luther King Jr. as a legend, his revolutionary roots have been purged into oblivion.

It is true that MLK was a religious preacher and a nonviolent civil rights leader who had aimed for gradual shifts in political empowerment towards American equality. This narrative has worked brilliantly for those in power longing to project MLK’s legacy as one of peaceful reconciliation with power structure. He has been heralded as an intense pacifist preaching moral values of peace, and as an idealist whose dream must globally aspire for racial harmony. A revered clergyman choosing dialogue over struggle; a nationalist for the country than a revolutionary for the oppressed; a believer in scriptures than a rabble-rouser; a composed champion of civil rights, not a class war agitator. Dr King has been labelled as the facilitator for Obama’s White House glory - an example that must end questions on racial and class inequities. A dreamer whose dreams have been fulfilled. A Congressional Gold Medal. A National Holiday. Several hundreds streets and avenues. A quintessential patriotic American.

The American power finds this moralist preacher unfailing - an inimitable icon that must eclipse his own evolution into an internationalist. What is left untold about MLK’s life is his story of imperfections, of his constant progressive evolutions, of his critical reflections as an astute revolutionary. Of his victimization as a recipient of ruling class narratives of equality and justice. And despite that, of his profound love and humane eagerness making allowance for endless possibilities. And most importantly, his eventual rejection of fundamental approaches bequeathed to him; of his experiments with truths that started with hopeful pacifications only to end with call for political-economic revolutions.

In classic continuation of imperialistic tradition, the preacher had to be heralded, and the revolutionary was obscured. What is left untold for the school children across the world were his words deemed too dangerous for the American status quo, the words of Dr King that were suppressed by the power structure, because they could keep generations of young Americans awake. Words, not of dreams and hopes, but of positively collective agitational actions. Not just for civil rights inside the country, but MLK’s determined opposition to white man’s wars, his unpatriotic declarations.

More than anyone else, Dr King was acutely aware of the possibility of a retaliation at his call not for domestic reform, but for international revolution. Therefore, he addressed the system on April 4, 1967 in New York: “Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: ‘Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?’ ‘Why are you joining the voices of dissent?’ ‘Peace and civil rights do not mix,’ they say. ‘Are you not hurting the cause of your people?’ they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment, or my calling.”

Dr King’s commitments were indeed not understood, nay, refused to be understood. The ruling power was more keen in establishing him as a mediator, than admit him as an agitator. He had to be christened a believer in peaceful progression, not recognized as an organizer in quest of radical replacement. MLK cleared the air in 1967, just few months before he was assassinated: “The white liberal must rid himself of the notion that there can be a tensionless transition from the old order of injustice to the new order to justice…It is important for the liberal to see that the oppressed person who agitates for his rights is not the creator of tension…We did not cause the cancer; we merely exposed it.”

Revolution is never tensionless, Dr King warned the white power. And the American crisis was not simply race, it was capitalism, he concluded - a declaration that is still considered too dangerous to be taught through history textbooks. Dr King thundered: “...(we) demand a restructuring of the architecture of American society…When you look at it, (integrating public places) did not cost the nation one penny. It didn’t cost businessmen one penny. In fact, it helped businessmen out. Even the right to vote didn't cost the nation anything to guarantee...Now what I want you to see is that we are now making demands that will cost the nation something. You can't talk about solving economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You are really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folks then. You are messing Wall Street. You are messing with captains of industry..in other words, we are dealing with class issues....something is wrong with the economic system of our nation...It means that something is wrong with capitalism.”

Dr King not only had dreams. He also had revolutionary economic plans to fulfill them. And his plans certainly did not include presiding over capitalism from inside the White House.

War Capitalism continued to dominate 2009

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:48:10 -0500

Compiled and Edited by Saswat Pattanayak for Women's Rights NY & Kindle

January 1-20: War Capitalism Intensifies: After a week of intense airstrikes, Israel declares more conventional warfare against Palestinians. In clearly what can constitute mammoth war crimes, Israel attacks end the lives of several children. It conducts 50 air strikes per night and kills 1200 Palestinians within less than three weeks of war. In comparison, Israel has 13 deaths. Defense Minister Ehud Barak declares “our military activities will widen and deepen as much as needed”.

January 20: New American President: Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. Obama maintains silence over Israel’s military aggressions against Palestine.

January 21: Hillary Rodham Clinton Confirmed as Secretary of State: Barack Obama’s former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has been confirmed as the new president’s pick of secretary of state. After a smooth hearing, Clinton is confirmed by a vote of 94-2.

January 22: Bay Promises: US Government agrees to close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp within a year. It has been one of the most infamous centers of human rights violations in the world.

January 29: Obama Signs Equal-Pay Legislation: President Obama signed his first bill into law: the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, an equal-pay act. The law expands workers’ rights to sue in pay disputes.

February 1: LGBT Victory: World witnessed the first openly lesbian head of government in Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir who is appointed as the new Prime Minister of Iceland.

February 6: Historic Job Loss in January; Unemployment Rate 7.6%: January 2009 saw 598,000 jobs lost, the highest number since December 1974, which brings the total number of jobs lost to 1.8 million in just three months. The unemployment rate jumped to 7.6%, up from the 7.2% rate in December 2008.

March 4: Racist ICC: The International Criminal Court (ICC) is heavily criticized for its attempts to help the West “recolonize the former colonies”. In an unprecedented and unsubstantiated manner, ICC issues an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for alleged war crimes in Darfur. Al-Bashir becomes the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the ICC but he gains strong supports from Arab League, African Union, and Non-Aligned Movement, among others. His indictment is supported by major western NGOs such as Amnesty, Oxfam and Mercy Corp.

March 6: Unemployment Rate Hits 8.1%; 651,000 Jobs Lost in February: Unemployment in the U.S., which has been steadily growing for several months, reaches 8.1% in February 2009. This is the highest rate since 1983, and an additional .5% over January. There were 651,000 reported jobs lost last month, slightly down from 655,000 in January.

March 18: New Mexico Abolishes Death Penalty: New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signs legislation to repeal the death penalty in his state. Lethal injection will be replaced with life in prison without parole. New Mexico is the second state to ban the death penalty since 1976, when the United States Supreme Court reinstated it.

April 1: Sweden Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage: Sweden becomes the fifth European country to legalize same-sex marriage. The law, passed by Parliament, will go into effect May 1. The other countries with the same rights are The Netherlands, Norway, Belgium and Spain.

April 2: G-20 Necessities: Financial crisis affecting capitalism is the dominant theme at the second G-20 summit which meets in London.

April 3: Unemployment Rate Reaches 8.5%; 663,00 Jobs Lost in March: The government reports another 663,000 jobs lost in March 2009, bringing the total jobs lost during the current recession to 5.1 million. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also announces that unemployment in the U.S. has reached 8.5%. January’s job loss was 741,000, up from the original estimate of 655,000.

April 3: Iowa Supreme Court Rejects Law Banning Gay Marriage: The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously rejects a state law banning same-sex marriage. Six gay couples had filed a lawsuit against Polk County, Iowa. In 21 days, county recorders will be required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Iowa will be the third state to allow same-sex marriages, after Massachusetts and Connecticut. California recently passed a similar measure, only to have a constitutional amendment disallowing same-sex marriage approved by voters in Nov. 2008. (Apr. 27): Same-sex couples are granted marriage licenses for the first time in Iowa. Despite concerns by local officials about angry protests, the mood proved lowkey in much of the state. By the end of the day, more than 200 couples applied for marriage licenses.

April 3-4: NATO Persists: 60th Anniversary of NATO is celebrated through it 21st Summit. Even after the dissolution of Soviet Union and end of Cold War, NATO continues to maintain its stronghold across its increasing spheres of influence. Former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is appointed as the new Secretary General.

April 7: Vermont Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage: Vermont becomes the fourth U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage, just days after Iowa becomes the third. The legislature votes to override Governor Jim Douglas’s veto of a bill allowing same-sex couples to marry, nine years after the state became the first in the nation to allow civil unions. Vermont is the first state legislature to legalize the practice; the other three U.S. states’ approval of same-sex marriage came from the courts. Vermont will begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in September.

April 13: Obama Loosens Restrictions on Travel to Cuba: President Obama announces that Cuban-Americans will no longer be restricted from visiting and sending money home to family. American companies will also be able to provide telephone services to Cuba. The original embargo will remain in effect until Congress votes otherwise.

May 1: First Female Poet Laureate Appointed in UK: For the first time in 341 years, a woman is appointed as poet laureate of the United Kingdom. Carol Ann Duffy, 53, will take over the post from current poet laureate Andrew Motion. Though the position was traditionally appointed for life, Motion accepted a 10-year term in 1999.

May 6: Maine Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage: Gov. John Baldacci of Maine signs a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, despite his earlier position against the law. The governor cites a desire to uphold constitutional rights as his reason for signing the bill. The law will not go into effect until this summer, but opponents vow to petition and overturn the law. Baldacci supports the people’s right to decide.

May 8: U.S. Loses 539,000 Jobs in April; Unemployment Reaches 8.9%: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 539,000 jobs were lost in April 2009, and unemployment hit 8.9%. Though both numbers are dreadfully high, they are slightly better than expected, leading experts to believe that the recession is nearing its end.

May 11: Iran Releases Jailed American Journalist: Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist arrested in Iran in January, is released from prison. She was arrested on charges of spying for Washington and initially sentenced to eight years in prison, but her sentence was reduced to a two-year suspended sentence. She is allowed to leave Iran immediately, if she desires.

May 18: LTTE Surrenders: LTTE surrenders after more than 25 years of liberation struggles within Sri Lankan Civil War.

May 23: Korean head commits suicide: Blogosphere’s first achievement, former President of South Korea Roh Moo-hyun who had pledged support to US for military interventions in Iraq, commits suicide following investigation for alleged bribery during his presidential term.

May 25: N Korea defies UN: UN Security Council is not pleased at North Korea’s second successful nuclear test in the province of North Hamgyong.

May 26: Obama Nominates Sotomayor as Supreme Court Judge: President Obama announces his nomination of New York federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Justice David Souter announced last month his intention to retire at the end of the current session, leaving a opening in the Court. If confirmed, Sotomayor will be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.

May 26: California Court Upholds Ban on Same-Sex Marriage: The California Supreme Court upholds the ban on same-sex marriage, solidifying the vote made by California residents last November. The 18,000 same-sex couples who were married before the ban went to effect are still legally married, however. The state still allows civil unions.

May 31: Renowned Abortion Doctor Killed in Church: George Tiller, a doctor famous for being one of of a few physicians in the U.S. who performs late-term abortions, is killed while in his Kansas church. He is shot while handing out bulletins in the church foyer. A suspect is arrested soon after the shooting and will be charged with murder, say police.

June 1: General Motors Files for Bankruptcy, Plans to Close 14 Plants: General Motors files for bankruptcy and announces it will close 14 plants in the United States. G.M. celebrated its 100th anniversary last year and is still the largest automaker in the U.S.

June 3: New Hampshire Governor Signs Same-Sex Marriage Bill: New Hampshire governor John Lynch signs legislation allowing same-sex marriage. It will go into effect in January 2010. The law stipulates that religious organizations and their employees will not be required to participate in the ceremonies. New Hampshire is the sixth state in the nation to allow same-sex marriage.

June 4: U.S. Unemployment Reaches 9.4%: The U.S. government reports that the country’s unemployment rate is 9.4%—the highest it’s been in 26 years. Job losses slowed down in June 2009, but the number of people actively seeking employment rose. Since December 2007, six million jobs have disappeared in the United States and 14.5 million Americans are unemployed.

June 13: Iran favors Ahmadinejad: Reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi loses to Ahamadinejad in Iranian elections. Massive protests are organized to challenge the results.

June 17: U.S. Extending Benefits to Same-Sex Partners of Employees: President Obama will sign a referendum allowing the same-sex partners of federal employees to receive benefits. They will not be allowed full health coverage, however. This is Obama’s first major initiative in his campaign promise to improve gay rights.

June 18: Supreme Court Ruling: Inmates Don’t Have Rights to DNA Tests: The Supreme Court rules in a 5–4 decision that prisoners have no right to a DNA test to prove their innocence long after they are convicted of a crime. The Court claims that most states already have laws in effect concerning DNA testing, so a federal law is unnecessary.

June 29: Madoff Sentenced to 150 Years in Prison: Bernard Madoff, the perpetrator of a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, is sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum sentence. The judge will decide how the victims of the investment fraud will be repaid in approximately three months.

July 1: EU Change: Sweden assumes the presidency of the European Union.

July 2: Unemployment Rate Reaches 9.5%; 467,000 Jobs Lost in June: The Labor Department reports an unemployment increases from 9.4% in May to 9.5% in June 2009. There are 467,000 jobs lost in June, topping estimates by 100,000.

July 2: Indian Court Overturns Gay Sex Ban: New Delhi’s highest court overturns the ban on homosexuality in India. Homosexuality has been illegal in India since 1861. Court justices declare the old law to be a violation of human rights and equality outlined in India’s Constitution.

July 3: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin Announces Resignation: Sarah Palin, the first-term Republican governor of Alaska and former vice-presidential candidate, announces her resignation. The move shocks politicians from both parties. Palin cites a desire to spend more time with her family and a lack of interest in running for reelection in 2010. She will relinquish control to Lt. Gov, Sean Parnell on July 26.

July 8-10: G8: The 35th G8 summit is held in L’Aquila, Italy.

July 13: Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings Begin for Sotomayor: Congressional hearings for the confirmation of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, begin. Support and dissent for her nomination follow party lines. Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice and the third woman to hold that position.

August 3: Bolivia creates history: Bolivia becomes the first South American country to declare the right of indigenous people to govern themselves.

August 4: N. Korea Pardons Imprisoned American Journalists: The government of North Korea pardons two imprisoned American journalists after former President Bill Clinton visits the country and its president, Kim Jong-il. Laura Ling and Euna Lee were arrested in March and sentenced in June to 12 years in prison for “illegal entry” into the country. Clinton agreed in late July to travel to North Korea on a humanitarian mission to save the two women.

August 5: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Inaugurated as President of Iran: Controversial president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad begins his second term amid a crisis in Iran sparked by the June election that was widely condemned as rigged in Ahmadinejad’s favor. The vote set off protests that resulted in mass arrests of opposition figures, journalists, and lawyers.

August 6: Sotomayor Confirmed to U.S. Supreme Court: The Senate approves, 68 to 31, the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. She’s the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice and the third woman to serve on the Court. President Barack Obama praised the confirmation as “breaking yet another barrier and moving us yet another step closer to a more perfect union.” (Aug. 8): Sotomayor becomes the country’s 111th Supreme Court justice as she’s sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts.

August 25: Projected 10-Year Deficit at $9 Trillion: The Obama administration’s Office of Management and Budget projects that the budget deficit in 10 years will be $9 trillion, $2 trillion more than the last estimated projection, made in February. According to President Obama, the difference lies in the severity of the recession, which is deeper than initially expected.

August 25: Obama Nominates Bernanke for Second Term: President Obama nominates Ben Bernanke, Republican chairman of the Federal Reserve, for his second term. Bernanke was a member of President George W. Bush’s administration, hired in 2006.

September 8: Federal Ruling: New York Discriminated Against Mentally Ill: New York violated the Americans With Disabilities Act by using more than two dozen adult homes to shelter 4,300 mentally ill patients instead of smaller apartments and buildings. The ruling, by Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis, called the homes “segregated settings” that kept patients from interacting with other people in the community.

September 25: G-20 to replace G-8: Continued financial crisis leads G-20 leaders to question the relevance of G-8. At the Pittsburgh summit, it is declared that G-20 should replace G-8 in handling of future crisis.

September 30: Bank of America CEO Resigns: Kenneth D. Lewis, chief executive of Bank of America, resigns after 30 years. Lewis’s retirement is shadowed by controversy concerning his recent takeover at Merrill Lynch.

October 2: Economy Shed 263,000 Jobs in September; Unemployment Reaches 9.8%: Though financial experts maintain that the recession is recovering, the economy shed 263,000 jobs in September. Unemployment increased from 9.7% to 9.8%. However, the rate at which the economy is worsening has lightened significantly over the year.

October 8: Nobel Prize springs surprises: Anticommunist author Herta Müller, a Romanian-born German novelist and essayist “who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed,” wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her writing focuses on the oppression in her native country and the difficulties of political exile. (Oct. 9): War President Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Obama responds to the recognition with surprise and humility, saying that the award is a “call to action” for further cooperation around the world in the promotion of peace.

October 14: U.S. Math Show No Improvement Since No Child Left Behind: Results of the nation’s most important math test for students show that achievement has not improved in the eight years since President Bush passed the No Child Left Behind law, which required 100% of students to show proficiency in math and reading by 2014. Student gains are actually slower since the program began; 39% of fourth graders and 34% of eighth graders test at proficiency this year.

October 19: No More Federal Prosecution for Medical Marijuana: The federal government announces it will no longer prosecute those who use or sell marijuana for medical reasons, if they are complying with state law. There are 14 states that currently allow medical marijuana to some extent.

October 24: Obama Declares H1N1 Flu a National Emergency: President Obama declares the outbreak of the H1N1 flu virus, also called swine flu, a national emergency. This step will allow hospitals and local governments execute disaster preparation plans and set up alternative treatment locations if they should face a rapid influx of patients sick with the disease.

October 26: India Challenged by Peoples: Maoist struggles gain wider support in India. Arundhati Roy says Indian democracy is in a state of emergency while government is at war with Naxals to aid MNCs. Writers and activists stand against Operation Green Hunt.

October 30: Obama Announces End of Policy Banning HIV-Positive Patients From Entering U.S.: President Obama announces that he is ending the policy banning patients who are HIV postive from entering the United States. He calls the law outdated and misguided, “rooted in fear rather than fact.”

November 3: Maine Voters Overturn Same-Sex Marriage Law: Maine voters overturn a law allowing same-sex marriage, which had been instated by the governor of the state in May 2009. Maine is the 31st state to block same-sex marriage through a public referendum. All of the five states that currently allow same-sex marriage instituted the law via legislative action and court rulings.

November 6: Unemployment Rate Reaches 10.2%: Unemployment reaches the highest rate in 26 years, hitting 10.2% in October. While many economists claim the recession is ending, and the G.D.P. grew in the third quarter for the first time in a year, the number of jobless in the U.S. continues to rise. A broader measure of unemployment, which includes unemployed, underemployed, and discourage workers, stands at 17.5%. This number is tracked by the Labor Department.

December 2: New York Senate Votes Down Gay Marriage Bill: The New York Senate rejects a bill that would allow same-sex marriages to be licensed in the state; the vote is a decisive 38-to-24, though the majority of the senate are members of the Democratic Party, which by and large supports gay marriage. Governor David Patterson and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg were among key politicians in support of the bill’s passage.

December 10: Blackwater Agents Played Integral Role in CIA Raids: Blackwater, the private military firm that trains security personnel, routinely participated with CIA agents in secret raids against possible insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also transported detainees, though both the CIA and Blackwater previously maintained that the guards only provided security during these events, demonstrating the close relationship between the two agencies.

December 24: Senate Passes Health-Care Reform Bill: After months of drafts, debate, and revisions, the U.S. Senate passes a health-care reform bill with a partisan vote of 60–39. The bill guarantees access to health insurance for tens of millions of Americans, and formulates a plan for reducing health-care costs. The House of Representatives passed a similar bill in November, with a vote of 220–215; only one Republican voted for the Democrat-created bill. The two versions of the bill must be reconciled before any law can be passed, however.

2010

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 04:20:45 -0500

No change in sight for women’s rights

No expropriation of privileged mights

Militarists prescribe global peace lies

Working class interests fail to unionize

Organic farming for corporate profits

Healthcare granted for the insured elites

Homeless poor in the glitzy American nights

Hundred twenty-two die in daily medical plights

Twenty-five hundred families each day bankrupt

Subjects of Superpower profoundly distraught

Feed into Afghan, Iran, and warmongering distractions

Collectively throttle international socialist aspirations

The Wars are going to end, say the War Presidents

Monopolist bankers at G-20 make economic precedents

Plutocratic nobility yield from ethical charity claims

Priests abuse children, forgive selves, avoid prison chains

Anticommunist Herta Müller wins Nobel literature

Postmodern Rands follow individualistic scripture

Private properties grow sacred with economic recessions

Consumerism thrives on year around discount seasons

Environmental concerns lip-served by business interests

Mountains ravaged, peoples displaced, plundered forests

Insidious attempts at defining freedom, political liberties

Minorities oppressed amidst democratic Colacracies

Marriages outlawed for all sexual orientations

Intending immigrants still illegal alien notions

Middle strata suffers from pangs of alienation

Trickled money from the rich their sole aspiration

Poor’s crimes are poverty and unemployment

Stealing of breads still law & order assessment

World capitalism is absolved of systemic failures

Of unequal laws, old boys networks, racist cultures

Two Thousand and Ten, promises to be more of the same

Let’s not celebrate this arrival of an age old game

Where monopolists continue to be magazine covers

Instead come what be the day, let’s join the class struggles

Revolutions won’t be scheduled for any auspicious occasions

Oligarchs cannot be rescued by their Gods or divine interventions

“Enough already!”, cry Zapatas in Chiapas and Orissa’s Maoists

Poor and wretched shall rise, and the rich ruling classes perish!

- Saswat Pattanayak

Peoples' Poet, 2010

Emancipatory Journalism Must Be Protected From Sedition Charges

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 03:40:34 -0500

By Saswat Pattanayak

Laxman Chaudhury’s arrest in Orissa is the latest in the series of assaults on press freedom. In the guise of fighting the Maoists, various state governments in India are now harassing journalists in an unprecedented manner. But what is more peculiar in this specific oppression of the people is the manner in which grassroot scribes associated with vernacular media are being specifically targeted.

Chaudhury from Mohana has been charged under sedition and for having waged war against the state. A committed journalist who exposed the nexus between ganja smugglers, women traffickers and the police, is suddenly declared as an enemy of the State after being framed for alleged links with Maoists. OTV reporters Khusiram Sunani and Kirti Chandra Sahu, editor of Nissan, Lenin Ray, Samaj correspondent Jagannath Bastia, Aaromv reporters Sriharsha Mishra and Kiran Mishra are also instances of journalists being harassed under similar pretexts.

Sedition is possibly the most serious charge envisioned against an unpatriotic and disloyal subject of the State. To bring up such a charge against active journalists who are championing the voice of the underrepresented clouds the vision of a vibrant democracy. Not only are the charges of sedition inappropriate to be brought against any journalist who advances the voices of dissent, but the very code of sedition needs to be reevaluated, and subsequently purged from the legal paraphernalia.

We need to remember that the original Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (1870) defined Sedition thus: Whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards Her Majesty or the Crown Representative in British India or British Burma shall be punished with transportation for life or any shorter term, to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.

Conveniently enough, our judiciary and legislative power combines have not amended this section much, and have merely replaced “Her Majesty or the Crown Representative” with “the Government established by law”, “British India/Burma” with “India”, and the “transportation for life” with “imprisonment for life”. What has entirely gone amiss from juridical interventions is the need to rethink the absolutely abominable colonial strategies to continue enslaving human subjects in the name of loyalty to the ruling structure. Its utter disgusting to sustain such a tradition of oppression even to this date, let alone fabricate freethinking conscientious journalists into submitting to charges of so-called sedition.

What has gone missing from the critical discourse is the unique history of humankind against colonial empires. Had the unfree subjects obeyed such unjust legal systems enforced upon them, there would have never been a single instance of civil disobedience or non-cooperation, or outright opposition against social injustice. It is important to recall that revolutionaries of our freedom movements were not so much opposed to the British individuals per se. In fact, many of them were educated by British professors, admired rationalist traditions of the British, and joined internationalist forces in declaring their freedom rights. This was the reason why our leaders, moderates and extremists alike, did not prefer to incite violence against the British individuals. They were chiefly opposed to the unjust methods of the British colonial system. They demanded overhauling of the system, but did not preach hatred against the rulers. This is the approach of the revolutionaries - to heed to the peoples‘ causes and calls and stir up a new movement to replace an older unjust one. It is not mere opposition to specific political parties that is desirable for a journalist to air, but also the demand for replacement of a whole gamut of corrupt structure when it has failed its entire purpose.

Journalists, more than any other professionals, are representatives of the people’s voices. It is through their views and interpretations that some people aspire to be politicians, some administrators look for policy changes, and some judges inform themselves before releasing a verdict.

Not only journalists need to be forever shielded from sedition charges, they must work together to influence the masses to demand for abolition of such unjust colonial legacies in our legal system. If people demand Her Majesty to be ousted, so be it. And if the majority of India, impoverished in poverty and being penalized for being poor, demand the existing government - elected through fraudulent methods of indoctrination, money power and manipulations - to go, so be it.

If a grassroot journalist can be accused of sedition, then its time to reassess the executive-legislative-judiciary branches in view of their former colonial masters, and they must together be declared guilty of graver charges. Crimes against the people must be denounced far more stringently than crimes against the authorities.

The Liberhan Commission report: Are we debating the right issues?

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 03:43:22 -0500

By Saswat Pattanayak

Contrary to popular beliefs, Report of the Liberhan Commission of Inquiry is not an indictment of senior BJP leaders; it is an indictment of the entire Indian society - guilty of harboring and perpetuating criminal intents, owing to carefully preserved religious and caste divisions.

Even a cursory reading of the text positions before us the essences:

“During enquiry, it has been rightly been impressed and patently has come on record that casteism and communalism exists in almost all organizations and institutions. Its infiltration in the community starts amongst the very young persons. The video record and photographs as well as the evidence which have come on record with respect to incident of December 6th 1992 shows that almost eighty percent of the personnel involved were between the age of the adolescence and early 30s. The problem is that it is deeply ingrained in radical thinking. A sustained effort is needed in order to tackle casteism; communalism or regionalism head on.” (8.14)

If there is one necessary lesson that must be drawn from the report, it is that, a mammoth collection of evidences points to one direction - a need for social rehabilitation. The report states, “Urgent action is needed if it is not to become epidemic a radical disease threatening the very survival of the Indian society. Communal, caste disadvantage and nasty associates of discrimination has not yet been eliminated. They poison the mind and attitude. They will as long as they remain, continue to be potent reason for unrest and cause throwing our nation weakness as temptation for foreign invaders.” (8.17)

Instead of these salient critical observations drawn from several years of commission inquiries, we as a nation are more keen on debating which leaders made to the list and why. As though, our sense of being secular Indian is dependent solely on the guidance, or the lack of it, on part of the handfuls of untrustworthy politicians. As though, we are confident that by bringing the “communal politicians” to book, we would have eradicated the roots of dangerous communalism afflicting the contemporary India. Such unprecedented mass interest generated in a judicial report can only suggest that this report was meant to solve the prevailing religious discords, and now must be examined for its merits.

Dangerously redundant:

Some would argue that we were always aware of the aforementioned lessons, and that, it would be more useful to discuss the specifics that point to the guilty. Even from that perspective, the discussions on the specific findings of the Liberhan Commission are as redundant as the report itself. By now, people know that this Commission has indicted leaders -Vajpayee, Pramod Mahajan, Lalji Tandon and Govindacharya - who have not even been summoned. That, it is too soft on the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao. And that, the report took too long (17 years and 48 extensions), spent too much (Rs 7 crore), and produced too little that was hitherto unknown.

Even as those be the cases, now that the administrative trivia are well exposed, we should still reflect on why a Liberhan Commission was considered a necessity at any juncture. More importantly, why it needed to be conducted in such a secretive manner? Are the indicted ones the real villains? Are we really ashamed of our lingering indifference, or merely angry that our dirty politicians are not punished enough? Are our secular stances victims to political propitiousness or are they ideologically whittled?

The Holy Cows:

The apparently sensational “leaking” of the report is a crude joke on the collective intelligence of our country. If a judicial commission is established with taxpayers’ money, its first obligation is to the people. One way of explaining the big fuss created by a section of the corporate media over the leakage is to understand their greed for “breaking news” credits. Hence, two news organizations could not contain absolutely immature excitement in claiming to be ahead of the race in their advanced knowledge of a report which was anyway about to go public.

The critical question is how can the report be perceived any differently if it is first placed in the legislature as opposed to amidst the citizens who help create the legislature. The hue and cry over the leaks of publicly funded reports are aimed solely to maintain the holy cow image of the judiciary (the only other category would be the unaudited military). In an elite fashion resembling limited medical college seats, the legal authorities protect their documents with utmost secrecy, giving thereby a sense of sacredness. In reality, akin to profiteering healthcare sector, judiciary is as amenable to corruption, partisanship and outrightly useless revelations. Liberhan’s report is equally vulnerable to being influenced by individual consciousness and unique environmental factors. In no sense of the term, it can claim to be objective, let alone irrefutable. Whether or not such a report first “leak” to the media or be tabled inside the Parliament is a moot point. But by bringing it up to stir a debate, in a macabre fashion, all the four pillars of our dwindling democracy - that must sink or swim together - are just deciding to alienate the people from their social rights to fundamental knowledge. As a matter of fact, the present shock and disbelief would not have existed had there been a popular continuous engagement with the report while it was in progress.

However, the Holy Cow institutions function in most secretive manner, as though the very moment they declare a judgment, the solutions would be reached. It is this very elitist mode of looking down upon the larger population which forms the core of social unrest. The civil and military executive, legislature, judiciary and the press - all function to the exclusion of an understanding that majority of people have a stake in their modes of operations. This leads to rife speculations before a so-called judgment day, instead of a conscious engagement with democratic political process. Social malfunctions such as failure of secularism in India are perceived in quantifiable measures, to be resolved with unraveling of judicial reports - undesirable distractions, impossibly valued.

Religious Rights in a Secular Republic:

Secular fabric of independent India was not attacked for the first time in 1992. Caste-related violences and Dalit oppressions were most frequent forms of Hindu religious unrest ever since India attained freedom. Bloodshed after partition was followed by Jabalpur Hindu-Muslim riots in 1961. In 1969, Ahmedabad witnessed deaths of over a thousand Hindus and Muslims in communal riots. In Delhi, thousands of Sikhs were murdered in 1984 led by Hindu rioters. Hindu terrorism has time and again displayed its ugly head throughout, without letting the issue get internationalized. In the veil of declared secular status, our schools conduct daily prayers, youths take to lathi in the open to aspire to be sainiks, and we cower down before religious godmen and goons alike. To assume that Hindu “way of life” is somehow inherently peaceful and tolerant, only disturbed by few right-wing extremists, would be to refuse responsibilities of our national indifferences, and inactions towards deep-seated prejudices majority of Indians harbor towards various oppressed minorities. By reducing our communalist character to Babri Masjid demolition and its aftermath, there is a parallel attempt at absolving the collective guilt as well promoting a certain myth of cultural-national purity that must accompany the anti-secular Hinduised akhand bharat.

Babri Masjid demolition was a political act, but it was driven by an ideology that has been glorified by majority of Indians - across religions. Decrying the acts of Hindu fanatics is not sufficient deterrent. We need to probe deeper into the religious, pious, sanctified ladders of nobility that Indian society as a whole practices. Publicly held religious ceremonies and exhibitionisms are amply promoted by leaders of various beliefs. Such zealous adherence to sacred faith systems must inevitably lead to competitive clashes. Attempts at conversions, sectarian promotions, moralist presumptions in the name of religion are a continuing saga in most parts of the world. Mingling of politics with religion is a mere extension of a practice that publicly proves superiority of a concept that, if at all must exist, needs to be deeply intrapersonal. Not only are the present systems of religious preachings - coming from mandir, madrassa and missionaries - filled with lessons of incompatibilities, comparative hatred and seeds of suspicions, they are also inherently regressive in historical interpretations. As a result, instead of treating Babri Masjid as a remnant of an unenviable royal legacy that can at best be preserved as a national monument, divisive religious tendencies are claiming to demand a share in it for their worshipping rights.

Juridical clarity must prevail while interpreting the Constitution. The citizens must enjoy personal freedom to practice religious beliefs, or to reject them, but the State cannot be both secular, and religious at the same time. Protection of heritage monuments are a national duty, not a religious group obligation. Indian state being constitutionally bound to be secular, should declare ancient places of worship as heritage monuments. Moreover, Indian government and each citizen needs to be mindful of our Directive Principles while dealing with ancient monuments. As Article 49 declares, “Protection of monuments and places and objects of national importance.- It shall be the obligation of the State to protect every monument or place or object of artistic or historic interest, to be of national importance, from spoliation, disfigurement, destruction, removal, disposal or export, as the case may be.”

Indian State continues to fail in its constitutional obligations. No one was looking forward to Liberhan to declare the state of communal unrest. We experience it on a daily basis. Following Masjid demolition, there have been countless instances of both Hindu and Islamic terrorism, of Christian attacks and retaliations, and massacres of Dalits. To assume any significant change to occur following Liberhan findings is to locate the historical developments through the ruling class eyes.

Currently, the legislators are debating on a certain bill to contain communal violences. Whereas, this sounds apt, it does not address the root causes of religious intolerance in a diverse society. On the other hand, such bills and commission reports are employed by the ruling classes to strengthen the status quo of national identity, to restore lost faith in law and order and to reassure the subjects that they must patiently submit their fates to power structure combines. Justice is to be awaited in the corridors of the courts and the parliament, not in massive peoples’ movement aimed at refusing religious practices in the public or objecting to religious instructions at the schools, or decrying the casteist indoctrinations at homes. Attitudinal changes are not brought about through wishful legislations, but via fundamental social shifts - not brought about by seasoned beneficiaries of the prejudiced system, but by the very people opposed to them.

Indictments: Are Vajpayees and Advanis the real villains?

Debates over whether or not the former Prime Minister was rightfully mentioned in the report are mere distractions. Liberhan has already clarified that he has never indicted Vajpayee in his report. Irrespective of what actions are taken, it will be prudent for the Indian youth to reflect upon the history and occurrence of communalism, and not resort to simplified narratives of legal justice. For each religious revival movement, there is an accompanying attempt at reclaiming legacies, which are bound to be disputed by opposing factions. Considering the unquestioned sacredness with which religions are adhered to, such contestations are compelled to produce fanatics as witnessed during Babri Masjid demolition.

Judicial reports may indict a few opportunistic politicians for the state of communalism. But more than the shock it provides in our knowing of our beloved leaders implicated thus, it is an appropriate time to reflect upon our own compliance in materializing such prospects of mutual hatred which in turn, nurtures communal politicians.

Following the demolition, India elected the very same perpetrators of religious strife who are being despised now based merely upon a judicial report. Shall we not immediately reinstate those communal politicians to power soon after they are exonerated of all crimes? If people deserve the kind of government they elect, it is also true that politicians are merely byproducts of their times. Our times are so hollow that we look at ancient monuments for reclaiming glories, to superstitious texts for invoking beliefs, to legislative indictments of our representatives in order to absolve ourselves of collective responsibilities.

Whose India?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:37:46 -0500

By Saswat Pattanayak

The more there are celebrations surrounding India’s economic growth, the more I grow desperate to oppose them. In a way, the more jubilant the headlines appear, the sadder I become as a reader. India is on the rise to emerge as the next superpower, and the more they try to convince me of that, the more agitated I become.

Fortunately, I am not alone in this state of agitation. The ruling class confirms that India faces the biggest threats to national security from her own citizens. But it refuses to internationalize the crisis; it instead chooses to mass murder the oppressed rather than eliminate the grounds of oppression. India’s complicity with barbarism has reached such a nadir that the burning realities afflicting the majority are being suppressed as exceptionalities, only in order to highlight the indulgences of the class minority as the desired universalities.

Intoxicated with newfound glory of being patted on the back by the imperialist powers, most elements from the Indian government, media and educated sections refuse to recognize their roles in perpetuating the myth of economic growth in a country that is profoundly anti-people. Their entities are suffused with uncritical acceptance of status quo, for any replacement of it must adversely affect the beneficiaries the most.

Amidst the desperate attempts to hold the country together (most ironically, after selling out all its natural and human resources to private monopolists), the military-prison-industrial complex prioritizes what needs to be made available in public sphere. Visionaries and revolutionaries who imagine a free India are accused of being terrorists. Mass organizers who find it impossible to accept that patriotism must cease subsequent to departure of colonialists, are rounded up as Maoists. Exploitative wealth concentration is heralded as praiseworthy, while the toiling dispossessed are routinely harassed as parasites.

Furthering the class society aspirations of the nouveau riche, technocrats and bureaucrats join hands to rewrite India’s global image to make it conducive for lucrative investments. Radio jockeys pronounce that the youths unconditionally love the new and emerging India. A spokesperson for imperialism, Thomas Friedman claims General Electric and Infosys - two of the largest private recruiters - neutralize India’s otherwise Nuclear-power status. Its the image of India which is felt as most necessary to be upheld at the expense of the reality of India.

Reality of India is what must wake us up at this critical juncture. India’s poverty line is a sham. The indicators are that of destitution. And even by that, more than 30% of people fall below a quality of life that can feed them once in a day. India has the highest infant mortality rate in the world, with over 4 lakh newborn deaths within the first 24 hours. The reality is that more than 90% of the workforce is employed in the informal economy - without job security or workplace rights (for women, it is 96%). The reality is 296 million people are plain illiterate, way higher number than that are nominally literate. India’s reality is that 233 million, largely children younger than age 3, are undernourished. As much as 48.6 percent of farmer households are in debt, with only 27 percent accessing formal credit. India’s reality is increasing farmer suicides across states. More than 60 percent of women are chronically poor in India. India’s reality is that the system has failed to take care of the most needy in the most basic manner. Even in 2009, more than 56 percent of households do not have electricity connections.

For all practical purposes, Republic of India has no moral position to aspire for a superpower status. Especially considering that the country it tries to emulate the most, the United States, as the world’s superpower indeed has one in six people remaining hungry. Image, is just that. It may suppress the realities of capitalistic economies, but cannot resolve the necessary contradictions of the class society. Time has come for India to recognize the ongoing class war as the new organized revolutionary movement grounded in scathing attacks on the root inequalities and misplaced priorities promoted by the ruling combines.

Militarist Obama and Corporate Nobel: Peaceful Partnership

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:04:10 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

(Written for publication in Radical Notes and VoxUnion)

There simply need not be any elements of surprise or shock at Barack Obama receiving Nobel Peace Prize. Almost every year, this award has been granted to neoliberal policy brokers otherwise known as liberals, social democrats, or simply the firm believers in Eurocentric democratic ethos that can be ruthlessly applied on lesser countries via doublespeaks. Obama joins Ahtisaari, Gore, Dae-jung, Trimble, Belo, Walesa, Robles, Esquivel, Begin, Sakharov, Sato, Cassin, Kissinger, Wilson, etc., as the latest torchbearer of the most overrated award in the human history.

Liberal media are attributing his win to moments in anticipation, while conservatives are yet to get over the shock. However, Obama is absolutely worthy of winning the prize and he must be congratulated for the same as a regular recipient of this insipid achievement. Even a cursory look at past few winners should indicate that Obama’s prize perfectly fits.

Last year’s winner, Martti Ahtisaari was almost a NATO agent who worked tirelessly as an anti-communist and aspired to end Finland’s neutrality through his fetishized versions of a corporate Finland as a prosperous Finland.

The year before, Al Gore - a dubious champion of environmental hanky-panky that has no pragmatic basis but plenty of populist boasts with an ability to marry corporate america with Zionist media lobby received the award. Gore’s multi-billion dollar campaigners have been chiefly free market champions who “reformed” Soviet Union and infamous money launderers such as Howard Glicken, Nate Landow and terrorist Rabbi Meir Kahane.

When Kim Dae-jung won the award, he was known as a firmly indoctrinated champion of capitalism, and a tireless communicator in the process of introducing “democracy” in North Korea, the kind of diplomatic talks which can bring down socialistic systems rather smoothly.

David Trimble, a Protestant leader from Ireland hell bent to punish Sinn Fein, the left-wing political wing of the IRA has also been an obvious choice. Comparable to him was a previous winner Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, a Roman Catholic bishop appointed to rid East Timor of the last of its radical strands. As though Portuguese occupation was not enough, an illegal encroachment of the country via NATO-backed Indonesia was to be done to eliminate the communists. After its successful atrocities, Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta have become the human face to the “peaceful” interventions in the lives of indigenous peoples through religious pacifications. The peoples can no more demand for reparations in a religious colony.

Lech Walesa, a pronounced reactionary leader in Poland organizing trade unions against the communists, received Nobel merely for such attempts. Alfonso García Robles collaborated with the nuclear powers in order to promote a non-nuclear zone for Latin America without demanding nuclear dismantling of the West. Nobel Peace Prize has traditionally been conferred upon non-agitating peaceniks who like much of social democrats, do not wish to alter the equation of the privileged while ensuring limitations for the oppressed. Dangerous tools are safe in the hands of the mafia, and very dangerous in the hands of the commoners. Nobel prize committees have year after year acknowledged this colonial notion.

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, another product of Christian missionary position of effecting changes without revolutions- changes as feeble as conversion to a dogmatic religion, was an illustrious winner. Even as vocally opposed to wars and policies led down by the kinds of Bush, the Nobel Peace winners are not the ones who even address the root causes of wars - class conflicts - and have acutely selective memories when it comes to linking the Church with perpetuation of bourgeois wars.

Menachem Begin, a zionist militarist who launched massive attacks against Iraq and Lebanon even before anyone witnessed Gulf Wars was another perfect winner. One of the biggest war maniacs in recent history, he was the architect of Begin Doctrine, way more vicious than any unofficial Bush doctrines the peaceniks have resented.

Andrei Sakharov, an exaggerated dissident who in the peak of cold war was perhaps so oblivious of American expansions that he created a stir through his advocacy in support of the imperialistic intentions; and immediately was conferred Nobel Peace Prize.

Yet another winner was Eisaku Sato, a reactionary conservative collaborator of Japanese-American interests, the principal opponent to Communist China’s recognition as a UN member, and a prime donor to Taiwanese causes. Here was another classic example of a liberal crony of the routine violators of international sovereign policies.

In previous years, René Cassin, chief legal advisor to Charles de Gaulle has won this coveted award, as has George Marshall. Marshall, the post-war propagandist was instrumental in implanting market economies in communist Europe through bribing, investing and coercing.

Albert Schweitzer’s racist stances on African peoples were well known when he won the Nobel Peace for his White Man’s burdens. So was Woodrow Wilson, a racist, segregationist president whose life was marked by pursuance of the American doctrine of imperialism and global hegemony.

Lesser said the better it is about Henry Kissinger, his pronounced hatred for Third World solidarity movements and his war-mongering. If Cold War achieved demise of Communistic alliances globally, it was done through the only weapons the capitalists know of: money, diplomacy and religion. The role of Nobel Peace Committee in converting the interventionists to heroes and legitimizing their methods of covert propaganda operations is unparalleled.

If Dalai Lama through soothing words of peace and spirituality attempted to undermine a peoples’ republic and won the awards through relegating Tibet into ancient conservative times, then it should not surprise anyone why F.W. de Klerk also won on behalf of South Africa. “Non-violence” in our times of global capitalism translates to unconditional surrender on part of the agitating masses to a reformed society. The reforms must take place within the overarching designs of the former colonial masters. Aung San Suu Kyi is another instance of a revolutionary whose limits have been set by Washington DC.

Since the inception of Nobel Peace Prize, an overwhelming majority of the awards have gone to pronounced anti-communists, masquerading as “reformers”. Mikhail Gorbachev is the brightest instance. Second largest category is the Christian religious saints, bishops and preachers. Goes without saying, their roles have been exemplarily complimenting the “pacifist” reformers. Wherever there was communistic presence, the Christian values needed to be imported there to sabotage peoples’ movements. West Bengal in India is a case in point, where Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity had to deserve Nobel Peace Prize through its covert operations of religious conversion, selective care and influence upon CIA-backed dictators in Africa. Communists are bound to agitate the hungry against their class exploiters, but the Saints pacify the hungry through capitalistic charity funds. Who wins the Nobel Peace is anyone’s guess.

Around the time when revolutionary spirits in Latin America was sky-high and Che’s dreams of unifying the region was slowly gaining grounds, Nobel Committee chose Oscar Arias Sánchez who through smooth means, implemented neoliberal economic policies in Costa Rica.

The last category of Nobel Peace Prize winners have great affinity with Zionist causes. The brightest scholar here is Elie Wiesel - the man with the irresponsible claims on the "uniqueness of Holocaust" and one infamous for downplaying or flatly refusing to acknowledge that other genocides caused by the Nazis have any comparable significance. Speaking of Israelis, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin were certainly not the exceptions.

Deconstruction of “Peace” in Nobel Prize and Lenin Prize:

With so many hardcore militarists (Wilson, Kissinger, Begin, Sato, etc.,) winning Nobel Peace Prize, not to mention scores of illustrious supporters of the aggressive Euro-American bloc during Cold War, how exactly is “Peace” defined by the wise committee?

Nobel jurists further the Eurocentric views of the world and they should not be blamed for it. After all, the people of color, the oppressed people in majority of the world did not have the financial means to combat the advertorial impacts of the aura surrounding this prize. For instance, Lenin Peace Prizes have been awarded to freedom fighters against colonial masters in many African and Asian countries, but the relevance of that great award has never been highlighted as part of collective historical knowledge.

Lenin Peace Prize, that truly revolutionary recognition of the people who strived to bring peace among nations has been relegated to obscurity through sheer exhibitionism on part of the European capitalists disguising themselves under the banner of Nobel. The sheer magnitude of diversity among the winners of Lenin Peace Prize, their roles in dismantling of colonial powers, and their relentless struggles on the sides of the oppressed are testimony to the true acknowledgment of what constitutes peace.

There is a rejoice among people of color upon the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Barack Obama. That is just and proper. But what escapes media attention is the fact that Nobel Prizes have been racist awards ever since their inceptions. Not a single black person has won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Physics or Medicine. Out of a total of 789 Nobel Prizes conferred thus far, only 11 have been awarded to black people. Out of these 11, one was an economist, three were laureates, and as many as 8 were pacifists!

How does it so happen that whereas black accomplishments are overlooked in every field of life by the colonial powers, they happen to be so useful when it comes to recognizing their peaceful conducts? How is it that the oppressed are awarded not for their agitations, but for their accommodations?

Quite naturally so. Nobel Prizes have been Eurocentric mechanisms to brand those people as the greatest human beings on the planet, that dutifully submit to the whims of colonial and imperial powers. Those people who have put their acts together to intervene in revolutionary situations with their negotiating skills to prevent escalation of class wars. These are the people who have pronounced that the exploiters and the exploited can and must live together in harmony with the class divisions remaining intact. Nobel Prizes are granted to those chosen few among the minorities that have a greater impact over the masses compared to their revolutionary counterparts.

There should not be any surprises. Nobel Prizes are offered by the Royalists, the status quo upholders, the deniers of class society. Their construction of “peace” is determined through their worldview, which comprises the refusal for a replacement of unjust world order, and strong resentment at revolutionary forces. Barack Obama’s win is the most natural continuation of Nobel Peace Prize tradition. Peace in Nobel Prize tradition is capitalistic utopia. In the realist world, peace can prevail only through equitable redistribution of privileges. Capitalism simply cannot accept that. Hence, peace itself has to be redefined.

Contrasted to that, majority of Lenin Peace Prizes were granted to people of color, and a huge majority of them were agitators. These were true proponents of peace for the peoples in the world. Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Angela Davis (USA), Samora Machel (Mozambique), Agostinho Neto (Angola), Paul Robeson (USA), Ahmed Sékou Touré (Guinea), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), W. E. B. Du Bois (USA) were some of the leading freedom fighters against colonialism. Lenin Peace Prizes were also awarded to Pablo Picasso (Spain), Brazil's Jorge Amado, Saifuddin Kitchlew (India), Pablo Neruda (Chile), Bertolt Brecht (East Germany), Thakin Kodaw Hmaing of Burma, Nicolás Guillén of Cuba, Lázaro Cárdenas of Mexico, Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Modibo Keïta of Mali, Aruna Asaf Ali (India), Kamal Jumblatt of Lebanon, Salvador Allende of Chile, Lê Duẩn of Vietnam, Miguel Otero Silva of Venezuela, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Mikis Theodorakis of Greece, and Abdul Sattar Edhi of Pakistan, among many other undisputed champions of human liberty. When Nelson Mandela was awarded Lenin Peace Prize in 1990, his legacy was not insulted by getting him to share the stage with F.W. de Clark.

In the world revolutionary histories, there are heroes, and there are sycophants. There are radical activists who march on without awaiting an award, and there are naive moderates that fall into grander schemes of manipulated dictums. In its truest sense, Nobel Peace Prize has never been awarded to peace activists barring on a couple of occasions. One worthy winner was Linus Pauling of the United States. The second one was Le Duc Tho of Vietnam. Like another radical Jean-Paul Sartre, Le Duc Tho too, had refused to accept Nobel Prize. Sartre refused to bring glory to racist France, and Le Duc refused to accept the prize at the same terms as Kissinger and to share the stage with him.

Nobel Peace Prize, in reality is an apologist for, and celebration of continued Eurocentric imperialism. Obama is the latest one to have been “humbled”. Amidst his militarist interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, through his announcements for larger US troops for invasions and bigger budget to feed the military-industrial complex, the Nobel committees have yet again perpetuated a reactionary definition of peace. In their world of successes and achievements, they have merely crowned their King.

David Letterman: Privileges produce Consensus

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:59:46 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

(Written for publication in Women's Rights NY)

Contrary to mainstream media depictions, David Letterman did not have any affairs with his staff members. And contrary to liberal media apprehensions, the world does not need to be bothered about whether the incidents took place before or after his marriage. Letterman’s apologies to his wife on air are ridiculously unnecessary, and his failure to step down from his job after admission of guilt is soaked in implicit privileges.

What Letterman has done is sheer abuse of his economic power and gender privilege. His unabashed claim that any disclosure of the details would embarrass his women employees he had sex with, evidences blatant sexism. Its a great irony of our times that women continue to not only put up with sexual advances at workplaces, but also are expected to maintain silence in fear of their career prospects. And here is a liberal intellectual who advances this regressive theory in an effort to “protect” his victims.

If Letterman feels his acts with the female employees are not unethical, the same must hold true for the women too. Hence, he needs to announce the names of the staffers, and the judiciary system must ensure that nothing harms the women simply because they had a relationship with Letterman. If Letterman’s job is not being taken away despite his being the perpetrator, there is no reason why the women’s will be.

If, however, Letterman feels he has violated ethics and possibly laws, by acting unworthy of his stature by means of either sexually exploiting the employees or by indulging in “consensual” sex with employees with full knowledge of their otherwise social commitments, then Letterman should have already resigned long time back, and having failed to do so, he must set an example now.

However, as it turns out, the world came to know about Letterman’s abuse of power only following the blackmailing tactics, indicating Letterman had something to hide, and this something was clearly unethical.

Letterman’s statement is wrong at so many levels: “The creepy stuff was that I have had sex with women who work for me on this show. Now, my response to that is, yes I have. I have had sex with women who work on this show. And would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Perhaps it would, perhaps it would. Especially for the women. But that’s a decision for them to make--if they want to come public and talk about the relationships, if I want to go public and talk about the relationships.”

First, Letterman’s dismissal of the employees as just “women” without names who “work for” him on the show clearly smacks of disrespect. Secondly, to assume that the onus must lie with the women to protect their character from being tarnished is the age-old excuse under which men have sexually exploited women all along. Letterman’s reasonings might be proper considering his tradition of making disparaging remarks about women (Sarah Palin and her daughter were verbally humiliated by Letterman solely based on their gender), but they are no grounds for escaping critical scrutiny. Thirdly, the race and gender blindness of powerful men have always assumed that it is entirely possible for the women victims to become public and talk about their relationships with the perpetrators, and that, in doing so, they just might be believed. Letterman assumes he and his victims are on the equal level, without taking into consideration the disparate social locations they belong to, the unequal power relationships they share, the economic class barriers among them and the gender equations prevailing in today’s sexist world.

Whether Letterman invites legal troubles or not is unimportant. At the crux of the issue are his responses and responsibilities as a media personality who has been accorded viewership. An abuse of power coupled with racial privileges cost Don Imus his job. Letterman’s is an instance of abuse of power coupled with gender privileges. Sexual harassment at workplaces are so rampant and complex in their stratifications that it is implicitly required for the employers and employees not to engage in sexual relationships. This is necessary not because it may or may not cost the employer a reputation or the lack of it, but because, more often than not, the women employees will be victimized to suffer as silent subjects without alternative recourses. The women employees usually have lesser choices to explore avenues when they are confronted with hostile or demanding employer. Not only as being men, but also as being economically superior, the male employers need to enforce codes of conduct where the assumed disadvantages of female employees are not violated by anyone at the office, least of all, by the bosses themselves.

Letterman has violated the workplace ethics by involving in sexual relationships - not just with one woman, but with several, while being an employer. He has also displayed disgusting attitudes towards women in understanding their limits and potential. And his making references to his “affairs” in jocular fashion only adds to his already established sexist image.

When legality follows, Letterman may face charges, or like another privileged creative professional brought to recent limelight, Polanski, may gather enough media support for his case so as to have himself pictured as the victim. But for now, American media do not need Letterman’s jokes and judgments, considering his sense of “creepy” is beyond reproach, and judge he must never again. Privileges produce consensus. Letterman is the brightest instance who abused his privileges.

Roman Polanski and Euro-American Privileges

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:06:15 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

It's a deceitful media circulation which suggests that the American judiciary is going after Roman Polanski. The truth is it never has. Polanski is a filthy criminal who had raped a child and yet was allowed to let go by the American justice system for over three decades. And this time, he is merely a bone which Switzerland threw at the United States over its UBS catastrophe. As for Polanski, who has visited Zurich several times and never been arrested before, its going to be few wordplays around extradition treaties that will ensure his freedom while, corporate media, hollywood biggies, and opportunist feminists rally in his support.

Roman Polanski is not merely mentally sick, physically brutal, and powerfully abusive, but he is also a rapist of a minor without a sense of repentance. Had he any iota of regrets, he would have surrendered to the legal system on his own, not continued to evade arrests, and make movies, no matter how many awards they win. It is in the content of character, not in the counts of awards, that a person is to be judged. His affairs with his leading ladies should not have bothered us, but his brutal rape of a minor is not an act worthy of kind reviews, let alone of a solidarity march.

But precisely, drawing from his old boys networks, from the euro-centric privileges, from the elite film industries, from the corporate media friends, and from the liberal feminists, Polanski has succeeded in generating unprecedented solidarity today. His support base glorious and powerful beyond any recent recollections. And in it, lies the greatest irony of our times: the justice system in capitalistic societies.

Each country’s administration that let Polanski work on its land is guilty of abetting this criminal. Mainstream media’s claim that European countries are harboring him while American judicial system is seeking him is utterly misleading. Polanski was to be sentenced not only for rape of a minor, but also on charges of sodomy with drugs. During the 70’s when police dogs were being unleashed upon innocent black workers on the streets, when educated youths were being mercilessly shot at for their demands for racial equality, and poor people were being arrested for jaywalking in rich neighborhoods, Polanski was allowed to go shoot in foreign lands even after he pleaded guilty to the rape charges (in order to avoid harsher sentences associated with sodomy with drugs, he just preferred being sentenced as a rapist and as an European-American, get a bail for the rest of his celebrity life).

For more than three decades (32 years, to be precise), this man was not arrested by the American judiciary. He did not even have to abscond, or flee, as the media reports suggest. He remained in public limelight, continued making movies in Britain, France and Poland. The Oscar jury even shamelessly awarded him with the highest prizes. He could easily have been arrested within three weeks of his departure from the United States. Three decades made him mere immortal.

Disproportionately high number of poor people in America are imprisoned for crimes that are not remotely as heinous as Polanski’s. There is scarcely any demand for their unconditional release. And yet, the American elites have all the hearts for this scum of a man - a filmmaker powerful enough to evade law for such long periods. The man who could not have the courage to surrender before due processes of law, but always had the audacity to attend award ceremonies. Now that he is finally being held in Zurich, all kinds of extradition laws are being reviewed to have him released. What is even more interesting are his lawyers’ claims to their Zurich counterparts that they have evidence to suggest the California police were not very keen on his arrest. Following that, the efficient police department of Los Angeles immediately responds by saying they have been looking for Polanski for over thirty years now, and his arrest has nothing to do with diplomatic faux pas over UBS scandal!

How would have been an ordinary man treated while in position of Polanski is an easy guess. California court would not have taken so long to find a rapist, especially one who is visibly present everywhere, giving out interviews, and receiving awards. In place of an European like Polanski, what would have happened to an African-American celebrity had he been convicted of raping a minor, not to talk of drug possession charges accompanying it. It is worth noting that Michael Jackson was acquitted of all charges by the court, and yet he was damned as a pedophile by the media even after his death. No Hollywood elites signed petitions to attack the press or to convince President Obama that Jackson was a true American hero who deserved a tribute. But here is a man already confessed to have raped a child after drugging her and the media are all quoting his famous friends about his deeply troubled personal life!

Not just United States, even United Kingdom could have taken an action on Polanski. It could have easily handed over the criminal to California. But that did not take place. And the French, the self-proclaimed civilized, those that taught the Algerians how to behave as decent law-abiding citizens, of course preferred to twist their own laws when it came to treat a self-confessed rapist. French judicial system, instead of imprisoning a convicted and at-large criminal, decided to play word games of extradition treaties and harbored a pedophile rapist into emerging as a filmmaker of some repute. Not just that, this abominable piece of trash was even heralded as the pride of France, as one of the greatest of its sons! How does a rapist cease becoming one after crossing geographical borders is beyond amazement of human intellect of this century.

The Hollywood, the corporate media as well as renowned feminists have all come together to support Polanski and to demand his immediate release. Such hollow and reactionary are our current progressive movements that the world of films - that imaginative, creative society of free thinking professionals, has lost every sense of self-respect in their unquestioned support lent to a child predator.

Whoopi Goldberg claims she “does not believe, it was a rape-rape”. In her feminist sit-com show, “The View”, she thinks, “he’s sorry. I think he knows it was wrong. I don’t think he’s a danger to society.” Instead of using the opportunity to appeal to women of Hollywood and television industry to come out about the sexual exploitations women have continuously faced in film societies, resulting in phrases such as “casting couch”, and worse, rapes and humiliations by the veteran directors, producers and actors, Ms Goldberg decided to defend a child rapist and assumed he must be feeling sorry!

Debra Winger is also feeling sorry, apparently because according to her, the whole art world is going to suffer in the arrest of Polanski! Even as she knows, Polanski might at the most get a probation, or in the least likelihood, the highest of 16 months in prison. Which world will suffer for one year detention of a convicted rapist can only be left to Winger’s imagination.

Now comes, Peg Yorkin, the renowned feminist and chair of Feminist Majority Foundation, which she co-founded with Eleanor Smeal. Yorkin not only does clearly absolve Polanski, she even reverses the foundations of progressive feminism with her statements to LA Times: “My personal thoughts are let the guy go. It's bad a person was raped. But that was so many years ago. The guy has been through so much in his life. It's crazy to arrest him now. Let it go. The government could spend its money on other things.”

Its sad, but a true reflection of comfortable feminists throwing around millions of dollars in charitable causes meant to address issues concerning women, but in reality, sympathize with the perpetrator as a victim. Yorkin parrots, what the mainstream media does: Polanski has been through a lot in his personal life. But they do not ponder over for a bit as to how does that anyway relate to the specific criminal act? When no one objected to his winning awards despite his personal life, why would the law not apply to Polanski because of it? The logic of Yorkin, Winger and Goldberg, our contemporary women champions of feminism are victimized by the same sexist structural overarching they are trying to contest.

Not to mention of the powerful males in Hollywood who are busy drafting petitions in support of the rapist claiming that “filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision.” Someone needs to tell them that France is already in Europe, so that mention is redundant, and secondly, “around the world” has no empirical basis. The whole world is not as perverted and manipulative as these signatories: Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Mike Nichols, Woody Allen, Neil Jordan, Harvey Weinstein, Pedro Almodóvar and Ethan Coen.

The final defense is in the assumption that raping of minors was commonplace in those days and Polanski being a man of his times, his arrest is an unfortunate exception. Such arguments lack validity since in those days, so many black men were being routinely arrested on entirely false charges of rapes. It is true that Hollywood was perhaps the place for the Anglo-American playboys. Woody Allen immediately comes to mind - a privileged liberal who exploited his adopted children and married his stepdaughter, without his image being tarnished in any manner.

What is more distressing is that this trend of relegating the invisibly exploited women by the powerful filmmakers of Hollywood to irrelevance continues to this day. The fact that over a hundred legendary filmmakers come together to suppress the significance of combating sexual exploitation in the world’s wealthiest film industries, speaks of their own contributions in silencing the victims to this day. Be their films be declared hollow, their messages sexist, and their positions unworthy.

Capitalism: A Democrat's Love Story

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:40:49 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

Written for publication in VoxUnion

Capitalism: A Love Story, is just that.

As occurs in most love stories, there are depictions of mismatched expectations, conflicting situations, remorse and grief, cherished moments, rejoiced nostalgia, idealistic aspirations, and eventually a unilateral resolve to call it quits. Michael Moore’s disillusionment with capitalism is manifested in the current liberal crisis: a crisis that discovers resolve in invoking the founding fathers and preaching moral ethics, a crisis that must indulge in taxonomy of political correctness.

Wistful Days of Yore: Most liberal commentators are currently obsessed with the ‘good old days’ before Ronald Reagan spoilt it all. Michael Moore’s film parrots this narrative rather pronouncedly in the film. According to Moore, in the good old days, students were not dependent on loans and wealth flowed into economy from all quarters, and “we even sent a man to the moon”. A system was working until it was failed and hence, the liberal remorse. The truth, however, is that the American political-economic system has never worked for the majority of people, in its entire history. The happy images of the yore which the film so poignantly projects as exemplification of successful economy were at their best, racist, discriminatory and exclusionary. American infrastructure were built not with free spirits of democracy, but with susceptibly invisible slave labor. Its a myth that there ever was a system that had worked in the United States for the betterment of majority of its people, or of the world. The film perpetuates it through appeal to look kindly at the Fordist era.

Not only the industrial period following the Second World War, Moore has selectively quoted from the original American Constitution and the “Second Bill of Rights” as suggested by FDR to appeal to the humanistic roots of American hegemony. Liberal espousal of such brilliant documents, however, are soaked in sheer idealism than any planning around radical restructuring. Neither the makers of such documents had any designs to implement equal access to outcomes of such resolutions, going by the exclusion of oppressed minorities in affairs of the nation, nor were there any attempts to limit the access of the privileged in controlling of economic power. Even to this day, if the Universal Health Care, far from being a fundamental right, has not even been implemented at legislative level, it is because of a refusal on part of the powers to curtail the existing exuberance of the rich class. Mere declarations for “general welfare” (Constitution) or right for “decent home” (Second Bill of Rights) are wishful, and hence by virtue of that, reactionary.

The “Golden Days” of the past never had any scope to limit the free market, and the present days have no control. Moore avoids deliberating on the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment which proclaims that private property cannot be taken by the state for public use. Nor does he quote the Second Bill of Rights where FDR also suggests that every businessman - small, and large, is free to trade in an atmosphere of freedom.

Capitalism versus Democracy: The film’s main argument is that Capitalism is different from Democracy. Indeed, Moore says the other -ism is not Communism, but Democracy. Moore’s reliance on the glories of American proclamation of democracy enshrined in the Constitution has guided him to such idealistic and misleading conclusions. The truth is American democracy has worked just the way it was designed to work from the very beginning. In fact, American democracy has only improved over the years. Women suffrage was not part of what the Founding Fathers had decided upon. By their documents, even the people of color were not going to be active participants in the electoral processes. No matter how many times we quote the Constitution’s exalted words, they were not designed for all. And yet, the document was a result of democratic standards to which Moore looks upto. Likewise, every subsequent amendments have been democratically implemented and have only resulted in sustenance of the status quo. America has been the citadel of democracy, an exemplary nation that has resulted in election of President Obama through sheer voting power. To deny the democratic nature of American politics is to redefine political democracy.

Moore could have chosen to redefine political democracy, because in reality, democracy thus far has only been a constant ally of the capitalists. Election of President Obama is not the liberation of African-Americans from centuries of discrimination; it is yet another victory for the private bankers and militarist forces that profit from economic recession and wars on Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iraq. Through system of electoral voting, financial manipulations have invariably always taken over the propaganda mill and influenced political processes in most western countries. Capitalism is the political-economic system that demands democratic consensus for its prosperity. Moore does not need to be a Marxist to understand this. A critical perusal of societal bases of economic relationships should suffice. Even President Obama’s democratic mandate was materialized through capitalistic alliances. Capitalism is not opposed to democracy. Indeed, it requires democracy so as to be able to fund, and benefit from, it. A breakaway from feudal past was necessary for the prospective capitalists, and envisioning a proletarian dictatorship through communism would seem nightmarish. The safest bet for the proverbial Wall Street magnets is sustenance of multi-party democracy. Moore surely is acutely aware of it. Roger and Me was an outstanding exposition of status quo elements. But with passing years, and as a Democratic Party fanboy, he is now clouded with misplaced optimisms.

Desperate attempts to separate capitalism from democracy have gone nowhere in the film, because in real life, they are inseparable. Be it Italy, or India, Germany or England, America or Philippines - political democracy is a major hoax of our times - an euphemism for plutocracy. Money buys votes, and democracy is the best system money can buy. Obama was aware of it during his fund-raising campaign which resulted in highest amount of revenue collection in electoral history. In so many ways, it is impossible to differentiate between Reagan and Clinton or Bush and Obama. Because there are no fundamental differences. Each of their democratic triumphs are thanks to capitalistic lobbyists.

Holy Books and Capitalism: So who are the anti-capitalists? Not the communists, Moore declares. They are the anti-communists! The Church! Moore’s childhood love for the Catholic nuns (an exceptional child he must have been) and dreams of becoming a priest himself, and in the typically liberal fashion of distancing oneself from Communism, Moore turns to the Fathers. He quotes the holy books to suggest how the Bible must have been anti-capitalistic in content. The Christian God himself is for the poor and the oppressed. Certainly the atheists must be the capitalists.

Moore misleads not just in his attempts to posit democracy as contradictory to capitalism, but also introduces Christianity as the friend of the oppressed. Not surprising, considering the current liberal fascination of alluring the mainstream and giving them a sense of unity under the America as envisaged by the new president - a race-neutral country of the one-God. Moore goes so far as to interview three Christian priests, and to quote from the scriptures - all appears honky-dory, and everything Christianity is about divine love for the poor and the oppressed. The anti-Capitalists are the Catholics. Such vulgarly twisted interpretations of a religion that singularly led to emergence of capitalism’s assaultive powers speaks of the acute vacuum that exists in current liberal thoughts. Or, quite simply, the dissent camps of the Democrats have merely been converted to becoming apologists for Obama administration. A film such as this clearly absolves Obama of the charges of being a socialist, a “Muslim”, and a likely shareholder of the economic mess.

Hail Obama: Moore, to the cheer of his traditional devotees (myself, included) bashes Reagan and Bush for their dastardly lies about economic state of the nation. But I shall find myself outside of his sycophantic zone in hailing Obama as the man on a mission to correct the ills brought upon by corporate greed. It is not only factually inaccurate to suggest that President Obama has done anything thus far to punish Wall Street mongers, but it is also absolutely ridiculous to overlook the amount of damages the new presidency has caused since its acquisition of power. The fact is President Obama’s election campaign depended on Wall Street mercies and he must remain obliged to their interests. And by all admission, he has. The biggest corporate bailouts in American history were not declared by Bush. They have been authored by Obama. The largest acquittals of financial criminals were not conducted by Reagan administration. They are being done right now by Obama administration. Moore does not offer the slightest hint of how manipulatively the current administration is functioning. The reality is not the failure of capitalism. It is the success of capitalistic democracy. The anti-thesis of Moore’s assumptions.

The film clearly serves as a propaganda medium for Obama administration. But I shall not blame Moore for this myopic project completion. His is reflective of larger liberal opinions. The opinions which have suddenly fizzled out in thin air when it comes to anti-war movements. There is no Cindy Sheehan in this Michael Moore film. A critique of capitalism without mention of the military-industrial complex? Sure, because now, the liberals benefit from the wars. The restless anger and frustration characteristic of Moore has been replaced with Christian values of selective amnesia. Class wars are not done through comic orchestrations. “Hey, tell the CEO that I am Michael Moore and I am here to make a citizen’s arrest” spanks of both celebrity arrogance as well as a self-proclaimed sense of being a savior. Much as his boss Obama, Moore is on a trip: “Are you with me? Let’s go change the world” rhetoric is so seeped in liberal privileges that the commands become invisible to the protagonists.

Democratic Party has killed the anti-war movement in the United States. First by organizing few demonstrations to change the color of the cola in the election war, and then by withdrawing the funds to continue the movement, the party has done bigger damages to kill the spirits of the peaceniks than the Republicans could ever imagine. Progressive filmmakers like Moore no more link war with capitalism as long as Democrats are in power. Is it not a fact that the economic recession could have been better handled had the administration curtailed the enormous defense budgets? With President Obama pushing for more wars against more nations through recruitment of more armed forces than even before, the conservatives are not complaining, and the liberals have their feet in their mouth. This is the first major documentary made by Moore that does not deal with economics of war. He has no one to blame but himself. His constant hope that Obama would somehow stop the wars has been shattered. But he is in denial.

Just as Moore is in denial when it comes to Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. He constantly showcases them as the villains of Bush era. But entirely skips to mention that they were hand-picked by President Obama as well. So why are they serving in Washington? Moore says Obama has selected them because they know the rules of the game. It is smart in selecting the Mafia to control the drug dealings. And what leads Moore to believe that Summers and Geithner will listen to Obama more than they listened to Bush? Unless, of course they are closer to the former. Either way, these are dangerous people - policy makers and capitalists on behalf of the militarists. They are the gifts of the political democracy. Just as Goldman Sachs is. Or Secretary Paulson, the former chief of Goldman Sachs was. If Obama is the hope for the democracy, Goldman Sachs - his million dollar sponsor - must be the protector of democracy. Moore, like Obama, denies that capitalism is inseparable from political democracy. Like the politically savvy liberals, both of them claim a distance from the dirty mud while embracing the rejoicing pig.

Upon election of Obama, Moore declares it is a “Farewell to Old America” in his film. He cites a bread factory cooperative and a Bank of America employees protest as examples of rejuvenated country that is witnessing revolutions against corporate takeover. This is exactly the kind of myth which the current administration wants to spread in its attempts to strengthen base among its loyalists. Moore has unknowingly or knowingly fallen in that pit. Anti-corporate sloganeering are among the easiest of protests. Politicians love it when the public turns its ire against the corporates, and business houses do not mind much of the assault so long as the politicians honor their contracts. Both the sectors remain so cozy in their actual functioning as partners in crimes because by turning the public ire against the “corporate greed”, they ensure that the enemy will always be a faceless, unknown bunch of people whose progress are neither supposed to be monitored by the public nor are even noticed from close quarters.

Therefore when a few dozens of Bank of America employees express their anger at the company, President Obama declares his support for them and win huge approvals. And needless to predict, the bank then hands over few thousand dollars to the employees and the movement fizzles out. The protestors think they have won the battle, whereas in reality, the political party in power gains strength, makes greater friends with the company, and the company bosses find reciprocation from Washington. So when Ken Lewis masterplans takeover of Merrill Lynch at $50 billion, or contributes to fraudulent misappropriation of taxpayers’ money worth $700 billion, eyebrows are raised, but actions are not taken against him. In fact, the public anger is still against the “corporates”, but the closures are hardly in sight. The biggest vultures, like Citigroup and Bank of America continue to flourish when it comes to their board member salaries with public money. In fact, Citigroup has liabilities of $1.797 trillion! And yet, these company heads, instead of being imprisoned for fraudulent practices, predatory lending, and mismanagement of working class money, are rewarded by the administration in Washington DC without any clause for future auditing of their subsequent spendings.

Political democracy has always needed capitalistic economics. They swim and sink together. The odd examples of cooperatives that Moore provides are not only exceptions, but they are romanticized exceptions. Cooperatives, unless made universal and owned by the states themselves make no sense, and are merely to suffer from the maladies of health insurance status in the United States. The private enterprises through their carrot dangling tactics will continue to attract a select few and the rest will be subjected to their own fates. Mixed economy, like the “middle class”, is a misnomer. There are only haves, and the have-nots. A credit society is not a prosperous society. America is a prime example of a failed economy because of capitalism. And capitalism survives through the political system it has helped create. Contrary to Moore’s assumptions, capitalism did not start with Reagan. It started with the Constitution of political democracy where the voting is counted, candidates are selected, the public is normalized into believing that the system which opts for “change” as opposed to “replacement” is the system that works.

Handing over $6000 worth of checks to few employees at a bank is not called advent of revolution. Temporary pacification of agitated mass through token money and soothing words of religious priests are actually murders of revolution.

Brother Gil Scott Heron has appropriately described what is a revolution:

"NBC will not be able to predict the winner at 8:32 or report from 29 districts...There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock news and no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose...The revolution will be no re-run brothers; The revolution will be live."

Michael Moore has distorted the idea of revolution. Revolutions indeed, cannot be predicted through mainstream movies commercially distributed nationwide. Or through the collaboration of the Catholic Church. Certainly not spearheaded by the likes of Obama and his fundraiser Goldman Sachs. As always, the conservative critics have raised wrong questions. The question that is being asked today is why Michael Moore resents capitalism so much if he makes so much money. And Moore continues to be defensive about it by citing instances of how the privileged can make a difference. By that standard, Warren Buffet and George Soros and Bill Gates are all necessary elements for a better world. In reality, these are the scums of the earth, and the parasites that grow with their charities. Moore does not need to defend any of these guys, nor does he need to answer why he is collaborating with Sony Pictures for his films or Warner Books for his books.

Moore may also look at another critique of capitalism, and he might just discover then that individual consciousness is shaped by the political economic system, and not the other way around. Revolutions are not conducted by one man with a controversial name and an amplifier, nor are they done by a group of people crying in joy at being pacified by a populist president throwing around resounding words. Revolutions are not supported by multi-party voting systems founded by oligarchies, sustained by nationalists, funded by feudalists and flavored by capitalists. Moore’s intents at attacking capitalism is much appreciated, and most timely for him to win few more awards from the European jury. But his tools of deconstructing capitalism as necessarily antithetical to political democracy, his analysis of class relations from the standpoint of Bill of Rights, his reliance on Germany, England and Japan as model democracies, and his aspirations to offer the political democracy as a solution to the global economic crisis, instead of isolating it as one of the root causes are worth inspections all over again. Liberals will do well in expressing solidarity with international movements against capitalism based on their class status and class alliances. In their reaffirmed belief in overthrowing of existing structures of power in a sense that there will be no president that will be heralded by his race, nor be surrounded by the old treasury criminals as his advisers.

A political democracy that allows everyone a vote without first ensuring that everyone has equal access to the potential of the exercised power, is a sham. Its a political system that was a stark failure when the Greeks first implemented it for only the elites. Its a system that was a failure when the European landowners implemented while excluding the slaves and the women. Its a system that continues to be a failure when India as the world’s largest democracy goes to polls with people illiterate and hungry. Its a system that remains a failure in America where the candidate that is fielded is the one who must raise most funds by collaborating with the corporate houses. Western democracy has been an abject failure, more so because it gets away with ‘masks of consent’ rather than facing revolutionary forces of workers in solidarity. Such phony democracy is a system that has become the norm, a standard against which other systems are evaluated, a self-sustained yardstick that has no place for upheavals and certainly, no scopes to imagine revolutions. Such unsurpassed strength of an immoral political system is possible only through the massive presence of its base: Capitalism. It is inconceivable for the modern democracy to exist without capitalism. The sooner the masses realize it, the sooner they will find their paths of liberation. They will not wait for another four years. Nor for the next charitable rich for their strikes to be called off.

Revolutions are expressions of collective human emotions. Not their suppressions. Moore’s comic attempts to capture the essence of our times are certainly worthwhile, but their attempts to define revolutionary ethos are not. The Moore I knew from Roger and Me is a much evolved man now. He is not so much opposed to the types of the Pat Boones during economic crisis. Rather, he is way more subtle, more religious and less angry a man now. And so is his new film. Without a distinctive revolutionary tone, which we had all so grown to expect from an unquestionably remarkable filmmaker like him.

On Obama's Refusal to Acknowledge Michael Jackson

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 06:49:07 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

Obama’s constant denial to acknowledge racial tensions in the United States has refused him an ability to officially respect Michael Jackson’s demise. Michael- the most famous black man and the most popular black entertainer in the world history passed away. And only the fans must do all the mourning. The fans must keep Michael’s memories alive. The United States system has apparently no obligation to commemorate the occasion. President Obama has refused to issue a written statement to mourn the passing of Michael even as world over, millions of people are heartbroken.

As a perpetuator of the liberal Zionist media spin, President Obama relegated his press secretary Gibbs, a thoroughly disgusting communicator considering his role of responsibility, to convey the musings to the media. And how did Gibbs respond to a series of sincere questions about why the White House would not release a written statement? He laughed and said to the press: “You know, I think I did a good job”.

He implied celebrating a national hero is not the job of the President. The president is apparently busy. He is too busy to join the huge majority of the earth to respect the most celebrated black man. After all, he is in constant denial about the significance of the black freedom struggle in the United States. A freedom struggle that continues to this day. A freedom struggle which was being waged by even the most “successful” artist of color.

President Obama acknowledges there is an economic crisis. He is trying his best to help the Wall Street magnets reclaim their power corridors. He is making sure that the corporate banking conglomerates get the “bailout” money needed to re-strengthen their stature. But he refuses to acknowledge that the economic crisis does not affect everyone equally. He refuses to acknowledge that in the United States, the society has been unequal along the racial divides. The corporate CEOs’ luxury vacations out of frustrations at economic stagnation should not be confused with the thousands of black educated men and women who have been unjustly abandoned from their workplaces.

Unlike Obama’s election rhetoric which denies racial inequalities in America, the fact is, there is a Black America and there is a White America. This is something which Michael Jackson painfully realized and publicly acknowledged. The way in which the White America creative industry overwhelms the Black American artistic endeavors was properly articulated by Michael: “All the form of popular music from Jazz to Hip-Hop, to Bebop, to Soul - all these are forms of black music...you talk about different dances from Catwalk, to Jitterbug, to Charleston, to Break dancing - all these are forms of black dancing. We (black artists) are the real pioneers who started these. These things are very important but if you go to the bookstore down the corner, you will not see one black person on the cover, you'll see Elvis Presley, you'll see the Rolling Stones.” Michael challenged the legacy of white musical legends such as Elvis and Beatles. He said, “Otis Blackwell was a prolific phenomenal writer who wrote some of the greatest Elvis Presley songs. And this was a black man, but he died penniless. I met his daughter and I’m so honored. It was the same level as meeting the Queen of England.”

Is it because Michael Jackson was vocal, nondiplomatic and accurate in his depiction of the racial divides in the American entertainment industry which irked President Obama? Or was it because Obama has simply no faith in the American judiciary system which despite having caused enough damages to Michael during his life, despite subjecting him to inhumane police brutality, clearly declared him innocent of each and every allegations brought forth against him. Michael was almost bankrupt and he could not even buy the judiciary system like many politicians simply raise funds to become political candidates. Michael was too private when it came to meeting the press so he could not influence the mass media unlike many politicians who simply use the force of empty rhetoric and press relations to declare untested popularity. Where did Michael fault so much as to not deserve a national statement upon his death?

President Obama never hesitated to offer a written statement for Omar Bongo - an infamously corrupt politician of Gabon - when he died, just two weeks before Jackson’s demise! Obama’s written statement said: “I am saddened to learn of the death of President El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon. President Bongo played a key role in developing and shaping the strong bilateral relationship that exists between Gabon and the United States today. President Bongo consistently emphasized the importance of seeking compromise and striving for peace, and made protecting Gabon's natural treasures a priority. His work in conservation in his country and his commitment to conflict resolution across the continent are an important part of his legacy and will be remembered with respect. On behalf of the United States government, I offer my condolences to his family and to the people of Gabon.”

Clearly President Obama has no elementary knowledge of the cold war history, else he would never make such a statement praising Bongo! Unless of course he has only consumed the noncritical liberal press that makes hero of anyone who praises interventionistic tactics of the United States. Bongo, right on! Michael Jackson, hell no!

Obama has never failed to issue official statements just to denounce the decision of a magazine to honor Louis Farrakhan. “I strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.”

The White House released official statement from the President regarding shooting at DC's Holocaust Museum, which left one security guard dead: “I am shocked and saddened by today’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms. No American institution is more important to this effort than the Holocaust Museum, and no act of violence will diminish our determination to honor those who were lost by building a more peaceful and tolerant world.”

To such statements - be it in honor of Bongo or the Holocaust Museum, or in opposition to honoring Farrakhan, there need not be any controversy. As a human being, Obama is entitled to honor or dishonor them. But when it comes to Michael Jackson, whose contributions to the world of music is unlike any other, and which is duly acknowledged by everyone - and whose death was mourned by world leaders from Nelsn Mandela to Hugo Chavez, what did Obama have to lose?

More importantly, what has United States got to lose if we officially show respect to MJ - the most well known and acknowledged man of color. Will we never commemorate his death with a national week of mourning? Will we never celebrate his birthday officially? Will we never remember that black artistry must be celebrated above all else? It is true we have not duly acknowledged many great black artists in the past. The question is shall we continue this trend?

United States machinery has appropriated the gains from Michael’s “We Are The World” to help America put a human face on its cold war strategies. In America’s war against drugs, Michael has been used as the most influential and positive role model. To implement humanitarian causes that secured politicians such as Al Gore Nobel Prizes and Bill Clinton immortality, Michael’s legacy was used to the max.

And most notably, in the past, all American Presidents have issued official statements mourning great artists. Here are just a few:

Jimmy Carter's written Statement by the President on the Death of Elvis Presley on August 17, 1977

“Elvis Presley's death deprives our country of a part of itself. He was unique and irreplaceable. More than 20 years ago, he burst upon the scene with an impact that was unprecedented and will probably never be equaled. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense, and he was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness, and good humor of his country.”

John Lennon was remembered after his death by both President Carter and incoming President Reagan through written statements.

Frank Sinatra’s death was mourned by Bill Clinton through a detailed written statement to the press:

“Hillary and I were deeply saddened to hear of the death of a musical legend and an American icon, Frank Sinatra. Early in his long career, fans dubbed him 'The Voice.' And that was the first thing America noticed about Frank Sinatra: that miraculous voice, strong and subtle, wisecracking and wistful, streetwise but defiantly sweet. In time he became so much more. Sinatra was a spellbinding performer, on stage or on screen, in musicals, comedies and dramas. He built one of the world's most important record companies. He won countless awards, from the Grammy -- nine times -- to the Academy Award, to the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And he dedicated himself to humanitarian causes. When I became president, I had never met Frank Sinatra, although I was an enormous admirer of his. I had the opportunity after I became president to get to know him a little, to have dinner with him, to appreciate on a personal level what fans around the world, including me, appreciated from afar. Frank Sinatra will be missed profoundly by millions around the world. But his music and movies will ensure that 'Ol' Blue Eyes' is never forgotten. Today, I think every American would have to smile and say he really did do it his way. Hillary and I would like to offer our condolences to Frank's wife, Barbara, and to his children, Nancy, Frank Jr., and Tina. Our hearts are with them today.”

What has stopped President Obama and the US administration from honoring Michael Jackson, who has emerged even greater in his death?

Whose Fourth of July?

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 06:54:52 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

Even as President Obama leads the nation into the biggest fireworks show in American history to celebrate the day, the Fourth of July is a stark reminder of American inequalities, not independence.

The independence movement of American republic was not aimed at securing liberty to the inhabitants. American independence from the British Empire was not attained for the indigenous peoples, the black population or for the women. It was an independence that certainly had created a radical series of documents but since, the departure from the tradition of overlooking the plights of the oppressed has never been done either through inspiration or through implementation. American Constitution to this day of 2009 still does not strive to provide life of equality towards the minorities - the various minorities that actually comprise the majority in this country. And the reasons for celebrations are scant.

Reasons for celebration of July 4th would be equivalent to upholding the American monopolization of militarist endeavors that has collaborated with their partners in crimes such as India and Israel. It would be to support the interventionist policies of the United States in the affairs of sovereign nations around the world with an aim to subjugate them to corporate blackmailings or annihilations. It would be identical with loftily championing the neocolonial mindset to divide the people along lines of nationalities in the garb of patriotism. What is worse, to declare human beings as “illegal” simply because they are struggling to be granted citizenship status, often in duress from their own lands being under occupation. They remain “aliens” even while their labor is expropriated for cheap to the huge benefit of the capitalistic society.

And reasons for celebration of July 4th as declared by President Obama are in such a contrast to the reasons for not celebrating it by the great Frederick Douglass, that one cannot help but reject as vehemently the White House statement and embrace the abolitionist’s with as much enthusiasm.

President Obama: “Today, we are called to remember not only the day our country was born – we are also called to remember the indomitable spirit of the first American citizens who made that day possible. We are called to remember how unlikely it was that our American experiment would succeed at all; that a small band of patriots would declare independence from a powerful empire; and that they would form, in the new world, what the old world had never known – a government of, by, and for the people. That unyielding spirit is what defines us as Americans. It is what led generations of pioneers to blaze a westward trail. It is what led my grandparents’ generation to persevere in the face of a Depression and triumph in the face of tyranny. It is what led generations of American workers to build an industrial economy unrivalled around the world.”

Great Frederick Douglass: “Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the American nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America!..... Fourth of July is a day that reveals to the enslaved, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour. ......Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties) is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen.......You glory in your refinement and your universal education; yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation-a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty."

The emotions of Frederick Douglass expressed well more than a century and half ago is still so relevant that it makes a mockery of the American capitalism which is being advanced by the likes of Barack Obama.

Often it is the most oppressed in the nation who can express the biggest truth to its people. The enslaved of the America today have only increased in number, proportion and perpetuity. The biggest economic sector of the United States today in 2009 is unorganized. It comprises exploited nannies, nurses, office assistants, graduate students and millions of non-unionized workers in virtually every field of seasonal employment.

In the largest industrialized nation of the day, manual labor forces exist in abundance that is underpaid and inhumanely treated. Minimum hourly wages and annual poverty rates are abominably low at any level. Prostitution and drug abuse, teenage pregnancy and uncritical education, disparities in healthcare and education system divided along economic lines, police brutality and intelligence infiltration are constant reminders that the independence movement is being carried out on an everyday basis - each time a Sean Bell is murdered or a Mumia is tried in court.

Discriminations at workplaces are so rampant that basic human rights are courtroom dramas every passing day. Largest population of undertrial prisoners in the world suffer in American prisons. Prison-industrial complex continues to exploit slave-labor inside the jails. Constant drug and human trafficking and lack of gun control leads crisis to resurface in such ghastly manner that would trivialize all allegations of foreign terrorism conspiracies. The militarist intervention of the United States into sovereign lands that do not subscribe to White House orders have continued with the Cold War fervor. Innocent civilians world over are targeted and eliminated by American and their allies NATO forces in the pretext of human freedom that is denied to the homeless and uninsured sick people of America right in her community neighborhoods.

Fourth of July is a very significant day in American history. But not so much as a day of independence, as it is a day of critical self-reflection and privilege recognition. A day of acknowledging the deplorable militarization and despicable human rights records of the most vicious empire on the Earth: United States of America.

Ahmadinejad is the Leader the World Needs Now!

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:09:26 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

Obama administration has two vital interests in Iran: continuation of war and imperialistic expansion. And neither of these remotely relate to establishment of a democratic society or any other fanciful distractions that most Americans are being spoon fed to believe in through their reactionary media propaganda.

In fact, a democratic society already exists in Iran. It is more vibrant and expressive than many other nations, including that of the United States. Iran’s democracy is so vibrant and strong that it has been able to produce a visionary leader such as Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - a leader who has singularly challenged the capitalistic hegemonic barbarism inflicted upon the world through Wall Street scamsters, whereas on the other hand, as a starkly unfortunate contrast, these are the conmen that President Obama has been sheltering from day one of his taking over the office at White House.

Ahmadinejad is a leader of global influence whose stands against American militarism and Israeli occupations have widest reverberation among the majority in the world. Ahmadinejad has also been a national leader of Iran who has steadfastly refused to let Iran go of its sovereignty, its self-respect and its fundamental right to develop scientific and nuclear researches. Ahmadinejad has been the leader lending a spirit of solidarity to all the oppressed nations and peoples of the world who have been either trampled upon geographically by expansionist NATO forces or held captive psychologically through the media warfare unleashed by corporate media masquerading as liberal free estates.

Ahmadinejad is a necessity for the betterment of the world at large not simply because unlike any other leader in the world today he alone has the ability to challenge the globalized yet monopolistic power corridors of capitalistic combines, but also because he has displayed acute amount of perseverance in managing a civil war at home abetted by foreign interests, deep sense of political acumen to understand international relations imbalances, profound ability to confront the reactionary interventionist assaulters with calm understanding. Western corporate media as well the so-called liberals’ constant vilification of his personality, on his political career and public honesty merely suggest a targeted attack on a sovereign country’s head - an ugly and criminally abominable tradition continued in United States and much of western Europe since several decades now. So why do the NATO block countries - including their educated youths, often think the way they do.

History of Holier-Than-Thou Democracy:

Along with racial genocides, enforced slavery, interventionist militarism, illegalization of human beings, minimum wage exploitations, and civil rights suppressions, American power structure while oppressing its own working class people at home has also pioneered one other aspect that has been demonstrated to morally overshadow everything else: “Holier-Than-Thou Democracy”.

This “Holier-Than-Thou Democracy” - a political system of democracy which constitutionally never worked for all the people residing in the country - not even in 2009 - is intrinsically flawed. A system that excludes a huge section of people based on their naturalization status (even while they enrich the country through manual labor and income taxes) is intrinsically elitist. A system that runs to the politically appointed judges to decide fates of popular electoral results is intrinsically corrupt. A system that decides its head based on how much fund-raising that person is able to evince, how much of friendly corporate class alliance can that person exhibit, how much of media propaganda can that person muster to demonstrate - is a system that is intrinsically pro-capital, anti-people.

This is the nature of American democracy - evolving since well more than two centuries and still lands up being far from a decent one, let alone being a perfect model. To call American democracy decent would be to celebrate wealth disparities. It would amount to rejoicing marginalization of the poor who never have the means to receive Ivy league education as the presidents have, or when they do, most of them do not choose to align their class affiliation with the bourgeois. To call American democracy decent would be to amplify a mockery at the largest undertrial prisoners in the world; to emulate the dumbest people on the earth who are systematically deprived of a necessary knowledge about the true history of their collective struggles. To call American democracy decent would be to cheer on the military onslaughts by the NATO forces routinely demolishing cultures to shreds, relegating heritages to rubbles, raping women to objects, killing children to the untold history and torturing prisoners to unthinkable states.

To call American democracy decent would be to convey resounding support to the war declarations of its president - one after the other - each one of them. To glorify the culture of war against innocent people in far away lands. To call American democracy decent would be to assume Obama as the voice of an exhausted nation whereas he clearly represents the interests of the bankers who have financed his party while bankrupting the country. To call American democracy decent would be the biggest hoax of this century, and the last.

A much much bigger hoax it would be than what the world media are accusing Iranian elections to be. To call American democracy decent would be to declare the United Nations dead.

And yet, this is exactly what we have been doing all these years. All these decades since the beginning of the so-called Cold War. Each American administration has worked overnight to protect the interests of the greedy corporate class that is integral to maintaining the phony democracy operated through networks of ill-gotten wealth. American political system has been a necessary tool in the hands of the capitalist class to maintain a status quo of private wealth accumulation by the historically privileged or their recent converts. American political system has been the backbone of the world capitalistic system.

And in turn, the capitalistic combines have gifted to the American political system a corporate press - one which will stand away from the dirty political diplomatic quarters and instead extend its support externally. The American media - along with the religious and educational institutions which are otherwise amply funded by the state to also support the system from the outer- carry out their daily duties to inform people of the events through such packaging that would enhance a sense of security. The American media have in the process established a sense of political knowledge hitherto unknown to the human beings. A brand of political knowledge that begins with definitions and ends with definitions. A series of definitive prepositions regarding what constitutes “democracy” , “equality” and “justice” that are void of political logic, of ethical dimensions, of moral duties and of socialistic thoughts.

America with its utterly indecent form of political manipulations - where only the wealthy participates within a two party monopolistic system which involves little to none differences in their core adherences- ends up producing a nation of blatantly ignorant citizenry that have been designed to be kept away from emancipatory knowledge - lest they challenge the consumeristic exploitations, the standards of privatized education, healthcare and employment sectors. One of the magnificent ways in which this trickery continues is in celebration of the system itself. An obviously unequal system of political governance which fosters class societies and debt-ridden passivity of the majority is bombarded every day as having the authenticity from the very people it oppresses.

Just as outlandishly unrealistic Hollywood flicks become household names owing to advertisement galore, just as a political candidate becomes legitimized simply by utilizing the sheer reach of campaign wealth, the America democracy is heralded as the greatest political process in the world magnified through the lens of the media moguls it protects. The people - the active audience starts perceiving itself as “smart” since they are told they are indeed getting to “choose”: no matter if it is only within Pepsi and Coke or New York Times and New York Post or McCain and Obama. The freedom of choice - within the choices permitted by the system to prevail in the race - is celebrated as the mark of brilliant liberty exercise.

Anything that slightly or vastly opposes this system in a level of implementation then is viewed as the “other”. This “they” can no longer be tolerated to exist, let alone prevail upon. Taking cue from the individualistic philosophy that shapes capitalistic economy, the power structure of capitalism unleashes its attack on those that differ from it, not by degree, but by type. The entire saga of Cold War was written with bloodshed caused by America’s interventions in the sovereign countries whichever among them thought of adopting a non-capitalistic system. Every time a nation freeing itself from colonialists would deliberate upon adopting a socialist economy, American political system - the very system that would on one hand sing rhetoric of self-proclaimed land of the free and on the other would be crushing its minority populations under police dog attacks at home - would send its young innocent troops to emerge as habitual war criminals in countries they had never dreamt of visiting as a tourist. From Korea, to Congo, from Vietnam to Chile, from Greece to Algeria - the United States has always invariably become the country of attackers, plunderers, rogues and intruders. Not to mention, world’s only atomic power bomber. The biggest hawkish nuclear power holder. The strongest voice against disarmament. The most immoral example in the history of civilization.

Subsequent to the cold war, it was America which funded the Islamic extremists to wipe out remaining secular people of Afghanistan. It was America which funded the Gulf War through Kuwait’s adamance to Iraq’s occupation to capture of Iraq itself. Its interventionist strategies have annihilated nations and disrupted normalcy of lives among millions of people across the world. But such strategies have succeeded not because America had one war president or the other, but because the system of American democracy is inherently militarist, which no president, no matter how well meaning the person may be, can prevent from actualizing year after year.

Continuing with the disastrous war against Iraqi people is Obama’s enthusiasm for war against people of Pakistan, Palestine and Iran. Any amount of fundamentally autonomous protest against Americanization of the world is not subject to toleration by the American president. Like the ancient Kings and Emperors, Clinton, Bush and Obama appear to be calm and ethical. They have spoken the same lines of ethical duplicity and yet the statement is abundantly clear: One is either with America or against America. And while being with America one is with justice and democracy. Or else.

Unfortunately for the American presidencies, not every leader of the world has succumbed to their implicit threats. It is true that to remain world’s sole superpower, a country’s leader must mobilize all forces, direct all provocative speeches to unite the people, and needs to expand the sphere of influence in the world. But what is also true is that this ambition to remain as global superpower, to hold the position of being the biggest militarist in the world is not necessarily acceptable to the others. At least, not any longer.

Peoples everywhere, from New York’s Harlem to corners in Tehran have exhibited deep angst and disrespect towards American imperialism. To suppress that, naturally enough, as has been done in the past and as is expected in the future, American intelligence agencies have infiltrated into progressive camps and have done everything possible to turn the tides. America has witnessed the failure of its domestic youth movements for social justice, from Weather Underground to Black Panthers - the relevance of whom are felt now than ever before especially since there is no one left today to speak on behalf of the oppressed communities following the victory of tokenism. The failure has been brought about by the system against the progressive peoples everywhere - at times through sheer force and at times through intelligence tactics involving infiltration, pamphleteering, and at most times simply through the power of money and intimidation.

History is replete with instances of FBI’s investigations against peace-loving American citizens and of CIA’s interventions in foreign countries’ affairs when the latter have fundamentally differed with America’s stands.

Iran merely happens to be the latest victim (albeit, once again).

Tomorrow: Iran: America’s Battle Playground

Michael Jackson Will Forever Live On!

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:06:23 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

They finally killed Michael Jackson.

The music industry giants of America with their racist press collaborators took away the life of the greatest entertainer, the world has witnessed in recording history.

Michael Jackson was on a slow death since several years now. Most notably ever since he raised his voice against Sony Corporation and the exploitative music industries. Ever since he, more than anyone else as influentially, highlighted the plights of black artists as victims of racism: “The record companies really, really do conspire against the artists. They steal, they cheat, they do whatever they can. Especially against the black artists.” Unable to accept how Sony’s chairman Tommy Mottola referred to one African-American artist as a “fat black nigger”, Jackson condemned him as “mean, a racist, very, very, very devilish” person. Michael Jackson had taken a stand against racism within music industry in a manner no musician had dared to take before. Nor after.

But that was not all.

Michael Jackson had also emerged as the most widely recognized human being in the world.

Unlike anyone else in human history - way more than any icon of the western world, more than any president of modern times or emperor of the ancient age - it was Michael Jackson who was recognized and respected by people all across the globe. The most “popular” American was increasingly transcending the limits of fame set by the power structure. He was rising taller than the Washington Monument in nation’s capital, and World Trade Center in New York City. Micheal Jackson was a bigger ambassador of American love than Kennedy or Lincoln ever were. He was a bigger American poet than Walt Whitman was. A greater performer than Frank Sinatra. A better dancer than Fred Astaire. A grander legend during his lifetime than Elvis was following his death.

And yet, as his good friend Elizabeth Taylor often remarked, inside America, Michael Jackson was “treated as dirt”. Why would he be not? He had surpassed every limits ever set forth: by America for the black peoples.

Michael Jackson was the black man who steadfastly refused to walk the ropes, to plead with the press, to sell his musical soul to the corporate copyrighters. He was the black man who took over the Elvis and the Beatles and shattered every myth revolving cultural purities. He was the black man who challenged the white hegemony over recording business and historiography. The musical pundits had to be forced to rewrite the list of greatest entertainers. Through “Thriller”, he won the world and then a record number of records. From the greatest music video the world had ever witnessed, to the Moonwalking steps the world had never known so gracefully existed, to the songwriting of “Man in the Mirror” that no one knew millions would cry to - Michael Jackson redefined everything that the world of music had hitherto known and did not.

They could not categorize him. In fact, he would not allow that to happen. His creations were not merely rock or pop, soul or blues, dance or music. But they were all soul-lifting. They were breathtaking. Mesmerizing. His “Beat It” red jacket was as much revolutionary as his “Heal the World” pleas to make the children smile. Everything he did, he did with a sense of dedication that shook the foundation of the common knowledge. And this violated the principles of status quo in the western world that could “allow” him to exist, but not “emulate” him now that he had vanquished the protected heritage masters to oblivion.

Thus, Michael Jackson, the de facto cultural ambassador of the United States of America emerged more popular worldwide than he was back home. He made friends with the Islamic nations that America despised. He was crowned by the African tribes that America ignored. He befriended more people and gave rise to more dreamers than America as a nation did. The more America became isolated in the map of the world, the more acceptable became Michael Jackson to the world. Michael Jackson became the internationalist - the singer more powerful than the recording industries, the man more acceptable than the press reports, the heart more profound than all the charities. Little surprising that as Jackson went on winning hearts of the world majority, the elite press minority of America unleashed their fury back home.

How do you stifle a legend while he is alive? Especially, if the person is the greatest philanthropist - more consistent than Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates put together. Charity in the modern age began with Michael Jackson. Whereas every billionaire would squander away token money in order to evade taxes and earn immortality, Jackson would give away the entire proceeds of his shows to cause of black children in America and for the dispossessed in Africa - without a mention in the press. If charity meant not blowing the trumpets on celebrity TV shows, if charity meant giving without expecting, perhaps charity in its grandest term has ended as well with Michael Jackson.

It is not the legend and the myths of Michael Jackson that made him. It is in fact, the plain human being which he was that was exemplary. He loved children and he made no qualms about it. He did everything in spirit to address the needs of children. Heal the World Foundation is the single largest voluntary organization sponsoring the cause of the oppressed children worldwide. Greater than any country on this earth, greater than the United Nations’ duplicitous endeavors and certainly greater than the neoliberal rhetoric by the free market champions - are the contributions of Michael Jackson to making the world a better place - “for you and for me and the entire human race”.

How do you stifle such a man when he is alive? A man who defied the media conventions of masculinity. A man who refused to carry out the gender roles of prescribed American macho cowboy image. A man who played into no racial stereotypes. No black exploitation of his racial image. A refusal to be an essentialist. How does one stifle a man who defies national boundaries? Not a national hero, Michael Jackson would be. The singer poet of the “Earth Song” was a global crusader against neocolonial expansions, who amplified the cause sung in his crying voice:

“What have we done to the world

Look what we've done

What about all the peace

That you pledge your only son...

What about flowering fields

Is there a time

What about all the dreams

That you said was yours and mine...

Did you ever stop to notice

All the children dead from war

Did you ever stop to notice

The crying Earth the weeping shores”

How do you stifle this environmentalist? The pacifist? Or the humanist, as exemplified by the immortal poetry of his in “Man in the Mirror”:

“I've Been A Victim Of A Selfish

Kind Of Love

It's Time That I Realize

That There Are Some With No

Home, Not A Nickel To Loan

Could It Be Really Me,

Pretending That They're Not

Alone?”

How do you stifle the political activist? The supporter of Roosevelt’s socialist policies? The fighter for social justice? In “They don’t really care about us”?

“Tell me what has become of my life

I have a wife and two children who love me

I am the victim of police brutality, now

I'm tired of being the victim of hate

You're raping me of my pride

Oh, for God's sake

I look to heaven to fulfill its prophecy...

Set me free

Tell me what has become of my rights

Am I invisible because you ignore me?

Your proclamation promised me free liberty, now

I'm tired of being the victim of shame

They're throwing me in a class with a bad name

I can't believe this is the land from which I came

You know I do really hate to say it

The government don't wanna see

But if Roosevelt was living

He wouldn't let this be, no, no”

They would do to Michael Jackson what they did to Paul Robeson. When Robeson had become more popular and rewarded abroad as an internationalist fighting for social justice, he was condemned back home in America. His passport was snatched away so he would not be able to perform. The only platform for an artist is an ability to express. Robeson’s expressions were taken out of contexts and the press vigorously mounted an ugly war against him, portrayed him as an enemy of freedom and democracy - the very ideals that Robeson held closest to his heart.

That is how the system kills an artist. The very core of their philosophies is scandalized. In instances of Michael Jackson, his philosophy of life did not revolve around political economy. He had no aspirations to mobilize the masses for revolutions. He was not a fighter against market capitalism. But he had a potent weapon in his hands nevertheless, to transform the world after his vision. Children. For him, children were the past, present and the future. If the world was in a mess it was because of the grown-up militarists. The children were left out of the agendas set by the men. Children were neglected world over. Their rights trampled, their dreams refused to take shape, their imaginations murdered everyday.

Children, Michael Jackson theorized, needed the love and the attention. They were the center of the universe. It was the children for whom Michael Jackson acted in movies, made the music videos, wrote innumerable songs, danced to be imitated, and built the most beloved amusement park in the world. It was not merely about Michael Jackson’s lost childhood. It was about the childhoods that were yet to shape up. It was for the future that Jackson wrote in “Heal the World”:

“We could fly so high

Let our spirits never die

In my heart I feel

You are all my brothers

Create a world with no fear

Together we'll cry happy tears

See the nations turn

Their swords into plowshares

We could really get there

If you cared enough for the living

Make a little space to make a better place.”

And it was the children they did abuse to get back at Michael Jackson. Trial after trial after trial. Months after months, Michael Jackson defended himself. The mainstream press which he refused to cooperate with, ridiculed him through cartoons and staged demonstrations and judicial overtures. King of Scandals, they called him. Even today, as he is no more, the press headlines Michael Jackson thus.

The scandals never really left him alone. Neither did the millions of loyal fans who despised the media as much as they loved Michael. I grew up learning about Jackson through the sensational press and just like any other admirer of his, I learnt soon to disregard the press reports as fabrications and targeted accusations. It was a constant refusal to believe in the press reports over what they projected democracy and liberty as just as they projected what a monster Michael Jackson was. Like millions of his devoted fans, I have deliberately and proudly refused to go beyond what the man stood for. I have every reason to believe Michael Jackson over the mainstream press reports. Every reason to trust Michael Jackson over the racist judicial system. Every reason to celebrate Michael Jackson over the monopolist music industry whims.

Jackson did not speak much to the press. Like Bob Dylan, he too did not trust them. But unlike Dylan, Jackson did not permit himself to be isolated. Unlike everyone else, Michael Jackson was a black artist owning the license to his own music, producing his own albums, refusing the media an entry into his life, controlling his gender roles, his paternal duties, his marital status, his appearances, his sexualities, his imaginations and their cumulative expressions. Michael Jackson was the artist, everyone of us aspired to be like.

It was necessary that they had to let him die just when he was enthused over his return to the stage this summer. They could not have allowed the return of the legend in the age of the complacent. They could not have left him in peace any place in the world. The mendacious reports and mawkish bullshit manufactured by the press can continue no longer, now that Michael Jackson is no more.

What will remain now on are his immortal songs, his inspiring messages to save the trees and prevent the wars. And most of all, his immense love for the world’s children. A deeply personal love, only he could fathom in “Childhood”:

“People say I'm not okay

'Cause I love such elementary things...

It's been my fate to compensate,

for the Childhood

I've never known...

Have you seen my Childhood?

I'm searching for that wonder in my youth

Like pirates in adventurous dreams,

Of conquest and kings on the throne...

Before you judge me, try hard to love me,

Look within your heart then ask,

Have you seen my Childhood?”

I shall miss you, my beloved childhood hero. In many ways, its good that you are no more amidst us. Because rest assured, before you are judged again, you shall be only loved now on.

Communists Must Win, Now That the Election is Lost

Fri, 22 May 2009 23:17:41 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

Elections are social, not political events. Whereas social functions entail an understanding of, and adherence to established norms, effective political actions require empowered state of conscientious being. Democratic elections - from ancient noble Greece to enslaved corporate America - take place independent of mass empowerment, most often, by keeping the participants oblivious.

People are kept sufficiently ignorant about the repercussions of their actions by not only the political parties, but by their media cohorts in general. What is instead propagated at an almost constant level comprises pure trivia: the equations of wins and defeats, the seats and the states, and the number games to legitimize a victor.

What results is a triumph of the end-product of elections, than an exposition of process complexities so as to challenge existing structures of power. Every mass-based hierarchical election that claims to have democratic character in turn produces a winner which revels in celebration of conquest as a finality of purpose, not identification of its purpose as worthy of celebration.

After all, identification of purpose in political sphere takes shape through solidification of an ideology. Since every ideology is backed by distinct political-economic theory, it inherently distances a section of people from embracing it. To evade this dialectic nature of political action, the so-called democratic election of the day, in its systematic pursuit of sustenance, necessarily has to shed the elements of ideology. At a social level, since the masses are kept ignorant of the systematic nature of the process that legitimizes one party or the other, the ideological components are dissolved in favor of encouraging consensus and its accommodating functions. The natural conflict that must ensue between an ideology that supports bourgeois electoral system and one that rejects it, is crushed down in favor of projecting the multiplicity of politics through democratic election that pits one comfortable party against another one.

Thus, political action plans for the people are orchestrated by the very entities that stand to benefit from them. Instead of letting people decide the system which can produce ground for equitable redistribution of worldly accesses, several political parties, often floated by a handful of seasoned ruling class elements carve out a system that produces visions for society as shaped by one winning party of a given time in an electoral drama that is designed to produce another victor the next time. In this game of changing hands between various rulers, the parties must blame each other once the they fall off the mark. The constant blame-game between the parties continue within the framework of existing political system which rely on an assumption of hailing the public decisions as the absolute one.

After keeping the masses ignorant in spheres of political education, the parties shower their gratitude to the people for keeping them in the contests. These electoral contests between various political parties ceremoniously take place every few years form the heart of this reactionary and retrogressive movement. This is retrogressive in its affinity with practices of royal, colonial, and feudal eras where representatives were chosen from among the exploiters. Mere transfer of power from colonial agents to capitalistic ones may not be sufficient sign of progress, but it should not appear so alluring that any sign of fundamental protest is obliterated.

And yet, in the recent elections in India, a continuance of political tradition has resulted. It does not matter who has won the polls insofar as some parties have emerged winners. In the victory of the electoral system as a sustained thread for unified Republic of India lies the defeat of the majority of people, destitute of dignified lives and yet heralded as architects of the country’s growing economy.

Such is the humongous irony in Indian elections that the poorest section of the society has chosen to be represented by the agents of the richest section. Even as ironical, this should not come as a surprise, since every country that lays its political foundation upon the so-called democratic elections has a ruling class exact opposite in its economic nature from its majority subjects. But unlike most such countries, India’s second largest organized political party is actually proclaimed as Communistic. The aspirations of this political base are naturally ambitious when they vocally champion the causes of the oppressed - the huge majority of Indians. In fact, so much is their sphere of influence that for the first three decades of India’s sovereign status, it was the Communist Party of India and its sympathizers within the ruling Congress regimes that led the country through a certain Nehruvian Socialistic/Internationalist way of life as opposed to a fundamentally different, yet more naturally inclined considering the cultural givens - nationalistic, religious, reactionary way of life as envisaged by the Hindutva forces after their successful attempt at ensuring a creation of a Muslim nation separated from India. During the period of so-called Cold War, India was guided mostly by leftist philosophical overtures thereby cooperating with the Soviet Union on most grounds so much so that it went to war with American interests in Pakistan, and East Pakistan while submitting to Chinese communistic dominance. In Indian academics, the leftists thoughts prevailed. In scientific progresses, collaborations were made with Soviet Union. In business, India maintained a huge public sector reserve. In other words, the communists significantly influenced Indian way of life, managed the largest trade unions and despite their comparatively minimal presence inside the Parliament, they steered several ruling class policies to overtly show sympathetic tones towards pro-people, not pro-profit legislations. Subsidies, rural employment schemes, agrarian incentives formed the major portion of Indian political interventions.

In a way, the Communists in India had a sway over both the elected leaders and the Indian population in an unmatched manner in the history.

And yet, 2009 elections mark the biggest blow to the organized communistic movement in Indian political space. What then has resulted in such a mandate?

What is left of the Indian Left?

The answer obviously is not obvious. But contrary to media beliefs, Communists have probably not been defeated in this election season. The parties have certainly lost considerably in their seat-gathering momentum. But in this defeat of theirs lies their eventual victory.

Since the dissolution of the USSR, like every other Communist Party in the world, the organized Indian left started to crumble in its orientation once more (the first major blow was over Sino-Soviet split). In a desperate attempt to survive, the Indian communist parties evolved strategies of fighting the system within the system. Extending “outside support” to the ruling parties formed part of an instinctual decision of the leadership which was a radical shift in the leftist position. A blurry line between outside support and coalition network dissolved in no time and the party in its ambitious best decided to actually take charge of the power if thus granted at the national level. There is nothing inherently wrong in aspiring to win the mandate if that is the goal of political activism, irrespective of ideologies. But what went missing was the self-evaluation of the philosophy of communism as an emancipatory tool for the working class from the vestiges of capitalistic utopia.

Instead of acknowledging the necessity to unite progressive forces for the sake of replacing a political system that was soon becoming subservient to imperialistic interests, the leading communist parties employing tactics of survivalism chose to seek and appease a public that was intoxicated through post-modern bliss of uncontested capitalism. These leaderships were readily embraced by the the media houses as representatives of the Indian left, to the exclusion of the extremists, Maoists, the Marxists-Leninists. Two major communist parties and few left leaning outfits which were legitimized by a ruling government to be able to participate in the popular system grew electoral wings and their media acceptance. In an almost desperate bid to exhibit their power position, they supported Manmohan Singh’s Congress-led coalition, even if upon their own terms. The class agitators became the class reconciliators.

Shedding every bit of Marxist conclusions, the official communists joined the market-driven Congress-led coalition to form a Common Minimum Programme (CMP). The CMP aimed to dissolve the differences between working class needs and bourgeois aspirations, with an enviable ability to eventually deny the fundamental nature of conflict between classes. The idea that the official communists agreed upon was that it was possible to reconcile the differences between classes by forging common alliance and following a market economic model with a ‘human face’. Joseph Stiglitz and his likes became difficult to ignore as their humanitarian pleas for the rich nations to help the poor ones were projected as the biggest dissent against World Bank philosophies. Communists, alongwith their role in attempting for reconciliation also declared their politically amicable positions when it came to support neoliberal market forces.

With “reforms” replacing “revolutions” in the literature of the communist parties, and with supports for selective privatization plans of Manmohan Singh - the chief architect of neoliberal economic policies in India - the legitimized leftist forces fell out of line with their ideological distinctiveness even as they fell into the power paradigms of the nation. India was soon evolving into a nation that proclaimed its own brand of wars on terror against its dissenting peoples. And communists, once accused of being the internationalists, now stood vulnerable as identifying with reactionary nationalist anthems. When Manmohan Singh on his several addresses to the nation including on Independence Day celebration of 2006, declared that the biggest threat to India was not the poverty or unemployment, but the Naxalites- the dissenters against a failed political system he was heading, the Communists were supporting him. Dr Singh’s words included, “We cannot rest in peace till we have eliminated this virus. We need to cripple Naxalite forces with all the means at our command...The Naxalite threat was the biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country.”

Biggest internal security challenge ever faced by India? For such a learned man like Manmohan Singh (who of course credits with gratitude the Colonial Crown for all his knowledge in his infamous speech in Britain), even a cursory look at security threats in India would have suggested glaringly different realities. Atrocities committed by Indian defense forces against their occupied lands of the North-East are just a passing reminders about priorities India must set before claiming the moral high. The farmer suicides - the highest act of insecurity - owing to failure of loan repayments would perhaps stand in the line of top internal security threats in India, a country whose national reserves are way higher than the debts and yet which, thanks to the market fetishes of MacMohans have to keep borrowing from the international monetary organizations at rates that must corrupt the country and thereby impoverish it to the extent of subjugated living for at least decades without end. Not only has the economist in Dr Singh been blatantly wrong in his market assessment of India’s financial situation (employing this ignorance, his finance minister provisions more than 80% of the budget towards repayments to World Bank and the likes), the militarist in Dr Singh has been entirely wrong in assessing the security needs of his country (employing this arrogance, his regime provisions for more than 15% of the rest budget towards defence expenditure to fight the dissenting poor). In his militarist speech to curb the “virus” of India, Dr Singh was merely echoing sentiments of another militarist predecessor of his, A B Vajpayee’s.

Vajpayee wrote in India Today dated December 26, 2005, “The activities of Naxalite and other extremist forces sound a warning bell for India’s future. These forces, which have no faith in the power of the ballot, not only endanger India’s democracy, harm India’s socio-economic growth, condemning the poor and backward areas in which they mainly operate to continued poverty, and imperil India’s unity and integrity, but also their ideologies and actions pose a threat to everything we value in India’s cultural and spiritual heritage. Political parties and governments must sink their differences in evolving a united and comprehensive strategy to neutralize this peril.”

Sure, the communists were not alarmed at the profound similarity in opinions between Vajpayee and Singh. The extremists in both Singh and Vajpayee’s opinions were agitators from the left who organized the masses for violent protests against continued oppression. Whereas the Hindutva extremists managed to contest elections and rule over commercial capital of India for years, and whereas the Market extremists managed to contest elections and rule over the political capital of India for decades, the alarming virus was noticed only within the rank of the Left extremists who continued to be seen as the biggest threat to India’s internal security because they organized the poor for proactive measures for their welfare which the government failed to provide for. One gets reminded of how the FBI used to consider the Black Panther Party as the biggest internal security threat to the United States because they used to offer free mid-day lunch program for black children in poor school districts. But, no, the official communists did not get reminded of the history.

Communist party, whose elementary functionings depend on theorized goals and strategies to struggle for social justice, always commanded respect among a section of people, consisting of working class poor, idealistic students and patriotic seniors who were well informed about the party’s role in India’s struggle for independence against the colonialists, and in its internationalist alliance to fight the forces of imperialism. Struggles for social justice do not easily translate to power corridors. In fact, they are incompatible aspirations. Especially, if the power is not wrested by force or consent from the private monopolist consolidators and their agents, and instead be granted via a ballot system that thrives through ignorant masses and financially sponsored candidates.

What needs to be Done?

Even as the romancing with bourgeois parties have ended, the communists need to remind themselves that their role in human history is not of becoming agents for reconciliation, but rather to emerge as the torchbearers of revolutions. To that effect, they must officially extend supports to all progressive forces in India that are oppressed today by the corporate and political power structure sustained through electoral processes. Exercising vote may be a free idea, but it is not a step towards achieving freedom for the oppressed. A choice mechanism that revolves around one bourgeois party and another, between one corrupt politician and another, between one religiously divisive force and another, between one exploiting regime and another, between one coalition of opportunists and another, between one capitalist enterprise and another - no matter the differences between their religions, castes, or nationalities- is not a mechanism that can ever be used to create a socialist society.

When winning an election within a neoliberal setup is no more a goal, when appeasing a growing middle-class opportunistic urban youths is no more a mission, when becoming politically correct to address issues of caste, gender and religion is no more an option, the communists will find them by the sides of the oppressed in India - these people may be the unpaid housewives, unemployed engineers, agitating teachers, misdirected youths, displaced indigenous peoples, marginalized dalits, exploited domestic housekeepers, non-unionized software mechanics, faceless rape survivors, undertrial prisoners, street theater activists, legal sex workers, illegal child laborers....indeed, with the majority of people in India. Poor peasants, organized naxalites and factory workers are just a fraction of the solidarity network. Redistribution of property is the only necessity at this and at every historical stage in order to enforce social justice. This is an aim that require massive political education and emancipation of the working class. Only then will voting make any sense as a political act. Voting as a means to gain power is a feeble attempt at securing status quo. The communists are by nature inclined to destabilize the status quo.

This so-called defeat of communists in Indian elections is actually a victory for the organized communism. It is a call for carving out a unique niche once again with the historical opportunity it provides. To choose its side with the very people it has been despising each time the communist party has faltered into forming coalitions. To recognize that there indeed are class antagonisms, and not every interest needs to be catered to in quest of winning a democratic mandate. To strengthen the progressive forces everywhere in India, and in the world in a collective struggle against maintenance of imperialistic forces that spread their reach through global capital. This is the opportunity to stay away from power corridors and go back to the peoples in educating, organizing and agitating them against the system that perpetuates class society through poverty, unemployment, and divisions along lines of race, caste, sex, religion, and nationalities. To form a classless society requires, not an election, but organized revolution against the winners of elections that hold the national posts in order to facilitate international trades. The communists must not forget where they came from: from a fundamental difference with the existing world structures, with an intent to replace it, not aspire to becoming a collaborator. The communists must never forget what Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in the Manifesto exactly 160 years ago:

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

Revolutionary May Day Greetings!

Fri, 01 May 2009 18:05:06 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

(Written for publication in Radical Notes)

Relevance of this day never was greater than it is today - as a celebration of collective human progress, as a reminder of historic labour struggles, as an occasion to reaffirm class allegiance with the working poor, and the majority strugglers.

Not an allegiance to exploitative ruling class demarcations of geographical boundaries drawn and redrawn through manipulative gestures of status-quo diplomacy. Not an allegiance to standards of academic, material, knowledge society thus distinguished and rewarded by the handful corporate czars to effectively facilitate their spheres of influence. Not an allegiance to normative philosophies of spiritual and religious practices aimed at bringing calm and internal peace through aggrandizing state of ignorance, indifference and ineptitude.

An allegiance to organized human labour necessarily requires obliterations of several convenient divisions mapped thus by the ruling class combines, while recreating new necessary ones.

Class allegiance in action must uproot the notions of purity attached with the cultural high-handedness in the form of canonic texts, classical arts and holy scriptures. Owing to lack of time from life’s labour, indulging in critical reflections on societal upbringings often becomes impossible or inadequate. As a result, the majority’s thought processes of any time are mostly conditioned by the simplistically offered explanations of recognized experts, not reshaped through rigorous testing by the self of acquired knowledge and incidental experiences. Such a propensity towards contentment by not subjecting oneself to question the foundations of belief systems helps maintain the glorification of cultural produces that puts the peoples in their oppressed places: that is, at the level of passive observers.

Authoritative texts irrespective of how patriarchal, discriminative and violent they are - all religious scriptures fall into this category - are passively consumed as holy and irrefutable. Ongoing texts of necessary collective resistance do not find a publishing house or a review on the mainstream liberal media. Classical as well as postmodern arts depicting both the royal past and confused future are heralded as containing “high” artistic value, while realist arts depicting peoples revolutions in the past or existing organized working class movements are discarded as socialist propaganda. Labour union songs, films portraying human labour as protagonist, and books about organized revolutionary history are forced out of circulation. If elite culture is limited to incomprehensible museums, popular culture is defined in terms of vulgar exhibits of indiscriminate media consumption. After dumbing down people through trivia overloads, they are praised for being free to choose what works best for their lives. After conditioning popular thoughts through uncritical materials, subjects are offered options to choose - between Coke and Pepsi, Disney and James Bond, McCain and Obama, Drama and Romance, Oprah Winfrey and Ellen Degeneres, Rock and Pop. Choices vary only by degrees, because they simply cannot vary by kind. Such wide array of similar choices offered by corporate greed must necessarily be a substitute for the limited options necessary for establishment of a classless society. They cannot be supplements.

Classical/postmodern and socialist/realist choices cannot co-exist harmoniously. In their realized state, the monumental and fundamental conflicts must surface. Just as haves and the have-nots cannot co-exist peacefully. In their emancipated states, revolutionary struggles must take over. Political systems that claim otherwise and preach possibility of peaceful coexistence between economically disparate classes merely work overtime to deceive their subjects through propagandist media which conveniently redefine economic classes (hence, a creation of “Middle Class”) and reposition boundaries of dissent by forming among themselves mutually respecting groups of liberals and conservatives - as a result, annihilating the possibility of communistic discourse around property relations.

Political systems such as these - the wide array of “Democracies” rule over a comfortably numb, blissfully ignorant, uncritically religious, and eternally grateful mass of people who are preached the merits of self-centric career growth, domestic peace and personal saving accounts over the high costs they cause - endless cycles of poverty, unemployment, lack of healthcare, absence of socially relevant education, continuation of escalated wars, and unquestioned acceptance of accumulation of private wealth as a necessary virtue. This hegemonist worldview not only widens its own sphere but in the process closes the alternatives. As a result, individual comforts take precedence over collective good and external aggression is justified in the name of internal peace. The wealthy section is heralded as deserving, the poor as resulting high-crime neighborhoods. The rich are rewarded with tax-breaks and bank loans while the poor are condemned to be credit-unworthy and liabilities. The true majority comprising the working class is treated as a minority when it comes to effecting administrative changes, policies governing education, house ownerships, business labour practices and environmental concerns. The true minority consisting of the historically privileged and their recent elite cronies express and install the legislations that suit their interest while masquerading them as national interests. Hence the president of a given country declares wars in these times under the advice of the friendly military-industrial lobby without taking into account the interest of majority of people in the world. What is worse, the majority of people are in fact attributed as the ones who wanted to go to war in the first place. After all, in the democracies - the system where the leaders are elected by virtue of how much money they have gathered - people deserve the kind of government they elect. Since people have exercised their voting options - no matter how uninformed they were kept in their choices not just to vote one leader or the other but about their stance on the process of farcical elections themselves - the leaders carry out most heinous of acts relegating the consequences of responsibilities to the masses.

Under the conditioned pretense of being active deciders of their destinies, people support their elected heads in all unfortunate decisions - just as inside houses the children do not question their reactionary parents, students do not confront their ignorant teachers, followers do not challenge their religious preachers. In effect, narratives of socioeconomic history are authoritative when they speak through the ruling class lenses. Students grow curiosity about the hairstyles and handbags of the First Ladies of White House, than pose critical questions concerning the reason why their own working mothers toil so hard and yet feel they do not deserve the similar treatments as the rich presidential wives or their corporate guests at grand banquets. A “free” society based on rhetoric of individual liberty suffers from being inherently an unfree, ignorant, selfishly passive one. Women are defined by gender roles prescribed to them by men. Their loyalty is defined in terms of how much of the body they cover, and their freedom is defined in terms of how much of the body they expose. From their menstrual cycles to pregnancy months, their status as workers is defined as a liability by norm and disability by law. When the entire workforce strives to accentuate the greedy private capitalist bank accounts, the sense of contribution to societal developments is felt through the merciful charities - disguised as tax evasions - of rich individuals, and through painfully slow legislations of judicial systems that offer drops of justice from time to time. Legal amendments to grant freedoms to minorities - that conveniently divided group of oppressed world majority - offer quotas in lowly paid jobs in form of so-called affirmative actions and reservations. Not as reparations to the historic damages.

Demands for reparations lead to revolutions. Revolutions are prevented by means of granting of charities. Status quo of the privileged is maintained through shedding of material grants, and guilt, from their surplus. World Bank loans and grants to the landless in the world is an act of charity on behalf of the greedy bankers, financiers who put their poster-boys at the helm of political power just to prevent any step toward reparations. In these days as always in the past, private bankers help their political weapons to rule over the people. They do so by granting credits and loans to people for essential needs that otherwise should be taken care of by the governments. Instead, availing of housing, healthcare and education facilities are privatized in order to keep people debt-ridden throughout their lives. Debts and interests accrued on them create a majority population that is unable to conceptualize the demands of reparations. On a May Day today it is only important to note that Bank of America which has received billions of taxpayers money not only spends them for its own profit motives by pursuing a credit war on the hapless consumers; it also lets the CEO Ken Lewis receive $35 million salary in the past two years; and what is worse, it fires thousands of employees who cannot avail of the so-called Employees Free Choice Act - yet another false promise from the American President Obama, known better as the lasting friend of the corrupt banks.

It is not enough to say the economic class war on majority of world’s peoples is an indictment for the freedom and equality envisaged for our world. Indeed, it is only natural that in order to keep the world unfree and unequal, it is important that the economic class war waged by the rich upon the poor continues in this manner. For the ruling class of individualistic corporate, political, judicial, academic, religious profiteers who assume the world does not need revolutionary replacements whereby they must be prepared to give up their private houses, businesses and mansions, it is necessary for them to continue exploiting people - directly and indirectly- by preaching peace while waging war, teaching lies while educating the youths, celebrating private properties while pretending to be moral and religious.

Those of us who must realign or strengthen our class allegiances with the oppressed and the exploited, must sympathetically understand why the ruling class does what it is doing. Only then can we unite together to transcend barriers and divisions instilled among us by the exploiters and empathetically revolt for the classless society that we strive for. May Day is an occasion to stop wondering in surprise. Only yet another day we need to rise above and beyond the divisions. And working class must still continue to unite even more and reach out to those workers who have doubts choosing which side they must be on.

Laal Salaam!

New American Magic Realism

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:44:56 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

Now that some time has passed since the United States stopped rejoicing a routine election fanfare necessitating short term relief from the economic war the capitalist government has unleashed upon the media consumers, one needs to critically attend to the repercussion of the events that passed by.

Not only Bush-McCain administration was unacceptable to the American people, they were equally unwanted by the corporate czars. Fixation on Iraq had to shift gears as not much excitement was left following brutal murder of Saddam Hussain. The military-industrial complex, tired of its “reconstruction” missions in Iraq (despite the profitability factor that leads them to continue seizing the land to this day) needed to focus elsewhere. And the new war mission needed to find a new leader. A differently appearing, yet positioned similarly in direction, an attractive personality, with a deceptively mixed agenda needed to be given charge. From nullifying the necessity to contain electoral budgets to promoting imperialistic expansions in the “post-war” period, from conveying an impression of rendering public service through recreation of “big government”, to facilitating spending of the public money for further private monopolistic accumulation - the corporate America needed a government that will prevent collective anger from taking a revolutionary turn.

In the history of last one hundred years, every time American military has invaded a foreign land, popular resentments inside the country have threatened the very basis of capitalism. Democratic Party, that holy cow banner maker of pacifism has suffered the worst of public anger. Be it during the time of Woodrow Wilson or Harry Truman or John F Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson or Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, each Democratic President has faced numerous protests from peaceniks inside the country. Sometimes, the peace lovers have even turned violent in their demonstrations in order to appeal to the consciousness of their favored self-proclaimed world leaders.

Today, the scenario is no different. President Barack Obama has raised the military budgets to unprecedented levels during the most unusual time of economic collapse. His seeking of $75.5 billion for the wars is a supplemental-spending request. Wall Street Journal reports that the president is increasing the budget as well as the force in Afghanistan by more than 20,000 new recruits (totaling American presence to 58,000). And despite the reinforced corporate presence in Iraq, sustained military assault on Pakistani civilians, significant infiltration into Afghanistan, reliance on Japan to silence North Korea, breadcrumb diplomacy in Latin America, there have been no rigorous criticism of the administration. In fact, there have been no demands from the publicly pacifist sections of the society either. No “Bring our Boys Home”. No “War is Over” narrative.

Such misdirected are political sentiments and such doleful are peace education that amidst the wave of celebration surrounding new American leadership, basic tenets of radical protests have been buried within frameworks of false hopes and unnecessary optimism. In deeply myopic stance of understanding progressivism, left intelligentsia has fallen for the media engineered leadership wheel. Absent from the conversation is the proposition that singular heads elected in modern western democracies are best leaders money can buy. These leaders obliged as they are to the military industrial complex must necessarily sustain the very system that lifts them up to a level worthy of glorification.

The series of gratitudes showered by President Obama to his election is a symbolic validation of the virtue of White House irrespective of its everlasting dark ages. Declaration of America as land of the infinite possibilities in wake of recent results is a celebration of wealth accumulation that must decide fate of aspirants preaching race blindness. Drawing parallels of an electoral victory for a person of color as a probable end of race discourse in white societies is normalization of privilege denial.

The issues that are being projected as resolved with the new president’s arrival are the very issues that are problems of the future. Like Wilson, Obama continues to be a fervent anti-communist publicly bashing the philosophy. Like Truman, he is yet another proud “War President” cheering the onslaughts in Iraq by his troops. Like Kennedy, Obama is an interventionist who minces no words before deciding to target yet another sovereign country. Like Johnson, he drafts one policy for North Korea while creating another for China (LBJ’s infamous speech goes on to validate American quest to combat Korean communism while not intending to attack Chinese communism). Like Carter or Clinton, Obama’s peace pledges have been convenient in form and impractical in content. Be it the lingering silence over Israeli show of strength in Middle East or American lingering show of strength in South Asia.

Liberal media takes fancy in comparing Obama with Bush and scoring brownie points. Where they need to make a substantial headway instead is in comparing Obama with Kennedy and Clinton. That is, after the necessary critical historical scholarship has gone into researching the so-called Cold War and why President Obama inherits an unenviable experiential heritage. The ease and comfort with which Obama proclaims moral world leadership to bomb Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the skillful oratory that carves his presence among capitalist bigwigs at G-20 summit are necessary consequences of the system that allows him to preside at the helm. Obama’s espousal at the London summit that “In America at least, people don't resent the rich; they want to be rich. And that’s good,” was not merely his support for Wall Street monopolists. It is fundamental a philosophy for the growth of capitalism at the cost of oppressing the majority poor.

The usual resentments associated with such sick statements advocating Wall Street riches and bonuses have been declared dead. The otherwise anger resulting from hawkish mentality of world leadership while bombing civilians in the guise of locating a hooligan has been voluntarily suppressed. The necessary methodically critical analyses of imperialistic world leaders have been shoved to irrelevance. The hegemony is ideological this time. Self-censorship is the icing. Normalization, in the Gramscian sense, has come to stay. Hope is the magic. And the realism.

An Open Letter to President Obama: Against the Rhetoric of Hope

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:26:19 -0500

By Saswat Pattanayak

(Written for publication in Radical Notes)

Dear President Obama,

I hope you truly emerge as the hope you have claimed yourself to be.

A hope for the ordinary people, who have believed in your promises of change and cried tears of joy upon your election.

A hope that will let the likes of Bernard Madoffs to face trial and be sent to jail, not left to enjoy house arrest at his comfortable multi-million-dollar penthouse, while, need I mention, thousands of young people of color languish as under-trial prisoners of the industrial complex you are going to chair, a couple of days from now.

A hope that will finally help you decide whether or not you will cancel the series of billion-dollar extravaganzas that have been planned to herald your taking up a position of responsibility to serve, not rule. At a time when the world is reeling under economic depression a hope that you shall declare these scums of earth - those that are spending $50,000 a ticket to get a favoured seat at the ceremony to crown you - as your enemies, not friends.

A hope that you will finally advise your celebrity fans - the multimillionaire friends - that an election to a post is merely incidental, not phenomenal enough, to demand rhetoric like "Anything is possible in America - the greatest country on earth". And that bunch of Hollywood celebrities may also be advised to root out the trees that hide their mansions from public purview so that people can get a view of how stinking, parasitical, gluttons the so-called commercial artists really are, living in the richest boulevards and inspiring the rest of the nation to become like them - almost in a pattern of dark humor.

A hope that you will rid yourself of the comparisons with Dr Martin Luther King, because unlike you he never would claim today that your election proves in any form, kind or shape that America has suddenly become intelligent or free, or both, in selecting its leader. He would never have accepted funds from Wall Street and Zionist lobbyists. He would never have accepted corporate media favors. He would never have remained silent at Israeli atrocities on Palestine. Unlike you, Dr King would not have claimed America has no colour lines just because two clowns in form of McCain and Palin could not inspire White America enough. Did I mention Dr King would not have voted unconditionally for the $700-billion corporate bailouts as you did - thus ensuring their media throw around bullets at a desperately sinking people’s hopeful minds?

A hope that you will be a world leader, rendering thoughtful humanitarian progressive opinions, not promising reactionary interventionist military tactics. Your urge to pursue military wars against tethering economies of Pakistan and Afghanistan is far from the hope the world looks forward to from the leader of a country that has, in the first place, created the mess those regions are.

A hope that you will truly stop addressing the AIPAC Zionist causes and rather side with the progressive Israeli and Palestinians in order to end the war on peoples in the Middle East - a war directly funded by American taxpayers money. So much so that the working class Americans are forced to pay 47% of their tax money towards fighting wars against Arab peoples. And now they hope, President Obama, that you will conduct direct negotiations with the Hamas- legitimately elected to government in Gaza - instead of funding hate against the Middle East by furthering flow of tax money to the Israeli militarist state. Certainly not to depend on the Republican Party adviser, Pentagon chief Robert Gates, to decide on your behalf - a process you have already formalized.

A hope that you will "fully withdraw" from Iraq and not "reduce" the presence of American troops there- your claim throughout that American troops are “part of the solution in Iraq” is a wisdom that is contrary to laws of international human rights as applied to sovereign nations, not to mention one that has resulted in slaughter of well over a million innocent people. Despite Abu Ghraib and despite well-documented deaths of civilians at the hands of the American military your view is abjectly hopeless: "The fact is that our US military is probably the most capable institution on the planet in terms of carrying out extraordinarily difficult assignments. And I continue to be concerned that we have set out for ourselves just an enormous task of rebuilding an extremely volatile and large country, and the military is not going to be able to do it alone so we're going to have to have some good policies from Washington to move it forward." Dear President Obama, the ordinary voters, deeply anguished at Republican measures and deeply brainwashed by Democratic media, have pledged their hopes on you. This is time, they hope you can move the military backward and "bring the boys back" home, not to move them forward into any more tortures in the Middle East that bring us shame as human beings, not just as divinely blessed Americans.

A hope that you do in fact refrain from the last lines in your speech in quoting the tradition: "Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America." As it turns out, there are so many of us atheists and so many of us followers of non-Christian God that it pains to notice the lack of a break in the tradition when it comes to religious diplomacy. In fact, Christian fundamentalism runs so high in the land that you had to invite the most infamous reactionary pastor to herald you as the leader - a man who most despicably declares homosexuality as a disease and opposes same-sex marriages. And oh, even while you used the media to woo the sizable section of LGBT constituency, your own opposition to gay marriage is also well pronounced. And yet, our depressed, repressed and suppressed sexual minority still hopes you will make true of your promises and get rid of seeds of intolerance such as the Godmen who preach against "God's own".

A hope that you will sincerely withdraw your inaugural speech in favour of a more pragmatic, critically progressive one. Your opening lines that "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer" just does not sound convincing enough. Are we not the same people who voted year after year based on what the media had to convince us on foreign, domestic and economic policies? A country having the largest record of anti-democratic measures, of having committed vote scams and frauds at presidential level, of having maintained an elitist tradition of two richest parties ignoring everyone else, an electoral process that decides on candidates based on how much funds they generate thereby eliminating anti-corporate candidates effectively - how could this country suddenly become the land of the dreams of its founding fathers (not to mention, that you keep forgetting some of those were slave-owning fathers) and torchbearers of democracy (or demon-cracy, dear President considering even on the day of your speech all the anti-democratic policies were still in place- from Guantanamo Bay to Iraqi oilfields? From military bases in Kuwait to assertions in NATO, from supremacism in the UN Security Council to maintenance of Cold War ties with dictatorial regimes of Saudi Arabia or installed state armies in much of Africa to slaughter people’s outfits?)

A hope that you will carefully snap your ties with the likes of Warren Buffett. Is it merely incidental that the very year you got elected was the year when Buffett was declared as the richest man in the world - the man who you claimed time and again was most qualified to be your economic adviser. The capitalist accumulator of ill-gotten wealth, the man who has become the charity celebrity - such a charitable man he is that he has promised to donate his billions to another charitable (sic!) buddy of his, Bill Gates for the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation! As though the activities of Gates Foundation in perpetuating life-threatening diseases in Africa by funding illegal factories were not enough, now your adviser and angel investor in your "middle-class" campaign, Mr Buffett, has to make the corporate houses stronger while rendering the government weaker - steps such as this which have caused the recent havoc at the first place to begin with.

A hope that you will sincerely abuse your own illusions about this country that you might have missed opportunities to critically reflect upon. Just because you were born in the land with a certificate that enabled you to contest as a Presidential candidate does not mean that you will continue the tradition of shoving to silence millions of hard-working taxpayers of the land who do not have the "legality" - a privilege that is bestowed not by some unseen supreme force, but by political leaders of the respective times. The "illegal workers" who clean the tables and the dishes before feeding millions of Americans every passing day of today are the black suffrage of yesteryear. The minority Hispanic, Asian and Black women workers - who earn way less than the minimum wage reserved for the male workers every hour, as housekeepers and nannies and bargirls in sectors that do not allow for unions and demands - are the Rosa Parks of today, whose voices have been silenced amidst glories of your victory. And you have led the rhetoric, Mr President, when you declare, "We are America. We are the nation that liberated a continent from a madman, that lifted ourselves from the depths of Depression, that won Civil Rights, and Women’s Rights, and Voting Rights for all our people." In your elite school education they obviously rendered a myopic study of what America in the 21st Century was like. Perhaps you need to only go through your own EEOC reports to witness racial harassments, gender disparities in pay and discrimination based on sexual orientation before making sweeping statements on the nature of liberation embedded in the idea of Americanism.

A hope that you sincerely and finally acknowledge that the same Washington DC political lobby and the same Wall Street economic lobby are the ones that have lifted you to power. By default, your struggle will be against the working class people who on a daily basis wage wars against the aforesaid corridors of powers. And the poor working class whose money will continue to be spent on your imperialistic fanciful wars against Iraq, Gaza, Pakistan and other threats, as and when conveniently produced by the White House, with more than a little help from your so-called liberal press - the CNN and the New York Times that work overtime to turn the country into a land of hero-worshippers.

A hope that you, indeed, emerge as a hero worthy of the worshipping. This is no reality TV show and as brother Gil Scott Heron (hope they taught him in the Ivy Leagues) says the people’s revolution will not be televised. The streets of Gainesville, Harlem, Huntington and New Orleans will not have makeup artists and publicists to let people show their best faces forward. The masses do not possess the charm and power that the televised news anchors possess. They even do not have a right to define what constitutes poverty line in the country. They, however, will hope that you increase the official poverty line to demonstrate the reality of debt-ridden society of America. $21,000 annual income for a four-person family is worse than just poverty, Mr President, while calculating the millions of invisible in the land of billboards by Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, General Electric, Proctor & Gamble, American Express, Johnson & Johnson, Bank of America, Nike, KraftFood, Comcast, Costco, Burlington, UnitedHealth Group - all of these corporations and more whose shares are owned by your buddy Warren Buffet and your friends on the Wall Street. After having hoodwinked the poor of the country with corporate media propaganda that you stand up for their causes, while in fact you get funded by their class enemies, the people hope your friendly media conglomerate stops celebrating your words of free American joy immediately!

A hope that you will also remember what Dr King had said in the context of televised glorification of racial harmony as "cruel manipulation of the poor" and American War Presidents' presence in foreign land as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today". Neither media propaganda about social normalcy in blatant disregard of the poor class, nor White House prerogatives to perpetuate wars in foreign lands have lessened, let alone, ceased. How can you continue to parrot that that no one should "question the power of our democracy", and herald the biggest destructive force in recent world history - the US military - as the "most capable institution on the planet"?

Perhaps so, you have a need to showcase hope. But you know, acute realities continue to bite.

Satyam Scandal :: Ramalinga Raju is not the Problem

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:49:58 -0500

By Saswat Pattanayak

When Enron conveniently declared its bankruptcy in 2001, it not only resulted in rendering more than 5000 employees jobless, and relegating more than $1billion in employee retirement funds to vacuum, but the corporation also succeeded in eventually evading recovery of more than $40 billion of its assets. Enron's corruption was neither pathbreaking nor unique. Financial bunglings are necessary features of market capitalism resulting in widespread unemployment, continuation of class society and dependence of world majority on the corporate minority.

All criticisms being hurled at Ramalinga Raju - the disgraced former boss of India's leading software giant Satyam - is pure travesty. The fact is Raju is merely unlucky, and in this present instance, a victim of his beleaguered conscience that arose too late. For, his scandal is neither as consequential as Enron's, nor as dangerously implicit as PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Any focus on eliminating Raju and his business from the world capitalistic map only shall help strengthen the businesses of his former rivals. Reducing India's largest financial scam to the alter of accusations against one man merely shall undermine the necessity to examine the canons of capitalism.

Raju's attempts at salvaging his son's companies have nothing to do with personal corruption scandals. It has to do with the very nature of how "free market" capitalism works. The same investors who objected to the $1.6 billion scam orchestrated by Raju were the ones who have been supporting him throughout the series of deception, fraud and financial misappropriations committed by Satyam over the years. The same auditors - PricewaterhouseCoopers - who have suddenly hogged the headline for the wrongdoings have been heralded by Market Capitalism as one of its most informed wings. The corporate media conglomerates that are now singling out Raju as the fraud that deserves jail term are the gatekeepers of news and opinion that had been awarding Raju variously, including as "Corporate Citizen of the Year" (by CNBC in 2002). Not just the endorsement of PricewaterhouseCoopers, even its rival - the other big financial auditor - Ernst & Young has only recently bestowed upon Raju the award of "Young Entrepreneur of the Year (in 2007).

If the world has been forced to embrace market capitalism as the dominant economic base, the superstructure for such foundation has comprised investors, auditors, deregulators, and the corporate bosses. In case of Satyam Computers Services, all these elements have been exposed threadbare. And this is hardly the first instance of corruption in capitalism. Quite the contrary, corruption is inherent in capitalism, in its essence of profit drives at the cost of ethical responsibilities, in its essence of satisfying investors at the cost of customers, in its essence of exploiting workforce at the cost of amassing disproportionate wealth.

The market economy approach which India has embraced necessarily must produce Harshad Mehtas and Ramalinga Rajus. Any elements of surprise speaks to the lack of confidence in understanding of capitalism's contradictions. A free-for-all umbrella must cloud the levels of competition and turn them instead into monopolistic collaborations among giants. Giants who must exhibit their capability to stay in top (or, perish) must necessarily employ unlawful, illicit and unethical means to hoodwink the consumers, clients and society at large.

What Raju has resorted to is not a sign of failure in his conscience. Rather, what most of the media are perceiving in his character of late is a failure on their part to understand how capitalism functions. This is what Fidel Castro calls "Economic Illiteracy" prevailing in the present age.

Workers' Rhapsody

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 09:13:58 -0500

All the while, all the while

Freedom mile, all the while

Been oppressed, all the while

Exploited, all the while

Set me free, set me free

Incarcerate me, set me free

Always in debt, set me free

Bank dues late, set me free

Never before, never before

Mayhem forever, never before

Darkness ahead, never before

Hopeless dejected, never before

Cannot rest, cannot rest

Hallucinate, cannot rest

Abused drugs, cannot rest

Competitions, cannot rest

How many years, how many years

Greedy corporates, how many years

Conservative cronies, how many years

Liberal phonies, how many years

Who bail 'em out, who bail 'em out

Protest ask shout, who bail 'em out

Profiteer crooks, who bail 'em out

Funding Obama/Bush, who bail 'em out

Power to peoples, power to peoples

Redistribute lands, power to peoples

Regulate wealth, power to peoples

Nationalize health, power to peoples

Crisis not ours, crisis not ours

Sold-out lenders, crisis not ours

Collapsing capital, crisis not ours

Proving them lethal, crisis not ours

Capitalism dead, capitalism dead

For once pay heed, capitalism dead

Their media lying, capitalism dead

Rich legacies dying, capitalism dead

We shall not tolerate, we shall not tolerate

If owners are ingrate, we shall not tolerate

No more minimum wage, we shall not tolerate

No stopping our rage, we shall not tolerate

Ignorance no bliss, ignorance no bliss

Palestinian deaths a miss, ignorance no bliss

Go tell truth to the power, ignorance no bliss

Imperialist war funds terror, ignorance no bliss

Fighting war, fighting war

Homeless once more, fighting war

Shelters full, fighting war

Tanks so cool, fighting war

Smoke us out, smoke us out

Funders of hate, smoke us out

Evil is the bomb, smoke us out

Bring war home, smoke us out

Bring war home, bring war home

Unemployment zone, bring war home

Poverty in Bronx, bring war home

Capitalism sucks, bring war home

- Saswat Pattanayak

Peoples' Poet, 2009

What Have We Planned For 2009?

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 09:03:00 -0500

Have we planned enough for the year ahead?

The terrorizing wars, conflicts, military bloodshed

Zionist lobbies, hawkish Hindus, Islamic fanatics

Have we planned enough to defeat Christian clerics?

Have we planned at all for the impending poverty?

Or a few billionaires controlling all earthly property

Forty million refugees, can't call a region their own

Have we planned at all for the homeless population?

Have we planned well to tackle global illiteracy?

For more than a billion, education still a fantasy

Eighty percent of world survives for ten dollars a day

Have we planned well to end the class society next May?

Have we planned any to read beyond headlines?

Of Obama's hopes as wars on Afghans, Pakistanis

Saving global capitalism as the onslaughts on poorest

Have we planned any to abuse our illusions at best?

Have we planned somehow to stop funding hate?

To end Israreli occupations before its way too late

American troops, Blackwater mercenaries, Halliburton Oils

Have we planned somehow to block capitalistic turmoils?

Have we planned steps to care for the unattended sick?

Four billion sans drinking water, yet more uninsured weak

Private healthcare preferring profit over public concerns

Have we planned steps to replace the pharma corporations?

Have we planned yet to support unions and labor forces?

The peaceniks, communists, lovers and freedom sources

In solidarity with Zapatistas, the Naxalites, and our landless

Have we planned yet to ally with these progressive classes?

Have we planned ever in view of our future generations?

How to organize and educate the current media consumers

Before the majority among us is deceived again this new year

Have we planned ever to herald a new world, freed from fear?

Have we planned ways to restore lasting peace on Mother Earth?

Not to imagine battles, occupations, business interests' wrath

Uniting indigenous, workers, spreading words against wars

Have we planned ways to consolidate workers, not corporate class?

- Saswat Pattanayak

Peoples' Poet, 2008

Prelude to Mumbai Blasts: Hindu Terrorism

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 11:29:19 -0500

By Saswat Pattanayak

Like Mumbai, also in Maharashtra, Malegaon was the site to bomb blasts on September 5, 2008 – less than three months prior to Mumbai blasts. Three bomb attacks killed more than 31 people – mostly Muslims – while they were returning from offering Friday prayers at a mosque.

Immediately thereafter, the “India” woke up to terror alerts. Politicians and administration were quick to point out the role of Muslim terrorists. The usual hounding of suspects continued, and all the “illegal” Muslim student outfits were harassed. Police arrested Muslim youths under suspicion. Until, one after the other evidences led to a radically different conclusion: That, it is not the Muslim people of India, but Hindu terrorists who were behind the Malegaon blasts.

Malegaon blasts have opened up a whole Pandora’s Box. Not so much of a shock considering that the Hindu fundamentalists who are still holding seats in Indian Parliament today were the despicable figures behind the biggest communal clash and tragedy to hit India when they demolished Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992. That was the darkest day in India’s contemporary history. Those that led the procession of mayhem and sinister murder trails went on to get elected to the highest offices of Indian democracy soon thereafter. Such coveted politicians included chargesheeted riot leader like LK Advani – that shameful face of Hindu fanaticism masquerading as a meticulously passionate orator of Hindi-Hindu aspirations.

Hindu terrorism is also not a shock for millions of Indians who did witness the biggest tragedy to reshape Bombay due to the reactionary terror attacks orchestrated by a Hindu Chauvinist Bal Thackeray and his gang of Hindu fundamentalists calling themselves Shiv Sena. Following Ayodhya terrorism against Muslims’s sacred place, instead of bringing calm and publicly apologizing on behalf of the Hindu civilization, misguided Hindu supremacists like Advani and Thackeray conducted nationwide victory marches to incite hatred against the minorities in India. As a result, Mumbai, the commercial capital under the mercy of Thackeray, was converted overnight into a terrorized center of Hindu-Muslim riots. While in power, all that Thackeray did was continue his mode of operation- hate-speech against the Muslim minority. Currently his political cronies have taken up staunch regionalism in Maharashtra to threaten the lives of “outsiders”, whereas the terrorist outfit representing the Hindu interests have been bombing all over Maharashtra, recruiting a few Muslim youths for training, and then shifting blames of terror attacks either on Pakistan or on Indian Muslims.

Hindu terrorism is also not a shock for millions of Indians who have been silent sufferers to a merciless manner in which Gujarat – the birthplace of the Mahatma – had been converted into the rowdiest of states in India under the disgusting leadership of a racist politician Narendra Modi – also part and parcel of the revived Hindu fanaticism. Gujarat’s famous Godhra incident, which was used as a tool to ravage the Islamic business sector in the state ended up taking lives of more than 2000 people, more than 80% of which were Muslims. Under the rule of the Hindu right wing political party, the infamous, yet legal, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), unprecedented violence was let loose on the streets to pointedly murder innocent Muslim citizens. Not surprisingly by the culturally same Hindu fanatics who pride themselves for having assassinated Mahatma Gandhi sixty years ago. Unheard of atrocities against Muslim women were committed by the Hindu “Sainiks” and “Saints” and terrorists that have no parallel in world history.

Thus, Hindu terrorism is not a matter of shock to the huge majority of Indians- majority of whom are deeply innocent Hindus themselves.

Dark Ages of Hindu Revivalism: Secular India to Communal India

Indian history has never been devoid of Muslim roots. Predominantly, Indian land was ruled by Moghuls. Most of the glorified historical personalities of India- from secular emperors to magical musicians, from wise philosophers to lyrical poets have been Muslims. Muslims also have been a successful business class, self-sustained and despite prejudices, well organized. Whenever foreign colonial powers assaulted Indian nationalism, Muslims joined the struggles for freedom alongside the Hindus. They were so united in spirit with Hindus that it took the meanest and most corrupt methods of the British colonialists to separate the two religions from living in harmony.

As a result of British interventions and formation of pseudo-Hindu outfits such as Hindu Mahasabha (which opposed Gandhi’s call for unity), and submission to ruling class blackmails by Muslim League, Pakistan was created upon the blood of millions.

Pakistan’s life was made even more difficult to manage thanks to the illogical and criminal manner in which the British divided the map geographically. East Pakistan (on the east of India) naturally enough remained the point of contention since Pakistan (on the West of India) could neither rule over it to its abilities nor could remain a distinctive nation in the subcontinent without it. Added to the miseries were the decisions of a Hindu supremacist Sardar Ballavbhai Patel to blackmail all Princely States of India to join the British-freed India. This was a cause of misery because in the predominantly Hindu North-Indian democratic setup in Delhi, the representation of predominantly Muslim princely state rulers was almost impossible. Therefore, India, after her independence from British rule, emerged a fractured country of inconsistent neighborhood (which finally got “resolved” with the creation of Bangladesh) and internal religious divides (now officially revived through impositions on Hyderabad and Kashmir – one Hindu state with a Muslim King, and the other a Muslim state with a Hindu King. )

Taking advantage of the problems Nehru faced in his initial years as the first Prime Minister, the ugly head of Hindu fanaticism started to show up. Not only were they banned from participation in mainstream politics by a secular Constitution of the land, they were forbidden from expressing themselves. Despite the fact that Nehru himself was a Kashimiri Brahmin, he was unwilling to cooperate in escalating the communal tensions in India, following Gandhian footsteps. This period of Golden Age of Independent India came to an abrupt end when the country started noticing that many of the Hindu fanatics had hidden their identities and joined the mainstream Congress with an aim to take over the power later. Vajpayee who became the right-wing leader of Indian democracy later on, used to claim himself as a Nehruvian socialist to climb the ladder of power, only to later condemn Nehru after his death. George Fernandes who later became the most tainted Defense Minister of India for his deals with Western militarists used to deceive people in his early years as projecting himself to be a socialist. Indeed, many congress leaders of Nehru’s period claimed Socialism as their paths only to gain entry into mainstream politics of India – and to later disband every principle of socialism in favor of domestic capitalism.

Nehru’s Congress as the dominant political party cannot be absolved of the crime of overlooking the nature of its disciples in favor of their sycophancy. As a result of its professed but unintelligent silence over growth of communal politics in India - where its official policy was to advance the cause of Muslims and minorities even as several of disguised communal politicians were busy thwarting possibilities of harmonious living- India evolved into a vulnerable land soon to be ruled over by the very same Hindu fundamentalists that Gandhi and Nehru, Subhas Bose and Bhagat Singh, together opposed tooth and nail throughout their illustrious lives.

Hindi-Hindu India overshadowed and almost choked to death all the rich historical heritage brought to Indian culture through Islamic traditions. Urdu was relegated to nowhere, Hindustani was not recognized as a language, affirmative actions for Muslims continued to perish under caste politics within Hindu religious majority. Casteism and untouchability continued to exist despite constitutional dictums. Both Dalits and Muslims emerged as outcasts and myth of Hindu cultural purity continued to prosper.

Nehru’s Congress which prided itself for receiving aid from Soviet Union, while at the same time forming Non-Aligned Movement and taking respectable roles in the United Nations to promote peace was gradually reduced to a capitalistic economy headed by a finance minister called Manmohan Singh, who today has become the Prime Minister for his able diplomacy at praising the British Raj (his enslaved speech at Oxford University heralded Queen’s English as the biggest development for India), and unconditional surrender to NATO interests on every conceivable grounds – military to economic.

In such overtly distressing times, it is only natural that the likes of Hindu supremacists who were vehemently opposed by the founding leaders of India’s freedom movement, are back to power. They rule the roads of Maharashtra and Gujarat – two most economically successful states in India. The Hindu supremacists are funded by their bosses – the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) – an outright communal racist organization based in the United States. Indeed, most universities in the US allow VHP-funded student outfits to recruit local students for to promote anti-Islam causes in the name of cultural diversity. And back home, the same organizations routinely attack any Islamic institutions or student unions. As long as it is Banares Hindu University – a completely unnecessary university to be founded on religious grounds considering that Hindus anyway comprise the majority and community-based institutes are required to be formed to protect minority cultures – there is never a talk on terrorism emanating from them. Even as it has been proved countless times that Hindu student organizations such as Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) are violent in nature, and misconstrue history to depict Vivekananda, Bhagat Singh and Subhas Bose radically differently in the minds of the impressionable youths, they go scot free and celebrate their existence and growth. At the same time, Muslim Madrassas are constantly under police investigations. Faculty members of Aligarh Muslim Universities are routinely harassed. Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) has been legally banned by the Indian government.

Usual Suspects: Muslim Youths

Indian official authorities continuously arrest numerous Muslim people, doctors, professors and students on alleged grounds of terrorism, whereas the proven terrorists of Hindu based organizations continue to contest elections, win seats and influence courts. In the most recent Malegaon serial bomb blasts, the first arrests were that of SIMI activists. Noor-ul-Hooda was arrested by the police along with two other “suspects”: Shabbir Batterywala and Raees Ahmed.

Such arrests based solely on suspicion are no exceptions. Even without undertaking any investigations of merit, such Muslim youths are subjected to arrests on a routine basis. In Malegaon, this was massive, because the suspicion was on accusation of murder of 31 people and injury of over 300.

Times of India in their initial report reported: “The involvement of both Shabbir and Hooda in the Malegaon blasts came to light during their interrogations after their arrest in a bomb hoax case. The intention of conspirators of Malegaon blasts was to create communal tensions in the textile town which has a history of riots and the bomb hoax exercise undertaken by Shabbir and Hooda as the blasts failed to disturb the peace in the town, the DGP said.”

So Who Were Behind Malegaon?

After the initial arrests of Shabbir and Hooda, public demand increased to arrest everyone concerned. The investigation was thus under public demand, transferred to the most efficient branch to deal with issues of terrorism: the Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) and its superhero cop Hemant Karkare.

Karkare and his team thoroughly investigated the Malegaon blasts and reached entirely different conclusions. For the firs time, the official agencies had to admit their errors in arresting Muslim youths whereas the real culprits were the Hindu terrorists.

Among the eight arrested following due investigations the Hindu terrorists had high profile candidates: Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur of the right wing political coalition, Indian army official Ramesh Upadhyay, Hindu fundamentalist youth organization Abhinav Bharat’s leader Sameer Kulkarni, and Army official Lt Col Prasad S Purohit.

Hell broke loose. Just when the western world was eyeing Pakistan, including America’s President-Elect Obama who was at his rhetoric worst in calling for war on Pakistan and it was the long cherished time for the Hindu fanatics to rejoice, the real truths were slowly uncovering to indicate otherwise. Immediately reacting to ATS, Delhi’s right-wing leader VK Malhotra attacked the officials and asked its officers to undergo narco-tests! Malhotra of course resorted to his proverbial American master’s tongue: “Whereas the world is seeing Pakistan and Bangladesh as hub of terrorism, ATS is accusing the “saints”!”.

No amount of rhetoric could save the right wing political party this time, because not only it was found upon investigation that the Hindu terrorist leaders representing the BJP’s interests were involved in masterminding the blasts, but even the Indian defense forces officials were. The Hindu “Holy Cow” and the India’s “Holy Cow” were both the actual culprits.

In the past, when Shabbir and Hooda were arrested on suspicion, media reports were agog with conclusions that the previous bomb blasts in India had a very similar strategy. Hence, the conclusions of the media were that, all those blasts perhaps were also caused by Muslim outfits. Hence investigations were on into all the previous blasts. And soon, one after another, the truths started emerging when the cases were “reopened”.

Also came under investigations of ATS were the closed cases of yesteryears: Parbhani blasts of November 21, 2003, Jalna blasts of August 27, 2004, Jama Masjid blast in Delhi on April 14, 2006, Mecca Masjid blast, May 18, 2007, Ajmer blasts, October 11, 2007, Modasa blast, September 29, 2008.

In all of the above terror attacks, the Muslim youths were held under suspicion without investigations. But when the cases were reopened, ATS unearthed evidences which startled the very foundation of Hindu supremacism in India.

Upon due investigations, it was indeed found out by the Indian authorities that the series of blasts have been planned since 2001 by the same group of people- Hindu terrorists. A Hindu supremacist Rakesh Dhawade had transported 54 people, trained them in a camp in Sinhagad in Pune for three years, starting 2001. Using his access to power structure in India, Dhawade continued to remain free despite all evidences against him. Finally, after more than four years of Jalna blast, and after seven years of his discovered training camps, he was chargesheeted in early November 2008. On Novemeber 11, 2008, as a bigger blow on Hindu terrorism, another accused Maruti Wagh was arrested by Jalna police. In the entire Marathwada region, terrorists involved in the several bomb attacks in Parbhani, Purna, Jalna, Nanded and Malegaon were found to be the same –the highly protected Hindu terrorists.

Likwise, in Nanded blasts, new truths had emerged. On April 6, 2006 when a terror attack woke India up in Nanded, it was not as much highlighted in the local media, and received zero coverage on international media. It was so because the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) in its investigation found that behind the bomb blast, there was no role of any Muslim agency. Indeed, it was a hardcore Hindu fundamentalist group that carried out the terror attack. During investigation it was also found out that the Hindu terrorist group was planning to orchestrate such terror attacks in Aurangabad. One Hindu terrorist Rahul Pande was arrested in regards to Nanded bomb blast. Two of his accomplices Naresh Rajkondwar and Himanshu Panse who prepared the bomb died on the spot. Three more Hindu terrorists Yogesh Deshpande, Maruti Wagh and Gururaj Tupttewar were seriously injured.

In related investigations, Hindu supremacist Manoharrao Pande, one of the accused, said that they were trained in handling explosive devices and one trainer Himanshu Pande, died while assembling the explosives. Pande had also implemented the terror attacks in the Marathwada region, including in Jalna, Purnea and Parbhani.

Rationale Behind Mumbai Blasts: Who Benefits?

November 11, 2008 – the day of victory of Anti-Terrorism Squad against Hindu Terrorism- happened two weeks before the latest Mumbai Bomb Blasts.

Just when the world opinion was about to be reshaped following the ugly face of Hindu terrorism being officially exposed, the foreign nationals – the supposedly Muslim-fearing American and British citizens - were attacked in Mumbai. Just when the Hindu “Saints” were going to be declared terrorists, some Muslim youths were once again arrested in the center of commercial capital as accused of the blasts. Just when proper and due investigations were about to begin, lawyers were threatened by right wing political parties from representing the accused. Just when the Anti-Terrorism Squad captured the accused for investigations to find out the masterminds (going by the past blasts, who were going to be the Hindu supremacists), ATS chief and nation’s most beloved police officer Karkare was mysteriously killed.

The fact that Karkare had received death threats from BJP activists, the Hindu terrorist groups and his wife could be interrogated for further information about the letters, Karkare was converted into a national hero and declared to be dead while fighting Islamic terrorism!

India, a country of independent spirited people who took on the mightiest of empires through actions and thoughts of the wise and the nonviolent, has been forced to be converted into a country of hero-worshipping uncritical enslaved people that refuse to believe that the problems are indeed from within.

Karkare has been converted into a national hero and is being heralded as the bravest police officer. Yet ironically, his principles of life that defied conventional thinking while he unearthed the most shameful chapter of Hindu nationalism, have been already forgotten. Domestic media – both vernacular and English language have adopted a tone that’s most submissive, prejudiced and rhetorical. Indian parliament has always been the mainstay of chosen criminals from across the country since last few decades. Now it has evolved as the chamber of discussion among most of them demanding across parties, to control the country through new draconic laws.

Indian Hindu terrorism has once again been shoved into obscurity by once again successfully shifting blame on Pakistan. Instead of working closely together with Pakistani officials to eradicate roots of terrors – which are implanted by the politicians in both countries than invented by the misguided people – India has chosen to allow Israeli and American interests to prevail upon the land in a quest to convert Gandhi’s Free India into a Militarist Enslaved Agent of Global Imperialism.

Fellow Decent Human Beings...

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 11:38:11 -0500

Following is a translation of a poem by Sahir Ludhianvi: "Ae Sharif Insaanoen"

I find the poem to be deeply relevant to our times. Just when the majority of us are blaming the minority among us for criminal acts of terror caused by the militarists and suddenly believing in the words of "our" national politicians to caste doubts upon innocent people of another country, at a time when we Indians have become mute witnesses to cultural bans on Pakistan and artists from Pakistan even as racist communal elements in Bollywood such as Aadesh Srivastava or Abhijeet are gaining grounds, at a time when artists such as respected Ghulam Ali are being banned from entering the land of a country - India- whose people love him immensely, simply because suddenly some communal Hindu supremacist leaders are opposing any possible cultural exchanges with our neighboring nation, at a time when we are allowing a bunch of proven thugs - the politicians who we all know to be corrupt to the core every passing day, the politicians who have legitimized criminalization of politics in the land of the Buddha - are demanding across party lines to come up with draconic laws to silence resenting voices in India, at a time when ATS officer Karkare who was instrumental in uncovering the ugly masks of the terror from Hindu fundamentalists has been killed and has been converted into a hero by the very people he despised, such is a time to question our conventional wisdom.

By Saswat Pattanayak

Shed our blood, or theirs

Lives lost are of human race

War on the East or against the West

Casualty is troubled peace

Bomb our land, or across the borders

Afflicted are souls under construction

Homeless our people, or theirs

Suppressed is oppressed expression

Tanks march across or in our lands

Leave Mother Earth barren stretch

Victory cry or vanquished sighs

Countless lives mourn the death

War itself the biggest crisis

What problem can it ever solve?

Seeds of hatred it perpetuates

What necessities will it absolve?

Hence, fellow decent humans,

Better if we avert these wars

Ours and theirs – in all the lands

Better if candle of peace sparks

To prove our point of advancements

Do we need to flow their bloods?

To rid our houses of darkness

Do we need to set theirs on flames?

Wars we must differently showcase

Battlefield’s not the sole option

Humans also exhibit intelligence

Fanaticism not the only emotion

Come, in this age of bitter darkness

Let us spark some lights of care

Those steps that foster peace and progress

Let us consider some new thoughts to share

War, results of heartless barbarism

Peace, results of civilized progress

War, proud catch of power structure

Peace, humble heritage of humaneness

War, in the name of enslaved people

Peace, to promote socially just system

War, voiced by misguided zealots

Peace, for hapless masses supreme

War, a shameful occupation of few

Peace, for equity, prosperity for all

Fight the war, and the war-mongers

For peace, progressives everywhere

(Trans. by Saswat Pattanayak, Peoples' Poet, 2008)

Beijing Olympics: A Humanist Success Despite Tibetan Terrorism and Western Imperialism

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:33:27 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

The opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics can easily be counted among the greatest of collective acts in human history.

Despite years of reactionary movements led by religious and sectarian groups to sabotage the Games, the Chinese peoples stood firmly with each other in solidarity and thwarted every such attempt.

For every step of success that the nation exhibited in celebrating togetherness of the representatives from all countries congregated with sporty spirits at one place, one time, and to quote the official slogan as ‘One World, One Dream’, there were scores of impediments along the way. Let’s visit some of the most dastardly instances that were aimed at undermining the great Chinese peoples, some of which are still underway:

Free Tibet Movement:

For a starter, Olympic Games are not a Chinese handiwork. Olympics are global celebration of sports. Logically, there should have been no connection of Free Tibet movement with Beijing Olympics. However, even after giving allowance for the necessity to politicize every event, the Free Tibet movement lacks credibility, honesty and necessary progressive principles.

The so-called Tibetan faction (so called, because not everyone from Tibet, or those who support Tibet’s stand on need of autonomy, support the reactionary agendas in place to prevent Olympics from happening in China) comprises in part, a group of miscreants indulging in violent interference in preventing the peaceful march of Olympic torchbearers. They exhibited violence in several parts that were entirely uncalled for. The infamous Lhasa riots this year on March 14 was not the only one which brought international condemnation of Tibetan movement led by Dalai Lama. But let’s first turn to Lhasa to understand the currents of violence that the Tibetan groups trumpeting credos of non-violence potentially possess.

Lhasa Terrorism:

Tibetan rioters in their zeal to demoralize a nation’s prospects of hosting the Olympics for the first time in its glorious history claimed that they were observing the 49th year of organized protest against the so-called Chinese occupation.

How did the self-proclaimed Buddhists conduct themselves instead? The answer was best offered by the only living female Buddha herself. The twelfth Samding Dorje Phagmo told Reuters that “The sins of the Dalai Lama and his followers seriously violate the basic teachings and precepts of Buddhism and seriously damage traditional Tibetan Buddhism's normal order and good reputation.”

The female Buddha even said that prior to being transformed as a well endowed community of educated people under the Communist rule, the Tibetans used to endure living conditions worse than slaves. Before being incorporated into Communist China, Tibetans did not even have slightest of medical care and they were largely considered as illiterate serfs. “Old Tibet was dark and cruel, the serfs lived worse than horses and cattle,” she said.

Instead of exhibiting gratitude to the Communist rule or at least join in the celebrations of an Olympic Games being held for the first time in their land, the Tibetan mobsters conducted themselves dastardly. The rioters attacked the predominant Chinese ethnic group Han Chinese and a Muslim minority group Hui. The Tibetan freedom fighters vandalized the businesses owned by these ethnic groups who had no role in “subjugating” Tibetans in any known manner.

The Economist, the most respected of western media whose reporter was an eyewitness to the events reported, “The mobs, ranging from small groups of youths (some armed with traditional Tibetan swords) to crowds of many dozens, including women and children, rampaged through the narrow alleys of the Tibetan quarter. They battered the shutters of shops, broke in and seized whatever they could, from hunks of meat to gas canisters and clothing. Some goods they carried away—little children could be seen looting a toyshop—but most they heaped in the streets and set alight.

Within a couple of hours, fires were blazing in the streets across much of the city. Some buildings caught fire too. A pall of smoke blanketed Lhasa, obscuring the ancient Potala—the city’s most famous monument, which covers a hillside overlooking the city. It is the traditional winter palace of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, who fled into exile in India after an abortive uprising in 1959. Some of the demonstrators shouted slogans like “long live Tibet” and “long live the Dalai Lama”.

And how did the Chinese police react to these terrorists? The Economist says, “A handful of riot police with shields and helmets (but no guns visible) patrolled in front of the Jokhang as the riots continued around them, while others stood in lines at the perimeter of the riot-torn area.”

The police, the “dreaded” Chinese police did not even carry guns and used tear-gas instead to disperse the Tibetan mobsters. Such is the scale of human rights violations in China that President Bush keeps referring to!

However, it did not end on March 14. The violent riots orchestrated by Tibetan mobs continued in Gansu (well beyond the Tibetan region) where more than 5,000 terrorists damaged governmental offices. The violence persisted in Qinghai and Sichuan and even in Beijing.

Apart from The Economist which was the only media actually present on the spot and offered a candid report, the rest of western media offered their usual spin against Chinese authorities. Remember these are the media houses that never went to the areas of riots! However they justified the riots citing that there were rumors of a monk being killed which could have resulted in the violence. Yes, they said, a rumor was good enough a cause for the riots. They came up with another astounding justification: that Tibetan teachers were being spied upon and were subjected to intimidating telephone calls from the Chinese authorities. The third justification was that many immigrants, mostly Chinese, were making Tibet their home and that was clearly unacceptable.

All the three justifications offered are ridiculous. Firstly the rumor of a monk’s death was already considered as a rumor. There was never truth to that news, and moreover there never was a news of involvement of Chinese governmental hands in such a murder that never occurred anyway. The rumor was well known to be a rumor even before the riots started.

Second argument that the teachers were getting intimidating phone calls from the authorities may possibly be true, but it holds no ground as a justification. Every sovereign government has a right to make intimidating phone calls to instigators of violent riots. And if it violates the freedom of the peoples under the scope of the sovereign government’s specific constitution, then there are legal ways to address and redress. Certainly not violent riots to destabilize a land awaiting the world delegates for Olympics.

Thirdly, the accusation, that Chinese immigrants are making Tibet their home is misconstrued too. It is illogical to argue that a people be denied access to a land of their own. Tibet is technically part of China and this is a geographical and political fact which has acceptance worldwide. Even the Dalai Lama who spearheads the Free Tibet campaign does not want Tibet to be freed from Chinese occupation. What he intends for is “autonomy”, not “independence”. In other words, the Tibetan leader does not agree that Tibet is colonized. To call Chinese people “immigrants” in their own land is itself a fallacious sentiment. Therefore, the third premise of justification also runs short.

Buddhism and its Misappropriation:

The most riveting of instances where possibly we miss the whole point about Tibetan independence movement is that, the religious spirit which this community claims to be observing as their own perhaps do not rightly belong there.

Not only Buddhism not teach or preach or practice such forms of violent behavior as appropriate, the Buddha himself never supported the institutionalization of organized religion.

Today, thanks to this bunch of ignorant moralists taking shelter in India and acting as the high commands for the Tibetans in China, most people in the world are of the illusion that a) Buddha possibly hailed from China, b) Dalai Lama is some authority on Buddhism or worse, a Holy man himself, c) Buddhism is a great organized religion, d) Buddha is a God etc.

The truth according to human history is that Gautama Buddha was a materialistic philosopher in his time who denounced Hinduism, idol-worship and existence of God with its associated myths. This is a fact well known to the Dalai Lama or closer home to Robert Thurman. However in their ambitious claims to high fame, they would rather perpetuate the necessary myths around Buddha. Thus what we have today is a crash commercialization of secular philosophy of the Buddha. Buddha has suddenly emerged as some sort of a religious icon, and a God himself. People are now offering prayers and worshipping Buddhist statues – the greatest act of insult one can cause to a pronounced atheist who devoted his life against idol-worshipping.

In their pathetic attempts to attain immortality, the modern day Buddhist monopolists like Dalai Lama have offered to themselves such coveted titles of their own fanciful creations. Buddha never said after his death there should be a religion called Buddhism headed by a title called Dalai Lama. Indeed, for the Siddhartha who left his kingdom rejecting royal life, we had a contrasting lifestyle in form of the Tibetan empire which thrived on having a royal kingdom where people were forced to remain as slaves prior to Communism in China.

Buddha who denounced his own father for the holy halo around his authoritarian self, has now been relegated to an elite corner of self-seeking Nirvana achievers like Dalai Lama who dines with the celebrities and fancies himself being called as “His Holiness”! How ironic that the Dalai Lama cannot even simply drop such Holiness addresses resisting the worldly glory and fame reserved for the lesser mortals’ ambitions.

Western Lamas:

Like their friend the current Dalai Lama, the American celebrities Robert Thurman (incidentally, also the father of Uma Thurman who played the violent protagonist in ‘Kill Bill’. For those of us who wonder how can Robert – the first American to be a Buddhist priest- has to be blamed for Kill Bill concepts, there is some news. In a recent interview to New York Times, he goes on to lucidly defend the director Tarantino’s intents), Richard Gere, and Steven Spielberg among scores of other fancy Hollywood names, are reestablishing Buddhism through the “popular” interpretations. Professor Thurman in a recent “interfaith” gathering in Riverside Church at Columbia University ironically enough, quoted from Hindu texts to provide his rationale for Buddhism. I was present at the meeting to wonder why they would not invite atheists to a gathering meant to bring awareness about Hiroshima. I did not have to wonder much.

The Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama, the Thurmans and the “politically correct” celebrities keep churning millions of dollars in producing misleading films about the Buddha, write scores of bestselling books that do not touch the periphery of atheism and consistently work to undermine the otherwise natural connection of Communism with Buddhism.

Buddha and Communism:

In the corporate media-driven world of misinformation it is often more comfortable talking about “peace and love” while easily overlooking the imperialistic wars and militarists. It is but natural to assume, since they are “as seen on TV”, that the communists are the greatest enemies of Tibet (again, way fallaciously concluded as modern highland of Buddhism).

A little critical deconstruction is necessary to unravel the questions that we need to pose in face of religious intolerance existing in current world. The religious leaders all claim that theirs are the scriptures that alone have the capability to bring peace to the world. On August 5, when I was taking part in an interfaith meeting in New York to commemorate Hiroshima Day, the invitees read out portions from their sacred texts to suggest “peace and love” in God’s land was the aim of religions. The grand irony in such debacle of an assumption is that all major wars of the past several centuries were fought only because of religious prescripts. From Hitler to Ariel Sharon to God’s own Bush, the war mongering missiles have declared war cries using religious pretexts. The Vatican in its history of constant apologies (but no punishments to itself) is testament to the long standing history of religious horrors. Be it the Hindu fundamentalists of India or the Afghan Talibans, religious heads have always resorted to communal clashes, acts of terrorism and in promoting environment of intolerance and perpetuating wars.

Against such necessary consequences of religious existence, being a progressive philosopher, Buddha was the one to firmly oppose religious warfare. His concepts of peace and tolerance were directly aimed against organized religious efforts of imposing authorities. If he were alive today, he would surely condemn all the His Holinesses of the world who have emerged as unquestioned authorities. If Buddha were alive today, he would join the Communists in the world that are working to destabilize “Royal” kingdoms, be they of Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet or of Sweden. If Buddha were alive today, he would have turned sick to the stomach watching how people were offering prayers to his own statues! If he were alive today, he would have been traumatized at the sights of hooliganism displayed by the self proclaimed “monks” to sabotage the celebration of a global event.

Olympics is beyond China, although this year, China made Olympics prouder than it ever was. Never before there was such a participation of the masses in creating a great spectacle of solidarity and friendships. Never before was Olympics organized in such ideology-free environment of welcoming nature in the most peaceful and cordial manner possible. And Olympics is beyond a country. It is one symbolic gesture – no matter how sexist and undemocratic its Athenian roots are – that the entire world congregates in moods of jubilation and sports, through participation from representatives of various regions. An insult to a peoples’ efforts in Beijing to formally and beautifully conduct Olympics is also an insult to the world sentiments.

And in this act of resentments, Tibetan mobsters stand alone.

The accomplices:

If the minority of self proclaimed Buddhists stand alone, how could they have possibly caused such an impact in the world? They are not considered to be a legitimate cause of concern by the world bodies. No government worth a name in the world despite rants against “Chinese Communism” has lent support to Tibetan demands so as to boycott the Olympics (a trend very popular during Cold War period).

The truth is behind the veils of make-believe indifference, governments of many western powers and their corporate media organizations continue to foment the agitations against Communism and in the process, using Tibet as a trump card, keep negotiating with China to systematically abolish Communism.

One needs only to reflect back to 1984 Olympics where the China-Taiwan debate was at its peak. Communist China’s rights to posit itself as the sole legitimate representative from the area – also considering its position in the UN as the security council member- was historically denied by the very allowance of Taiwan’s participation in Olympics. The peasant government of China was replaced by the elite government of Taiwan in Olympic representation. So far so good. Except that when the Soviet Bloc responded to the Americans (who first boycotted the Moscow Olympics four years ago citing Afghanistan crisis), the US played the Sino-Soviet card to duly recognize Communist China in the realm of Olympics.

Today, 24 years later, the US, whose leaderships ranging from Bush to the recent Obama and Clinton (who all have publicly addressed the Americans of doing everything they will to stop Chinese economic growth amidst spiteful verbal promises), have decided to play the Tibet Card to negotiate further with China.

Anyone who has watched the NBC coverage of Olympics this year will get the picture clear. Not only the Olympics was not telecast “Live”, it was heavily edited and censored by NBC, the corporate media owned by a General Electric, a defamed corrupt monopolist.

GE, which owns the rights to Olympics this year could not have otherwise done so, without negotiation with the Chinese authorities, where the influence of Communism is dying rapidly if not dead already.

Olympics this year also marks the greatest commercial extravaganza in its history. A whopping $300 million investment on part of China would not have been possible without direct assistance of American corporate interests who intend to continue doing business with Chinese market- the largest bazaar in the world.

To make this possible, there have been deliberate attempts to undermine Communistic influences. It started with privatization of Olympics itself with sales of broadcast rights. GE which is infamous of pleading guilty to selling military jet engines to Israel, on charges of fraud and money laundering is at the forefront of making profiteering business out of the Olympics. GE chair Jack Welch is a pronounced anti-communist who heavily funded Ronald Reagan’s warfares against socialist economies during his time.

The battle against Communism has continued with negotiating with China with Tibet as the pawn. Consequently, talks with Iran and North Korea are underway. Sudan is next in line, what with the American team deliberately positioning a “Sudanese Refugee” (as NBC went on repeating itself) as leading the march. We let you keep Tibet: You renounce Communism, the American political leadership says to the Chinese leadership. We let you believe that opening of your market was required so that you could host the Olympics: You let our NBC and McDonalds and Bank of America to stake rights over the games, the American corporate leadership says to China.

And guess what, even the Dalai Lama agrees to this, the American leadership assures the Chinese. Indeed, Dalai Lama went to the press several times to clarify that he was supportive of the Olympics taking place in China. All at the cost of the expansion of American imperialism.

Just when the Chinese authorities thought that the required compromises of Communist policies-- which have been in the process of being perfected ever since the demise of Mao – they could not have been backstabbed more.

President Bush chose Thailand as a site to make a “human rights” critique of China, the day preceding the Olympics. Tibetan protesters were allowed by Dalai Lama to go back on rampage. NBC in its censored telecast chose to mock at Chinese athletes “under pressure” and went on a tirade while unnecessarily joking about Iran, Zimbabwe, the then East Germany, erstwhile Soviet Union etc while offering so called expert commentaries.

Media reports from this backstabbing coalitions comprising the enraged Tibetans, and their media partners in form of NBC and BBC – two supposedly public broadcasters entirely dominated by corporate interests—continue to vilify the Chinese peoples and their government.

Economic Freedom Drug and Future of Chinese Working Class:

History is replete with accounts of such negotiations between progressive blocs with the capitalistic counterparts, and such coalitions have never worked in favor of the former. This is the appropriate time when China learns that its partnerships with corporate profiteers of multinational entities can only lead to further harming its peoples than aiding them.

Following the Olympics, China must reassess the false promises of glory and dangled carrots it is shoved to. The great modern country based on premises of working class rulers and founded by Chairman Mao must understand that the economic trickery that the West has subjected it to is nothing but an empty rhetoric related to 10% annual economic growth – a growth that suggests nothing in actual, since never before in Communist China were the disparities between the rich and the poor were so high- a growth that the Western media are reluctant to point out in this context- in the proportion of 3.3:1.

The great Chinese people, in order to regain their identity as a peace loving, communist country excelling in economic parity (not necessarily superfluity), must dissociate themselves from temptations of appeasing the West in name of Tibet, Taiwan, or Terrorism.

This Olympics, China displayed to the world how glorious they can be when they are united in their efforts to showcase the greatest show of the Earth despite scathing attacks from Western powers in name of “human rights”, and violent protests by Tibetan religious mobsters in name of “freedom” or organized hooliganism displayed by the Falun Gong reactionaries.

If China could overcome such hostilities today and bring the world together for one dream of peace and harmony in a period marked by imperialistic wars, China can easily overcome the current levels of compromises and rise to be once again the pride of humanity, as a victorious working class society as it once was, not so long ago. China must undergo the process of Rectification in order to lead its path to the revolutionary goals that are conducive for the majority of people, and not to appease a minority elite section of religious or propertied.

The Rectification movement according to Chairman Mao (in his speech at the Chinese Communist Party's National Conference on Propaganda Work on March 12, l957) is “a widespread movement of Marxist education. Rectification means the whole Party studying Marxism through criticism and self-criticism. It is an arduous task to ensure a better life for the several hundred million people of China and to build our economically and culturally backward country into a prosperous and powerful one with a high level of culture. And it is precisely in order to be able to shoulder this task more competently and work better together with all non-Party people who are actuated by high ideals and determined to institute reforms that we must conduct rectification movements both now and in the future, and constantly rid ourselves of whatever is wrong.”

This Olympics, while the world must celebrate the Chinese spirit of Communistic cooperation, China must also undergo necessary rectification to reassess its reactionary economic policies and how far it has deviated from its revolutionary goals, lest it becomes entrapped in capitalistic appeasements. For China, both culture and the politics at this crucial juncture as Mao had warned about, need socialistically “realistic”, not economically opportunistic assessments.

Hiroshima!

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:36:57 -0400

Apologist for collective indifference

Bereft of long term amnesic stance

Capitulated dissidence

Decades of glaring carcasses

Emphasize countless tragedies

Frantically reassess the losses

Grim prospects for peaceniks

Hectored loftily by regimes

Invidious despair from mavericks

Joyous wait for impending peace

Kingdom of utopian bliss

Ludicrous beliefs never cease

Misread pages of war histories

Normalize causes of thy miseries

Oppressive narrations of human follies

Peace comes not by bombing lands

Quest for justice needs friendly hands

Revolutionaries above mere firebrands

Solidarity in these times of wars

Towards lasting peace and raising bars

Unionize to defeat the militarist czars

Victory to boundless internationalists

Workers of the world who unite to fight

Xenophobes, reactionary nationalists

Yardsticks of progress are years of peace

Zenith of harmony shall be rare to miss

-Saswat Pattanayak, Peoples’ Poet, 2008

Political Economy Of American Colacracy

Sun, 18 May 2008 06:17:28 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

(Originally written for Kindle Magazine)

The high moral ground for American democracy rests on the presumptions of healthy, competitive and fair elections. And holding these traits to be self-evident, the elections are held with utmost pomp and show. The grandeurs associated with US polls are unparalleled and are generally considered as reaffirming symbols of multiparty viabilities in the world.

Countries that do not boast of a multi-party system are considered to be autocratic, and consequently despotic. Whether or not it is important to analyze the rationale behind such a forgone conclusion where fairness is associated with competitive party system is a separate matter. Considering the timeliness of the upcoming polls, it will be prudent to conduct a reality check on the core features that sustain electoral system of American democracy itself.

The Election Farce:

Some people say we need a third party. I wish we had a second one – Jim Hightower, national radio commentator

America does not need two Republican Parties – John Kerry, former Presidential nominee for the Democratic Party

What Hightower and Kerry are expressing are concerns addressing the larger American choice-freedom fetishism. They do not question whether having two (or three, four, five) parties by itself will solve the current political crisis arising out of a tradition of lackluster world leadership, but they have at least admitted to the fact that the political map of the US does not reflect either heterogeneity, or healthy competition.

What the opinion leaders are concerned about is the lack of strong ideological differences between Republicans or Democrats regarding policy issues, rendering their separation as merely symbolic. For the most part, both parties totally agree on core issues such as nationalism/patriotic exhibitionism, neocolonialism, foreign affairs, warfare policies, health sector, concerns over the illegal immigrants, employment guarantees, among many other crucial questions. If there exist any differences, they are more in degrees than in types.

If both the parties do not have clearly outlined differences that are crucially significant when it comes to national economy, security and foreign affairs, then what is the single most important difference that exists, albeit in shades, between them, or among the candidates within them?

Money.

Political Economy of US Polls:

Characteristic of a capitalistic economy, people with more money have more access to power, and utilizing the tools of power, they eventually gain to control the power. Hence, the American polls concentrate on the most basic principle of its brand of democracy: raising funds. The candidate who raises more funds is the candidate that is certain to win nomination from his/her own party. In a recent interview to NPR, Democratic consultant Tad Devine, suggested that the election process costs between $750 million to $1 billion annually during the primaries alone!

Where do the millions go? In 2004 US elections, even after the primaries were over, between just the two leading candidates, they spent more than $500 million. Majority were spent on media publicity (Bush spent $132 million and Kerry spent $94 million). Buying TV spots and multimedia “bracketing”, the candidates make sure that the ads appear on TV morning shows, strategically can be heard while people are driving to work, they are replayed on internet news channels in afternoon, played back in evening news on television and while watching programs during late nights. In addition, thousands of paid volunteers are recruited all over the country and trained for months and paid for by the campaign money. In addition, costs are incurred for travel and events, payroll and consultants, fundraising-mail, and overhead- rent, utilities, insurance, equipment.

With the stakes so high, it is only natural that the richest lot or the candidates with access to the richest lot actually join the mainstream politics – so that in return, as history is witness every year, they can serve the military-industrial interests. 2008 is no different. On one hand we have Hillary Clinton, a woman who has amassed wealth to the tune of more than $109 million dollars during last eight years along with her husband. And far from being a result of the great “American Dream” that afflicted the protagonist of “In Pursuit of Happiness”, Hillary has always had the privilege of growing up in affluent Chicago suburbs, of being a high profile lawyer who has no knowledge of the price of gasoline in her country. Not only does she still parrot the price to be $63 for half a tank (whereas it has actually gone beyond $100 now), she also entirely fabricates the story about how she went to be part of the armed forces and faced targeted attacks by the enemies (an account which has been later regretted by her as being false). Positioning her as the representative of the white working class, she excludes discussing about her own backgrounds that are more distinctly memorable for being on vacation with Oscar de la Renta than for walking the extra mile to unionize the workers. Positioning herself as a potential world leader she talks of teaching lessons to people of Iran and China. Blatant lies, and exclusive privileges as an elitist characterize her during her several addresses where attacking her fellow Democrat Obama has been the single largest ideology she has to offer.

On the other hand, Barack Obama leads the race of the Democrats. Of course it will be too naïve to imagine him as a Black presidential candidate considering that he has been winning the majority of support in a white majoritarian country, voicing the religious sentiments and threatening to bomb Pakistan. While that sounds just stupid, what is not so noble is his clearly elitist background that speaks less of experience (which, contrary to Clinton’s claims, is of no significance for a potential leader), and more of a lack genuine intentions to represent the very people he claims to be leading. Making tall claims of not buying into the Wall Street lobbyists like both Clinton and Republican contender John McCain have, Obama himself has been raising funds worth more than both Clinton and McCain put together. As of March 2008, Obama had raised $234, 745,081, Clinton had raised $189,097,053 and McCain had raised $76,691,826, leading Clinton to take a recent “loan” of additional $5million. On personal front, Obama and his wife reported an annual income of $4.2million in 2007 alone. Of course it is nowhere closer to what the Clintons earned in 2007: $20.4millions!

In the competition among the millionaires to be the world leaders, John McCain, the Republican candidate who has already spent enough to earn his nomination tops them all. True to the hypocritical nature of the Republican fabric, McCain has not persuaded his wife from letting their incomes be public. Cindy McCain who is chair of Hensley & Co controls the family riches of McCains which runs into $36.6million to $53.4million. Additionally, they have several stocks and ownerships in businesses and partnerships.

The Colacracy:

Apart from the obvious differences in the flag colors (blue and red), both parties have nothing unique to offer as truly distinguishable. The differences seem as acutely competitive as the different colors that adorn Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola billboards.

As silly as it may sound, there is nothing historic about the “woman” candidate who runs for the post using her husband’s speech royalties and lobby money. There is nothing historic about the “black” candidate who hobnobs with the rich and amasses the majority “white” money. And there is nothing to look forward to about a “conservative” candidate who is not even liberal about disclosing his family incomes to the people whom he and his wife intend to represent as President and First Lady. Its not surprising that the media have been harping on the “race”, “gender” and “experience” factors while overlooking the most obvious social location: “class”, because the American Empire has been built upon the assurance that it is not a class society and intrinsic to this self-denial is the assertions that new revolutionary measures are unnecessary and illegal. All these candidates coming from the same “class” location would rather play by other means to make appeals, hideously suppressing the facts of their being agents of the same system of exploitation that they apparently are challenging.

For the millions of working class American tax-payers who have become so pathetic with their finances that even the Bush Government is sending them Stimulus Check to spend tax-free money, for the 2 million homeless who search for public spaces that are closed after evening, for the 36.5 million people (12.3% of population) below poverty line, and 46 million people without health insurance, a country of working have-nots class who are debt ridden for generations, such farcical superfluous billion-dollars extravaganza wasted on elections every four years should ideally cause them to feel sick to the stomach. But with the same country where Chevrolet is advertised as the American Revolution and freedom is equated with using remote control to watch television channels competing to reach higher standards of absurdities, it is rather natural that even a Coca-Cola and Pepsi battle would seem to be the only form defining “democracy” in the world. Or did I say, Colacracy?

Remembering Michael Gurevitch

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 06:15:08 -0400

My teacher is no more. Professor Michael Gurevitch passed away this morning.

As I fight my tears in disbelief, I am also smiling at my various imaginings. In my little world of unbridled imaginations, Prof Gurevitch was Woody Allen’s Side Effects and head of McLuhan’s Global Village. He was the moderator of the noise in my world of blogs. He was the caricaturist of the planet myspace. Prof Gurevitch was the professor without the difficult words. He was the guide with the greatest wits. He was a scholar who knew his roots. A teacher ever willing to learn. He was the one who I always wanted to emulate. And I shall always do.

So what if he is no more in this world? Certainly, he will be missed terribly by his most loving family; he is going to be missed on the corridors of the College in Maryland by his colleagues. He is also going to be missed at the committee meetings and classrooms by the graduate students, no doubt.

But more importantly, it is his presence that will be felt forever as media studies will continue to be researched upon. It is his contributions to global comparative analysis that will help shape future perceptions as the world shrinks even further. It is Professor Gurevitch’s staunch refusal to limit to the dichotomies that will pave the way for eliminations of schools of thoughts in a deeply divided world of media theories.

And personally for me, he shall reside in my mind and heart, in my pen and keyboard, in my thoughts and actions, than he will ever likely to be missed.

Before I attended the very first class with him, it was my beloved professor, Dr John W Cordes who offered me an introduction. So deeply in love with Prof Cordes’ class that I was, I was slightly apprehensive of leaving the room for the next. Prof Cordes asked me, “Whose class is next?” I said, “Dr Gurevitch’s”. I remember very vividly the reply given by Prof Cordes: “Oh is it? I am so jealous and you are all so fortunate that you shall now be attending to a lecture by Michael!”.

Prof Cordes is always a man of very few words. Although intensely philosophical at heart, he is always concise, and although deeply theoretical, he spoke s a little. And yet, when he offered such a rich tribute to a living professor that one usually reserves for the legends and myths, I could not wait any longer to meet with Prof Gurevitch.

The professor at the Media Theory class was not visibly impressive. He was not dressed in a suit. He was not articulate in his words. He was not polite enough to be the quintessential gentleman. He was not elite enough to be a full professor of a research university. On the contrary, he was the most casual presence in the classroom. He was extremely sarcastic when it came to most thoughts. He was the one who would turn the student’s question upside down and then ask the student what is meant by turning a question upside down.

For Prof Gurevitch, asking the question was not enough. Asking the right questions was crucial. Watching the TV was not inducing violence. Getting afraid of the televised cops was. Presidential elections were not important enough to be in the media. Media were more important for the presidential candidates to continue the fanfare. Would violence stop if there were no video games? Would everyone be so obsessed with their presidents if the television attended to more important issues?

Is it the driver or the bus that’s saying hello to you when you step inside? Why are people so polite in their interactions? Is it because the society is so highly segmented so as to lead to instrumental relationships? Are we gossiping more about the celebrities than our neighbors? No, gossiping is not bad. We have just been overlooking the scene outside the windows, if at all we open it once in a while.

Prof Gurevitch was equally sarcastic of the ideologies. And no, the ideologies were not in the communist countries. When media focus on President Bush, they are doing the duty of presidential coverage. Why are media considered unfree when they focus on the presidents in a totalitarian regime in those countries?

If media are supposed to make us informed citizens, we can ask how well do they perform their role. Perhaps we can test the people if they are well informed, and the professor would chuckle to himself. Then he would be generous to the ambitious freethinking scholars and say that the level of information and level of informed people perhaps do not provide the required comparative scale, but they merely show there is a disconnect somewhere.

Does the disconnect start at the dining room? Why is it that in the American society, sanctity of privacy is so highly regarded that the public sphere almost goes amiss? Why should people discuss politics over food when they can rather watch television? How different is it in a country like Cuba where people watch televisions in communities? Is it a good thing that people cannot afford individual TV sets? What have we done to community radio? How do we know what the housewives feel as a collective experience? Is there a distinction between citizens and consumers? If the democracy needs citizens, do we have a democracy existing today? Have the media not turned us all into consumers? Why do students remain silent inside the libraries? Why is there a “Do not Talk” signboard at a place where debates must naturally should take place?

Prof Gurevitch was never short of questions. When he asked me what was my blog all about, I asked him to go through it. He stressed that he does not even have any interest to write emails to people. He does not believe cell phones are tools of liberation. And yet, the next time I saw him after that was at an informal gathering of bloggers. I walked upto him to pay him respect and give some company as he was the only old man conspicuous by his presence sitting by the corner leaving few empty benches ahead of him. He said he was there to feel the pulse of the blogs. “Can you lend me the video you took of the blog conference you said you had attended in Washington DC last month?”

Prof Gurevitch decided to remain in my committee. Yes the dissertation is about the blogs, but I shall address the issues of noise, he said. I was absolutely thrilled and remained grateful. I am yet to know if the blogs are the vehicles of some sort of liberation, or some sort of noise, but among many words of wisdom that I have learned from Prof Gurevitch, I ever so closely remember the most is his note of caution to me: “Do everything that you must, but take a pause once in a while in life’s journey and look back. Who knows, you might discover you were wrong in some ways. Then move forward again.”

Prof Gurevitch’s own life was a saga of pause and play. In an academic world of strict schools of thoughts, he had to choose his sides only to later disown them gracefully. Earning a doctoral degree through quantitative empirical analysis only to show merits of theoretical qualitative scholarship later. A Marxist scholar who would on more occasion than one publicly deny the allegation. As the Howard Zinn of the media studies in my view, Prof Gurevitch was deeply saddened by the orthodoxy and elitism pervading the Marxist scholarship today. To the classroom he would often digress from Marx and go beyond to Hegel, and as my good fortune, he would then think for a while and say, “hmm..Saswat would have a clue about Hegel, I am sure”.

He knew throughout of my spiritual and emotional love for Karl Marx and Marxist-Leninist philosophies. He was never the one to dismiss the merits of a system that many in American academia swear has failed. He was more concerned about the collective amnesia regarding the constant failure of the democracy that is being heralded as a success. Democracy was a failure in the US as glaringly as it was in India. Who are the ones researching about it? I brought to him texts that were apolitical in many ways to walk the safe lanes. He instead brought his notepad and wrote down the names of the scholars I had proposed. Gayatri Spivak was one of the many he would subsequently go to read about. Feminism was not the solution, and film studies he would stay clear of, but like the blogs, his initial resistance was not so much a denial of his want, as to test how well committed were the arguments in favor of various schools. Once convinced of the arguments, he would go one step further to provide support. I remember clearly how on the day of defense of my Comprehensive examination he asked me in the end, “I am going to ask you a question that I have not asked anyone before.” I was naturally most curious and very apprehensive. He then went on to say, “Frame a question yourself that you would like to answer because you think the question is important, and then answer it yourself.” I was stunned, and delighted at the same time. Was it not just the greatest compliment I had ever received in my life? Or was it perhaps the most difficult question I had ever faced? Either way, it was a lesson I shall always cherish in life, and a wisdom I shall pass along as I keep growing up.

Prof Gurevitch had a sarcasm towards the so-called free society that never really left him. He knew well that the free society was free depending on how much means of freedom one owns. Closer home, he knew how free he was in the classroom depended on how much was he going to be allowed to be. Even with his public shyness from academic radicalism, he often was branded in political terms. In the entire University of Maryland Systems, he was the most qualified of the professors to be offered the least compensation for his contributions. A couple of years back when I had checked into the public disclosure of annual salaries of the university community, most faculty members who were not even full Professors were being paid three times more the amount than Prof Gurevitch himself. Not that he ever discussed why it was so, but he certainly alluded to the fact that even the professors in the free society needed to buy themselves some grants as well. These are the times when there are way less grants for critical studies research, and lot more funding for administrative researches. In this world of unnecessarily positive fancies, where undergrad students would much rather hear of a beautiful career of television anchoring than learn about media monopolies and exploitations, it was only natural that critical media scholarship was about to slowly go defunct.

A former colleague of the legendary Stuart Hall, Prof Gurevitch relentlessly continued his scathing yet constructive attack on the corporate media and conclusively proved that “Media Studies” was not about studying media alone, it was about ripping apart the media as well. Media have always been active agents of the ruling classes everywhere in the world. It is time to honestly critique their roles and needs. Prof Gurevitch in his inimitable wit suggested a website in the classroom during the time none of us had an idea it existed. Nakednews.com is also a media, in fact it offers the very latest news, except that it is more candid about the fetishism surrounding television news. We laughed, but learned it to be true as well.

Amidst the laughter and learning processes, there are millions of words he spoke, and spoke well. Thousands of examples he offered that brought life to a field yet to be systematized. Evidences he suggested which brought to surface the reality that human beings are not scientific, how can the media be?

And beneath all his teachings, and erudite research, he was forever a simple man who had good words to say about different cultures, a winning way to speak with the students, a collegial comrade to his beloved college. And as I recollect the person who perhaps was closest to him in academia in his later years, Prof Kathy McAdams, saying to me, “Did you just take a class with Michael? Did you not simply love him?” I realize that not only have I been so fortunate as having attended his class, I have always and shall continue to love him as a human being I have been proud to have known in this life.

Iran: The US Myths Perpetuate

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 06:09:18 -0500

By Saswat Pattanayak

The recent news that the American government reports regarding Iran’s nuclear activities were motivated and based on systematic lies is no news.

Back in September 2006, the UN had condemned the US reports as false, erroneous and misleading. Vilmos Cserveny, a director of International Atomic Energy Agency had written a letter addressed to Chairman, US House of Representatives, in clear terms saying that the US report “Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States” (dated 23rd Aug 2006) contained “erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated information”.

The UN’s responses to US report as blatantly motivated were subsequently ignored by the corporate media at that point. The biggest news monopolies chose not to highlight this factor even as they went on raising apprehensions of Iran as the threat to world security. And the people of the western “democracies” naturally went ahead to parrot their oppressive ruling class stances. During the war against Afghan people, they had not raised voice because most of their media told them it was just and appropriate. During the war against Iraqi people, the first world citizens indeed voted their war mongering leaders back to power because they again believed in their militarist war reports. And now, when the tirade turned against Iran, they blindly allowed their corporate media to project Iran as the threat to the world security by consuming overwhelming proportions of anti-Iran coverage.

Following UN objections, not taking chances, the western media imperialists combined their joint efforts. AP, Reuters and AFP (the American, British and French media monopolists) circulated a story that was generated by some French racists. Agence France-Presse, whose single point agenda has been to defame the Islamic world reported in March 2007 by reinventing the myths and published a concocted story that a UN inspector had been denied access to Iran. This story found such coinage and credibility that even in his August tour of Columbia University, Iranian president faced questions from the University President, a learned professor, to this regard.

The fact that the Columbia University President not only believed in the news reports published by AFP and circulated through news channels in the US, but also without feeling the need to investigate into the UN responses, decided to harshly question the morality of President of a sovereign country is evidence enough as to what extent the ordinary working class American people are gullible to the so-called news reports distributed by their trusted media. From Fox to CNN channels, from conservative to liberal publications, American media have historically heeded to false reports, at times deliberately to protect their own grounds, and at times incidentally as a matter of “professional” routine.

Before accusing an individual of committing a crime, the law, order, judiciary and media claim to leave no stones unturned. And yet, in cases such as this where a head of a sovereign state was being accused of preventing UN inspection team, no one thought twice before republishing AFP lies.

The very fact that elected representatives of many western demoncracies thrived through the cold war period by implanting devious designs into independent territories, installed atrocious dictators to suppress peoples movements, forcibly colonized half of the world through territorial and economic invasions is enough to raise collective suspicion that the fourth pillar of such malicious structures, the press, must be largely responsible for continuing the legacy of oppression. And yet, the fact that the enlightened western audience, the successors of the renaissance heritage, the alumni of the ivy leagues allow themselves to be vulnerable to their corporate media productions and they become active participants in reproducing the elites of their countries must raise some basic questions:

1. Media Myths: Even after the UN itself denied the US reports alleging violations of UN norms by Iran, hundreds of thousands of American people continued to believe their media editorials as more accurate than the source they were referring to. It is because the myth that media are independent entities (from administrative interference) looms large in western hemisphere. Media outlets be in Communistic countries, or in Capitalistic countries are active agencies of the political system they work within. If under Communism, they propagate the action plans of the Party and raise awareness among people about socialistic policies, under Capitalism, the media propagate the conflicting situation faced by the ruling party in a multiparty competition and raise awareness about the merits of individualistic market economy. The question then is, how long do people have to wait till they can force the hypocritical media agencies to declare their affiliations (financial, political and ideological)?

2. False News: What happens when a world news is distorted entirely and presented in a form that suits the interests of the ruling class, solely to the detriment of the ruled people? It has always happened, but to take instance of the present case, people are well aware that the ordinary lower economic youths were sent to Iraq to be killed in order to serve the financial interests of the ruling elites in Washington. Even as the 9-11 reports manufactured by the US government were proven to be inconsistent with the reality and even as the government itself is accused of having role in the terrorist act, the even used as an excuse to bomb Iraq was propagated as the only recourse by the media outlets. The president was elected twice based on false news reports circulated nationwide under the preposition of Patriotism. In the recent sleight of hand against Iran, the US media designs were once again defeated when the UN also denied the allegations that its inspectors were forbidden by Iran. In such cases, how long do people have to wait till they can demand the ouster of editors from the news outlets they have been subscribing to, which parrot the official lines while claiming to be independent?

3. People Power: The primary goal of having media or bestowing certain privileges upon journalists is to ensure that people have a platform as wide, or wider than the political parties they allow to administer their affairs over. As years pass by, we notice that the contrary appears to be true. People have been losing their right to know the truth, to seek clarifications and to demand actions using the media platforms. Instead, people are meted out with corporate advertisements to allure and seduce them into remaining permanent features of an exploiting market economy that thrives through sweatshop practices, domestic slavery and private monopolies. Media (TV, Radio, Print, and now Internet) in the capitalistic societies have emerged as extremely necessary vehicles for consumeristic voyeurism. Beyond that, the remaining spaces are filled with outright lies, motivated news items and editorial columns that lack historical insights. Peoples’ participation has possibly increased as is evident through emergence of blogs and independent websites, but most of them anyway rely on the available news items to generate a comment. Hence, the conversation largely then remains within those groups of people that create and recreate the myths in various permutations. The question then is, how long will people have to wait till they can force their governments to restrict corporate advertisements and instead promote popular participation through activism journalism—the only way people power can be transmitted and translated?

Some of my concerns are philosophical in nature. Indeed, probably all are. But if we continue to ignore the roots of our collective human thoughts that’s getting increasingly conformist over the years by remaining content within the parameters of what is provided, than questions over what is required, then possibly we shall be leaving a deeply uncritical and acquiescing world for the future.

Ahmadinejad, Bollinger, Holocaust: the Great American Hypocrisy

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 06:03:52 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University was arguably the most important step taken by a world leader to initiate the global peace that is so much needed in the clearly terrorized world we live in.

Ahmadinejad is a leader of significant importance—chief of a major country and representative of a major world religion-- who was humble enough to accept a university invitation, and tolerant enough to appear in front of the most hostile audience that any academic institute in the world could feel ashamed of. And despite the odds, he was clearly on a mission: to promote the spirit of peace and open the road to desirable dialogue.

So, how was he received at the Land of the Free? First, the New York City Mayor displayed his level of arrogance by refusing Ahmadinejad a visit to 9/11 memorial site. Second, the Columbia University President exhibited unparalleled level of ignorance by verbally abusing the Iranian President. Third, the American President bathed in his self glory by refusing to entertain any possibility of any urgent dialogue.

Columbia: Elite University, Elitist Mindsets:

Columbia University characterized the drama usually associated with the great American Hypocrisy that has led to several wars and ideological confrontations during past many decades. One important way in which the First World countries have justified their position as regards to Freedom of Speech is by boasting about it. To prove that America allows freedom of speech, American administration needs to allow a certain amount of dissent to take place. Both the dissent and the freedom then have to be televised appropriately. Finally, the melodramatic confrontations are then needed to be compared with the economically subjugated world so as to prove an innate superiority in the methods of the free world.

In Ahmadinejad’s visit, all the above aspects were clearly evident. First, he was invited by Columbia University as the speaker. He was invited despite vehement protests from various student groups. This proved the spirit of tolerance that American democracy boasts of. However, critically deconstructing such an obvious reflection, one would fathom that the real reason why he was invited was not so much as “despite”, as was “because” of the protests from various groups of people. He was invited to speak on campus, because of the amount of controversy it would generate. And clearly, Columbia University did not do anything to stop the protests. Indeed, it advertised on its website additional permissions to student groups to create the noise and requested the community to bear with the protests which would continue for the entire day. Such vehement noisy protests where anyone could attribute any ghastly name to another country’s chief showcased a circus that was well planned and organized. Students and other social groups were not protesting against Columbia University (which they could have legitimately done by asking people to boycott a visit to the campus), rather they were enjoying the centrestage of press attention by using placards that could allow them to equate Ahmadinejad with Hitler and use any amount of vulgar slangs to denounce Iranian politics. In a country where peace marchers including octogenarian peacenik grandmothers are imprisoned because of silent protests, the rowdy behaviors from various “free speech” and student groups in front of a university was in fact encouraged.

Why was Ahmadinejad invited to the campus if the university was well aware that there would be thousands of people on the streets to protest? It was because the university was not afraid that they will lose reputation. It was not because the university was going to be boycotted. Not because students who resent Ahmadinejad were going to dissuade potential applicants from joining the campus. After all, a university which invites a “Hitler” naturally was going to be branded as anti-semite and was going to get bad press, and was going to be mocked at. The university was going to lose its own face by inviting someone whom many people on campus considered or even studied as a dictator.

Then why did the Columbia University invite someone as a chief guest who was so deeply hated by many in the campus community? In fact, Ahmadinejad was unique because he was (and continues to be) hated by both conservatives and liberals alike. Even several Free Speech coalitions did not have kind words for him. None of the politically correct historians had good thoughts about him. None of the civil rights organizations thought Ahmadinejad should be tolerated.

Lee Bollinger’s speech answered why: Calling the Iranian President “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated”, even before allowing him an audience, the Columbia University professor proved the invitation was premeditated to be insulting. “You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,” Bollinger called Ahmadinejad. It was with the sole purpose of insulting the Iranian head that Ahmadinejad was invited to speak. The spirit of sheer hatred continued as stealth mockery found resonance throughout Bollinger’s long introduction.

Lee Bollinger who in the mask of being a free speech advocate (Michigan Affirmative Action champion) went all the way to demonstrate how utterly vulgar and autocratic he could be. A proclaimed “free-speech” advocate, Bollinger not only did not feel sorry about Ahmadinejad not being granted the freedom to visit 9/11 site, but he went one step further. Even before Ahmadinejad could speak on his “defense”, the Columbian professor went on verbally attacking the Iranian head as befitting a liar, idiot, rogue and conman.

Bollinger said a number of Columbian graduates were the brave fighters serving the American troop in Iraq. That was spoken in order to praise the American war against the Iraqi people! He asked Iranian President on their behalf why “Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq killing US troops”. Whether it is a proxy war that Iran is fighting in Iraq is a matter of dispute. What, however has been true is that the US fought an unjust war in Iraq and American troops caused much military misconduct that have been quite extensively recorded in recent past. What the Columbia University President should have done was to apologize on behalf of the infamous troop that has caused much distress to the world citizenry by its brazen inhuman treatment of peaceful civilians. Even after prison tortures, and civilian rapes committed by American troops (yes the same “brave” Columbian graduates as cohorts), the highly educated and informed professor proved his agenda of falsehoods and pretensions time and again.

Bollinger continued with his series of malicious attacks that were not evidenced nor called for. He brought to the fore the issue of Iran’s nuclear deal, which suggested his lack of awareness about the matter. Contrary to his accusations against Iran as a country working to create an unsafe world, the UN’s agency (International Atomic Energy Agency) has been in close collaboration with Iran and has found no such threats as being decried by the professor. Inviting a guest, and accusing him and the country he leads in highly derogatory terms and verbally abusing him as insane and unintelligent without even having evidence or knowledge to back up marked the genius of Bollinger. Who does Bollinger quote to support his opinions? French president Sarkozy – a right wing conservative—who apparently has lost patience (according to Bollinger) with Iran. Did such trivial information make sense in an introductory speech provided to “welcome” an international guest?

Bollinger then asked Ahmadinejad, “Why have you made the people of your country vulnerable to sanctions?” If Bollinger had any sense of empathy or understanding, he could have instead asked why do the first world powers foster vulnerable conditions for Iranian civilians. In an unsurpassed level of academic elitism that should ideally call for much loath and disgrace, Professor Bollinger outdid his sense of self-glorification by finally challenging the head of state of Iran to respond to his speech: “Let me close with a comment. Frankly and in all candor, Mr President, I doubt you have the intellectual courage to answer these questions but your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do…I am only a professor who is also a university president, but today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion of what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.”

A huge section of Columbia University audience cheered and clapped to their president’s hate speech and waited gleefully for Ahmadinejad to fail the test. In contrast to the obviously arrogant speech of Bollinger, Ahmadinejad’s talk was pensive, thoughtful, full of insights. Ahmadinejad asserted that he was still an instructor at a university and as an instructor he strived for the whole truth. Apart from the questionable religious wisdom and denial of homosexuality in Iran, Ahmadinejad’s speech was more than an answer to Bollinger’s outlandish accusations. Yes, he did not answer anything “straight”, despite pleading from the university for him to answer in “yes” or “no”. But that was more due to the fact that Islam logic is not necessarily as vertically dismissive as Christian expectations. In every sentence that Ahmadinejad spoke, there was humility, a touch of candor and empathetic understanding. In every sentiment of Ahmadinejad, there was a prayer for collaboration, a hope for global peace, a step towards mutual dialogue. In every answer of Ahmadinejad to the Q/A session, there was an assertion of a world leader who was humble enough to raise historical lessons, and of an educated non-elite who was unafraid to research.

Ahmadinejad was forced to revisit his stance on Holocaust. Clearly he had not come to the US to speak about his views on historical revisionism, but to extend a hand of friendship for future peace pacts. Even at that stage he said he was not a Holocaust denier, what he wanted instead was further research into the area of history that has led the world to prepare for the largest unrest in recent times. Palestine did not fight World War II. Europe did. And why are the Palestinians facing the crisis still? Not an easy answer to this question, and Ahmadinejad sought for further research into this aspect. Talking about the halt in Iranian progress, he dwelt on the root cause of the unrest and insecurity. Why was Iran under sanction? Why did the first world powers withdraw unilaterally after assuring nuclear energy support to Iran? Why should there be limitations imposed on Iran’s scientific endeavors especially when IAEA has not found any problem with Iran’s peaceful nuclear program?

Moreover, Ahmadinejad did not just ask questions that were uncalled for. He offered agreements. Despite the insults and abuses and threats outside the campus building that were encouraged by the university officials, he invited American students to visit Iran, attend the universities and speak with civilians. Whether he would agree to hold a dialogue with the White House regarding resolution of US-Iran disputes? Of course, anytime! Ahmadinejad requested for a peaceful dialogue. “Everything can be resolved over talks. We need to talk”.

White House ignored Ahmadinejad during the rest of his stay. Ahmadinejad even called for a meeting of religious leaders to initiate global peace talks and succeeded. Around 140 religious leaders attended the meeting in New York, with the sole exception of any Jewish leader who refused to attend.

On the Homosexuality Question:

I waited for a few days to study media response to such an uncivilized treatment meted out to a state’s head. The American corporate media of course bathing in its biased glories preferred to maintain the line adopted by Columbia University and at their best, tried to provide a “balanced” perspective to the issue that clearly called for critical intellectual intervention.

Most reports mocked at the ignorance of Ahmadinejad when it came to issue of homosexuality. They chose to play moral pundits while not mentioning how America treats its own LGBT community. The fact that the US has consistently failed to provide for basic human rights to homosexual population even after acknowledging their presence in every sphere in social life here is clearly amiss from all reports that attacked Iran’s condition. “Mr President, in your country, homosexuals are treated in this and that way” has been a standard line of both the Columbia University president and our enlightened western press. Not for once did the educated pause awhile to review the fact that not so long ago American Psychology Association (APA), the famed master of all things research, used to consider homosexuality as an abnormality. And even to this date, the major state religion whose dictums appear on the courtroom walls and classroom prayers has been the single biggest enemy to the cause of the LGBT community.

On the Holocaust Question:

Most amount of time devoted by the university professor in his speech and later on by the university during Q/A session, and by media reports before, during and after the visit of Ahmadinejad focused on the alleged “holocaust denial” of the Iranian head. It has been accused severally that he is an Anti-Semite, like most of anyone we know in the recent history who has challenged the Holocaust issue from different perspectives.

Even as we have succeeded in challenging the legacy of Columbus and George Washington, the only and perhaps the largest event of significance has remained beyond recent review. Bollinger, the academician said there was absolutely no need to do any further research on Holocaust while Ahmadinejad said to presume that research on a topic is already exhausted is to underestimate the power of knowledge itself.

The wisdom which Ahmadinejad brought to the conference hall of the New York based university was clearly demolished to pieces with overriding imposition that calling for research into Holocaust amounts to challenging the truth itself.

The fallacious logic applied by the dominant historical thread about Holocaust is clearly evident in the manner in which they are unwilling to entertain any slightest of suggestions that can be introduced to enrich our collective historical knowledge.

If the leading academicians of the western world are so vehement in their resistance to any further research into one specific historical event, then commonsense implies there is something wrong somewhere. Personally, for me, to deny Holocaust is a crime by itself, and I am sure Ahmadinejad has not committed that crime. However it is equally a crime if we refuse to allow any more research on a historical process that changed the geographical face of the planet. Like Ahmadinejad said, we need to conduct research into every possible field in the world. We do not know whether our beliefs will be restored or quashed. The motive behind conducting a research is not to prove one or the other side. The motive of conducting a research has been to excavate further truths that may or may not unsettle previously known knowledge. On the day of his speech, Professor Ahmadinejad had not forgotten the basics of research methods. Professor Bollinger, had clearly forgotten that. And in all earnest observation, Bollinger behaved every bit unlike a student, unlike a teacher. Where is the zeal to conceal truth coming from? What legacy does Holocaust hold?

This is a crucial question of our times. Let me state that each human being of this planet has a stake in this question and each of us have a moral responsibility to respect the multiple truths that emerge from the researches done, and researches awaiting to be done. Neither the professor at Columbia holds the key to a sole truth, nor the head of Israel, Iran or United States.

If fact be told as has been chronicled by every historian of our age, the truth is the people who are steadfastly holding onto the Holocaust theory are probably the ones to have distorted the truth. That is why we need further research into the field. If truth be told, the truth is the mainstream history by denouncing Stalin and Soviet Communism and trumpeting the capitalistic cause of the age have in fact automatically joined the world of holocaust deniers.

The fact is it was the Red Army which for the first time in the world discovered the Auschwitz camps that led to an understanding of the Holocaust. The fact is when Stalin’s administration tried to send out this message to the first world for it to react, none of the western countries came forward either to help the Red Army or the victims of Hitler’s camps as was required. Quite the contrary, as has been well-evidenced, the truth is Western Europe and America were foremost in denying access to the victims of the Nazi camps.

The truth is when the Vatican learned of the secret chambers, it refused to act against the Nazi powers because the Communists had helped release the victims and for the church, communism as a political theory was more dangerous than Nazism was. The truth is Hitler’s army was heavily funded and in fact sustained by most of the leading business empires of America and Europe that continue to amass wealth and do great businesses worldwide. The capitalists during that time were aiding Hitler because for them badmouthing communism was more important than saving the lives of people who were victims of Hitler’s camps. The truth is those corporations today own most of the media business, most automobile industries. Both Ford and General Motors were aiding the Nazis then, and they are as household names in American families even now.

The truth is that the actual Holocaust deniers are those that have been hesitating to give due credits to Stalin and Red Army for their role in letting the world know about the secret chambers, by saving the lives of the remaining survivors, and by revealing the actual number of Nazi massacres to the world.

The truth is the Red Army, the only brave people who fought Hitler to his death, had put the number of dead as 4 million. This is the statistics that remained the only official figure for more than four decades. There was no question of anyone denying Hitler’s concentration camps. Of these 4 million, overwhelming majority of people were communists and communist sympathizers and fellow travelers. Hitler’s main ire—aided by his western capitalistic sponsors and the church—was against the consolidation of communism in the world. The world embracing communistic philosophy that aimed at redistributing private properties for social good was the biggest threat to the Fascist and Nazi forces that ruled the minds and hearts of rulers of every western imperial power then. Recently the formerly classified British intelligence reports have proven how the UK was a partner in crime with the Nazi forces in imprisoning, torturing and murdering communists during the WW II period. Countless American reports have suggested that the apparent threats of McCarthy seemed like a joke when compared to the actual CIA interventions in the lives of the progressives in the world. Anti-communism was the biggest single weapon that was used by Hitler then and continued till Reagan later. Interestingly, between the both, the fact is the same companies financed their respective empires wholeheartedly for them to rise and shine in power ladders.

However, to erase the fact that Communists were the actual victims of Nazi camps, the attempts on part of conservative religious groups finally led to the revision of the 4 million figure. The revisionist conservative historians conveniently “denied” the camps and its death toll and revised the number from 4 million to a little over 1 million. And the revisionists claimed that the number was much less that 4 million because 1 million of them were the Jews that were killed.

Much before Ahmadinejad proposed for a revision, it was Dr. Franciszek Piper who did revisionist research into the number of prison camps, and his research erased more than 3 million people from the total number. And the Poland’s museum which for four decades mentioned 4 million as the number of people killed by the Nazis was forced to revise the number to 1.1 million because of the revisionist historians.

The sole purpose of reducing the number was to discredit the Soviet role in combating Hitler, and to erase the historical truth about the majority of those who were killed. The majority from 4 million were actually murdered because of political reasons, and if research is led in this direction to actually demonstrate the way the Nazi-Capitalism-Church combine led their ugly war against the communists of that era, much academic curiosities will end up perhaps in suggesting the need for further research into this area of history.

Israel was built on the legacy of Holocaust. Soviet Union was disintegrated on the legacy of Communism, and the Third World was ravaged on the legacy of anti-imperialism. This is our history. We must demand to know why the 3 million victims of Nazi Capitalism were forgotten from the history. We must demand to know why the millions of Red Army soldiers were eminently discredited because they fought the Hitler to his death. We must demand to know why the Vatican and the America and the Europe did not admit the Communists to their countries even after aiding the perpetrators of the biggest genocide in recent world history. We must demand to know why the corporate houses and banks that materialized Hitler’s army and funded it to wipe off millions off the face of earth still continue to dominate businesses. We must demand to know why the inhabitants of the land, the Palestinians still continue to remain dispossessed in their own lands while the plans laid out by the perpetrators have been allowed to succeed to decide on their fates. We must demand to know why intellectually dishonest academicians and historians on their own sweet will decide what constitutes apt to be called a history despite their revising it, and why something will be rejected as history simply because they do not approve of it. We must demand to know. We must demand. History is about us.

Helpful Links:

Ahmadinejad Meets Clerics, and Decibels Drop a Notch

Iranian President Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia University

Film: America and the Holocaust

Film: Amen

POSCO in Orissa - A Case of Global Masters against Local Preys

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 05:59:32 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

Pohang Steel Company (POSCO) operates two of the world's leading steel projects--the Pohang and Gwangyang works, and conducts business in over 60 countries around the globe.

Since last couple of years, POSCO has been setting goals for the economically backward and minerals-rich Orissa. If Vedanta promises the biggest university in the world, POSCO promises the largest steel plant, and the biggest foreign direct investment in history (Rs 51,000 crore). After signing a Memorandum of Understanding with POSCO, Orissa-a largely obscured cultural site for Hindu pilgrims, has now found the biggest reserved location on World Exploitation Map.

According to the MoU signed between the state government and the Korean corporate giant, POSCO will build a 3 million tonne capacity steel plant, blast furnace or Finex route, during the first phase in Paradeep, Orissa between 2007 and 2010, and will expand the final production volume to 12 million tons. The investment proposed is to the tune of US$12 billion, including an initial investment of US$ 3 billion during the first phase, making it the largest steel project to take place in India.

The Orissa government will in turn also grant POSCO mining lease rights for 30 years that will ensure a supply of 600 million tons of iron ore to POSCO, besides granting it permission to export another 400 million tons through its mining partner in the project, BHP Billiton of Australia.

The technical catch

Indian politics does not by itself reach heights of fraudulence. It is enriched by its nexus with international military powers, business houses and elite bureaucracy. In case of POSCO, it is a wise combination of three. South Korea's allegiance to American military-industrial complex is well-known. Indian central government preferring to conduct business worth billions with this camp tells quite a few things about changing preferences on national security issues. In addition, there is no business like selling off one's own lands. And ironically, this is the area where the national government of India has allowed for 100 percent foreign investment.

It primarily means that apart from the private properties that the rich landlord class of India has harbored, the vast land masses in forest and rural areas managed and cared for by the poor in a country that still "lives in villages" is always open for transactions. For the rich class in India, the Constitution provides for rights to their private properties. For the poor, the same Constitution is used by the cunning ruling class to take away every human rights to the communal properties.

Communal properties, like human emotions, are supposed to be priceless. They are not owned, they are guarded. And those that safeguard the communal properties should logically be most loved and cared for. But in a society oppressed under individualistic norms, neither human values nor communal properties are taken care of in the interest of the humanity. Consequently, every bit of natural splendors is put on sale to the favored bidders of the class of privately propertied. It is the rich parasites of India who crave for not just the protection of their own properties but also for making good in dealing with communal properties that they historically have forced the poor to safeguard.

In the current neoliberal schemes of corporate expansions of profiteering sweatshop sectors, "investment" is the civilized term for feudal gains out of enslaved labors of landless guardians.

To the blind profiteers, it does not matter if the inhabitants refuse to part with their lands. It does not even matter if what they promise to the people in lieu of realizing their fast money-making opportunities is unkept. Not just the promises of compensations, but also promises of business goals themselves are kept aside as long as the loot is achieved in a shorter frame.

POSCO is yet another example of such fraud that satisfies the hunger of the government officials and business houses in the short run, and loses sight of the goals no sooner than the booty is collected in desired proportion.

POSCO has sought to ship 400 million tons of iron ore over a period of 30 years out of a captive iron ore mine capable of supplying 600 million tons of ore. And this unacceptable absurdity prevails even in the face of Indian Bureau of Mines estimates which depicts it as impractical proposition. India's iron ore reserves stand at 17,712.4 million tons, which include reserves of Hematite iron ore at 12,317.2 million tons and Magnetite iron ore at 5,395.2 million tons. The total production of iron ore in a fiscal year is around 120 million tones. Out of this, the indigenous consumption is about 60 million tones. The rest, which is used for purpose of exports is about 60 million tons.

It is extremely doubtful that a 30-year sustainability can be achieved out of such projected statistics for POSCO, even if one ignores the fact that local consumption of 200 million tones for 30 years is way shorter than the real market demands in the country today. At the same time, out of the uncommitted iron ore reserves of 2 billion tones that are estimated to be available in Orissa, 1.7 billion tones would be already consumed if the 36 MoUs signed with the Orissa Government are realized. The various MoUs account for 34 million tons of new steel capacity and eventually they will leave only 300 million tons for the POSCO project. Hence, even on the paper, such deals are blatantly shady. With 300 million tons availability, the state government has signed up to supply 600 million tons for POSCO.

POSCO is imagined to be exchanging 30 per cent of the 600 mt ore with iron ore of higher quality by exporting it. Interestingly enough, the company is not expected to be spending anything, since POSCO will not purchase iron ore from Orissa. POSCO has been given mining lease where it will take away iron ore by just paying royalty. Since the existing market rate for one tonne of iron ore ranges from Rs 2000 to Rs 26,000, and POSCO is supposed to take away additional 400 million tons of iron ore, the company will be taking out of Orissa 1000 million tons of iron ore. Even at the manipulated figure of 600 mt (instead of 1000mt), POSCO is slated to take away iron ore worth more than Rs 10 lakh crore. At the minimum price (@ Rs 2000), POSCO will make Rs 1,20,000 crore, and after extraction costs, the net profit will be at least Rs 96,000 crore.

It's a quick-rich trumpet that merely blows about the capacity of 12 million tons per annum making the project not only the biggest in India but one of the biggest in the world. But before we embark upon realizing the 30-year dream of POSCO, we need to take into consideration the immediate needs of the millions of poor still languishing in Orissa.

Just as the blueprint for corporate success may be invalidated in view of statistical impossibilities, the promises for social upliftment are also as bogus as they come. Whereas even most mainstream media coverages acknowledge that at least 20,000 houses will have to be displaced, POSCO on its official website claims the following: "Interestingly, the topographic features like the soil and vegetation of Pohang (Korea) and Paradip (Orissa) are very comparable. The Pohang project was successfully able to rehabilitate 67,000 residents from the project site; this tremendous experience will be replicated in Orissa as well. The site near Paradip is sandy like Pohang, Korea. It also has stretches of forest like Pohang; the latest estimate says that about 2,000 people of 400 households have to be relocated from the site for the Orissa project whereas about 67,000 residents were rehabilitated for the project site in Pohang."

Drawing some grossly (and childishly) ambiguous parallels between Pohang and Paradip, the company lies through its tooth about the number of people going to be affected. First of all, households in the projected sites do not have nuclear families. Secondly, the number 400 is astoundingly rubbish. If the company can lay the foundation of lies on its purported victims, one can imagine the extent of manipulations it can resort to in order to maximize profits.

Even before the project has begun, many people have started fleeing from the area in search of livelihood. In a Times of India report headlined "Clashes over POSCO trigger migration in Orissa" , it is informed even by an organization which supports the plant that, "At least 500 people from the affected villages have migrated over three months either to other states such as Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab or to other districts in Orissa in search of livelihood." That, a company of such international stature even can afford to ignore the actual number of people who are going to be affected, tells quite much about the things yet to unfold.

And this is not even the beginning of the ordeal for the local poor. Some can of course migrate to other states once they know in advance that the land-grabbers are approaching. But the majority of potential victims are yet clueless. This is because, as of June of 2007, the Korean firm had acquired only 1,135 acres of land out of total 4,000 acres it requires for the project. So whose turn is it going to be next in both the plant site and the mining region? And what options are there for the people? To declare themselves as immigrants in their own lands or just displaced (to homelessness)?

What needs to be debated?

POSCO issue has generated lots of debates. On the face of it most engaged in the discussions are either heartily welcoming of it as a panacea, or are surprised by the manner it has been able to hoodwink the people. Of course those that consider it to be a cure-all, have a stake in the culminated public perception that private capital is after all the way to go.

But what we need to deconstruct are the larger views held by those that oppose POSCO. Why a state government should purchase land for private concerns has surprised many. Bimal Jalan , a current Member of Parliament and formerly Governor of Reserve Bank of India says in an email response: "So far as land acquisition is concerned, it is not desirable for a state government to get directly involved in the purchase of land for a private company-unless there is an overwhelming public interest in doing so."

Such a view assumes, first that it is alright for the state to be a property pimp for private profiteers with certain conditions. Naturally such conditions keep changing based on who decides what is in the public interest. Ironically the most people who decide the "public interest" are the same bunch of state bureaucrats, and hence it is only a matter of their differential preferences over the company to which they intend to hand over the land, than any principled opposition against mass subjugation. Secondly, Jalan's comments are merely normative and they do not endorse a plan of action, something which none of the political parties are really doing anything about today in India.

The irony of POSCO crisis is that it has been boiled down into a moral concern. Either one is ethically opposed to it with a disdain, or looking forward to it as a magic potion. The reality is this crisis was long time coming and it must be utilized as a historical unfolding that requires critical attention. What is meant by this is that terms such as FDI, SEZ, etc., are merely coinages to grant legitimacy to the intent of the capitalists, than to acknowledge these as tools of the haves-class to wage war against the landless.

Shailesh Gandhi, leading RTI activist while vehemently opposing POSCO offers quite a few sound arguments: "The top priority of India must be provision of livelihood, and if any concessions have to be given, they should be linked to livelihood generation. Instead large businesses are being given great advantages, solely on the ground of large capital and the equity market is the major criterion of health of the economy after GDP." Here, the assumption is that India is indeed a socialist economy that needs to have its priorities straight to cater to the interest of the "livelihood generation".

One of the basic problems, then lies with the manner in which we perceive the Indian nation. Most liberal voices indeed still maintain the primary preposition that the state works for the people. Starting from such a hypothesis, they offer various solutions as regards to what subsequently then, the state should do in order to benefit the larger mass.

Absent from the entire equation of romanticized version of state patriotism is the real question of political economy. This is no hidden knowledge that after the departure of the British, the Indian state has consistently worked for the interest of the rich class that in its turn promoted the ruling elites. For more than four decades, the state served the interests of the propertied class in every way possible while etching out half-hearted five-year plans that remained largely devoid of sensible implementations. The stress on agrarian economy as a primary sector was also conducted to maintain the economic disparities, not to industrialize the needs of the people on their own lands. When the time came for state assistance to industrialize sectors, then domestic capitalist classes were given free hand to choose and create industries on their own terms. As a result, the houses of Tatas, Birlas, Dalmiyas, Singhanias, Thappars, Ambanis etc increased their shares on public lands.

In the early 90's what transpired was nothing groundbreaking, and yet the era of liberalization or "free market" in India was hailed as though it was a break from the tradition. There were celebrations over the end of what one called the "license raj". Manmohan Singh was hailed as some architect of this new economy. And the non-Congress parties complimented Singh on this bold step that was perceived to be a break from Congress tradition.

The reality is Singh had merely continued the tradition of the ruling class interests of the country. The reason why even the BJP and its likes of right wing interests did not have much issues with liberalization was that they were in fact waiting for this to happen. Indeed, one might say that BJP was a creation of the liberalization process. It was only when the domestic capitalist classes of India decided to expand their business interests globally to earn profits in international currency, that the 'license raj' (which was so far maintained to strengthen the private business interest nationally) posed as a stumbling block.

And lo and behold! With the advent of MacMohan (pun intended!) policies, the private business concerns in India went up for celebrations; they were able to plant a bunch of bribe-seeking politicians (as colorfully illustrated by Tehelka, etc.) to do what they were best at doing: sell off the nationalized industries at dirt cheap prices to the capitalistic combines.

And they offered a sophisticated name to manipulate popular confidence in such hideous transactions: Disinvestment (and even established a ministry after such a name). Just as "Foreign Direct Investment" had become an accepted terminology, instead of calling it "Imperialistic Interests", likewise "Disinvestment" became legitimized which should have been termed "Loot-Raj" for that is exactly what was witnessed following such a political action.

The primary motive behind loot-raj was of course to strengthen the imperialistic interests. In the nicety of "swim together, sink together", the coalition of capitalistic class members was a necessity to fulfill the works they had set out to perform.

It would be extremely naïve at this point or any other to either be hopeful of the Indian state administration or their capitalistic partners, both at home and abroad, to either concede to popular demands or to look after the welfare of the people.

Indeed, it is stupid at the best, and reactionary at the worst to expect that things will change through requests, forums, petitions, and any sort of addressing to the India-POSCO combines. At the best they should be lauded for what they have set out to do, that is, carrying out the task of fulfilling their class interests.

Some friends of the progressive forces have raised the issue of "compensation for rehabilitation of displaced people". This is again unwarranted because by framing the phrase thus, we tend to really legitimize a few things: we end up assuming that people are truly displaced, that they are really in need of rehabilitation, and that higher compensation should prove useful.

This is an extremely dangerous approach that will merely work to pacify local agitation among people whereas the need is to organize workers movement world over. Private capital such as POSCO's always begins from a gaining ground. That is to say, on the negotiation table, POSCO will always emerge the winner. There is no telling why they will be in a position to increase the compensation amount for people. Many political parties that are opposing POSCO, chiefly the left parties in India, are demanding higher compensations, than actually opposing the political system that has given rise to such a crisis. In response, POSCO with its massive funds has not only opened local offices in Kujang, it has also created an Oriya website to pacify the people and through its excellent public relations skills it has been able to partially convince the local people that its compensation package is the best.

Compensations are issues of consequences, not of cause. These are consequences within the capitalistic ruling terminology. Just as "charity" is. By such terms it is denoted that the rich can keep the poor pacified by throwing bread crumbs at them and getting rid of their own guilt (if any) or getting absolved of their crimes. A renowned Columbia University Professor of Economics and Law Jagdish Bhagwati suggests that:

"I would encourage the foreign multinationals to add to the benefits that their commercial activity must generally speaking bring to Orissa by also doing what is called Corporate Social Responsibility. It has now become a tradition for a couple of decades for the big firms to do something altruistic for the community in which they are situated. For example, building a playground, giving funds to local primary schools for supplies, aiding the destitute etc. Orissa authorities can surely suggest to the multinationals to do this, allowing them the choice of programs that they would like to support. Many of us individuals do the same, of course, and I call it ISR, Individual Social Responsibility. Thus, speaking for myself, I believe that my life's work as a Professor has been enormously helpful to the countless students I have trained. But I still do ISR, giving away large sums of money to the local church near Columbia University to support its program on helping the homeless rehabilitate themselves, and to organizations such as CRY in India."

Such pathological approach to social development has at its roots two assumptions: one, that everything is alright at the level of system status quo, meaning that it is not the political economic system that needs to be the issue, rather the trickling consequences that need to be taken care of, and two, those that are wronged need only to be rehabilitated with charity than be organized to take equal claims.

Of course any charity money such as "ISR" as described by Bhagwati are mere leftover funds and hence they are from the outset not meant to empower the dispossessed. And no empowerment deals with power issues where it is reduced to an economic dependence or slavery. Churches and NGOs do their great bit in caging peoples' aspirations to the basic minimum and such CSRs or ISRs are the primary factors encouraging such social mishaps.

POSCO has also heeded to calls from the elite intellectuals, the famous NRI propertied classes of professors and scientists in the Europe and the US, who stand to gain from an India modeled after the countries where they currently live and fantasize about capitalism as the solution. The Columbia professor in question should have only looked at the Bronx and Brooklyn poverty and Manhattan and Queens homelessness to offer solutions other than charity in the same city he "trains" countless students in.

The path of neoliberalism is strewn with surreptitious moves in action and words. In action, it aims to allow only a handful members of the rich class to dominate over the mass of landless while colluding with their active collaborators drawn from the sections of people it would declare "upper middle class". In words, neoliberalism is depicted by fraudulent and cunning lexicon of comforting terms that are projected as unalterable normatives. Little wonder that words such as "charity" are associated with the rich class as a greatly generous act, and words such as beggary or stealing associated with the poor mass are denounced as lowly acts, without deconstructing that if not for formation of a class of charity actors, there would have been no scope for beggars and "thieves".

Instead of conscious efforts to study the genealogy of private properties that inevitably will, shall and should give rise to the crisis of capitalism where poor people are forced to choose between money in charities or jail terms, the sad and effete intellectuals that capitalism produces aplenty are concerned about solving the problems that POSCOs of the world face from the disgruntled masses.

Reuters provide its typical coverage on such an issue. In an article headlined, "Delays raise cost of POSCO's Orissa steel plant" , it sympathizes with the losses that POSCO has to bear due to people's unrest in the region. In the typical fashion characteristic of corporate media, the story interviews the POSCO bosses (in this case, POSCO-India's chairman and managing director Soungsik Cho), not the locals.

The displacement of more than 20,000 people does not become part of the headlines even in the most sensational of media reports. Even the fact that those workers who grow betel vines on state owned forest land would not be eligible for any financial package, does not raise enough eyebrows. Moreover the most necessary debate about financial packages themselves goes amiss from larger discourse.

Cultural Strategies of Class Society

Whereas the urban, upper class culture understands the language of success, achievement, media coverage, celebrity status, Americanization, globalization, or even nationalistic pride, there are uniquely guarded cultural traits among the indigenous peoples everywhere as well. The majority of people dwelling in the forest regions are intelligent, but illiterate, hardworking but unsuccessful, loyal but candidly honest as well. As a result, although they are able to carve out lives in the worst of weather, withstanding the natural onslaughts without regular assistance of the state, build their own homes without qualifying to receive bank loans, they are also almost usually straightforward in their dissent, vocal in protests and possessive when it comes to the rivers, and lands.

The corporate culture of urban India has similar socio-cultural backgrounds as that of their Korean counterparts. It is not surprising that the agony of combating conflicts raised by the lowbrow masses becomes equally intolerable to the capitalist fraternity. The crucial difference that lies between the poor and "backward" rural Orissa population, and the ambitious upper middle class Indians and Koreans is founded on economy, but is consolidated on cultural givens perpetuated by their respective class characters.

The problem would have perhaps been much less or perhaps grown more desirably complicated, had the have-nots class been deciding what would hold good for the haves-class. For example, if the victims of POSCO would have to prescribe what would be better for the development of the world, they could start with advocating for better irrigation projects, small scale village cooperatives, and a ban on high-rises (to prevent unauthorized use of groundwater). There would always be shades of regressive and progressive thoughts when such idea would be entertained. Some villagers would indeed insist on reinforcing superstitions-even as most are merely based on the capitalist-sexist order of a propertied patriarchy.

However, the reality is the voices from the forests are choked by the mainstream media. With the media following their internal rules of thumb when it comes to define the legitimate sources for airing opinions (bureaucrats, business authorities), and they forming the larger framework for what is considered to be commonsense knowledge today, it is but natural that the struggle is entirely lopsided in favor of the educated opportunists.

In POSCO, it is still a 'Heads I Win, Tails You Lose' situation for the combine of ruling politicians, parasitical bureaucrats and the greedy capitalists. If the villagers don't cooperate, they will continue to face the wrath of the state. And now that they have displayed disdain against the local police who serve as custodian of capitalistic interests, the situation is merely going to be worse for the dissenting people. If they succeed at preventing the lands from being exploited, it is they and their family members who must endure the violence on their dignity for generations to come. And if they allow for the state to hoodwink them off their right to land, they will naturally be shoved to obscurity after some bundles of cash are thrown at them.

Those that advocate compensation theory for the displaced naturally assume that money holds greater value in society than human dignity. This is not entirely dramatic, since this holds true for many upper class people. But to conclude that the same notions of cut-throat competitiveness and zeal to walk upon corpses to climb power ladders are inherent with every villager is a dangerous presumption.

And in the maddening race to justify such presumptions as rules that can be generalized on behalf of the humanity, the first casualty/victim of inhuman greed often is the nature herself. Environmental concerns are relegated to backstage entirely by the same consciousness that denies Darwin and Global Warming. As a result, the long standing battle between the people out to protect their land, forest and river and the antagonized business class gets to the next level. Resorting to corruption of mind and morals, the rich class gets the various environmental boards to work for it.

No wonder, the State Pollution Control Board at Bhubaneswar even went ahead and gave clean chit to POSCO, much to the ire of the protesters. The protestors under the banner of a voluntary organization, Navnirmanamiti, had been vehemently opposing the issuance of a No Objection Certificate (NOC). "We are opposing the issuance of the NOC to POSCO by the State Pollution Control Board. We also want to know, on what basis the public hearing on the issue was held, as majority of the people who will be affected by the project were not present during the hearing," said Akshya Kumar, convener of a voluntary organization to the local media.

Rich get richer as poor state becomes poorer

Amidst the growing presence of POSCO, we must not lose focus of the great progress that people have been making in opposition to the global monster. Protests against POSCO have reached significant scales and it has rendered the state government entirely helpless. Not wanting to repeat the Kalinga Nagar massacres, the government has instead resorted to the trickery that modern day democracies are famous for. Since the people could not be convinced to give up their lands, the Naveen Patnaik regime has offered 3500 acre of government land to POSCO just adjacent to the farm-lands of the threatened cultivators in a bid to compel them to sell away their rights to POSCO, else to face greater crisis. Bigger damages are inevitable since industrial wastes would not let the farmers live in peace in the same locality.

In a micro level study by Dr. M.Mishra, titled, "Health Cost of Industrial Pollution in Angul-Talcher Industrial Area in Orissa, India" , it was found that "economy forces change on the environment, which in turn reacts back forcing unforeseen changes on the economy", leading to people of Angul-Talcher sustaining a total health damage of Rs.1775.48 millions, per annum on an average.

Although the people bear the brunt of ecological disturbances, POSCO does not even pay its costs. POSCO plant won't have to worry about electricity or water, because it will be given the facilities by the state. It has already been authorized to produce electricity out of coal mines that it will be provided with; meaning it will not be paying for the coal. Even without a SEZ status, POSCO has been given enough leverages, also on the front of water. No estimates have been conducted as to the amount of water that will be utilized and of its source, in a drought-ridden state. Now that SEZ status is part of the MoU, naturally enough, POSCO will evade all the taxes even while exploiting the natural resources preserved so far by the population it aims to displace.

The Left front has opposed POSCO so far in as symbolic terms as they go. Only after the cat has spilled the milk, the tears have started flowing in. Prakash Karat said to The Hindu that, "We are not against FDI in the mining sector. But the country's mineral policy is faulty as it allows loot of our mineral wealth by foreign companies. Unless we challenge the country's mineral policy, we cannot fight the POSCO deal." So the official Left is not indeed opposed to Imperialism in practice, only that they want it in moderation. Such imbecile logic can only held in jest, not in contempt. The questions being asked in relation to POSCO are still industry-defined, not people-driven.

When it comes to people, questions are being asked related to the number of jobs that will be generated. As misleading the numbers can be, the neoliberal promoters always champion some or the other numerical value to put forward their advocacy. In this case, the talks of annual growth rates will come later perhaps, for now POSCO and Naveen Patnaik administration claim they will be providing direct jobs to 13,000 people, and 35,000 will get indirectly benefited. The quality of jobs are not discussed anywhere, for a state which is identified by its seasonal and disguised unemployment rates. Of course all these numbers include the daily wage laborers, the carpenters and tea-stall boys. Likewise another figure doing the rounds is how the state will gain Rs 22,500 crore in 30 years time and the central government making Rs 89,000 crores in that time period. This amounts to a total Rs 1,11,500 crores for 30 years. Of course this so-called net gain will entirely be used up in the process of granting of SEZ status to POSCO. And all this much ado for nothing is going to be in contrast to the Rs 10,00,000 crores worth of iron ore that Orissa will be giving away to POSCO, not to mention more than 6,000 acres of land, complimentary water, electricity, roads and railways.

Orissa is yet again getting prepared to be massively exploited. But that is just the beginning of the ordeal. What remains to be seen is the extent to which imperialistic designs would continue to make inroads by either taking over, or giving cover to the domestic business partners in areas where the masses are likely to be perished under dual oppression.

(Originally published in Radical Notes)

Chavez and RCTV: Whose Media is the Question

Thu, 31 May 2007 05:51:04 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Pictures here.

The world media, and certainly the bloggers have been taking quite some notice of what is happening in the backdrop of a new media world. How much of control can be exerted on the traditional media when there are newer avenues still open out there in the forms of YouTube and weblogs? Indeed RCTV is now online already.

Moreover, what logic can be justified in a decision to shut down the messengers? And in our age of television, as a blogger rightly asks, indeed what could be the worst that can happen: shutting down of a TV Station!

Wait, there is even more. The Drudge Report says Chavez may shut down yet another station and readers are aghast.

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

What defense has Chavez got?

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

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

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

“President Hugo Chavez is shutting down a RW CIA operation mistakenly called a "TV" station and not only does he have a perfect right to do that, it's his patriotic DUTY to do so. For six years this RW nest of snakes has been trying to overthrow a DEMOCRATICALLY elected leader. This so-called TV station helped the coup in 2002 and they have never stopped aiding covert US forces since then. He gave them plenty of warnings but they just kept up their SHIT! It is time for the FASCIST media to get it thru there head that everybody is getting sick and tired of their FAKE NEWS CHANNELS which are being used to overthrow governments by creating FAKE CIA protests. This tactic which started in 1953 when it was used against Iran, has caused nothing but trouble for US credibility. In other words IT'S NOT WORKING ANYMORE! Hugo Chavez was legally elected and he has duty to protect his people from covert attacks by other countries. RCTV is a threat to Venezuela's national security. Personally I think just shutting it down was being WAY TO NICE! The "reporters" cough cough, should be THROWN IN PRISON FOR TREASON! This should be a message to all in the FAKE MEDIA and their counterpart organizations...

YOU ARE CRIMINALS and you are not getting away with this crap anymore. If any "REAL" people are upset with the shutting down of the CIA front TV station it's only because they will miss their soaps. That can be fixed and I'm sure Chavez plans to do that. Hugo Chavez is doing a bang up job for his people. He's paid off their debt. and for that alone he needs to be supported by all good people. All you SELFISH GREEDY RW CRIMINALS can go right to HELL! GOD BLESS HUGO CHAVEZ!”

The same form of defense goes on with another usual Left Spin: Jo Swift says, This TV station is a company that would not get a license in other democracies, including the United States.

Swift even says the story is “framed” as a simple matter of censorship and that the US Media has a Spin to it in order to accelerate the opposition against Chavez. (Ironically, at the same time, the right-wing bloggers are saying the US Media has a liberal spin that decides not to cover it as much as it should be).

The language of revolution:

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is Class War!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To end with Che Guevera (who called himself “Stalin II” and had an unwavering support for revolutionary goals without getting perturbed by the first world cultural definitions and never felt ashamed of his warring radical declarations that have been the most vociferous ones we have ever heard) once said:

“The revolutionary, the ideological motor force of the revolution within the party, is consumed by uninterrupted activity that comes to an end only with death, unless the construction of socialism is accomplished on a world scale. If one’s revolutionary zeal is blunted when the most urgent tasks have been accomplished on a local scale and one forgets about proletarian internationalism, the revolution one leads will cease to be a driving force and sink into a comfortable drowsiness that imperialism, our irreconcilable enemy, will utilize to gain ground. Proletarian internationalism is a duty, but it is also a revolutionary necessity. This is the way we educate our people.”

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

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

Beyond the Judiciary - Reservation as Reparation

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 05:47:47 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

Written for Radical Notes

"The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expressions of the dominant material relations, the dominant material relations grasped as ideas; hence of the relations which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance" (Marx and Engels).

The recent Supreme Court of India decision imposing a stay on the implementation of the 27 percent reservation for the "other backward classes" (OBCs) in elite institutions is a desperate attempt to secure a few public institutions exclusively for the 'meritorious' few, whose merit rests on accumulated wealth, connections and opportunities. This is also an attempt to draw a limit to the concessions that a neoliberal regime can admit (for the sake of public legitimacy) against capitalism's Malthusian values which it is supposed to protect. Already the ruling classes in India - the capitalists and their political and institutional henchmen have been troubled by the growing demand for affirmative action in the private sector. The SC decision comes as a relief for the executive and the legislature, who are formally bound to local interests and pressure. On the other hand, the judiciary is above and beyond every democratic and institutional binding, thus can be more consistent in its approach. Even if the Indian government's attempt to solicit the opinion of a constitutional bench to overrule the two judges bench decision result in the implementation of the reservations, the present judgment comes as a clear warning - this far and no further!

Here we will address the above issues from two disparate quarters: one, from the lens of the Supreme Court itself, since it appears like the judiciary might have acted here almost independently (considering all the criticisms it has been receiving from political parties), and two, from the perspective of the class society in India, at a more micro level.

Judicial Elitism

If we agree that despite all the technological progresses that should have made life for everyone way easier in the planet, the world is still in a despicable state suffering from unjust social order where majority of the human population is at the receiving end-afflicted by poverty, unemployment, homelessness-across countries, then something somewhere has gone really wrong. And perhaps to set things correct, to offer not mere sacred guidelines but forceful means to implement them, the societies have formed relatively autonomous judicial systems, which are considered essential for establishing the much-revered rule of law. Apparently the judiciary comprises the wiser of the lots deciding over how we are all going to lead lives, when there are disputes and conflicts.

However, the reality is that the revered judiciary for most comprises either people who are close to power structure (when they are selected by the government), or people who get there through sheer academic elitism (by virtue of their access to top law schools). In either case, the judiciary then does not necessarily, and very rarely comprise people, enriched by their varied experiences of social failures in life through which they understand the complexities of living conditions. Often times they are fed through to good schools and better jobs by utilizing their family's Old Boys Networks. Most often the judges then reflect the interests of the upper social strata of the society - becoming in themselves, the rich, creamy layer. Hence, even when they seem charitable, it is charity that is expected 'normally' from these strata.

The basic agenda before the judiciary is to deliberate on what is the best way of maintaining the status quo within a given legal and institutional framework. Revolution cannot be enacted by the judges - on the contrary, when a revolution or any grand change seems imminent, it rests upon the judiciary to make it jurisprudentially 'normal', legal and systemically palatable.

On the other hand, one of the basic elements in the conception of peoples' movements, howsoever moderate, is their challenge to the institutionalization and alienation of rules from popular scrutiny and control, even if they are not explicitly against them. This aspect puts them in conflict with the 'rulers', i.e. those who oversee the implementation of these rules. Naturally, every time the activists land at the court's door for justice, by this very act itself they fail their cause, upholding the 'sanctity' of the court or the jurisprudential policing. The court as the arbitrator appointed by the system to negotiate between the system and peoples can legitimately do anything. It has famously disgraced millions of people attached to their landless movements time and again. It is because of the court that displaced peoples (a la Narmada) do not receive any justice. It is because of the court that the high-rises are still allowed to exploit reservoirs worldwide. It is thanks to the court that no ruling has ever banned the police from attacking the workers when they stage a protest against the exploiting bosses. In fact, it is the court alone that has prevented the working class strikes from being legal.

If the society has made any headways in its civilizational history - if it has forced even a faint "sense" of equality among men and women, and among the races of people-it is because of the thousands of movements outside the courtroom-and, always against the prevailing social order. A court merely observes the situations outside to safeguard its own interests inside, because the court often consists of the same class of people that become the object of protests. As the agreements are reached outside, the rulings are made inside-which is why the court is always for months (or weeks) delayed in taking decisions. In the present case, let's wait till August, the judges have cautiously remarked.

Who's Afraid of the Class Society in India?

For, it is outside the courtroom, the realities are more apparent, as they are unmediated by the jurisprudential exactitude, which trims down the realities to fit them in the judges' learned sense. After all, most people do not pretend to be either wise or learned. In a country like India, where fifty percent of women and 35% of all people are sheer illiterate, people have been even instructed that they are not learned. And since wisdom in the age of information warfare is constituted of how much one succeeds in reading books and rulebooks, and not in reading people and situations, the large majority of Indian population is considered to be object, not subject of knowledge, of power.

How else can the country still be managing itself to be riding a racist power ladder since six decades of its "independence" now? How else can one rationalize why the judges could have ignored what the world could not any longer - that casteism in India is racist in nature. Just one week prior to a display of the Indian Supreme Court's learned ignorance, the United Nations had already recognized in no uncertain terms that India carried on a tradition of racism against the lower castes of people. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) voiced its feeble protests against India being a country that "systematically denies Dalit rights at home", even as the "learned" creamy smart bunch of Indian delegates at the UN debated over the difference between caste and race, confirming that they can be moral "pundits" over race matters, but will disown their roles in caste oppressions.

The seemingly unwise, ignorant fools of India - that comprises most of us who do not appreciate the fact that getting an entry into one of the elite institutions like an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) or Indian Institute of Management (IIM) has anything whatsoever to do with one's ability to showcase more merit than others - are obviously adopting a regressive path somewhere. How else can one justify the almost complete and continued monopolization of upper castes in India's power corridors, even as they constitute a tiny percentage of the population? Whose country did we wrest for when the struggle was against colonialism? A country that would have gone back to the elite bureaucrats of the Raj or a country that sought for social equality among classes of people - divided along the line of castes and religions by historical ruling elites?

A mantra of India's Independence has been well played now - and one can say enough played now - to evoke ringtones and create a thriving industry called Bollywood. But it sure is a sense of humor we could do well without. India continues to be oppressed by a small elite which is a mirror image of their counterparts during the colonial period - a group of people who believe that only a certain segment of population can be allowed to flourish. A group that thrives on a class society that makes impossible to bridge the gap between mental and manual labor. In fact, it thrives because it maintains a relationship of slavery - in which the manual workers are the slaves. In a land predominantly agricultural, India is in fact a sorry country of its slaves-where by its own official estimates, 111,000 peasants committed suicide last decade-even as the slave masters continued to climb corporate ladders in their age of "globalization". Definitely, this slavery is modernized today - with such a big number of slaves in reserve, you are not required to feed them continuously. The capitalist "hire and fire" machine is very convenient, indeed.

The official Republic of India is the country of slaves and untouchability - one in which discriminations used to be part of an unofficial public policy (until now - after the court decision, it is already official). That is, the Nehruvian dreams had drafted on its mammoth constitution certain sections along the line of abolishing untouchability. In doing so, the racists of India also smartly got rid of their age-old guilt trips arising out of their practice of untouchability. They created cultural images of untouchability existing only in the village lines of drawing water from the well. And silently they went on creating domestic slaves of the manual servants from the lower caste people in their high-rise buildings. They declared that in rural schools, now everyone was free to study and anyone who discriminates against others based on their caste will be penalized. Because they knew they would never enter those schools anyway-schools without blackboard, furniture and most of the times a teacher. Instead they created their own private English medium schools and created a reservation policy for students to enter into their elite technical institutes.

Who deserves reservations?

The progressive reservation policies - be it for SC/ST or OBCs; for the women, or for the people with disabilities-are of course different from the other form of reservations that exist without a debate - for the Non-Resident Rich Indians who call themselves "India Inc" and for the Indian Rich who are invited to buy the seats reserved only for those who can afford them.

The rest of the seats, they call comprises for the students with 'merit'. No surprises to be here, considering that among other grand narratives of India's entity (such as independence, liberalization, software giant, knowledge powerhouse, superpower for 2012 etc), this merit proposal fits rather beautifully. After all how can a country claim itself to be a "giant" without saying it has done so through merit!

India is indeed a giant-only one that has surged forward through perishing under its wheels of fortune, the millions of hungry and homeless it always chooses to ignore. After all, giants emerge only in this vicious manner - by gulping down anything that comes on their way. India has almost perfected that art by now, in refusing its people the land they deserve, by refusing its students the access they require, by eliminating its dissenters from its public and private press discourses.

The current discourse around reservations is quite interesting. Indeed no political party seems to be agreeing with the judiciary. So, suddenly have all the political parties gone progressive in India? What is at stake here?

In a simplistic fashion, possibly it is true that the political protests are in part to their apparently temporary loss of power. After all, even with legislative approvals, how could the court nullify the government decision? These protesters still have not got over the shock over this tacit powerlessness, far from realizing that it is they that hold the court to be a sacrosanct institution where they could run to every time they had a conflict over state water policies. Every time the government utilized the court to replace peoples' protests into policy matters. So whenever in India (or elsewhere in the world likewise) people took up a movement to destabilize the government system, the ruling party and the opposition together rushed to the court in the pretext of granting people justice, whereas all they do is to convert the revolutionary spirits into a "wait-n-watch" policy matter. They took away the issue from the people and gave it to the court. And here we have to realize that this "powerlessness" is actually as much a gimmick as any other power rationales are.

Remember how the Kings used to rule over their states in the bygone days. They would address their resenting masses that the Brahmins will decide the issue, and get absolved of the responsibilities thereon. The Brahmins of course were always in the King's favor. It would be quite unnatural otherwise-except in cases where the Brahmins themselves resolved to be the kings.

The high priests of those days have now occupied the IITs, IIMs, and National Law School at Bangalore. These are the ones now advising the Kings - the political parties. That is their assigned role (being part of the "three pillars") because they want the desired positions of security, money and power. It's true that we know what the priests want. The question, is what do the Kings want?

The political parties of Indian parliament are not in difference with each other. After all, with all the chair-flinging incidents they still are together under the same roof. This is because what brings them together is of a greater value than that, which could force them separate. What values does their unity bring? Why the political parties - despite their most fundamental differences in their agenda sheets-stay together along with their pillar partners - judiciary and the press - is because they can form their so-called "democracy" system only when they stick together. If the "executive", "legislature", "judiciary" and "the press" do not stay together who will each run to when they face peoples' wrath? Who will play the Brahmin when the time comes?

Officially, a prime minister of president or Supreme Court judge or mainstream media editor or any of their corporate investors are claimed to be different "check and balance" corridors of power. In fact at this mass deception too, they play out the acts very well. They have a question hour (get paid for asking questions on behalf of people), they have public interest litigation (what has public interest got to do with the court, anyway?), they have a letter to the editor (views that are of no consequences whatsoever), and they have corporate social responsibility (what's that?). These are conscious and deliberate efforts to normalize their operations in the interest of the ruling system of which they are a part. No matter if they change political parties or newspapers or corporate houses or departmental bureaucratic divisions - they are the cohorts of the same batch of rulers that must "swim together or sink together".

Of course they would prefer to swim together. And in this larger context of reservations, especially so.

What is important is not why the judges came up with such a decision (which is a natural class-alliance issue), but the more pressing question is how did they get away with making this decision? Were they not afraid of the people outside - that majority of people in whose favor a contrary decision was supposed to be taken? Were they not taking a chance with the Parliament-that sacred body of legislators who had already taken a decision? The answer is neither.

And in fact, quite the contrary. Judiciary has been once again used by the government to do what it always wanted to: to provide an illusion of equality while maintaining the status of inequality. The parliamentary decision last December had come with pressure to answer back to the constituencies of OBCs. Once the pressure was off, the government rushed to the judiciary with ill-filled papers of 1931 (as an excuse) to reverse the legislation. And the two-bench committee did exactly as per the governmental wish. Like the Brahmins of the royal era, the judicial priests knew that they were the last resort of blinded wisdom.

Such macabre dramas play out in our life everyday. One needs no reading of Arthashastra or of The Prince to learn the art of governance. We are acutely aware of the true faces of power accumulating politicians, corrupt judges, greedy business houses and the corporate press - and we are well aware how despite the façade of apparent disagreements, they all gel so well as to unite together against the majority of people by creating an elite commonsense.

The opposition to reservations in India is part of the elite commonsense. The judges got away with such decisions because they knew they would be protected only if they do so. The larger Indian media have been harping on the need to abolish reservations, so also the top administrators and corporate kingpins. From the editors, to bureaucrats to industrial leaders-majority of them do not just incidentally happen to be belonging to the higher castes, in fact they are there only because of their trampling over the hopes and aspirations of the lower caste peoples.

Just as economic classes developed the race paradigm, they also created the caste structures. Historical alliance between class and caste is no mystery today. What needs exploration is beyond the academic understanding of the alliance, and more of a social revolutionary movement towards destabilizing that alliance.

At this stage, the commonplace dominant narrative insists that the SC/STs were granted reservations by the well-meaning leaders of India. This is entirely false. The "backward" castes of India were not granted anything. They fought along the lines of demands and protests to earn the reservations-and by the sheer proportions of their success in relation to their historical dispossession-they proved worthy of every bit of that. It's entirely wrong to imagine that a government or its judiciary wing will donate anything in charity. Such a misplaced imagination can only lead one to the corridors of a court.

The fight to go on has to transcend its own limited imaginations. Knocking the door of judiciary is appealing to the hearts of the Brahmins. It is not the Brahmins who need to be blamed after all, considering that they have a share of power. What is important is to revitalize the movement taking place outside to make it entirely impossible for a regressive policy to be crafted either in the Parliament or in the Courts. And that is just the beginning. It's not a question of reservation issue. It's a question of revolution issue. The majority of people do not want nominal reservations. They deserve the entire institutes. They do not wish to work for the structures. They want the structures to work for them.

Ultimately reservation is not just a demand, but historical reparation obligation. And at its heart lies not the questions regarding the efficacy of reservations. At its heart lies the question of social order maintenance that thrives on discrimination. The sick medical students and arrogant doctors that went to strike last year are the questions to be solved. The reactionary right wing NGOs like Youth for Equality (who forever fail to understand that they are the root cause of inequality) are the questions to be solved. The judicial system that has no business with social justice is the question to be solved. The question to be solved is the question of our times: how long will people silently suffer at the hands of a political system that uses unofficial policies to maintain authority - pimping press, and a free market. The question to be solved is how to snatch the power from these sugar-coated, superpower-dreaming elites of one-nation Indians and replace the feel-good plutocracy with a truly working democracy driven by the will of the real majority, where the difference between the manual labor and mental labor would have subsided enough to make the issue of IITs/IIMs and their reservation policies quite irrelevant. And any wishful thinking, any pleading politics is not going to ensure that the striking doctors will accept the wage of their domestic servants - no matter if the servant cooks wonderfully to serve the rich master and the doctor lets hundreds of slaves die because he has to stick to the Apollo and the thriving corporate hospital industry.

To snatch the reactionary power of the ruling elites, the task is not to appeal to the rulers. In fact, quite the contrary. Let me end the passage that started this reflection, by quoting Marx and Engels again: "The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class."

That's the only task that needs to be done: to build the class that snatches its reparations by revolutionary means, not through appeals to courts and parliaments that ride on the waves of social injustice.

Appendix:

[The above article relates to the following decision by apex court of India:

(Case No: Writ Petition Civill No. 265 of 2006 (With WP Civil No. 269 & 598 of 2006, 35 & 29 of 2007))

Ashoka Kumar Thakur Petitioner versus Union of India and Ors Respondents

Date of Decision(mm/dd/yy): 3/29/2007.

The Subject Index reads:

OBC reservation policy -- prayer for grant of interim protection in the writ petition -- the policy of 27% reservation for the Other Backward Classes (in short the 'OBCs') contained in the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 is the subject matter of challenge. The primary ground of challenge is that the Union of India has failed in performing the constitutional and legal duties toward the citizenry and its resultant effect. Consequentially the Act shall have the effect and wide ramifications and ultimately it shall have the result in dividing the country on caste basis. It would lead to chaos, confusion, and anarchy which would have destructive impact on the peaceful atmosphere in the educational and other institutions and would seriously affect social and communal harmony -- concept of creamy layer cannot prima facie be considered to be irrelevant. It has also to be noted that nowhere else in the world do castes, classes or communities queue up for the sake of gaining backward status. Nowhere else in the world is there competition to assert backwardness and then to claim we are more backward than you -- the creamy layer rule is a necessary bargain between the competing ends of caste based reservations and the principle of secularism. It is a part of constitutional scheme. Therefore these cases have to be examined in detail as to whether the stand of Union of India that creamy layer rule is applicable to only Article 16(4) and not Article 15(5) is based on any sound foundation -- court not staying operation of the Statute, particularly, Section 6 so far as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes candidates are concerned.]

Gun Control is the Key Question

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 05:43:36 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

Virginia Tech massacre is probably the biggest such incident in the US history. But if media reports continue to term it as only thus, it will turn out as even a bigger tragedy.

School shootings are neither new nor infrequent in the US. In fact, hardly a year passes us by when we do not encounter the grim realities of gun trotting on campus areas. And yet, each time there are shootings, the prompt official methods turn out to be “offering prayers”.

There is nothing wrong in offering prayers, and indeed when deep sorrows affect people collectively, all we seek for is healing. But once the hours pass us by, we must reflect back in order to repair and prevent the crisis from recurring. And even as all of us are still shocked over the tragedy, let not the crucial issues go unaddressed.

Weapons of Mass Destruction:

The truth is guns are the biggest weapons of mass destruction. They are like cigarettes. No matter how much we brand certain drugs to be injurious and no matter how many of our celebrities come forward to “Say No to Drugs”, the problem is not so much with the drugs as they are with Cigarettes.

Why? Because cigarettes are consumed by the masses. It is cigarette smoking that causes more deaths per year than drugs can cause per decade. And yet every 7-Eleven and every gas pump in the country has a corner for cigarettes.

Likewise, its not some unknown WMD in a North Korea that should raise so much hell as should the millions of gun-trotting people on this very land, who are “licensed” to own “private” weapons.

And yet, like cigarettes, guns are quite legal in the US. Because both of these weapons of mass destructions are actually products of biggest profiteering industries.

Armament industry flourishes through legalization of weapons in a country where most hard working human beings are considered to be illegal. Corporate investments in guns rather than humans make big business sense because guns earn dual dividends. In fact, the dividends are so lucrative, because they are going to make sense only for the manufacturers, not the consumers.

One, the overpriced costs of weapons are borne by individual customers, and two, the consumers do not get any returns from their own investments. For instance, one could spend money on buying a dictionary and get returns from this investment for a lifetime, whereas spending money on bullets is the stupidest form of disinvestment that there ever is. Neither the bullet can be reused, nor will it server any productive purpose.

This is not such a complicated scenario. And yet, what might appear baffling are the reasons why the federal government and state administrations cannot implement a policy of complete gun-control in an individualized capitalist society.

Top Guns:

Let alone controlling the guns, capitalism thrives on the gun-culture. Flaunting guns becomes an obsession for a system of political governance where private properties are considered yardsticks of human esteems. Bigger houses, bigger cars, bigger schools and bigger guns: the craze for exhibitionism spans television sets, Hollywood flicks and political debates. What is worse, the movies and leaders that depict more guns and warfare in their periods emerge more popular and ‘victorious’.

Because of these perverse instant gratifications such as guns and muscular heroes and wars of terrors, guns are advertised as being akin to freedom in many ways. One is “free to” own guns. Of course one has to prove residency: which eliminates the possibility of illegality of human beings. Of course one has to answer few questions: thus making sure that the future gun-owner is declared smart. And then the gun is handed over as the ultimate releaser of pent-up emotions.

Guns under market economy are not necessities. They are not going to be handed over to people en masse. For if, every citizen of the country owned a gun, it would be far more necessary to challenge the system than to kill people in frustrations. In our highly individualized society where social security numbers remain lifelong secrets, any collective endeavor or thought is perceived to be unlikely. Therefore, it is individuals who take up their frustrations in blatantly anarchic fashion. The difference between revolution and reaction is the difference between gun as emancipating tools of social justice and guns as private properties for individual gains. A “free” market economy works towards eliminating the freedom of people to have guns for collective consensus, but promotes to “license” guns only to individuals who meet the power structure criteria.

Just like freedom for none is implied when freedom for all cannot be ensured, the guns have severe limitations when they are wielded by few chosen ones. Instead of emerging as a collective responsibility, gun becomes a tool of individual prerogative.

Point Blank:

In continuance of a macabre history of shootings in school (by much younger kids in the past), Virginia Tech suffered the worst that was yet. So far the question that needs be raised are not being raised. Yet in a capitalistic sensational fashion, the media more or less have been covering reports about the shooter, his racial ethnic background, his class essays, the location of his parents’ house, his assumed girlfriend etc. Many theories are surfacing too: that he was the most lonely soul in the world, that he did not look his roommate in the eyes, that he wore a cap, and even was taking pictures of his classmates in the class. Even famous poetess Nikki Giovanni offers views about her former student.

Now, Cho Seung-Hui, “resident alien from South Korea” has a Wikipedia entry too. Hold on, the assumed girlfriend is a Wiki entry as well.

Whereas, his individual profiling is necessary for the investigators related to this case, there is no reason why this needs to be an issue of concern for the rest of us. Only in a perverse celebrity-driven society would everyone want to have a piece of the camera and soundbyte to describe a person who committed murders. Scores of people now are up in airtime describing this student to be a psychopath. He is being described as a South Korean whose green card renewal was done in 2003 and had been referred to a mental facility for harassing students.

Issues vs Non-issues:

The tragedy is so large scale that it will take really quite some time for the dust to settle down. But once it does partially (that is when the media shift their headlines), it will be a good idea to ponder over several unanswered issues.

a. Racial profiling: It is pointless to call a person by his/her country of origin if she/he has been in this country since early childhood, attended American schools and college and even secured a seat at a prestigious university as a resident student. Such characterization only will stand to create further stereotypes for racial minority populace. Considering the 9/11 memories, such media stereotypes can be extremely dangerous.

b. Personal profiling: Media should probably report sensations, but must refrain from sensationalizing reports. Its one thing to report about the death of 33 students, its quite another to create slideshows of the girlfriend of the murderer. Racial profiling should not be allowed, but personal profiling should be left to the investigators of the case, and not fed to the public.

c. Abnormal Profiling: To consider the case of shooting at campus as either exceptional or a handiwork of a psychopath from an alien land is really undermining the larger issue at question. Indeed the act itself renders one mentally unwell. But the fact is most gun related violence are caused by people with average intelligence. In this case, despite media reports, one will tend to understand that a university such as Virginia Tech would admit students that are above average.

d. Gun control: Whereas the background of the shooters in such cases should be left to investigators, the real issue must be highlighted in the press for the people to critically reflect upon. How many of us own guns? And what purpose do they serve? What is the genesis, and necessity of gun practice? Why are guns being made available for commercial purpose? Who benefits from the sale of guns? Who loses from the sale of guns?

Our world was always unpredictable. Now it is even gloomier if our educated youths mindlessly commit suicides and murders. But what is even more disastrous is if we investigate no more than their health records, and provide no more than some religious prayers.

For the sake of a safer world, renouncement of guns, and other military weapons on the part of state and individuals is a necessary first step. And it must begin from the mighty ones among us. To exemplify that we care for the future generation of brilliant youths, we must implement legitimate gun-control practices in every place. To set this example, we must take every measure to prevent the press from highlighting gory aspects of criminal world (which merely showcases guns—even as they belong to cops—as the tools of solution), to stop preferring violence over sex (all the hoopla over Janet’s breast as opposed to top ratings for cop serials), to check the video game industries that showcase crime and masculinity for children that grow up with those sick ideas, to stop glorifying wars as a solution to anything—where youngsters pick the threads to consider violence as victory.

In case of this young student shooter, either of the two things might be true. One, he had a motive: the girlfriend question that has been raised, which he might have found an answer to through the powerful guns. Two, the fact that he was mentally unwell and was the loneliest of people, and found that suicide was the path.

In either of the situations, the most glaring instance of alienation in a competitive capitalism surfaces. It is the crisis that we need to address, now that the incident has already taken place. Gun is a consequence, not a cause.

Tax Deduction Day: Together We Sink

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 05:41:17 -0400

By Saswat Pattanayak

Today will be remarkable for its deep venality and outright disgust. To add to the tragedy, not that many will mind it a wee bit. But as people will rush to finish filing taxes to meet tomorrow’s deadlines, it is perhaps a time to candidly examine the system of taxation that defines capitalism to a great extent.

For whom the taxes toll?

Instead of a banal question that wonders if taxation is a good thing or a bad thing (which is as debatable as ethics of don Imus), lets ask if it serves the purpose –and more importantly, whose purpose. Logically, the taxation system must be serving some purpose—else, we would not be having the IRS at the first place emerging as the biggest bureaucratic makeup in the country. Now the critical question is whose purpose is it serving.

Surface answers are quite obvious: taxes serve the rich in a capitalist country. After all, the rich get richer, and the poor poorer as the economic gaps in the first world countries would indicate. But it is this extent of disparity that must force us to pause and rethink the strategies to make the taxation system work- for the majority. (And I am not talking about tax reforms here.)

Perhaps it would be fruitful to assume that the taxation system means differently for the power structure at various phases of history. At one point not so long ago, the landless alone paid the taxes. Slavery was the most visibly institutionalized taxation format in the world. Be it under the ruthless kings, the colonialists or the slaveowners, the <em>sarbahara</em> (dispossessed) was exploited beyond humane reasons. From this exclusively oppressive taxation limited to the poorest, to the current practice of universal taxation aimed at the larger population—the point to ponder is how much has changed ever since, and how much needs be replaced.

Capitalism as Charity:

Indeed, no one wrests for capitalism. There is never a revolution enacted with an aim to provide capitalism. Capitalism is the biggest antidote to revolution, because it is based on charities. Not only it thrives on charities, it in fact originates as one. As inherently mocking is charity towards its recipients, capitalism is doubly so. Doubly, because it transcends the hypocrisy of charity and even declares charity itself as a revolution.

If a car brand called Chevrolet amuses itself as the American Revolution or a TV producer Oprah Winfrey declares the push-up bras she gifts out to standardized women as the biggest revolution in the world, its because in an depressingly shell-shocked environment, only the most ignorant can be permitted to legitimize their views.

As the ancestral philosophies of these ribald declarations, charities have been equated with the “revolutionary” thoughts of capitalism. From the founding days of so-called revolutions in all the first world countries, one has only witnessed filthy “free” rules by the master class over their slave classes of subjects. It was not until the middle of last century that the oppressed class received some of the political rights, if at all. Why did the owner class of the “democracies”- Greek to American- call themselves free rulers of a subjugated people for hundreds of years? Because they thrived on their charities towards the “commoners”—at once, getting rid of the psychological guilt and financial burden.

Likewise, political power was granted in charities—indeed this continues to be the case, as we witness the perfect embodiments of rich capitalist class wielding political power in all the “modern democracies”. A system of taxation, thus was evolved to sustain the class character of charities.

Class Character of Charities:

Its rather simple to understand—the more we have, the more we can donate. In fact, many even go to the extent to justify why they need to have more: because they can donate more! In the perfect sense of reformism, the only way a human being can be useful to the world is by being able to donate more to the world. And the donation is not “empty” thoughts that might turn “dangerous” (and therefore the collective disdain at the Communists in this country, for example), but the donations have to be in form of goods, lotteries, charity shows –all forms of capitalistic exhibitionism.

Individual prerogatives:

Many reformists in the past and present argue for opposing the payment of taxes. Some pacifists argue, since a portion of it goes towards war purpose, it is rather not to be paid. By that logic, the absolutely illiterate celebrities (sounds like a redundant phrase here) protest they are paying way too much for (education of) the poor. Both are dangerous freedom frolics who would probably wish for both Imus and Hip-Hop lyrics to stay on, because they would want to have a piece at the dirt arena too. With all the cameras focused on Al Gore and Anna Nicole (these types are born immortal, after all), its rather a good idea for them to maintain the circus of abuses in the name of freedom! More money, more freedom. Add a pinch of Charity, Cause, or Commotion—and we will have another guilt-free year when we file the taxes.

So what is our role here? All of us—the majority of people- who want to pay honest taxes so that they will be spent for good cause? Should we merely refuse to pay taxes? Hell, no. So should we not apply for “deductions”? Yes? Sounds like a noble idea. This way at least we can make sure that our share of tax remains with the IRS, and not paid back. Sounds good.

But highly improbable. With the hundreds of thousands of tax consultants who are ready to swing the carrots of refunds on our face, and the perfectly “legal” clauses that ask for the Thrift Store receipts or Tuition Fee deductions, why would one refuse to claim the benefits? After all, do we ever insist that the discounts at JC Penney be just not applied to our counter purchases?

Ironically, the truth of charities is that it creates a society based on greed and competition. Both greed and competition promote lies, deceit and outright oppression. For an instance, as a student, perhaps one would say a deduction should be claimed on the textbook purchases. At the same length, a venture capitalist would claim deductions based on massive property. In fact while filling out the form yesterday I noticed one could claim deduction if one had provided shelter to a Katrina victim! On all the above three counts, the acts of deductions are absolutely dishonest. What thoughts go through our minds when pay the tax at the counter? Thoughts that we will have it partially back once the tax season comes? What then, remains of the usefulness of taxation system? Of course its dangerous redundancies are obvious from the continuing state of ill-health that the poorest sections continue to suffer at the hand of apathetic administration. But it also begs for a critical reflection over the concept of taxes, charities and their tunes of deductions.

Charities are inherently oppressive. First, the benefactors gain eminence over the recipients. It is so vulgar that the benefactors in fact name institutions after them for throwing in some illegitimate money that pays them tax dividends. At the same time, they weaken the spirits of the “benefited” who thrive on the charities of the rich—essentially, so that they can never revolt against their own state of dispossession. Charities in this sense merely perpetuate the cycles of oppression, hopelessly, ceaselessly. They do not address the causes of disparities, they work to maintain it in a more acceptable fashion. And so that charities do not cause harm to the donor, the flawed system of taxation comes to the rescue. As a trickled-down effect, this provision also comes to help some of us in the lower rung, and we gladly act on it in the manner we would if a ticket price is “discounted” for us (no matter if it merely means we pay 10% of our income for the discount, while the rich pay less than a percent of theirs at the full price). Why do we let this happen?

What should be done?

As long as we can ‘get away’, we will tend to let others ‘get away’ (even if getting away is a matter of vastly varying degrees). Unfortunately, this is still true for most part in the human society, no matter how much we blow the trumpets of individualistic freedoms, the social equality as a principle must always be aimed at curtailing individual liberties.

Taxation, like healthcare, needs to be truly effective, not figuratively universal. Tax reformers have been arguing that tax should be collected on a proportionate basis. That is, the rich will pay more tax, and the poor will pay less. This is an almost perfect argument. Why it is almost so, is because this is an incomplete argument. The point is collection of tax has something to do with deduction of it as well, because in the final analysis, the effects of collection are impacted by the amount of deductions.

For the taxation to be effective, the state needs to enforce the collection of proportionate taxes at a rate that may not be “convenient”, but maybe socially desirable. For those of us who whine at the relativity of “social desirability’ citing postmodern angst, all we have to do is to position ourselves in the lowest social class ladder to get a grasp of reality that is material, not philosophical.

Tax cuts and deductions must be revisited as a system of operation that may not sound very lucrative (as stated above, no one will give away their freedom to cash a check if the free check is around). And it is because of this temptation, this greed to hold onto our “hard-earned” money (because the poor apparently do not earn…and by this crude logic only the rest of us who pay taxes hard-earn), we need a system at place, not some good hearted individuals.

Deductions Depict Class Society:

Tax deductions are indeed the lifeline of a class society. So long as tax deductions are in place, what is important is not merely to grasp the gaps in deductions that people can afford to ‘get away’ with, but the fact that deductions are present so that they must be unequally applicable to people.

In other words, tax deductions are the biggest proof, and, the biggest security for the existence of a class society. If only all the people, irrespective of mental or physical labor, were employed at equitable income level, there would not be such a thing as ‘tax deductions’.

If only people had an equal stake in the maintenance of social structure, and their roles would not have to depend on their level of income, there would not be deductions in practice to promote acts of charity—whose purpose is to make a hero/heroine of the rich, and to silence the potential dissent by the masses who are fed the cakes thrown from tall balconies.

As a reminder, capitalism will never stop the system of deductions, because that is the manner in which it normalizes the income of the richest—those who own the structure and create its norms.

And if we do not question the system that is designed by the rich, of the rich and for the rich, we would be perhaps talking merely wishfully about social justice and peace and happiness. No amount of either personal charities or noble actions of paying “proportionate” taxes will be useful as a means, if the ends themselves are based on promoting a class society—one in which the poor people have nothing to claim as deductions, for they do not even pay the taxes, because they do not even work, and they do not even have healthcare, nor can afford education. And they are accused as the wretched of America—the “freeloaders”, the social security beggars and the charity-seekers. Give it a thought today: it is not they that are at fault.

Instead of “providing shelter to a Katrina survivor’ as a means of tax deduction, we should have engaged the victims of a massive administrative disaster in all the forms we could to snatch for them the rights to be treated equally by the state apparatus thus ensuring no administrative loopholes exist any longer. But then, in a “free” market economy, we have even sold the state’s responsibilities off, where individuals are left to fend for themselves.

On the “Tax Deduction Day”, lets resolve to take the “power” back from the free markets, and truly have a system that “enforces” equality.