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Revolution in Egypt: Interview with an Egyptian anarcho-syndicalist
July 11, 2011 by Leave a Comment
In the following conversation, Jano Charbel, a labor journalist in Cairo who defines himself as anarcho-syndicalist, talks about the character of the revolution in Egypt, the recent history of workers’ struggles, the role of Islamists and unions, gender relations and the perspectives of struggles. The interview was conducted by two friends of the classless society in Cairo in spring 2011.
Courtesy: http://www.klassenlos.tk
Must We Rebuild Their Anthill? A Letter to/for Japanese Comrades
July 1, 2011 by 1 Comment
Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis
Dear comrades,
We are writing to express to you our solidarity at a time when the pain for those who have died or have disappeared is still raw, and the task of reshaping of life out of the immense wreckage caused by the earthquake, the tsunami and the nuclear reactor meltdowns must appear unimaginable. We also write to think together with you what this moment marked by the most horrific nuclear disaster yet in history signifies for our future, for the politics of anti-capitalist social movements, as well as the fundamentals of everyday reproduction.
Concerning our future and the politics of anti-capitalist movements, one thing is sure. The present situation in Japan is potentially more damaging to people’s confidence in capitalism than any disaster in the “under-developed” world and certainly far more damaging than the previous exemplar of nuclear catastrophe, Chernobyl. For none of the exonerating excuses or explanations commonly flagged in front of man-made disasters can apply in this case. Famines in Africa can be blamed, however wrongly, on the lack of capital and technological “know how,” i.e., they can be blamed on the lack of development, while the Chernobyl accident can be attributed to the technocratic megalomania bred in centrally-planned socialist societies. But neither underdevelopment nor socialism can be used to explain a disaster in 21st century Japan that has the world’s third largest capitalist economy and the most technologically sophisticated infrastructure on the planet. The consequences of the earthquake, the tsunami and, most fatefully, the damaged nuclear reactors can hardly be blamed on the lack of capitalist development. On the contrary, they are the clearest evidence that high tech capitalism does not protect us against catastrophes, and it only intensifies their threat to human life while blocking any escape route. This is why the events in Japan are potentially so threatening and so de-legitimizing for the international capitalist power-structure. For the chain of meltdowns feared or actually occurring stands as a concrete embodiment of what capitalism has in store for us —an embodiment of the dangers to which we are being exposed with total disregard of our well-being, and what we can expect in our future, as from China to the US and beyond, country after country is planning to multiply its nuclear plants.
This is also why so much is done, at least in the US, to minimize the severity of the situation evolving in and around the Fukushima Daiichi plants and to place the dramatic developments daily unfolding in and out of the plants out of sight.
Company men and politicians are aware that the disaster at Fukushima is tremendous blow to the legitimacy of nuclear power and in a way the legitimacy of capitalist production. A tremendous ideological campaign is under way to make sure that it does not become the occasion for a global revolt against nuclear power and more important for a process of revolutionary change. The fact that the nuclear disaster in Japan is taking place in concomitance with the spreading of insurrectional movements throughout the oil regions of North Africa and the Middle East undoubtedly adds to the determination to establish against all evidence that everything is under control. But we know that nothing is further from the truth, and that what we are witnessing is the deepening crisis, indeed the proof of the “unsustainability” of the energy sector — since the ‘70s the leading capitalist sector— in its two main articulations: nuclear and oil.
We think it helps, then, in considering this crisis, to think the Fukushima disaster together with different scenarios that, in their representation on the US evening news seem to have nothing in common with it and with each other.
*Libya: where NATO and the UN are collaborating with Ghedaffi in the destruction of a rebellious youth whose demands for better living conditions and more freedom may jeopardize the regular flow of oil.
*Ivory Coast: where French, UN and Africom (the US military command devoted to Africa) troops have joined ranks to install a World Bank official, handpicked by the EU, to clearly gain control of West Africa’s most important country after Nigeria and create a solid Africom-powered bridge connecting the Nigerian, to the Algerian and Chadian oilfields.
*Baharain: where Saudi Arabian troops are brought in to slaughter pro-democracy demonstrators.
Viewed, in this context, the threat the disaster at Fukushima poses to international capital is not that thousands of people may develop cancer, leukemia, loose their homes, loose their sources of livelihood, see their lands and waters contaminated for thousands of years. The danger is that ‘caving in’ in front of popular mobilizations, governments will institute new regulations, scrap plans for more nuclear plants construction and, in the aftermath, nuclear stocks will fall and one of the main sources of capital accumulation will be severely compromised for decades to come. These concerns explain not only the chorus of shameless declarations we heard in recent weeks (bouncing from Paris and Rome to Washington) to the effect that the path to nuclear power is one with no return, but also the lack of any international logistic support for the populations living in the proximity of the melting reactors. Where are the planes carrying food, medicines, blankets? Where are the doctors, the nurses, and engineers? Where is the United Nations that is so readily fighting in Ivory Coast? We do not need to ask. Clearly, as far as the EU/US are concerned, the guideline is that everything must be done to prevent this nuclear disaster from sinking into the consciousness of people and trigger a worldwide revulsion against nuclear power and against those who knowingly have exposed so many to its dangers.
There is also something else however in the response of the world politicians to this juncture. What we are witnessing, most dramatically, in the response to the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, especially in the US, is the beginning of an era in which capitalism is dropping any humanitarian pretense and refusing any commitment to the protection of human life. Not only, just one month after its inception, the catastrophe that is still unfolding in Japan is already being pushed to a corner of the evening news in the same way as nothing is any longer said about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We are also repeatedly informed that catastrophes are inevitable, that no energy path is safe, that disasters are something to be learnt from, not a cause for retreat, and, to top it off, that not all is negative, after all, Tokyo’s troubles are Osaka’s gain!
This is the same doctrine that today we are dished out in debates on the financial crisis. Financial experts now all agree that it is impossible to prevent major economic crises, because, however clever government regulations may be, bankers can elude them. As Paul Romer, a finance professor in Stamford University, put in a New York Times interview (3/11/2011): “Every decade or so, any finite system of financial regulation will lead to systemic financial crisis.” That is, those of us who are on pensions or have a few savings or have taken out a mortgage must prepare for periodic losses and there is nothing that can be done about it!
What we see, then, today in Japan, is the moment of truth of a world capitalist system that, after five centuries of exploitation of millions across the planet, and after endless litanies on the fact that science opens a path of constant perfectibility of the human race, has decided that it is not their business to offer solutions to any major human problem, obviously convinced that we have become so identified with capital, and have so lost the will and capacity to construct an alternative to it, that we will not be able to prise its future apart from ours even after it has demonstrated to be totally destructive of our lives. We are reminded here of the response that Mr. Chipman, an official of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), gave when asked, thirty years ago, if “American institutions” would survive an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. “I think -–he replied– they would, eventually, yeah. As I say, the ants eventually build another anthill.”
We think is our task to prove Mr. Chipman wrong –to prove that we will not be like the mindless laborious ants who mechanically reconstruct their hill not matter how many times it is destroyed.
We believe it will be a major political disaster if in the months to come we will see business as usual prevail, and the surge of a broad global movement protesting what has been done to the people of Japan and to us all as the current will bring to our shore the radioactivity leaking from the unraveling plants.
We are concerned however that a mobilization in response to the disaster in Japan should not be limited to demanding that no more nuclear plants be constructed and those in existence be dismantled, nor that more investment be directed to the development of ‘clean energy’ technology. Undoubtedly, the Fukushima meltdowns must be the spark for a worldwide anti-nuclear movement. But we think, judging also from our experience in the aftermath of the disaster at Three Mile Island, that this movement will not have any hope of success if the struggle to eliminate nuclear plants or against the existence of nuclear armaments, is approached in the narrow manner characteristic of the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, if approached, that is, as a special issue, according to the argument that if we do not eliminate first nuclear power we will not be around to deal with other issues. This, we believe, is a short-sighted argument, as death, genocide and the ecological destruction of the environment come in many forms. Indeed, rather than as exceptions we should see the proposed proliferation of nuclear plants and the callous indifference demonstrated by world politicians to the possible destruction of million of lives under a nuclear regime as symptomatic of a whole relation to capital and the state that is the real threat to people across the planet.
What we need is to approach the question of nuclear power as the prism through which to read our present relation to capital and bring our different struggles and forms of resistance together. Short of that, our political activities will remain powerless, separated and fragmented like the reports about Libya, Ivory Coast and Japan on the networks’ evening news.
A first step in this direction is to establish that Nuclear Power has nothing to do with energy needs, in the same way as nuclear arms proliferation had nothing to do with the alleged threat posed by communism. Nuclear power is not just an energy form, it a specific form of capital accumulation and social control enabling capital to centralize the extraction of surplus labor, police the movements of millions of people, and achieve regional or global hegemony through the threat of annihilation. One of its main objectives is pre/empting resistance, generating the kind of docility and passivity that we have witnessed in response to such capital-made disasters as Katrina, Haiti and today Japan, and that in the past enabled the French and US governments to explode hundreds of atomic bombs in open air and underground tests in the Pacific and use entire population from the Marshall Islands to Tahiti, as guinea pigs.
Nuclear power, therefore, can only be destroyed when social movements come into existence that treat it politically, not only as a destructive form of energy but as a strategy of accumulation and terror– a means of devaluation of our lives– and place it on a continuum with the struggle against the use of the “financial crisis,“ or against the cuts to healthcare and education. To this program, those of us who live in the US must add the demand for reparations for the descendants of the people who have been the victims of US nuclear bombs and nuclear tests. For our struggle must revive the memory of the crimes that have been committed in the past through the use of nuclear power beginning with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
For with memory comes the demand for justice.
In solidarity,
Silvia and George
Courtesy: http://libcom.org/library/must-we-rebuild-their-anthill-letter-tofor-japanese-comrades
Remembering R S Rao and His Critical Marxist Tradition
July 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Gilbert Sebastian
Prof. R S Rao (74), retired professor from Sambalpur University, a long time intellectual of radical politics in India passed away on 17 June 2011 in New Delhi. He had suffered a stroke and was in the ventilator for around twenty days. The inevitability of death takes away from us his lively and jovial company and the sharp intellect combined with unswerving commitment to the cause of the common people.
Remembering the critical Marxist tradition of R S Rao, we would like to argue herein that it would not be appropriate to portray him as an uncritical loyalist of Maoist politics in India. On the other hand, it would be more appropriate to view him as someone who upheld the critical tradition of questioning and debates within the movement, something which is not commonplace in the Communist movement in India today.
It was a rare combination that R S Rao was a teacher of quantitative economics who taught econometric techniques in the class room and was a theoretician of Marxist political economy outside the class room. Quite uncharacteristic of economists in general, he was an economist who used to speak a lot about people and people’s agency. He used to say, Stalin hardly spoke about people but about material goods. He had a strong historical sense and was optimistic to the core. He believed that systematic application of methodology, as while doing a Ph.D., hampered creativity. He himself never did a Ph.D. He was not overwhelmed by scholarly papers in national and international journals. Rather he attached greater value to articles in activist publications because ‘they have a sense of purpose’, as he put it. He seldom contributed to the mainstream press.
Prof. Rao used to say that in order to understand, we need to focus not on the aspect of light but on the aspect of shade. In life too, he had moved from the light of the Gokhale Institute in Pune to the shade of Sambalpur university located in a backward region. During the hype of developmentalism in the early Nehruvian period, when there were many who praised the building of big dams, he focused on the shady aspects of displacement and misery caused by the Hirakud dam project which he considered as a symbol of exploitation. He had said that even in the ‘modern temples’, those who built them have no entry. Prof. Rao was steadfast in his commitment to the cause of the people until his last days. It may be recalled that he was one of the mediators in the case of the abduction of Collector, Vineel Krishna by Maoists in February 2011.
Although my personal encounters with him were limited to those in late 1990s, they were memorable and intellectually enriching. I would miss Prof. R S Rao, especially since I could not meet him for so many years now. As it is said, Prof. Rao had an ability to leave a strong impression on some people even in one meeting or two. About his person, I remember not only his personal habit of continuous smoking but also his non-hierarchical attitude and the hearty laugh he had, showing his toothless gum. He had a Socratic quality of intellectually guiding the youth through sharp and timely questions. This was very important about his personality since it is said that he still operated mainly within the oral tradition since his writings are few and far between.
His first collection of essays, Towards Understanding Semi-Feudal, Semi-Colonial Society was published in 1995 with a famous essay, ‘In Search of the Capitalist Farmer’. He has also co-edited with Venugopal Rao a collection on 50 years of the History and Development in Andhra Pradesh. Of late, five books and some essays by him have been published in Telugu. In his socio-economic analysis, he had an ingenious way of drawing insights from Telugu literature.
In March and April 1998, he had taken a few parallel classes for some interested students at Jawaharlal Nehru University. His analysis of Marxian dialectics and his observations on how the semi-colonial relations related to the semi-feudal ones in the Indian context were insightful. It still resounds in my memory how he summarised Marxian dialectics in three terms: totality, contradiction, change or movement in time.
During those days, once he chanced to find me with a book of P J James (1995), Non-Governmental Voluntary Organizations: The True Mission. He asked me to review this book for him. So I wrote a review of this book. The main idea of the book was that NGOs were serving the cause of imperialism by diverting people away from the path of class struggle. R S Rao guided me by posing mainly one question: ‘In what specific way(s) do the NGOs turn diversionary?’ He guided me into thinking that they turn diversionary by having no sense of primacy among social contradictions. For example, they would not address the land question but would rather address social contradictions as related to caste, community and gender i.e., those relating to social liberation movements, not directly counterpoised against the State but against one or the other dominant section in society. He had approved my book review, saying it required only some editorial corrections. But unexpectedly, I had to get into a heated argument with a prominent mass leader of the Maoist movement, specifically on the political line of this review. He was very angry and became very personal in his criticism because he felt that I was being too generous towards the NGOs in spite of recognising the neo-colonial agenda many of them were promoting. After this argument, I lost my confidence and did not send the article for publication anywhere. But I could not help wondering how much divergence of views can be there within the same political movement, among those with the same ideological persuasion.
Probably, Tariq Ali was right in pointing out in a recent book review in New Left Review (2010, Nov.-Dec.) that it was something tragic that happened to Communist Parties across the world that they became established mass-based parties in the 1930s and ‘40s during the high tide of Stalinism. The organisational methods they adopted, influenced as they were by Stalinism, stifled dissent and suppressed debate. Probably, this explains how the Communist movements the world over moved away from the early Bolshevik tradition of vibrant debates within the party and in the Indian case, from the vibrant intellectual tradition that characterised Bhagat Singh and his comrades.
It is worth recalling an exchange of views in late 1990s between Prof. Rao and a trade union activist working in the industrial areas in and around Delhi. This comrade-activist had left CPI-ML (Red Flag) in Kerala and joined the stream of Andhra Naxalites. He had left the Red Flag group specifically on the question of this group giving up the policy of armed struggle. Prof. Rao asked him what were the differences which led him to leave Red Flag. He listened to him very carefully and at the end of it, he asked quite emphatically, ‘Is your line a political line or a military line?’ Probably, what he meant was that the political line needs to have primacy over the military line. This is a question worth repeating over and over again today in the context of a neo-liberal State on the one hand, hell-bent on wiping out the Maoists, who are branded as ‘the greatest internal security threat’ and the Maoists on the other, confining their resistance mainly to the military realm rather than on primarily engaging in mass mobilisation around their political line, focusing on the question of people-oriented development. Maoists could be better off if they had primary focus on the political line involving mass movement wherever possible since the State has much less legitimacy in this respect although it is immensely more powerful militarily.
It is ironical that one has to speak about bureaucracy within the Maoist movement because it is a far cry from the Mao’s own ideas of party as a contradiction and party developing through contradictions. But whenever I did talk to Prof. Rao about the problem of bureaucracy within the movement, he was kind enough to tell me not to get discouraged since there are many sincere persons in the movement who are quite self-critical about the movement. He pointed out how (late) Shyam, one of the Central Committee members of CPI-ML (People’s War) was such an honest person who during the peace talks, was willing to accept criticisms about mistakes committed by the movement.
It is not to be missed out that from within the stream of radical politics, Prof. Rao had also come under criticism for not focusing sufficiently on the ‘semi-colonial’ which was gaining increasing ascendency over the ‘semi-feudal’ under ‘liberalisation’. But he seemed to have been more concerned about how one is related to the other. It was not easy to brush aside his argument about a process of ‘re-feudalisation’ in culture and institutions, including the State with the increasing incursions of capital. We could also justify his position from an entirely different angle: Even if the ‘semi-colonial’ or imperialism is considered as the principal contradiction, the struggle for fixed productive assets/natural resources – land, forest and water resources – could constitute the principal task of social transformation in a crisis-ridden and highly unpredictable world order of today.
There would have been times when the movement imposed blinders upon his process of thinking even as it must have enabled him other ways. Although there are those both within and outside the Maoist movement who would like to appropriate Prof. Rao as an uncritical loyalist of the movement, I would like to remember him as someone who belonged to the stream of critical thinking within the movement – an early Bolshevik legacy in the international communist movement and also a legacy left behind by Bhagat Singh in India.
These reminiscences are based on the author’s experience of having worked in the mass front of the Maoist movement. It has also drawn on some of the ideas of G. Haragopal, Vara Vara Rao, Venugopal Rao, Dandapani Mohanty and Rona Wilson during the condolence meeting at JNU, New Delhi on 18 June 2011. The author can be contacted at: gilbertseb@gmail.com
Financialization, Household Credit and Economic Slowdown in the U.S.
June 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Deepankar Basu
Between 1948 and 1973, real GDP for the U.S. (measured in 2005 chained dollars) economy grew at a compound annual average rate of about 3:98 percent per annum; between 1973 and 2010, the corresponding growth rate was only 2:72 per cent per annum. While the 25 year period of high growth after the Second World War has, with some justification, earned the epithet of the “Golden Age” of capitalism, the period of relative stagnation since the mid-1970s has been characterized by heterodox economists as a neoliberal capitalist regime (Dum´enil and L´evy, 2004, 2011; Harvey, 2005; Kotz, 2009).
Three characteristics of neoliberal capitalism have attracted lot of scholarly attention. First is the marked trend towards growing financialization of the economy, by which is meant a growing weight of financial activities in the aggregate economy. Figure 1 presents some well-known evidence, for the period 1961-2010, in support of this claim. The top left panel plots the share of value added that is contributed by the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) sector in the value added by the total private sector of the U.S. economy: between 1961 and 2008, the contribution of the FIRE sector increased steadily from about 16 per cent to roughly 25 percent. The top right panel gives the share of financial sector profit in total domestic profit income in the U.S. economy, which shows a steady increase since the early 1970s (interrupted briefly in the early 1980s). It is only during the financial crisis in 2007-2008 that this share declined for a brief period; it is noteworthy that the share started a rapid ascent in 2009, and has recovered much of its loss since then. The two figures in the bottom panel provide evidence, for the period 1988-2009, of the growing size of the stock market: both stock market capitalization and total value traded, as a proportion of nominal GDP, has trended up since the late 1980s, providing clear evidence of the growth of financial relative to real activity.
The second notable characteristic of the neoliberal regime has been the veritable explosion of the flow of credit (and the build-up of the stock of debt) in the economy. One important dimension of the growth of credit has been the unprecedented increase in the credit flowing to (working class) households. Figure 2 presents evidence in support of both these claims by plotting the time series of outstanding debt (measured as total credit market liabilities) of three crucial sector of the U.S. economy: the nonfinancial business sector, the household sector, and financial business sector. While the business sectors display an increasing trend since the early 1960s (along with large fluctuations at business cycle frequencies), the household sector debt starts a secular rise since the early 1980s (with almost no business cycle fluctuations), and the financial business sector also displays a secular rise till the onset of the Great Recession. The last chart in Figure 2 plots the time series of the ratio of outstanding household debt and outstanding debt of the nonfinancial business sector. The ratio shows a clear upward trend since the mid-1970s, with household debt increasing from about 85 percent of nonfinancial business debt in the mid-1970s to about 140 percent just prior to the start of the Great Recession.
The third important characteristic of neoliberal capitalism has been stagnation of real wages for the bulk of the working class. In the face of rising productivity, this has entailed a massive redistribution of income away from working class households, leading to widening income and wealth inequality. Figure 3 presents evidence in support of this claim. The top panel plots an index of productivity (measured real output per hour) in the total nonfarm business sector of the U.S. economy. There is an increasing trend in productivity over time, with a marked acceleration in growth since the mid-1990s. This is in sharp contrast to the evolution of real wages of production and nonsupervisory workers plotted in the bottom panel, who comprise about 80 percent of the U.S. workforce. The hourly real wage has barely increased between the early 1970s and the late 2000s; the weekly real wage has in fact declined during this period.
The main question that this paper wishes to explore is the possible connections between the slowdown in economic growth on the one hand and the three characteristics of neoliberal capitalism on the other? Heterodox economists have been interested in this question for at least the last three decades, and the main contribution of this paper is to extend that literature by presenting a theoretical model to address this question. Building on and extending Foley (1982, 1986a), this paper develops a discrete-time Marxian circuit of capital model to analyze the link between financialization, nonproduction credit and economic growth. It is demonstrated that increasing financialization and the growth of household credit (a component of nonproduction credit) can reduce the growth rate of a capitalist economy. Hence, this paper offers a novel explanation, rooted in a Marxian circuit of capital macroeconomic analysis, for the slowdown of the U.S. economy during the neoliberal era.
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Ramdev’s ‘divine’ reaction against corruption
June 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Satyabrata
“Violating all temporal standards of morality, justice and freedom, Fascism claims divine sanctions.”— M.N. Roy
Thanks to Anna Hazare, the government was recently forced to confront the question of corruption in a fashion that it was left with no choice but to form an ‘independent’ representative institution tasked with graft control. Rama Krishna Yadav, aka Baba Ramdev, stood beside him. It was not the first time that the “Baba” was in politics. In mid 2010, he went on a rally with other ‘babas’ in Haridwar demanding the cleaning of Ganga. Ramdev, not unlike all others, is political. Now, however, he has come to be the embodiment of a particular ideology. If his projects are carefully scrutinised in the context of the Indian economy, the political-economic basis for his ideology becomes evident.
The Baba came into limelight because of his simple methods, which he called pranayams and asanas, for curing arthritis and ulcers and relieving stress. It was initially embraced as a practice by those sections of the Indian public that suffered from those physical/mental troubles without any hope of redress, thanks to the profit-centred and unhinged Indian healthcare system in its private and public avatars respectively. These ‘yogic’ practices proved to be helpful and the Baba became an instant hit. He held ‘shivirs’ (camps) throughout India and had thousands of people attending them. Ramdev became a pranayam guru. Then came the second phase when he claimed he could cure cancer. And in some television channels dedicated to ‘religion and spirituality’ you had people validating his claims. Ramdev has an ayurvedic ‘trust’ that sells powders, herbal medicinal products and so on. In a recent interview to Shekhar Gupta (NDTV Walk the Talk), the so-called baba claimed his turnover between 2006 and 2011 had been Rs 1,100 crore. This, according to him, had come from the 10 crore people who apparently believed in him. It must be noted here that the sale of Ramdev’s ayurvedic products has been on a steady rise. They can be found in all major cities. This is how Ramdev, the yoga guru, became Ramdev, the ayurvedic capitalist. Now he virtually owns several hundred acres of lands in the UK, to where his market has expanded. The costs Ramdev’s ‘trust’ charges for those products can be seen on the webpage http://www.pypt.org/35-membership.html.
Soon after the ‘Anna Hazare movement’ we now have the Baba Ramdev movement. Hazare seems to have passed the baton of anti-corruption rolled in Gandhian satyagraha to Ramdev in a relay movement of sorts. But clearly ‘the Ramdev movement’ has the compulsion to display a different kind of political dynamism.
And the specificity of this display of political dynamism stems from Ramdev’s capitalist project premised upon claims, and sometimes proof, that ancient Indian medical science is superior to modern medical science. He has been able to convince people on that count and hence his market is expanding. But when the question of ancient India comes, can the great defenders of that “great culture” be far behind? The ‘Ramdev movement’ has, not surprisingly, drawn the support of the RSS-BJP. A fascistic movement seems to be re-emerging, this time with a popular leader and a popular issue (anti-corruption) at the centre.
On May 13, Ramdev wrote a letter to the prime minister. The following are the three (sic) demands he put forth in that missive:
1. To bring back to the nation Rs 400 trillion (US$ 9 trillion) of black money that is national wealth.
1.1. Create a law to declare money stashed away in foreign accounts as national assets.
1.2. Create a law for foreign account policy where each citizen having a foreign account has to disclose complete information.
1.3 Sign US Convention against Corruption, thus paving the way for getting black money back. (He probably means UN Convention against corruption http://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UNCAC/Publications/Convention/08-50026_E.pdf.)
1.4. Recall high-denomination currency i.e., 500- and 1,000-rupee notes and make 100-rupee notes as sparsely available as possible.
2. To stamp out corruption fully by enacting stringent laws for a capable Lok Pal that should have three important points:
2.1. It should be able to punish any official irrespective of designation if found guilty.
2.2. Any person should be able to file an FIR against corruption and if proofs are provided then the Lok Pal should be able to take action against the guilty.
2.3. Once a fast-track court declares a person guilty of corruption then he or she should be given harsh punishment like death sentence or life imprisonment if corruption involves crores or lakhs of rupees. The law should have the provision to declare assets of all such persons national assets.
3. To end foreign laws, customs and culture prevailing in the independent Bharat so that every Indian can get economic and social justice. We should follow Mahatma Gandhi’s book named Hind Swaraj that says that after Independence we need to remove the British system and adopt the Bharatiya system.
3.1. We need to abolish the Land Acquisition Act 1984 because by using this Act the government is exploiting farmers. A farmer who is the producer of food is not respected and is getting killed daily by wrong government policies. We need to impose a complete ban on genetically-modified food, which is dangerous for the health of citizens of this nation.
3.2. On the language issue the whole nation is suffering because 99% of people do not know English. When countries like Japan, China, France, Germany, Denmark, Russia, etc. educate their citizens in their own language and produce doctors, scientists, engineers, etc. then why cannot we do so in our own national and native languages. Each of our languages has more words than any foreign language. Why are we neglecting and giving such a low importance to our own languages. Technological innovations and inventions do not depend upon a language, it is a function of human intellect and mind and the world is a witness that Bharatiya’s thinking and mind is one of the best in the world. The language of law, justice, science, engineering, medicine and so on should be in our national or regional languages. Only then will smart kids of poor people be able to become scientists, doctors and engineers.
3.3. Why are we given Macaulay’s education, which was created to make Indians into Englishmen and why are 34,735 laws created by the British still imposed on this nation? Why are people of this country still tortured and humiliated by using those laws in the same way as the British would do.
3.4. When Bharat has given the world physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, all social sciences, law and justice system, astrology, astronomy, astrophysics, social structure, time (days, years), names of planets, economics, a cultured society and highly-advanced philosophy, and spirituality to the whole world then why are we always taught that everything is developed by the western world? We ought to give highest preference to our own culture.
3.5. Although the democratic system is best in the world but it has its demerits too. Had we not had this faulty law and order system in our country then such a big conspiracy would not have been created, and so much corruption would not have happened and our people would not be in such a bad condition. So it is imperative that those people, who are indulging this conspiracy in the name of democracy and are looting this nation through corruption, are changed together with the system. State-funding of elections, election of the prime minister directly by the citizens of this nation through mandatory voting should be there. Thus only honest people will come to power and then only strong democracy and a high-value parliament will be formed. We want to make it clear that we do not want to change the Constitution of India created by Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar but want to change the system created by the British and still followed. Example, Land acquisition act was not created by the Late Shri Bhimrao Ambedkar but by the British and so was Macaulay’s education system.
After that, the Baba went on a hunger strike demanding the fulfillment of his demands. On June 5, at around 1 in the morning, police attacked Ramdev and his supporters. Apparently, Ramdev’s demands might seem stupid and, at best, populist, but if one examines them carefully one will find in them a whole buffalo-nationalistic, imperialistic project at work designed to empower national capital. Whether this is the result of deliberate manoeuvring or spontaneous reaction doesn’t matter. What matters is that danger looms over the Indian working class. The ‘satyagraha’ and an attack on the ‘satyagrahis’ by the Congress-led Union government can be understood only if the social base of the Congress and its allies and the contradiction that exists between it and the social base of figures such as Ramdev and political groups such as the sangh parivar is taken into account.
If the movement unfolds we shall not only see the demon that has always been around — the Indian State and the current government that typifies it — but another more dangerous one in the making: the mass as a murderous mob under the ideological, if not political, leadership of sangh parivar and similar right-wing forces.
The Congress and its UPA government are doing the only thing it can do: defend the interests of its big bourgeois class base and its ideology. The bourgeois media, on the other hand, is doing its job well in terms of defending and promoting an “innocent” Ramdev. Meanwhile, the disaffection and dissent of the socially dominated working masses, in the absence of a revolutionary working-class ideology and force, inevitably ends up being articulated through and in that ideology of defence for a godman of reaction.
A Letter to ALBA countries
May 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Amarantha for Latin American Friendship Association (Erode, Tamil Nadu)
Dear Comrades,
“Humanity is Homeland” said Jose Marti, poet, philosopher and Father of the Cuban Revolutionary war.
“The exploited, all over the world, are our compatriots; and exploiters all over the world our enemies… our country is really the whole world and all Revolutionaries of the world are our brothers” said Fidel Castro, Hero of the Cuban revolution who realized Marti’s dreams.
Cuban doctors are at work among less fortunate people in many parts of the world. Cuban medical teams are engaged in relief and rehabilitation work in various countries devastated by natural disasters. More than 26,000 students from across the world study medicine free of cost at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana promising to serve the poor and needy back home.
But why did the present leaders of Cuba hail Sri Lanka for killing Eelam Tamils? Why did they tow behind India in praising the Sri Lankan state at the UN Human Rights Council when tens of thousands of Eelam Tamils were killed in the gruesome war? Are Eelam Tamils excluded from the Internationalism unique to Cuba?
We at the Latin American Friendship Association consisting of Tamils of Tamil Nadu, India, were shocked and disheartened when the ALBA countries, at the insistence of Cuba, voted in favor of the Sri Lankan State at the UNHRC on 27 May, 2009. It is now time for Cuba and other Latin American countries to correct their stand about Eelam Tamils in the light of the UN Advisory Panel Report on Sri Lanka, released on 25 April, 2011.
Members of the U.N. Advisory Panel on Sri Lanka constituted by the Secretary General of U.N. Mr. Ban-ki-Moon, have confirmed the allegations of Tamils living across the world. The report confirms that more than 40,000 civilians were killed by heavy artillery and widespread shelling by Sri Lankan govt. forces; that there was systematic shelling on “No fire zones” including hospitals, schools, etc…. It strongly denies the Govt. of Sri Lanka’s claims of “Humanitarian…. Operation” with a policy of “zero civilian causalities” and indicates that a wide range of serious violations of International Humanitarian Laws and International Human Rights Laws were committed by the Govt. of Sri Lanka. Though it has been alleged that the LTTE had used civilians as human shields, recruited children in its cadre and stored weapons in civilian areas, the panel report accuses the Govt. of Sri Lanka of trampling on all International Humanitarian Laws. Therefore, the panel has called upon the UN Security council to “reconsider the resolution passed by the UNHRC on 27 May 2009 in light of the Panel Report”.
One may recall that the permanent People’s Tribunal, an international body independent of any state authority, after examining evidences and hearing eye-witnesses in Dublin in January 2010, concluded that the Sri Lankan government is guilty of War crimes and Crimes against Humanity and that the International community, particularly the U.K. and U.S.A., share responsibility for the breakdown of the peace process during 2002-2006. The tribunal comprised of renowned jurists, Nobel laureates including Rajinder Sachar, former chief justice of New Delhi High Court, Sulak Sivaraksa- a Buddhist Peace campaigner, writer, etc… This People’s Tribunal was set up by the continuous efforts of the Tamil Diaspora, Tamils in Tamil Nadu and some Sinhala democrats.
The Tribunal termed the civil war a “war without witnesses” because, the GoSL prevented entry of both National and International media into the war zone. In fact, some of the early victims were journalists who were murdered by unknown assassins. The atrocities carried out by the military relate particularly to civilians and there are evidences of cluster bombs being dropped by warplanes. Sexual abuse and rape of women by government troops was yet another atrocity repeated throughout the civil war by govt. military in destroyed villages and in the “welfare villages”. This led to tragedies such as abortions and suicide by victims unable to live with family shame and mental trauma. This policy of targeting also applied to Tamils living outside the conflict zone. Apart from mass deportations, selective terror campaigns were carried out by means of abductions, assassinations, arbitrary arrests, detention, sexual assault and torture.
The tribunal insists that the charges of genocide require further investigation, whereas the U.N. Panel on Sri Lanka restricts itself to allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The U.N. fails to view the conflict in Sri Lanka as an ethnic issue as it does not recognize the Tamils’ struggle for statehood or the Tamils as a nationality with a genuine need to protect itself from extermination. Sri Lanka’s war crimes are only a part of ethnic cleansing of Tamils over the last 60 years.
The Sinhala rulers on assuming power from the British in 1948 began the systematic oppression of Tamils in all aspects of life.
(1) One million Tamils were excluded from citizenship and rendered stateless by the citizenship Act 18 of 1948. Act 48 of 1949 denied the right to vote enjoyed by the Tamils until then.
(2) Tamil homelands in the North and East were deliberately colonized by Sinhalese with state funds, but were excluded from all development projects.
(3) The Sinhala Only Act of 1958 and Standardization Act of the same year deprived Tamils of higher education, employment opportunities, professional opportunities and all public office thereby consolidating the racial discrimination.
(4) Thousands of Tamils were killed in racial violence let loose by the Sinhala rulers in 1956, 1958, 1974, 1976, and 1977 against innocent Tamils. There was widespread looting, arson, rape, torture, burning people alive, destroying property and centers of cultural importance – all planned and executed by racist Sinhala Governments.
(5) The state sponsored violence against Tamils in August 1977 forced more than 50,000 Tamils to migrate to northern part of Eelam and to several other countries including India.
(6) Burning of Jaffna Library in 1981 and the massacre of Tamils detained in Welikkede Prison determined armed struggle as the only course available for the Tamils for their liberation.
Is Sri Lanka an anti-imperialist state? :
Sri Lanka, which calls itself as a ‘Socialist Democratic Republic’, was the first country in South Asia to open itself for globalization in 1976, and amended its economic policy accordingly. Recently, the Sri Lanka Govt. has evacuated poor people from neighborhoods around Colombo to offer lands for multi-national companies.
Active military collobaration between the ‘anti-imperialist’ Sri Lanka and United States has been going on for more than two decades. The United States of America has been arming and financing Sri Lanka for most of the civil war period. [http://cdi.org/PDFs/CSBillCharts.pdf] From at least the 1990s, the US has provided military training, financing, logistic supplies and weapons sales worth millions annually. A Voice of America installation was set up in the northwestern part of the country.
The Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA ) was signed soon after Rajapaksa assumed power. It was U.S. citizen Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Defense Minister, and brother to President Rajapaksa, who signed the agreement, March 5, 2007. Their younger brother, also a minister, is a US citizen too.) . ACSA will enable the United States to utilize Sri Lanka’s ports, airports and air space. As a prelude to the signing of the agreement scheduled for July, this year, United States Naval ships have been calling at the Colombo Port for bunkering as well as to enable sailors to go on shore leave.
In return for the facilities offered, Sri Lanka is to receive military assistance from the United States including increased training facilities and equipment. The training, which will encompass joint exercises with United States Armed Forces, will focus on counter terrorism and related activity. The agreement will be worked out on the basis of the use of Sri Lanka’s ports, airports, and air space to be considered hire-charges that will be converted for military hardware.
(http://colombopage.com/archive_07/March5132506JV.html)
Today, lands in the war-torn North and Eastern parts of the Island are shared among Indian and Chinese corporate companies.
Sri Lanka is not a secular state as the constitution itself states that Buddhism is the foremost religion in the Island though there are people belonging to various other religions.
“War on Terror” is a slogan borrowed by Sri Lanka from the U.S. to justify the genocidal war on Tamils, using sophisticated weapons of mass destruction supplied by the U.S., Israel, Japan, Italy, China and India.
Truth and the UNHRC Resolution dated 27 May 2009; The Current Situation:
The U.N. Panel Report of 25 April 2011 is more than enough evidence to conclude that the UNHRC Resolution of 27 May 2009 is far removed from truth. The magnitude of physical torture, psychological torture, disease, starvation and abuse of the Tamils survivors has few precedents in history. It will be several generations before the Tamils recover from the horror of this war. As with any war, women have borne the brunt – there are about 89,000 war widows in Eelam. Tamil women have been molested, sexually harassed and raped as part of the genocidal program so that they never return to normal life. The Sri Lankan army has taken upon itself the duty of not letting any humanitarian aid reach the Tamil survivors. Deprived of food, water, medicine, medical services and other basic necessities, Tamils have been subject to several epidemics in the camps, leading to steady rise in death toll. There were an estimated three hundred thousand Tamils in these modern day “concentration camps” immediately after the war. The number has been dwindling by the day and two years after the war, though the govt. of Sri Lanka claims to have “let free” and “rehabilitated” Tamils, there is no evidence of resettlement; there is no information as to where these people were “resettled”. A state of emergency is still in vogue and the fear-gripped, psychologically tortured people in camps are still under the wrath of the Sri Lankan Army.
We would like to call upon the ALBA countries and other radical governments of Latin America to reflect upon the situation prevailing in south Asia. Countries that became independent after the Second World War including India (1947), Pakistan (1947) and Sri Lanka (1948) were under British rule for centuries. The British ruled these countries inhabited by several Nationalities speaking different languages under a single administrative unit for their own convenience. When these colonies became independent, people of different Nationalities were forced to remain under one state without recognition as separate Nationalities having separate homelands. This improper decolonization led to fighting by different Nationalities for the retrieval of their right to self-rule.
Just as the Tamils in Sri Lanka fighting for Eelam, their traditional homeland, there are other genuine Nationality struggles going on in Kashmir and the North Eastern states in India. Tamils and Punjabis are the potential Nationalities likely to rise in struggle sooner or later. With these realities in its backyard, the Indian government chose to assist the Sri Lanka Govt. in its war against the Liberation of Tamil Eelam. India let Sri Lanka use its satellites for surveillance, supplied sophisticated equipment including radars, technical assistance and billions of rupees in aid for the war against Eelam Tamils. India is well aware that a liberated Eelam state would not tolerate the dominance of the Indian state and its sway over Trincomalee, the strategically located natural port in Eelam territory. Liberation of Eelam could prove to be more than just precedence for Tamils in Tamil Nadu and other Nationalities in the Indian State. India has conveyed its message that it is capable of “nipping trouble in the bud” by deliberately taking part in the ethnic cleansing of Tamils in Sri Lanka.
In the light of the above, we urge the radical governments of Latin America to demand that:
a) The UNHRC Resolution dated 27 May 2009 be removed from the UN records.
b) The struggle of Eelam Tamils is accepted as a liberation struggle for the retrieval of their Homelands.
c) The Sri Lankan govt. under Mahinda Rajapakse is investigated for genocidal crimes in the international court of justice.
d) The planned Sinhala colonization and the land-grab by multinational corporations in Eelam be stopped immediately
e) International media and International Human Rights activists are allowed entry into Sri Lankan territory to gain access to the truth which has not happened even two years after the end of the war
f) Rehabilitation and resettlement happen under the supervision of the UN Peacekeeping Force
g) These countries join hands with Eelam Tamil support groups across the world in demanding that the Eelam Tamils languishing in camps under horrific conditions be let free to return to their homes and all humanitarian assistance rendered to restore normalcy in their lives.
We believe that the blossoming of Socialism in the Twenty First Century and its endurance will not be complete without the liberation of oppressed Nationalities of South Asia. The Eelam Tamils have paid their dues for such liberation dearly and this would no doubt go down in history as the impotence of the left and radical forces.
Imperialism has been successful in spreading the myth that ‘Communism is dead’ and ‘There Is No Alternative'(TINA) to capitalism. If we, as committed anti-imperialists fail to extend our solidarity for the democratic aspirations of the peoples, it will only become a historic blunder of joining hands with imperialism to bury the ideology of communism. And we would like to remind here the saying of the great Internationalist Che Guevera:
“The revolutionary [is] the ideological motor force of the revolution…if he forgets his proletarian internationalism, the revolution which he leads will cease to be an inspiring force and he will sink into a comfortable lethargy, which imperialism, our irreconcilable enemy, will utilize well. Proletarian internationalism is a duty, but it is also a revolutionary necessity. So we educate our people.”
The U.N. Panel Report on Sri Lanka released on April 25, 2011 gives us an opportunity to recognize the just struggle of Eelam Tamils for their self determination and to restore the dignity of International Humanitarian Laws. Cuba and the other Latin American countries should now voice their support for Eelam Tamils and demonstrate their true International spirit handed down to them by Comrade Ernesto Che Guevera.
We look forward to your cooperation in making this effort a success. A line in reply would go a long way in forging our belief in Freedom.
Two Years after the Eelam War: The Flames of Liberation Continue to Expose the Oppressors and their Apologists!
May 21, 2011 by 1 Comment
Democratic Students Union (DSU)
Two years back, on 18 May 2009 the Sri Lankan army claimed to have killed Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of LTTE, along with hundreds of his comrades. The next day in the Sri Lankan parliament a jubilant Rajapakse declared victory in the Eelam War IV. This was the day, two years back, when the Eelam Tamils lost their hard-fought freedom at the hands of the fascist and expansionist Sri Lanka. This week the Tamils in Eelam and outside remember the heroic sacrifice of the sons and daughters of Eelam who laid down their lives fighting the armed forces of the chauvinist Sri Lankan ruling classes. Braving threats, intimidation and harassment from the Sri Lankan armed forces and intelligence, the people of Eelam paid homage to those who have fallen in the decades-long struggle for national liberation. They reiterated that it is the people of Tamil Eelam alone who have the mandate to chose their destiny, denouncing and warning against any ‘negotiated settlement’ of the issue which compromises with the historical realities. The people have stated that any secret deal or confidential talk with the Sri Lankan state by those who claim to represent the Eelam Tamils will not be acceptable. The ‘solution’ only lies in the recognition of the historical reality of Tamil Eelam, i.e., its right to exist as a free and independent national state.
The injustice, oppression and discrimination of the Eelam Tamils by the Sinhala chauvinist ruling classes of Sri Lanka has a long history that goes back many centuries. The genocidal murder of Tamils in the first five months of 2009 in the last phase of the war was one of the most extensive and brutal phases of this national oppression. In the last days of the war alone, more than 40,000 Tamils – including combatants and non-combatants – were slaughtered by the marauding Sri Lankan army and air force. As the ‘international community’ watched in silence, cluster bombs and chemical weapons were unleashed on the entire population. Houses, schools, hospitals, ambulances, civilian shelters, and even No Fire Zones were bombed with impunity. By the time the war was declared over, almost the entire Tamil population of the north and east was uprooted, their lives and property was destroyed, and were forcefully confined in concentration camps which the Sri Lankan state calls ‘refugee camps’. Even conservative estimates put the number of displaced people to be above 3.5 lakhs. A large part of them are still not allowed to return to their villages, most of which have been ravaged and ruined beyond recognition. Eelam has been transformed into a mammoth prison-house by the occupation army of the Sri Lankan state. Here any form of dissent and articulation of political demand is strictly prohibited. The aim is to enslave the entire nation, and to kill the very hope of a free homeland. By forcing them into utter misery, the Sri Lankan state expects the Eelam Tamils to give up their aspiration for liberation, to abandon their dream of Eelam as a mere illusion, and to accept the present condition as their immutable fate.
Living under the shadow of fascist repression, experiencing the terror unleashed by the Sri Lankan state, and deeply aware of the historic oppression of their nation, it is the Eelam Tamils more than anyone else who seek the punishment of the perpetrators – the Sri Lankan ruling classes and its mercenary army. They deserve the severest of reprisal and punishment for their crimes. The question however is, what should they be punished for? For ‘crimes against humanity’, ‘war crimes’, ‘international crimes’, ‘violation of human rights’, flouting the rules of ‘Geneva Convention’, etc.? Or, for trying to wipe out a whole nation fighting for their inalienable right to self determination and national liberation? Here lies the difference between the perspective of the peoples’ movements and that of the International Human Rights industry/NGOs promoted by the imperialist camp. It is in the name of humanism, humanitarian intervention, and the so-called crimes against humanity that imperialism and its faithful lackeys such as the comprador ruling classes of Sri Lanka commit national oppression. Not for nothing that the Sri Lankan state called its war on Eelam a ‘humanitarian war to liberate the people of the Northern Province’. This is how the warmongers sell their wars, and the international weapons industry, its wares. This is the language in which the ‘internationally recognised bodies’ like the United Nations (UN), NATO and the European Union wages war on peoples’ movements and organisations. No wonder the imperialist countries and their ‘recognised legal bodies’ like UN spends millions of dollars every year to promote the discourse of ‘human rights’ or ‘crimes against humanity’ by funding thousands of human rights organisations and Non-Governmental Organisations. In the ‘conflict zones’ they protect the interest of the forces of oppression by accusing and persecuting the oppressed people, their leaders and their organisations, who dare to rise up against imperialism and its lackeys, while silently or vocally approving the acts of the oppressors. In the name of ‘conflict resolution’, they seek to take away the oppressed peoples’ right to fight back.
Any talk of ‘humanity’ and ‘humanism’ in a world divided into oppressor and oppressed classes, or oppressor and oppressed nations, is nothing but a sham. It is not in the name of ‘humanism’ that oppressed nations demand the right to self-determination. It is not in the name of ‘human rights’ that oppressed people seek liberation. The right of every oppressed nation to self determination including secession from the oppressor nation is a political right. It is a genuine collective right of a nation or a people, which even the UN was forced to recognise under pressure from the tidal wave of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist liberation struggles in the twentieth century. It is this inalienable political and collective right that the Eelam Tamils and their organisation Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fought for almost four decades without compromise. In the path of liberation they unflinchingly suffered, but have not surrendered. Even today, after undergoing such extreme forms of repression and near extinction, they have not given up the aspiration for liberation. Therefore, when some sections who claim to represent the Eelam Tamils or to be in solidarity with them talk of ‘war crimes’, ‘crimes against humanity’ or ‘human rights violations’ in Sri Lanka without even acknowledging the right of a separate, sovereign and independent Tamil Eelam, stands accused of not only betraying this heroic struggle, but also of colluding with imperialism and its trusted executioners, the Sri Lankan and Indian ruling classes. They would do well to pay heed to the students of Jaffna University, who while remembering the martyrs of Eelam War this week, warned that it is the Eelam people alone that have the right to decide upon their destiny, and not those who compromise with the peoples’ aspirations in the name of tactics.
The Sri Lankan ruling classes responsible for centuries of oppression of the Tamil national minority must be punished so that the people of Eelam can win their freedom. But this punishment can only be in the form of overthrowing the repressive rule of the Sri Lankan state and through the liberation of Eelam, not by ‘demanding punishment’ for this or that member of the ruling classes. Let us not forget that the Rajapaksas –Mahinda, Basil, Gotabaya, or Sarath Fonseka etc. are mere instruments of class rule and national oppression – they are the puppets of imperialism. To howl for the punishment of such puppets without opposing Eelam’s continued occupation by the Sri Lankan state and its plunder by the imperialists is nothing but to legitimize this oppression and to backstab the Eelam liberation movement. Only the wolves in sheep’s skin are capable of such opportunism. The struggling people everywhere – including the Eelam Tamils – have seen too many of these chameleons to be fooled by their pretensions.
Who then will punish the ruling classes of Sri Lanka and bring them to justice, after all? Will it be United Nations, International Criminal Court, United States of America, India, the Sri Lankan state itself? Or the oppressed people of Tamil Eelam and Sri Lanka? Anyone who trusts the collective strength of oppressed people and believes in their unwavering determination to struggle against injustice knows the answer. However, those who are in the payroll of imperialism or benefits from oppression and status-quo, call upon the people to repose faith in their masters to ‘deliver justice’. This is the characteristic role of the imperialist-funded human rights industry and the NGO racket. What is the track record of imperialist agencies like the United Nations or the International Criminal Court (ICC) in ‘punishing’ despotic and authoritarian rulers complicit in mass murders? The worldwide operations of ICC, for example, are run by a consortium of international NGOs called ‘Coalition for the International Criminal Court’ which has over 2,500 NGO members in 150 different countries, most of which are directly funded by the imperialists. No surprise that ICC has prosecuted ruling-class members of six countries for ‘crimes against humanity’, all of which are from African countries. The latest target against whom ICC prosecution has begun is Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, his gravest crime being the opposition to imperialist intervention and the US-led war. As per the official rhetoric, however, he is to be tried for ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’! On the other hand, the biggest criminals in the world – George Bush Junior and Senior, Barack Obama, Tony Blair etc. are roaming free, some even managing to get Nobel ‘Peace Prizes’! Therefore, at a meeting of 30 African ICC member states in June 2009, several African countries called on African ICC members to withdraw from the Court in protest against the Court’s targeting of only Africa. The Commissioner of African Union, Ramtane Lamamra, said that the Prosecutor of the ICC was applying “a double standard in pursuing cases against some leaders while ignoring others”. Knowing all this, can anyone be so naïve to be ignorant of the politics of ‘war crimes’, ‘crimes against humanity’, and the ‘justice’ system of “internationally recognised legal bodies”?
Is the real character and purpose of the UN any different? History proves that this ‘recognised legal body’ too has been a ‘powerful tool’ and a ‘strategic weapon’ in the hands of the imperialist powers and their surrogate regimes the world over. Just five years after its establishment, the UN –brainchild of US president Roosevelt – fought in favour of South Korea against Peoples’ Republic of Korea and revolutionary China under Mao in the Korean War (1950-53). From its inception till now the UN and its legal wing, the so-called International Court of Justice, has worked untiringly for establishing the New World Order under US imperialism. Its role during the ‘Cold War’ and thereafter needs no elaboration. In light of this dark history, to welcome the UN to be the arbiter of ‘international crime’ and ‘world peace’ is to invite imperialist intervention, to strengthen the forces of oppression and to deny any possibility of justice. Has the Libyan ‘rebels’ who invited UN bombardment in the name of ‘ousting Gaddafi’ and ‘liberating’ Libya opened doors for peace, justice and democracy? The people of Libya know that they are the lackeys of imperialism, no matter how much they try to convince the world about the ‘strategic’ need of using the UN-led war in Libya. For the Libyan people, the so-called rebels are nothing but imperialist collaborators and traitors.
The recent UN Expert Panel’s report on Sri Lanka exposes its real character to those who care to see. The so-called ‘major limitations’ of the UN report are nothing but the very basis of the report. Like any other imperialist agent, it does not recognise the right of Eelam Tamils for a separate and free homeland, instead offering a humiliating ‘common homeland’. It falsely accuses LTTE and its leadership, the force spearheading the decades-old liberation struggle, of using Eelam Tamils as ‘human shields’ and of even ‘point blank shooting of civilians’! In fact, while the UN Expert Panel finds five allegations of ‘potential serious violations’ against the Sri Lankan state ‘credible’, it held the LTTE guilty of six such ‘potential serious violations’, including the killing of its own people for whose defense and liberation it heroically fought for three decades! By accepting, welcoming and propagating the UN and its report, one tacitly accepts that the leaders and cadres of LTTE were also criminals, an opinion which is alien to the people of Tamil Eelam. The oppressed people of Tamil Eelam will never accept such a conclusion against the very organisation which they built and sustained with their blood and sweat. Nor would the LTTE or its leadership would accept such a verdict, no matter how much the report is ‘critical’ of the Sri Lankan genocidal state.
Sri Lanka’s ruling classes too have rejected the report, but for entirely different reasons. They know very well that the report and the threat of ‘prosecution’ in international courts will be used as a tool by the Western imperialist countries to wrest economic benefits, and hence is this rejection. Apart from outright imperialists, only those turncoats who see opportunities in the decimation of LTTE and the plight of the Tamils in Eelam can talk of ‘using the report as a strategic weapon’ in favour of Eelam Tamil and their political aspiration, after slyly declaring that “considering that the Lankan government claims that all the leaders of the Eelam movement have been eliminated, it can be presumed that the report shall apply only to those in state machinery who were responsible for war crimes”! We must thank them for exonerating the martyred sons and daughters of Eelam from being prosecuted for ‘war crimes’! But we have no right to anticipate whether the oppressed people of Tamil Eelam will be so merciful and benevolent as to exonerate the renegades for their crime of betraying the ongoing Eelam liberation struggle at one of its most critical junctures. Long live the struggle for free and independent Tamil Eelam!
The “Liberation” of Bamboo – The Caveats
May 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Campaign for Survival and Dignity
The recent victory of village Mendha (Lekha) in securing control over its bamboo deserves celebration. For the first time, after a struggle of decades by forest dwellers across the country, a village has regained control over its forest and over a key livelihood resource. For the first time – despite intense, illegal resistance by the Forest Department till the very last minute – it has been acknowledged that the forest bureaucracy has no God-given right to extract and destroy the livelihood resources of forest dwellers while harassing and repressing them.
But it is also necessary to remember that this is a very limited and partial victory. Claims that “bamboo has been liberated” are greatly exaggerated. This is because in several ways, Mendha is no ordinary village. If this is not to remain merely an eyewash, it is necessary to look more closely at what has actually happened.
First, Mendha is one of the handful of villages in the country whose rights to conserve, protect and manage its community forest resource (CFR) have actually been recognised and recorded by the authorities. In the vast majority of villages these rights have not been recognised at all; and in the few hundred where this has happened, as in Andhra Pradesh, the right has mostly been illegally handed over to the Forest Department-controlled Joint Forest Management committee rather than to the village. In other cases, even if the JFM committee’s name has not been mentioned in the community title, rights only on the area allocated for JFM by the forest department have been recognized (instead over forests falling within their customary boundaries) and the titles made conditional to continuing control of the forest department. As we said in our statement on the Environment Ministry letter on bamboo, the Environment Ministry has now consciously tried to limit ownership and control over minor forest produce to only these handful of villages whose CFR rights have been ‘officially’ recognized. In all other villages, Forest Department control will continue, in violation of the law.
Second, through their earlier struggles, Mendha village’s gram sabha had already wrested control over its community forest from the Joint Forest Management committee in the village. In most cases, the struggle between actual community control and these committees – which, as explained in this link, are actually Forest Department proxies – is still continuing. In its letter on bamboo, also as said in our earlier statement, the Ministry is not only preventing democratic gram sabha control over community forests – it is trying to strengthen JFM committees and blocking the legal recognition of community rights. Had the Ministry’s policy been implemented in Mendha, April 27th would simply not have happened.
The MoEF has a history of saying one thing and doing the opposite in forest management. If bamboo is not to become one more example of this, the Ministry has to be pressurised to abandon its illegal positions and recognise rights over minor forest produce (as well as community forest resource rights) in all villages, dismantle the systems of Forest Department autocracy, and shift to democratic management. In the absence of these measures, April 27th will be remembered as a day when the state gave in to one village’s historic struggle – while betraying thousands of others.
Radical Notes 