DIARIES – Radical Notes

Indian Central Government and Sri Lankan Tamils

February 28, 2009 by Radical Notes Leave a Comment

Vehujanan

Indian central government policy on the national question of Sri Lanka has always given priority to India’s regional interests. Policy making has been aimed at not just exercising hegemony over the whole of South Asia but beyond it to cover the whole of Asia. In particular, it has been compelling every South Asian country to accept its role as ‘big brother’. Refusal has been met with threats or attacks under some pretext. Sri Lanka, for example, has experienced this in the past.

Sri Lanka has strategic importance due to its geographic location in the Indian Ocean. The US, the West and India need the island of Sri Lanka in their respective bids for global or regional dominance. It was when JR Jayawardane, out of loyalty to the US, sought to surrender the country to the US, that Indira Gandhi and India took a keen interest in Sri Lanka. The opportunity came when ethnic violence was unleashed on the Tamils in 1983. India used it as pretext to get involved in Sri Lanka and used the issue as a device to serve its own purposes.

The conservative Tamil nationalist leadership, which was incapable of analysing why India showed an interest or assess it from a long term perspective, trusted India in full faith, from its standpoint of narrow nationalism. It was believed that Tamil Eelam will be carved out for the Tamils like Bangladesh was carved out of Pakistan in 1971 by the Indian armed forces under the leadership of Indira Gandhi. Sadly, a vast majority of the Tamil people were convinced to that effect by the Tamil United Liberation Front. The Tamil nationalists also ridiculed the logical arguments put forward by Marxist Leninists who placed before the people the facts and the objective reality to firmly declare that Tamil Eelam was not feasible in this fashion. They even denounced Marxist and socialist positions and expressed to the hilt their loyalty to India. Another group was immersed in its faith in the US and the West which were instrumental in the creation of Israel.

It was amid such developments that India began to strengthen its position to tighten its grip on the whole of Sri Lanka. The present Mahinda Chinthana government suits that purpose very well. Indian economic infiltration has gushed with speed into Sri Lanka, and has developed to the extent that Sri Lanka could soon be considered a strong colonial possession of India. India will not tolerate anything that stands in the way of this development. The chauvinistic government of Sri Lanka and the hegemonic state of India concur on this. The manifestation of this is evident from the activities of the Mahinda Chinthana government during the past three years.

India has resented the influence and interference of the US, the West and Japan in the Sri Lankan national question. There lies the essence of the inherent rivalry for regional hegemony. Having realised that the international allies of the LTTE had a foothold in the US and the West and knowing the implications of Norwegian facilitation and the role of Ranil Wickramasinghe in it, India began to make its moves; and the Mahinda Chinthanaya government made way for it. Indian hegemonic diplomacy started to act on the economic, political and military fronts. Norway was eased out of its role as facilitator. That was followed by closer ties on the military and political fronts with Sri Lanka, through which there were attacks on the LTTE in the Vanni, military success and a ban on the LTTE.

The US and the West, caught in a dilemma in the context of their strengthening ties with India, found themselves unable to do anything in Sri Lanka and maintain an embarrassed silence. The US and the West are on a low key in the face of the bellowing by the Sri Lankan government about its war against terrorism, since they had already banned the LTTE and Sri Lanka followed suit. Under the conditions, it is only the support from Tamilnadu that is a voice of consolation to the Tamils. But anyone who knows anything of the acrobatics of Tamilnadu politics will also know that it is not a sincere and unanimous voice. The political parties of Tamilnadu can only plead with the central government of India but cannot compel it to do anything. It has not happened in the past and it will not happen in the future either.

The central government of India will not come forward to bring an end to the war in Sri Lanka, since the war in Vanni was commenced on its signal. It has provided military assistance in many ways including the supply of arms. After all this, for the Tamil side to plead with the central government and the Tamilnadu state government is a show of weakness arising from the lack of a policy of self-reliance in struggle.

The Tamil parties conduct themselves in a manner where they seem to plead that, irrespectively of whether they are struck, kicked or spat on by India, India remains their master. Is this not an insult to “the self respecting Tamil race”? It is, however, not possible to change this attitude of expectations on the part of the Tamil leadership. Their reactionary politics is marinated with it.

Members of the Tamil National Alliance made several trips to meet the Indian premier Manmohan Singh, but failed to have even five minutes of hearing. It was said that Sonia Gandhi had pledged to Karunanidhi that Pranab Mukherjee will be sent to Sri Lanka. But the one who turned up was Shivashankar Menon who discussed matters of mutual interest. The unending pleas of the TNA which fail to appreciate the implications of these developments only further humiliate the Tamil people. Rival Tamil leaders will not free themselves of this. One after the other they will seek to define themselves as devotees of India. Indian hegemony thus seems to have penetrated at various levels.

In contrast to this, there is a need for the emergence of honest and far-sighted political forces from among the Tamils. Past experiences need to be studied; and decisions should be based on a long-term view of how the right to self-determination within a united Sri Lanka can be won, and about the policies and principles appropriate to the decisions. There should be clear decisions about who their friends and who the enemies are. The ordinary Sinhalese in the South should be persuaded that it will be possible to build a united, strong and prosperous Sri Lanka by the establishment of autonomies and autonomous units for the nationalities as a political solution to the national question.

No struggle could be won merely with brave fighters and modern weapons alone. The struggle should be a people’s struggle where the people decide their own fate and become the heroes of the struggle. On the other hand, a handful of fighters, however brave they may be, cannot fight on their behalf and win. This is the lesson that history has taught us. That “people and the people alone are the motive force of history” should be an unforgettable lesson of history. In a true struggle of the people, the people have never been defeated. The final victory is always theirs. That requires taking a clear and correct line of struggle. To seek the bases for it is what is essential today for the Tamil people.

Translation of article in Tamil, Puthiyapoomi, Jan-Feb 2009
Courtesy: New Democracy – Theoretical Organ of the New Democratic Party (Sri Lanka), February 2009

Filed Under: DIARIES Tagged With: Imperialism, India, International Relations, Self-Determination, Sri Lanka, State Repression

In Defence of Hamas – Response/Counter-response

January 27, 2009 by Radical Notes 1 Comment

The Original Article by Pothik Ghosh

Is there really a Palestinian bourgeois class, which shares socio-political interests with its Israeli counterpart? For the very same reason that explains the absence of a working class movement in Palestine, there is no capitalist solidarity in that region as well. There have been working class leaders who have failed their class without being bourgeois themselves.

There is greater out-migration from Israel than there is immigration into the country. There is no material pressure to expand territory. After all, Israel did vacate Gaza. You are willing to compromise with Hamas’s Islamicism. Why can’t the Hamas accept Israel in the same spirit? – TK Arun

Dear TK,

I will attempt to address only the fundamental theoretical questions you have raised in your response to my piece on Palestine here. I’ll leave out some of the more empirical details that you have brought up.

To begin at the beginning, capitalist solidarity does not necessarily preclude struggle within capitalism among various sections of the bourgeoisie. In fact, the hegemonic social logic of capital, which would be constitutive of such solidarity, is of competitive socialisation. Capitalist solidarity is, therefore, not without stratification, and domination of one or more sections of the bourgeoisie by others. Capitalist solidarity can never, precisely because of this constitutive logic, be truly envisaged as absolutely horizontal. To that extent, there is no equality, even within the bourgeoisie, in capitalism. And to my mind solidarity among various sections of capitalists cannot, unlike socialist solidarity, be conceptualised (repeat conceptualised) as an absolute state. It exists, provisionally if you like, only in relation to their domination of the working class. I have, if you go back to my piece, said that the PLO-PA – and the Palestinian social groups embodied by them – also pose a Palestinian identity of struggle against Israel. But the decline in the radical tenor of resistance as posited through this ‘secular’ identity, seen in conjunction with its rejection by the Gazan underclass and the ascendancy of Hamas and its Islamism as the principal idiom of Palestinian resistance, indicates that there is a Palestinian bourgeoisie. This bourgeoisie, even as it poses a struggle (competitive) against the Israeli state, and the Jewish bourgeoisie it embodies, for a better position within the larger regional capitalist hegemony, also seeks to protect and preserve its own interests against the assault of the Palestinian underclass. The PLO-PA’s collaboration, ever since Oslo, with the Israeli state to marginalise and even crush Hamas on one hand, and continuing to pose a Palestinian identity of struggle against Israel, on the other, is symptomatic of this strange capitalist paradox called competitive solidarity of the bourgeoisie. You will surely agree, and I have adduced examples to that effect in my article, that the Palestinian question posed by PLO-PA, post Oslo, is an apology of resistance in that it has been perfectly amenable to and even a participant in Israel’s insidious undermining of the Oslo Accords. Or, how else does one explain the failure of the Mahmoud Abbas-led group’s failure to forge a solid solidarity between West Bank and Gaza and conduct resistance against Israel with the same doggedness that Al Fatah, the Yasser Arafat-led main faction of the PLO, did in its heyday. That is something that Hamas has been doing. If anything, Abbas has used the PA security forces, and wonder of wonders Fatah fighters, to quell anti-Israeli dissent within Palestinian society not only in Gaza but also sometimes in West Bank.

If you argue that Hamas too is posing the question of self-determination in the idiom of competition I would certainly not disagree. Given that it’s not a self-conscious proletarian subjectivity, it sure is not self-reflexively aware that the question of political autonomy it’s raising cannot really be resolved unless it’s informed by a politics that shifts the horizon of socialisation from competition (capitalist) to non-alienated association and dialogue (trans- or counter-capitalist). Yet, at this moment this competitive posing of the ‘Islamised’ national Palestinian identity of Hamas – given that it is located in that section of Palestinian society (underclass) that is disenfranchised, dispossessed and dominated by a constellation of various institutionalized and alienated configurations of socio-political power formed by the PLO-PA and the Zionist state together as also separately – objectively poses the decimation of the competitive social logic of capitalism and its hegemony in the region. A hegemony that is, at this moment, precisely, the root cause of this dispossession and domination of a section of Palestinians. By the same token, the PLO-PA’s competitive ‘struggle’ against Israel, considering that it simultaneously seeks to collaborate with it, is an attempt to keep certain sections of Palestinian society at bay and, therefore, seeks to preserves and perpetuate the hegemony of capitalism and its competitive social logic and ideology.

I would, of course, join you in ruing the fact that working class forces have grasped this objective conjunctural situation neither in their theoretical analyses nor political practice. For, only that would break and displace the conjuncture towards a more ideologically proletarianised situation. And yet, that will not be any reason for me to simply reject a political subjectivity, which foregrounds this objective autonomy-association question sharply, merely because it’s not self-conscious of what its subjectivity actually amounts to in the objective realm. Of course, Hamas, or any such agency, will have to be critiqued for its deficit on those terms of self-consciousness. But that to my mind is not accomplished by painting it with the same moral-secular brush of Islamism that is used to taint forces like Al Qaeda or Lashkar-e-Toiba.

Coming back to a problem that has often cropped up in most of our discussions and debates, class for me is, in its essence, not a social identity or group. Though it can appear in that form sometimes. (Hegel’s “the essence must appear” or Marx’s “Class qua class”.) Class, for me, is a logic of relation. When competition happens, as is capitalism’s wont, in its moments of circulation (social) and distribution/regulation (political), we have to see in totality, by retroactive location in the moment of production (economic), what is the point from which absolute extraction of value occurs. The social group or identity that occupies that point at that moment is the form that the working class takes at that moment. In other words, politico-cultural identities have to be located within this matrix of social relations to figure out which class position they hold in themselves. And that would be irrespective of whether or not they display a subjective consciousness of their objective class location (or position) in positing their respective identities.

Your analysis seems to be informed by an economistic view of Marxism and class politics, which conflates the working class with workers and the bourgeoisie with a specific section among them: the industrial capitalists. But in my analysis West Asia, particularly Israel-Palestine, does not need to have heavy-duty industrialisation and thus industrial capitalists and industrial workers, for us to find either the working class or the bourgeoisie in that region. Capital, if I may repeat myself, is a certain configuration of social power.

Therefore, your assertion that there is no working class movement in the region is right. But not for the reasons you seem to imply. This absence is because, as I state above, the left forces in the region, which had some significant presence there once, have not been able to grasp, either in theory or in political practice, the conjuncture of Hamas’s emergence and critically engage with that conjuncture and thereby the Palestinian movement that has engendered a force like Hamas. If that sounds a tad voluntaristic and utopian, let me complete the dialectic, which will dissolve this subjective voluntarism into its objectivity, by saying the same thing from a different angle: only if Hamas succeeds in enabling a truly nationally (repeat nationally) self-determined Palestinian state would the Palestinian society have taken yet another step towards founding such a working class movement. The institutionalisation of Hamas, which the founding of such a nation-state would entail, would lead to the emergence of a new elite and bureaucracy from the currently struggling sections of Palestinian society, its concomitant alienation from the masses and the complete instrumentalisation of its Islamism, something that is at times visible now as fascism at the Palestinian community level.

All that would further deepen the objective conditions for the emergence of a significant working class politics in Palestine. Of course, subjective intervention to seize this objective moment would still be required. And we, who do politics in the shadow of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the elimination of the Tudeh Party by Khomeini’s band of Islamists, know all too well the heavy price to be paid for not seizing the objective moment through subjective ideological intervention. After all, only that can rupture the conjuncture. Similarly in Palestine. Hamas’s success and institutionalisation, going by the current configuration of political forces, could well lead to the emergence of more radical outfits such as the Islamic Jihad as the principal agency of Palestinian resistance. But Hamas’s marginalisation through military force, precisely what Israel has been trying to accomplish, would surely compel large sections of the beleaguered Palestinian underclass to vest their despair in the pernicious chimera of a hope that the pan-Islamism of Al Qaeda offers. Such perils in political struggles cannot, clearly, be pre-empted. They have to be faced even at the risk of making grave mistakes. For, if people eschew struggles for fear of the perils such struggles are likely to produce there would be no hope of them emancipating themselves. We would do well to recall Mao, who in his peculiarly Chinese Jacobin style used to say, “A revolution is not a dinner party.”

By the way, an aside: revolutionary forces in Palestine might be down but they are not out. Fighters of George Habbash’s Popular Front have reportedly been fighting the Israeli incursion shoulder to shoulder with the guerrillas of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The opportunity for a socialist revolutionary subjective intervention has not exactly been lost in Palestine.

Pothik Ghosh

Filed Under: DIARIES Tagged With: International Relations, Israel, Marxism, Palestine, Self-Determination, Working Class

Satyam – a symptom, not the problem

January 13, 2009 by Saswat Pattanayak 1 Comment

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.

Filed Under: DIARIES Tagged With: Economy, India, Saswat Pattanayak

An Interview with Lenin Kumar

January 11, 2009 by Radical Notes Leave a Comment

Satyabrata

Lenin Kumar, editor of a progressive peoples’ magazine in Oriya, Nisan, was arrested and sent to jail on charges of writing provocative literature. The fact is that his magazine took a stance against the anti-Christian pogrom in Kandhamal district after the killing of Laxmananda Saraswati. His arrest was an attempt by the government of Orissa to silence the voices of the oppressed, and could be seen as corroborating the ongoing McCarthyization process in India. After much struggle, Lenin is free on bail now.

Satyabrata: You have been convicted for possessing inflammatory materials. What, according to you, is being regarded as inflammatory in your booklet, Dharma Namare Kandhamalare Raktanadi (Kandhamal’s River of Blood in the Name of Religion) and why?

Lenin Kumar: Is it inflammatory, to identify the communal and brahminist forces and their agenda? The riot affected people in the relief camps have already pointed at the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal men as responsible for violence in the name of religion. In the book, Dharma Namare Kandhamalare Raktanadi they are unmasked. But, they are in power in the state. So using the police they wanted to silence the voice, which is ‘inflammatory’ to them. It is ridiculous to say that the book disturbed communal harmony because it exposed them who really disturbed it.

Satyabrata: Why is Nisan being targeted? What is your expectation from other progressive people, intellectuals on this assault on Nisan?

Lenin Kumar: Nisan stands for janabadi (democratic) literature. Its basic trend is against Brahminism and imperialism. Unlike mainstream journalism, we have focussed on the ongoing peoples’ movements (including the Maoist among others) and their roots in genuine popular desire for liberation from brahminical and imperialist domination. The magazine is not yet banned. There is no question of bowing in front of the anti-people forces. When they sent me to jail, people protested throughout the state – writers came on the streets in a manner quite unimaginable in a region like Orissa. I think this is due to our commitment. All these developments inspire us. So there is no question of leaving the battlefield. And how can one repress an ideology?

Satyabrata: What reaction do you expect from other newspapers and journalists?

Lenin Kumar: Unfortunately in Orissa, most newspapers are in the hands of the ruling classes. They are simply bourgeois party leaflets. It is very difficult for a genuine reporter to take his position. Some reporters blindly act like representatives of the state. In my case, I have seen my name as ‘Mao writer”. What does it mean, till date I do not understand. Professionally they are expected to be above the outlook of the ruling classes, which are openly becoming the agents of international capital. Otherwise, there will be no space for democracy.

Satyabrata: You were arrested because of touching the Kandhamal issue. What is your personal view regarding the recent incidents in Kandhamal?

Lenin Kumar: Anti-dalit, anti-minority agenda is in the air. The Sangh Parivar is openly challenging the democratic values. The state is keeping silence. The Maoists in Kandhamal have showed us that the communal forces are building their second laboratory in the region after Gujarat’s. They have opposed these forces in their own way. We should not forget that Laxmananda Saraswati in Kandhamal was not a saint or a representative of the Hindu religion, but a leader of VHP. And frankly, I have no respect to their riot-politics.

Satyabrata: What is your message for fellow journalists, writers, intellectuals and progressive people?

Lenin Kumar: For getting the bail, I heartily thank the writers, journalists, intellectuals who stood for freedom of expression and protested my arrest. I thank my wife Rumita for her camaraderie in this process. If a person like me coming from a middle class family living in the state capital can be targeted, one can only imagine the extent of state terrorism and violation of human rights in the remote villages of Orissa, which hardly get noticed. We must stand united against any undemocratic, exploitative, anti-people actions.

Filed Under: DIARIES, INTERVIEWS Tagged With: Communalism, India, Media, Orissa, State Repression

50 YEARS ON… And the same challenge of making a Revolution

January 1, 2009 by Radical Notes Leave a Comment

Lázaro Barredo Medina, GRANMA

“THE dictatorship has been defeated. The joy is immense. And yet, there still remains much to do. We won’t deceive ourselves by believing that everything will be much easier from now on; perhaps it will be much more difficult.”

This is what Commander in Chief Fidel Castro told the people on January 8, 1959, the day of his entry into Havana. Many people could never imagine the immense challenge that they would live to experience.

Suffice it to say that just a few days later, Fidel proclaimed the right to self-determination in terms of relations with the United States and immediately, the aggressions, attempts on his life and anger on the part of U.S. politicians began, evidence of which can be seen in speeches and articles of the time, as in an editorial of Time magazine, the mouthpiece of the most conservative sectors, entitled: “Fidel Castro’s neutralism is a challenge for the United States.”

But the Cuban people could not be neutral in the face of the United States. The triumph of the Revolution that January 1959 signified for the Cuban nation, for the first time in its history, the real possibility of exercising the right to self-determination. From that moment on, neither the U.S. president, Congress nor its ambassadors could continue making decisions on what could or could not be done in Cuba. The bitter dependence had been brought to an end; a dependence that saw U.S. governors and ambassadors enjoying a degree of power in Cuba that was far greater than the actual power that they had – with respect to decision-making – within the U.S. federal government or in relation to any of the 50 states that make up the U.S.A.

When full national independence was achieved, the Revolution began to exercise that right by immediately applying the program that Fidel had announced during the Moncada trial of 1953 and which is contained in his historic self-defense speech History Will Absolve Me.

Cuba established the economic and social regime that it believed was most just and established a socialist state with participatory democracy, equality and social justice.

The country’s economy was characterized by limited industrial development, essentially depending on sugar production and a latifundia agricultural economy, where landowners controlled 75% of the total arable land.

Most of the country’s economic activity and its mineral resources were managed by U.S. capital, which controlled 1.2 million hectares of land (a quarter of the productive territory) and most of the sugar industry, nickel production, oil refineries, the electricity and telephone services and the majority of bank credits. Likewise, the U.S. market controlled approximately 70% of Cuban imports and exports, within a system of highly dependent volumes of exchange: in 1958, Cuba exported products worth 733 million pesos and imported 777 million pesos worth of goods.

The prevailing social picture was characterized by a high unemployment and illiteracy, a precarious healthcare, social assistance and housing system for the vast majority of the population, as well as abysmal differences in living conditions between urban and rural populations. There was a high degree of polarization and unequal distribution of income; in 1958, 50% of the population earned just 11% of total income, while a 5% minority controlled 26%. Racial and gender discrimination, begging, prostitution and social and administrative corruption were widespread.

Addressing the social and economic problems in Cuban society could no longer be put off and could only be resolved if the Cuban people had control of their own wealth and natural resources. Thus, using the 1940 Constitution and in line with international law, Cuba exercised its right to take control of these resources and assumed total responsibility for this action. The island paid compensation to all nationals from third countries (Canada, Spain, Britain, etc.) with the exception of U.S. nationals, given that that government rejected the provisions outright and transformed the Cuban government’s decision into a pretext for unleashing a war unprecedented in the history of bilateral relations between the two nations.

Not only did the Revolution hand over land to campesinos who, up until then, had been subjected to semi-feudal conditions of production and forced to live in extreme poverty, but it also determined that that all the country’s resources should be allocated to national economic development and improving the material and living conditions of the population. To give just one example, in the 1980s alone, approximately 60 billion pesos were allocated to the construction of productive and social facilities.

The process of industrialization underway paved the way for economic and productive diversification. Under the Revolution and up until the economic crisis which began with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the East European socialist bloc between 1989 and 1991 – what we in Cuba call the Special Period – the country’s capacity for producing steel grew 14-fold, fertilizer increased six-fold, the oil refining industry quadrupled (not counting the new refinery in Cienfuegos), the textile industry grew seven-fold, tourism three-fold, to mention but a few. The state also created complete ranges and new industries such as machinery, mechanics, electronics, the production of medical equipment, a pharmaceutical industry, construction materials, a glass industry and ceramics, as well as making investments to increase and upgrade the sugar, food and light industries. In addition to these endeavors, we have the development of biotechnology, genetic engineering and other branches of science.

The country has also made great efforts in terms of improving its infrastructure. Electricity generation has risen eight-fold and water storage capacity has increased 310 times, from 29 million cubic meters in 1958 to nine billion-plus cubic meters today. There has been diversification with respect to roads and freeways and modernization of ports and other areas. Social needs have been covered fairly well, except for housing, which has been Cuba’s biggest problem.

The progressive growth and diversification of productive potential and the application of a widespread social program has allowed the nation to confront the problem of unemployment. In 1958, with a population of six million inhabitants, approximately one third of the economically active population was unemployed. Of this figure, 45% of the unemployed lived in rural areas while, out of 200,000 women in work, 70% were employed as domestic servants. Today, with 11 million inhabitants, the number of people in work is in excess of 4.5 million. Over 40% of workers are women and today they represent more than 60% of the nation’s technical and professional sectors.

In 1958, the number of illiterate and semi-illiterate people in Cuba stood at two million. The average academic level of 15-plus year-olds was third grade, more than 600,000 children did not attend school and 58% of teachers were unemployed. Just 45.9% of school-age children were enrolled and half of them did not attend classes. Only 6% of those enrolled finished elementary education. Universities were available to just 20,000 students.

The education sector received immediate attention from the revolutionary government. Its first task was to develop a masse literacy campaign with the participation of the population. An extensive network of schools was constructed throughout the country and more than 300,000 teachers and professors were in fulltime employment in this sector. The average academic level for those aged 15-plus year-olds rose to ninth grade. One hundred per cent of school age children are enrolled in schools, some 98% complete elementary education and 91% complete junior high. One in every 11 citizens is a university graduate and one in eight has technical-professional qualifications. There are 650,000 students in the country’s universities today and all education is free of charge. Education and vocational skills are also guaranteed for 100% of children with physical or mental disabilities, who attend special schools.

The precarious situation in 1958 with respect to public health was characterized by an infant mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births and a maternal mortality rate of 118 per 10,000. The mortality rate for those suffering from gastroenteritis was 41.2 per 100,000, and from tuberculosis, 15.9 per 100,000. In rural areas, 36% of the population suffered from intestinal parasites, 31% from malaria, 14% from tuberculosis and 13% from typhoid. Life expectancy at birth was estimated at 58.8 years.

Around 61% of hospital beds and 65% of the nation’s 6,500 doctors were concentrated in the capital. In the other provinces, medical coverage was one doctor for every 2,378 inhabitants and there was just one hospital for all the country’s rural areas.

Today, healthcare is free of charge and Cuba has more than 70,000 doctors, providing coverage of one for every 194 inhabitants. Almost 30,000 of them are providing services in over 60 different countries. A national network of more than 700 hospitals and polyclinics has been created. Thanks to a widespread vaccination campaign (every child currently receives vaccines against 13 different illnesses) diseases such as polio, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, tetanus, rubella, mumps and hepatitis B have been almost entirely eradicated. The infant mortality rate is 5.3 for every 1,000 live births and life expectancy exceeds 77 years.

There is also a series of advanced medical services that are not considered as “basic” in the international arena, and are provided completely free of charge, such as intensive care units in pediatric and general hospitals, cardiovascular surgery, transplant services, special perinatal care, treatment for chronic renal failure, and special services for occupational and physical rehabilitation.

The revolutionary state did not focus its attention solely on economic and social measures. It also embarked on efforts to establish an internal legal system to facilitate the right to self-determination via the population’s direct participation in discussions, analyses and the passing of the country’s principal laws. The most notable of these was the 1976 Constitution, supported by 97% of Cubans aged 16 and over through a referendum, as well as other momentous laws like the Penal Code, the Civil Code, the Family Code, the Children and Young People’s Code, the Labor and Social Security Code and many others.

Likewise, the self-determination of the Cuban people is expressed through the right to defend the nation against foreign aggression. Today, more than four million Cubans – workers, campesinos, and university students – are organized in militia groups have access to weapons in their campuses, factories and in rural areas.

However, since 1959, Cuba has had to confront the hostility of 10 U.S. administrations that have attempted to limit its right to self-determination through the use of aggression and the unilateral imposition of a criminal economic, commercial and financial blockade.

One of the universally accepted principles of international law is that state cannot be allowed to coerce another in order to deny it the right to exercise its sovereign rights. Article 24 of the UN Charter states that, in the context of international relations, nations must refrain from using threats or force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

Over the past 45 years, the United States has prohibited any trade with Cuba, including foodstuffs and medicines; it cancelled the Cuban sugar quota; prohibited its citizens from traveling to Cuba via the imposition of heavy sanctions; prohibited the re-export of U.S. products or items containing U.S. components or technology to Cuba from third countries; prescribed that banks in third countries should maintain Cuban bank accounts in dollars or use that currency in their transactions with the Cuban nation; has systematically intervened to prevent or hinder trade with or financial assistance to Cuba on the part of governments, institutions and citizens from other countries and international organizations.

In the 1960s these reprisals forced Cuba to structurally reconstitute its economic relations when and establish its essential markets in countries in the former East European bloc – specifically in the Soviet Union – which meant that the country had to embark on an almost total re-conversion of its industrial technology, means of transport, and provisions, etc.

When Cuba lost its natural markets in Eastern Europe, the U.S. government intensified its blockade via the 1992 Torricelli Act, which used the pretext of “democracy and human rights” to prohibit U.S. subsidiaries located in third countries and subject to the laws of those nations from engaging in commercial or financial operations with Cuba (particularly in respect to food and medicines), and punishing these by prohibiting the entry into U.S. ports for 180 days of vessels transporting goods to or from Cuba or on behalf of Cuba, measures that – given their extraterritorial nature – do not just prejudice Cuba but also harm the sovereignty of other nations and the international freedom of transportation.

On March 12, 1996, the U.S. government passed the Helms-Burton Ac, further aggravating relations between the two countries and assuming the right to sanction citizens of third countries in U.S. courts, as well as determining their expulsion or denying them and their families entry visas into the United States, with the aim of hindering Cuba’s efforts to recover its economy and hampering its possibilities of securing a greater insertion in the international market. That was also a way of attempting to pressure the Cuban people into relinquishing their efforts of self-determination.

More recently, it has adopted the Bush Plan, an attempt to transform Cuba into a colony through an annexationist program and the sibylline intention to intervene via a pretext of “transition,” a scenario in which the State Department would entrust one of its leaders as “governor,” when the Cuban revolutionary state disappears. This plan, with which George W. Bush decided “to precipitate the day when Cuba becomes a free country,” has intensified the blockade and pressure on the Cuban people by repressing family relations between Cubans resident in the United States and their families on the island; grants million-dollar resources to terrorist groups in Miami, as well as to mercenary subordinates in the U.S. Interests Sections in Havana; and promotes formulas to destabilize the country and redouble international pressure on the island.

That hostility on the part of the U.S. has included other notorious manifestations of aggression, ranging from the military aggression through the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the dirty war carried out by counterrevolutionary gangs heavily supplied by the U.S. CIA, bacteriological warfare on agricultural crops (sugar, tobacco, and citric fruits), animals (swine fever), and humans (hemorrhagic dengue), to sabotage plans, bombings using pirate planes, and assassination attempts on the country’s principal leaders.

The actions of terrorist organizations executing military attacks on Cuba from U.S. territory are notorious, and are publicized and fomented by the Miami media. Groups are constantly recruiting adventurers who are willing to head off to Cuba as agents and saboteurs, who openly declare that they have no fear whatsoever of being brought to justice in U.S. courts.

That is why Cuban patriots have had to leave aside their personal interests to serve those of the nation, even sacrificing their family relationships, in order to infiltrate the ranks of those terrorist groups in order to discover their activities and, with this information, prevent the bloodshed of Cuban and U.S. people. They are willing to pay the price of the political irrationality of the U.S. government, as is the case of the five Cuban heroes unjustly incarcerated in U.S. jails for combating terrorism.

The above is compounded by the heavy military mechanism created by the United States around Cuba and its constant tension-generating activities, as well as the illegal occupation of the Guantánamo Naval Base on Cuban territory (today converted into a horrific prison camp), a part of Cuba rented out by force to the United States in the early 20th century and which the U.S. government refuses to return.

In the early 90’s, with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, isolated and reviled by the international reaction, Cuba absorbed the terrible blow of losing the bulk of its markets in a matter of months and an abrupt descent in its gross domestic product. But the island confirmed that it shone with its own light and that it had never been a satellite of anyone, given that it was able to face that juncture on account of the extraordinary resistance of the majority of Cubans, who have acted on the basis of authentic motivations, values and ethical principles.

The Cuban people have made a conscious decision to support the country’s leadership, not only because they identify the system with their own interests, but also because of the responsible manner in which the state took on the crisis, reorganized its forces and designed a recovery strategy, despite the U.S. blockade and conditions imposed by its European allies.

The sacrifices provoked by that situation have been hard, but it has been possible to endure them because of the undisputed social advances attained, because of the confidence deposited in the country’s leading institutions and because of people’s appreciation that their government is not a decadent one or one that is in management crisis or lacking in strategies, but has confirmed that the population has remained at the center of all its work, even in the most difficult circumstances.

Fifty years have gone by and the liberation process has reached this point following the same direction indicated that night, 50 years ago, when Fidel, speaking to the huge crowd awaiting him in what was the dictatorship’s headquarters, affirmed that everything could be more difficult in the future, because we would have to fight to make the Revolution.

That is the challenge of the struggle currently underway to eradicate vices and exalt virtues, with Fidel as a soldier of ideas serving as a compass in the fight for freedom and independence.

Cuba’s enemies are backing their all on the opposite of that. In this world, where politics is a caricature, they cannot comprehend that, in its thinking and action, this Revolution is a process of continuity, and that Fidel will continue to be the leader of the Revolution of today and tomorrow, because, beyond responsibilities and titles, he will continue to be the counselor of ideas to which we will always have recourse, because he has transcended political life to insert himself in an intimate way in the family life of the vast majority of Cubans.

Courtesy: GRANMA

Filed Under: DIARIES Tagged With: Cuba, Fidel Castro, History, Imperialism, Latin America, Self-Determination, USA

Prelude to Mumbai Blasts – Hindu Terrorism

December 18, 2008 by Saswat Pattanayak 2 Comments

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 Vallabhbhai 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.

The 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.

Filed Under: DIARIES Tagged With: Communalism, India, Saswat Pattanayak, State Repression

All in the name of fighting terrorism

December 12, 2008 by Radical Notes 1 Comment

Ravi Kumar

Profiling, Repression and Consensus Creation

Post-September 2008, the political landscape of the country has further revealed what lies in the belly of the so-called ‘secular’ politics. The bomb blasts in Delhi and the subsequent ‘encounter’ in the Batla House area, which has been shrouded in controversy, gave us certain new tendencies that have been there in our polity but could never come out so overtly. The mass media, along with other instruments of state reminded how Muslims are potential terrorists. This message was conveyed wide across the country reflected in an image construction of Jamia Millia Islamia as a university where potential terrorists find a safe haven. So, media told us how the new face of terrorists is educated, urban, Muslim, somebody who lives with us without revealing his actual anti-national identity, may be as our friend or neighbour. The profiling of a religious community has reached a new stage. While political formations are out there proving their nationalist credentials, particular religious communities are also compelled to prove their nationalism. An era of homogenised perception of nation is being carved. Irrespective of political colours, these trends are fostering an overall right-wing fascist character of polity to become dominant and the only possibility.

If one travels through the recent incidents, beginning from Delhi’s, one finds a general trend towards enforcing the spirit of nationalism (which is more so, perhaps, in times of economic recession of which India has not been aloof). One particular community gets targeted and this time, the Congress Party which is in power and which has claimed to take up their cause vis-à-vis Hindu fundamentalism, has been instrumental in this whole process. It not only rejected the demand for a judicial enquiry into the police ‘encounters’ that took place in Delhi at the cost of creating significant dissent within the party (leaders such as Salman Khurshid came out openly against the Party’s stand) but being the party in power at the Centre as well as in the state of Delhi it was instrumental in killing of the youth in police ‘encounters’. Obviously, it has to compete with the ultra-nationalism of the right wing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). Hence, the issue was to prove who could be a more committed nationalist (which could be proven only by rejecting any appeal for an enquiry into the incidence).

Alongside this politics has been the role of mass media. It is impossible not to condemn the barbaric acts of terror such as the one that took place in Mumbai, though, due to its own obvious compulsions, the electronic media played down the death of ‘others’ (those who died at the railway station, on road or elsewhere) in comparison to those who died in the two hotels or the Cafe. While the condemnations of such acts have been overwhelming but they are not bereft of their own ideological and political ramifications. Take for instance the case of how the electronic media became ‘concerned’ with such an incident and in what language did it express its concern. The analysis and acts of brazen political allegiance hidden under the garb of value neutrality and ‘truth’ – that is partisan, partial and blatantly elitist – told us to do many things and think in a particular fashion during the course of those three days.

Equipped with the art of, what Goffman would have called, ‘role-play’, some of them told us, panting, with voices choking out of concern, stories of how people died and how terrorists broke glasses, fired shots and burnt down halls. Sensationalism sells, there is no point arguing about it, and therefore everyone was trying to give us information which was different from others. While telling us that one could capture ‘live’ the encounter between police and terrorists and a hostage drama, something that we could have watched only in films, the news channels were also putting their ideas onto us.

In between Suhel Seth, Alyque Padmse, Shobha De and others came out virulently against ‘politics’ (not telling us overtly that they were, therefore, arguing for another kind of politics), for a citizen’s initiative to be led by the TV news channels. A typical attitude that appeals to the post-liberalisation middle class and moneyed segment, which argues for stringent security measures (in fact one of the ‘serious’, pro-people, pro-encounter, ‘nationalist’, news channel boss did suggest something along the lines of the Patriot Act or Homeland Security Act for India), stronger bureaucracy and army and less space for dissent. Criticism by the electronic media of those who have been demanding enquiry into the Delhi killings by the police has been consistent ever since. They have been termed ‘conspiracy theorists’, anti-nationals and pro-terrorists. In other words, any voice of dissent, any question raised at the acts of the police has come under severe criticism. Somehow a majoritarian understanding characterises our life now – from what we are fed through the media to the everyday beliefs that we tend to form about the world and its inhabitants. And we have seen that even within the political framework of those who call themselves champions of minority rights. The State, in such a situation, reflects an overwhelmingly majoritarian politics. And one of the biggest disadvantages of such politics is that it does not allow dissent or does not entertain self-critical positions.

In such a situation where does the politics that bases itself in the anti-capitalist ethos stand. The opposition to the way the state has been involved in an active profiling of the Muslims or the way it has institutionalised repression under the garb of security and nationalism fails to look through the apparent forms of state actions. Hence, a critical standpoint that analyses majoritarianism, the right-wing fundamentalism or authoritarianism of the state as the obvious outcomes of its inherent character is lacking. The issue of false police ‘encounters’, or profiling of the Muslim community can be countered only through a counter-politics (it will be interesting to see which class of the Muslim community comes with such a politics). In other words, one will have to demolish the majoritarian stance of the Congress and BJP alike. In an environment, where politics among the learned (intelligentsia itself) is ‘repressed’ (it gradually becomes a consensual repression) under the pretext of law and order, or under the garb of a narrowed interpretation of communalism it becomes difficult to tackle the issues discussed above. Hence, unless the resistance becomes overtly political at all levels, right from the bottom of the societal pyramid, the issues will remain effervescent as they are now.

Filed Under: DIARIES Tagged With: Counter-Terrorism, India, State Repression

Workers Occupy Chicago Factory: Echoes of Argentina’s 2001 Worker Uprising

December 9, 2008 by Radical Notes Leave a Comment

Benjamin Dangl

When the 250 workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago were told that the plant was shutting down, they decided to take matters into their own hands. On Friday, December 5, the workers occupied their factory in an act that echoes the sit-down strikes of the 1930s in the US and the occupation of factories during the 2001 crisis in Argentina.

"They want the poor person to stay down. We’re here, and we’re not going anywhere until we get what’s fair and what’s ours," Silvia Mazon, 47, a formerly apolitical mother and worker at the factory for 13 years told the New York Times. "They thought they would get rid of us easily, but if we have to be here for Christmas, it doesn’t matter."

The workers are demanding that they be paid their vacation and severance pay, or that the factory continue its operations. They were given only three days’ notice of the shut down, not the 60 days’ notice which is required under federal and state law.

On Friday, fifty of the workers at the plant — taking shifts in the occupation — sat on chairs and pallets inside the factory and were supplied with blankets, sleeping bags, and food from supporters. Throughout the takeover, workers have been cleaning the building and shoveling snow while protesters gathered in solidarity outside waving signs and chanting.

The occupation of the factory — which produces heating efficient vinyl windows and sliding doors — is taking place in the midst of a massive recession, with the rate of unemployment in the US at a 15 year high, and with 600,000 manufacturing jobs lost in this year alone. As another indicator of the economic crisis, 1 in 10 Americans — a record of 31.6 million — are now using food stamps.

The factory workers are protesting the fact that the Bank of America received $25 billion in the recent $700 billion government bailout, and then went ahead and cut off credit to Republic Windows and Doors, resulting in the subsequent closing of the factory.

"The bank has the money in this situation," said Mark Meinster, a representative of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, the union to which the factory workers belong. "And we are demanding that Bank of America release the money owed to workers who have earned it and are entitled to it." On Monday Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich announced that, in support of the workers, the state will temporarily stop doing business with Bank of America.

President-elect Barack Obama also announced his support: "When it comes to the situation here in Chicago with the workers who are asking for their benefits and payments they have earned, I think they are absolutely right . . . what’s happening to them is reflective of what’s happening across this economy."

Rev. Jesse Jackson delivered turkey and groceries to the workers, saying, "These workers are to this struggle perhaps what Rosa Parks was to social justice 50 years ago. . . . This, in many ways, is the beginning of a larger movement for mass action to resist economic violence."

Occupy, Resist, Produce: Argentina’s 2001 Crisis

Argentina’s crisis was similar to the current recession in the US in the sense that in December of 2001, almost overnight, Argentina went from having one of the strongest economies in South America to the one of the weakest. As the occupation of the factory in Chicago indicates, there are some tactics and approaches used in Argentina to combat economic crises that could be applicable in the United States.

During Argentina’s economic crash, when politicians and banks failed, many Argentines banded together to create a new society out of the wreckage of the old. Poverty, homelessness, and unemployment were countered with barter systems, alternative currency, and neighborhood assemblies which provided solidarity, food, and support in communities across the country.

Perhaps the most well known of these initiatives were the occupation of factories and businesses which were later run collectively by workers. There are roughly two hundred worker-run factories and businesses in Argentina, most of which started in the midst of the 2001 crisis. 15,000 people work in these cooperatives and the businesses range from car part producers to rubber balloon factories. Though the worker occupation of Republic Windows and Doors is different in many respects to examples of worker occupations in Argentina, it is worth reflecting on the strikingly similar situations in which workers in both countries found themselves, and how they are fighting back.

The Chilavert book publisher in Buenos Aires offers one example of workers taking back a bankrupt factory to operate it as a worker cooperative. "Occupy, resist, and produce. This is the synthesis of what we are doing," Candido Gonzalez, a long time Chilavert worker explained to me during a visit to his bustling publishing house, with printing presses clamoring away in the background. "And it is the community as a whole that makes this possible. When we were defending this place there were eight assault vehicles and thirty policemen that came here to kick us out. But we, along with other members of the community, stayed here and defended the factory."

Candido didn’t attribute Chilavert’s success to any politician. "We didn’t put a political party banner in the factory because we are the ones that took the factory. All kinds of politicians have come here asking for our support. Yet when the unions failed, when the state failed, the workers began a different kind of fight. . . . If you want to take power and you can’t take over the state, you have to at least take over the means of production."

NO PASAR
Una mirada desde el trabajo autogestionado

Back in Chicago, at a time when politicians have failed to respond appropriately to one of the worst US economic crises in history, the occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors factory is a reminder that desperate times call for fresh approaches to social change.

"We aren’t animals," Republic Windows and Doors employee Apolinar Cabrera, 43, told reporters. Cabrera is a father of two, with another child on the way, and has been an employee at the factory for 17 years. "We’re human beings and we deserve to be treated like human beings."

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Click here to take action to support the workers at Republic Windows and Doors and to hold Bank of America accountable.

Benjamin Dangl is the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press). The book includes many stories of workers, families, and activists throughout Latin America working together to build a new world in the face of economic crises.

Courtesy: MRZINE

Filed Under: DIARIES Tagged With: Economy, Labour, Latin America, USA, Working Class

After Binayak Sen…

December 8, 2008 by Radical Notes Leave a Comment

A few months back Indian National Security Adviser MK Narayanan lamented that a “large numbers of the intellectual elite and civil liberties bodies provide a backup to the [Maoist] movement in terms of agitprop and other activities. And, the fact that the Maoists “are still able to get support of intellectual classes is disturbing. Unless we can divorce the two . . . [defeating the Maoists] is not that easy.”

Thus the McCarthyite policy of terrorizing the intellectuals continues vigorously. After Chhattisgarh, where Binayak Sen was made an example, Orissa tops the list in repressing activists and intellectuals. The latest is – Nishan’s editor, Lenin Kumar. He is apparently arrested for exposing the fascist forces’ involvement in Kandhamal riots.

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Three held in Orissa for publishing inflammatory book

Bhubaneswar (IANS): Three people, including a journalist, have been detained here for allegedly printing and circulating an inflammatory book on the communal violence that Orissa witnessed in August and September, police said Monday.

The book “Dharma Nare Kandhamalare Raktara Banya” (Flood of blood in Kandhamal in the name of religion) is said to have highly objectionable content and copies of it have been seized by the police. The book has been circulated in large numbers in the state, officials said.

“We have detained three people in this connection on Sunday,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Himanshu Lal told IANS.

At least 700 copies of the book were seized from a printing press and those detained include its owner identified as Lenin, who also edits a periodical called ‘Nishan’, an official said.

The printing press has been sealed, the official added.

Civil liberty groups in the state have condemned the police action against Lenin and say the charges against him are false.

Orissa’s Kandhamal district, located some 200 km from here, witnessed widespread communal violence after the murder of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and four of his aides at his ashram Aug 23.

While the police blamed Maoists for the killings, some Hindu organisations held Christians responsible for the crime and launched attacks on the community.

Thousands of Christians were forced to flee from their homes after their houses were attacked by rampaging mobs. More than 10,000 people are still living in government-run relief camps in the district. Courtesy:The Hindu

Editor of Nishan detained

BHUBANESWAR, Dec 7: The city police “detained” Mr Lenin Kumar, editor of Nishan, a magazine and raided a printing press raising eyebrows amongst human rights and social activist circles here.

Mr Kumar’s wife, Mrs Sumita Kundu, a social activist and member of the Committee for Release of Political Prisoners decried the “trampling” of human rights and Supreme Court orders by police. “Police ven refused to tell us why they were detaining my husband. They have not told me where they were taking him,” she said. She alleged that policemen entered the house and seized a few items including a CD and pen drive. Strangely, the police also did not divulge anything. “We are taking the items for certain verification,” a police officer said.

Reliable sources said Mr Kumar was first taken to three different police stations in the city. The police has seized booklets published by Mr Kumar on the Kandhamal riots. Courtesy: The Statesman

Filed Under: DIARIES Tagged With: India, Orissa, State Repression

Workers occupy Chicago factory – “Doing something we haven’t done since the 1930s”

December 7, 2008 by Radical Notes Leave a Comment

United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (regularly updated)

Chicago, IL – Saturday Evening, December 6

National news networks CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, as well as Chicago news media, are reporting on the following dramatic developments involving UE members in Chicago.

Members of UE Local 1110 who work at Republic Windows and Doors are occupying the plant around the clock this weekend, in an effort to force the company and its main creditor to meet their obligations to the workers. Their goal is to at least get the compensation that workers are owed; they also seek the resumption of operations at the plant. All 260 members of the local were laid off Friday in a sudden plant closing, brought on by Bank of America cutting off operating credit to the company. The bank even instructed managers at Republic to refuse to pay workers their earned vacation pay and the severance pay they are owed under the federal WARN Act, since they were not given the legally-required notice that the plant was about to close.

Below are some links to ongoing news coverage of this story:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28084616/

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/republic.windows.sitin.2.880850.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,463030,00.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-workersoccupyfact,0,1928458.story

http://www.france24.com/en/20081206-laid-off-workers-furious-bank-pulls-chicago-plants-credit

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/republic-windows-doors-120508.html

Bank of America, the country’s second largest bank, has received $25 billion in taxpayer money as part of the $700 billion government bailout of the financial industry. The public was told that this bailout was necessary in order to keep credit flowing and prevent the loss of jobs. Yet the very-well-paid executives at Bank of America have actually cut off credit and forced the closing of Republic where workers were, at least up until Friday, producing energy-efficient doors and windows.

Jobs with Justice, the national worker rights coalition, is asking people to sign an online letter to Bank of America, demanding that they provide the needed credit to keep Republic Windows and Doors open – or at a minimum, that they pay workers the money they are owed. Please go to this link to support this important struggle.

UE Local 1110 members, along with community supporters, picketed and rallied in front of Bank of America’s main Chicago branch on Wednesday, December 3. They chanted, “You got bailed out, we got sold out!” Local 1110 President Armando Robles told the news media, “Just weeks before Christmas we are told our factory will close in three days. Taxpayers gave Bank of America billions, and they turn around and close our company. We will fight for a bailout for workers.”

To support the members of Local 1110 in their courageous fight, send checks payable to the UE Local 1110 Solidarity Fund, to: UE, 37 S. Ashland, Chicago, IL 60607. Messages of support can be sent to leahfried@gmail.com. For more information, call the UE Chicago office at 312-829-8300.

UE has already contacted Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and will soon be in touch with Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), chair of the Senate Banking Committee, regarding Bank of America’s apparent abuse of its public obligations under the federal banking bailout.

Filed Under: DIARIES Tagged With: Labour, USA, Working Class