In Tehran, demonstrations called by the defeated US-backed presidential candidate are given non-stop, wall-to-wall coverage by the American media.
The charges of former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi of a stolen election and a “coup d’etat” are embraced uncritically and reported as fact by the New York Times, the Washington Post and other “authoritative” newspapers, without any independent investigation or substantiation.
A media propaganda campaign ensues aimed at isolating and destabilizing the ruling faction in Iran headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The protests are dominated by better-off sections of the urban middle class, who largely voted for Mousavi and support his right-wing program of closer ties to American and European imperialism and a rapid introduction of pro-market policies.
The working class, seeing nothing to support in the faction of “reformists” headed by Mousavi and the billionaire former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, abstains from the protests.
The media dispenses with any pretence of objectivity and proclaims the protest movement and its leaders the spearhead of a “green revolution” for democracy. Every act of “repression” by the Iranian regime is given headline coverage, and rumours of hundreds of deaths are reported as fact. The US media focuses its wrath in particular on the regime’s efforts to block Internet and mobile phone communication.
Two weeks later, the US-trained and equipped military of Honduras breaks into the home of the elected president, bundles him onto a plane and flies him out of the country at gunpoint.
The basic crime of the deposed president, Manuel Zelaya, is aligning his government with Washington’s nemeses in Latin America, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and carrying out modest popular reforms within Honduras, such as raising the minimum wage.
There can be no dispute that Honduras has undergone a coup. But the event is barely reported by the US press and broadcast media. Neither are the arrests and deportations of ministers of Zelaya’s government, the closures of local media outlets sympathetic to the ousted president, the arrests of foreign journalists and shutdown of US-based outlets such as CNN, and the imposition of a de facto state of siege, including a dusk-to-dawn curfew and the mobilization of thousands of Honduran troops in every major city.
The coup regime, which is backed by the Honduran business elite, the Congress, the courts and the Church, seeks to halt Internet and cell phone communication—evoking no protest from the US media.
Demonstrations in support of the coup staged by the new regime are dominated by the wealthy middle class of the capital, Tegucigalpa.
In the teeth of state repression, the Honduran teachers union launches a 60,000-strong strike that closes the schools, and thousands demonstrate in Tegucigalpa. The demonstrations are dominated by trade unionists, workers, the unemployed and the rural poor. This working class resistance to the coup barely gets a mention in the US media.
On Sunday, July 5, troops barricading the airport at Tegucigalpa fire on unarmed demonstrators who have gathered to welcome Zelaya as he attempts to land a chartered plane and resume his office. A 19-year-old youth is shot and killed. Again, barely a mention in the US news media.
One can only imagine how the US media would have responded had Ahamdinejad arrested Mousavi and thrown him out of Iran. Or the howls of indignation that would have erupted had the Iranian president blockaded the airport to prevent him from returning.
Examples of the double standard applied to Iran and Honduras abound. Just to cite a few:
CNN made great play of the efforts of the Iranian regime to censor the news and intimidate foreign journalists. It has said nothing about the shutdown of its own broadcasts by the Honduran coup government.
On July 4, CNN.com reported that it had received a video tape showing Honduran troops shooting out the tires of buses bringing anti-coup demonstrators to Tegucigalpa from the countryside. This video has been given little, if any, airplay by the network.
Most significant is the virtual absence of coverage in the US media of the murder and wounding of anti-coup demonstrators at Tegucigalpa airport on Sunday. The Financial Times on Monday provided a chilling account of the atrocity which makes clear its premeditated character. Reporting that a crowd of about 1,500 had gathered at the perimeter fence of the airport to welcome Zelaya’s plane, the newspaper writes:
“However, at about 3 PM on Sunday, soldiers guarding the runway to prevent the return of Mr. Zelaya launched an offensive against the unarmed crowd, according to witnesses.
“They opened fire from positions inside the airport and then sent tear-gas into the crowd.
“Moments later, a handful crossed the perimeter fence, which had been cut by the demonstrators, raised their automatic rifles and pointed them towards the mass of terrified men, women and children. Then they opened fire again. At least one person was killed, and as many as 30 were injured.”
The Latin American press has widely published photos of the fatally wounded youth, Isis Obed Murillo, being dragged away by fellow protesters. No such photos have appeared in major US newspapers or on television news channels. Murillo remains unnamed and unmourned in the American media.
One need only compare this callous treatment to the media frenzy over the death on June 20 of Neda Agha Soltan in Tehran. The death of the 27-year-old student, who was reportedly a bystander at a pro-Mousavi protest, occurred under murky circumstances.
The government denied responsibility, but the media immediately declared her a martyr of the “green revolution.” Her picture was splashed across the front pages of newspapers and broadcast by every TV channel. “Neda” was proclaimed the “Joan of Arc” of the Iranian opposition.
This tale of two capitals provides a graphic illustration of the character and role of the American media. Owned and controlled by corporate goliaths, it functions as an adjunct of the state and a propaganda machine in behalf of US imperialist interests.
Its class bias—and that of the lavishly paid individuals who serve as top editors, senior reporters and TV anchormen—is underscored by the diametrically opposed responses to the protests in Tehran and Tegucigalpa.
The American media adheres to no standards and observes no limits in carrying out its function of manipulating public opinion in accordance with the objectives, domestic and foreign, of the American ruling elite.
Nothing so clearly demonstrates the decay of American democracy and the “free press” in the United States than the manner in which it lines up behind phony “colour revolutions” against regimes deemed inimical to US interests and ignores flagrantly antidemocratic measures by regimes backed by the CIA, the military and the State Department.
Barry Grey
Showing posts with label Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog. Show all posts
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
GM Bankruptcy: Treating Retirees As 'Road Kill'
In the name of “restructuring” to protect “shareholder value”, General Motors, with the blessings of the Obama administration and Wall Street is going full throttle to get rid of its workers and retirees who served the company well for a lifetime. It's another sordid saga of sacrificing the workers' hard-won rights and benefits at the altar of profitability. There's a lesson to be learnt by Indian workers who will face a similar fate if the Congress government's labour "reforms" are rammed through parliament.
A judge in New York City on July 5 approved the sale of General Motors assets to a new company, 61 per cent owned by the US government, opening the way for the auto company to emerge from bankruptcy. GM filed for bankruptcy protection June 1, the largest such industrial failure in US history, following a similar move by Chrysler April 30.
The ruling, by Judge Robert E. Gerber of the US Bankruptcy Court, is less a legal decision than a ruthless business measure taken as part of the restructuring of the auto industry in the interests of Wall Street and the corporate elite. The Obama administration, with the full complicity of the United Auto Workers (UAW), is presiding over and driving this process at the expense of tens of thousands of auto workers, their families and entire communities.
The bankruptcy plan has already meant the destruction of 21,000 additional jobs at GM, the closure of a dozen or more of its plants and the elimination of 2,600 GM dealerships.
Gerber’s approval of the asset sale, following three days of hearings and in the face of hundreds of objections, means that the deal between GM and the US Treasury may be consummated as early as Thursday, one day before the deadline set by the government. The Obama administration had made clear that it did not intend to provide another penny to the auto maker after July 10.
In addition to the US government, the Canadian government will own 12 per cent of the new firm, with the UAW, through a retiree health-care trust, controlling 17.5 per cent, and other unsecured creditors getting another 10 per cent. The Obama administration has committed some $50 billion to the restructuring. Administration officials have repeatedly explained they intend to take no part in the day-to-day management of the company and would like to sell the government’s stake in the new GM at some point in 2010.
Under the sale plan, the auto maker’s profitable assets—including the Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC brands—would be sold off to the new GM, “while assets and liabilities deemed to be a drag on the automaker would be left behind in bankruptcy.” (Washington Post)
In rejecting the claims of product-liability claimants and others, Gerber declared, “Bankruptcy courts have the power to authorise sales of assets at a time when there still is value to preserve—to prevent the death of the patient on the operating table.”
Lawyers representing the claimants had argued that the new company should be responsible for lawsuits arising from accidents involving GM cars before the company entered bankruptcy. GM management only recently accepted, under pressure from a number of state attorneys general, the principle that the new company should be required to take claims from future victims.
The GM bankruptcy process has been a stark demonstration of whose interests prevail within the US political and judicial system.
Gerber ruled in late June against General Motors’ retired salaried workers who wanted to see the creation of a special committee to represent their benefit issues. As part of the restructuring plan, GM will continue paying the 122,000 retirees’ health care and life insurance benefits for the moment, but the benefits are expected to be slashed and retirees will be forced to pay a far larger share of their costs.
GM attorney Harvey Miller argued that the company had always had the right to alter the salaried retirees’ benefits and the creation of a committee “would simply add more costs.”
Gerber also ruled against a request from an unofficial committee of individuals with asbestos-related claims to appoint a “tort czar,” according to the Associated Press, “that would oversee all future claims against the old GM, not just those related to asbestos.” While secured lenders—all major Wall Street banks and financial institutions—will be paid the $6 billion they are owed, unsecured creditors, like the asbestos victims, will see little, if anything.
On July 1, hundreds of retirees from GM plants whose bargaining agent was the International Union of Electrical Workers-Communications Workers of America (IUE-CWA) picketed the courthouse in lower Manhattan where the hearings were taking place to protest the likely eventual elimination of their health care and insurance benefits.
Lawyers for 50,000 retired IUE-CWA, United Steel Workers and International Union of Operating Engineers members asserted in court that GM was attempting to evade its legal responsibilities to these workers by pursuing bankruptcy under Section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code, which provides almost no benefit protection, as opposed to Section 1114.
The IUE-CWA claimed that a deal was worked out more than a year ago, ratified by its members, creating a GM-funded Voluntary Benefit Employee Association (VEBA). On January 9, 2009, a company lawyer informed the IUE-CWA that the auto maker would not live up to the deal.
In court IUE-CWA lawyer Tom Kennedy pointed to remarks made by a top member of Obama’s Auto Task Force, Harry Wilson, under cross-examination July 1. “We told GM to cut two-thirds, Wilson said; we told them to figure out how to do it. On June 4, Treasury rejected a 62 per cent cut. The additional 5 per cent taken out to meet the task force’s 67 per cent target represents $400 million in the [non-UAW] retirees’ benefit programs, Kennedy said.” (Youngstown Business Journal)
In a bitter press release, the IUE-CWA accused Obama’s Treasury Department of treating the retirees as “road kill.”
GM attorney Miller explained cynically that while the “new GM” needed the UAW to function, it didn’t need the other unions, whose members worked in plants that were no longer operating. Under questioning, GM CEO Fritz Henderson testified that he “expected” the non-UAW retiree health care benefits would be dropped by the new company. In response, Kennedy pointed to an email Henderson had sent the Obama task force’s Steven Rattner lobbying to keep GM executive retirement benefits.
Gerber rejected the IUE-CWA objections along with all the others.
The Washington Post noted, “Throughout the court proceedings, the government and GM were repeatedly questioned about why they chose to assume certain assets and liabilities while rejecting others.
“In response, government and GM officials said the only measure was whether or not the assets and liabilities would support the commercial viability of the new GM.”
Underlining the political character of his decision, Gerber rejected the claim that the US government had been overbearing in negotiations to restructure the car maker. “The US Treasury, in making hard decisions about where to spend its money and make New GM as viable as possible, made business decisions that it was entitled to make,” he wrote.
Elsewhere in his decision, Gerber declared, “The only alternative to an immediate sale [of GM assets to the new company] is liquidation—a disastrous result for GM’s creditors, its employees, the suppliers who depend on GM for their existence, and the communities in which GM operates.”
The decline of General Motors has already been an unmitigated disaster for auto workers, suppliers, dealerships and entire communities. The continued private ownership of the automobile industry, or government control on behalf of corporate interests, only holds more of the same in store.
The UAW apparatus, which hopes to prosper by operating the VEBA retiree health-care trust, merely reported on its web site—with obvious pleasure—that the Bankruptcy Court had “issued its ruling approving the proposed restructuring, and the UAW Retiree Health Settlement Agreement.”
The media campaign to convince auto workers that the judge’s decision will save GM and their jobs began as soon as the ruling was issued. The Detroit News lost no time in claiming, “The sale will preserve hundreds of thousands of GM jobs in North America, and around the world, and bolster a reeling network of auto industry suppliers.”
It will do no such thing. The sale will trigger a new round of plant closures and demands for concessions. With global auto sales plummeting, profitability can only be restored at GM and its rivals by impoverishing workers to insure the investments and profits of corporate executives and financiers.
David Walsh
A judge in New York City on July 5 approved the sale of General Motors assets to a new company, 61 per cent owned by the US government, opening the way for the auto company to emerge from bankruptcy. GM filed for bankruptcy protection June 1, the largest such industrial failure in US history, following a similar move by Chrysler April 30.
The ruling, by Judge Robert E. Gerber of the US Bankruptcy Court, is less a legal decision than a ruthless business measure taken as part of the restructuring of the auto industry in the interests of Wall Street and the corporate elite. The Obama administration, with the full complicity of the United Auto Workers (UAW), is presiding over and driving this process at the expense of tens of thousands of auto workers, their families and entire communities.
The bankruptcy plan has already meant the destruction of 21,000 additional jobs at GM, the closure of a dozen or more of its plants and the elimination of 2,600 GM dealerships.
Gerber’s approval of the asset sale, following three days of hearings and in the face of hundreds of objections, means that the deal between GM and the US Treasury may be consummated as early as Thursday, one day before the deadline set by the government. The Obama administration had made clear that it did not intend to provide another penny to the auto maker after July 10.
In addition to the US government, the Canadian government will own 12 per cent of the new firm, with the UAW, through a retiree health-care trust, controlling 17.5 per cent, and other unsecured creditors getting another 10 per cent. The Obama administration has committed some $50 billion to the restructuring. Administration officials have repeatedly explained they intend to take no part in the day-to-day management of the company and would like to sell the government’s stake in the new GM at some point in 2010.
Under the sale plan, the auto maker’s profitable assets—including the Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC brands—would be sold off to the new GM, “while assets and liabilities deemed to be a drag on the automaker would be left behind in bankruptcy.” (Washington Post)
In rejecting the claims of product-liability claimants and others, Gerber declared, “Bankruptcy courts have the power to authorise sales of assets at a time when there still is value to preserve—to prevent the death of the patient on the operating table.”
Lawyers representing the claimants had argued that the new company should be responsible for lawsuits arising from accidents involving GM cars before the company entered bankruptcy. GM management only recently accepted, under pressure from a number of state attorneys general, the principle that the new company should be required to take claims from future victims.
The GM bankruptcy process has been a stark demonstration of whose interests prevail within the US political and judicial system.
Gerber ruled in late June against General Motors’ retired salaried workers who wanted to see the creation of a special committee to represent their benefit issues. As part of the restructuring plan, GM will continue paying the 122,000 retirees’ health care and life insurance benefits for the moment, but the benefits are expected to be slashed and retirees will be forced to pay a far larger share of their costs.
GM attorney Harvey Miller argued that the company had always had the right to alter the salaried retirees’ benefits and the creation of a committee “would simply add more costs.”
Gerber also ruled against a request from an unofficial committee of individuals with asbestos-related claims to appoint a “tort czar,” according to the Associated Press, “that would oversee all future claims against the old GM, not just those related to asbestos.” While secured lenders—all major Wall Street banks and financial institutions—will be paid the $6 billion they are owed, unsecured creditors, like the asbestos victims, will see little, if anything.
On July 1, hundreds of retirees from GM plants whose bargaining agent was the International Union of Electrical Workers-Communications Workers of America (IUE-CWA) picketed the courthouse in lower Manhattan where the hearings were taking place to protest the likely eventual elimination of their health care and insurance benefits.
Lawyers for 50,000 retired IUE-CWA, United Steel Workers and International Union of Operating Engineers members asserted in court that GM was attempting to evade its legal responsibilities to these workers by pursuing bankruptcy under Section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code, which provides almost no benefit protection, as opposed to Section 1114.
The IUE-CWA claimed that a deal was worked out more than a year ago, ratified by its members, creating a GM-funded Voluntary Benefit Employee Association (VEBA). On January 9, 2009, a company lawyer informed the IUE-CWA that the auto maker would not live up to the deal.
In court IUE-CWA lawyer Tom Kennedy pointed to remarks made by a top member of Obama’s Auto Task Force, Harry Wilson, under cross-examination July 1. “We told GM to cut two-thirds, Wilson said; we told them to figure out how to do it. On June 4, Treasury rejected a 62 per cent cut. The additional 5 per cent taken out to meet the task force’s 67 per cent target represents $400 million in the [non-UAW] retirees’ benefit programs, Kennedy said.” (Youngstown Business Journal)
In a bitter press release, the IUE-CWA accused Obama’s Treasury Department of treating the retirees as “road kill.”
GM attorney Miller explained cynically that while the “new GM” needed the UAW to function, it didn’t need the other unions, whose members worked in plants that were no longer operating. Under questioning, GM CEO Fritz Henderson testified that he “expected” the non-UAW retiree health care benefits would be dropped by the new company. In response, Kennedy pointed to an email Henderson had sent the Obama task force’s Steven Rattner lobbying to keep GM executive retirement benefits.
Gerber rejected the IUE-CWA objections along with all the others.
The Washington Post noted, “Throughout the court proceedings, the government and GM were repeatedly questioned about why they chose to assume certain assets and liabilities while rejecting others.
“In response, government and GM officials said the only measure was whether or not the assets and liabilities would support the commercial viability of the new GM.”
Underlining the political character of his decision, Gerber rejected the claim that the US government had been overbearing in negotiations to restructure the car maker. “The US Treasury, in making hard decisions about where to spend its money and make New GM as viable as possible, made business decisions that it was entitled to make,” he wrote.
Elsewhere in his decision, Gerber declared, “The only alternative to an immediate sale [of GM assets to the new company] is liquidation—a disastrous result for GM’s creditors, its employees, the suppliers who depend on GM for their existence, and the communities in which GM operates.”
The decline of General Motors has already been an unmitigated disaster for auto workers, suppliers, dealerships and entire communities. The continued private ownership of the automobile industry, or government control on behalf of corporate interests, only holds more of the same in store.
The UAW apparatus, which hopes to prosper by operating the VEBA retiree health-care trust, merely reported on its web site—with obvious pleasure—that the Bankruptcy Court had “issued its ruling approving the proposed restructuring, and the UAW Retiree Health Settlement Agreement.”
The media campaign to convince auto workers that the judge’s decision will save GM and their jobs began as soon as the ruling was issued. The Detroit News lost no time in claiming, “The sale will preserve hundreds of thousands of GM jobs in North America, and around the world, and bolster a reeling network of auto industry suppliers.”
It will do no such thing. The sale will trigger a new round of plant closures and demands for concessions. With global auto sales plummeting, profitability can only be restored at GM and its rivals by impoverishing workers to insure the investments and profits of corporate executives and financiers.
David Walsh
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
India Budget: Fat Cats Never Had It So Good
If more proof was needed that the aam aadmi for the Congress means the super-rich, just see the huge tax breaks given to the fat cats. While crumbs have been thrown at the ordinary middle class folks, the movers and shakers have a bonanza awaiting them when it comes to filing tax returns next year.
Thanks to the 2009-10 Budget proposals will have people in the higher income strata laughing their way to the bank or mall for LCDs which are now cheaper. Indeed, the richest must be doing cartwheels after Finance Minister Pranab Mukerjee on Monday raised the basic exemption limits for all income groups.
For men and women, the basic exemption limit was hiked by Rs 10,000. For men, the hike is from Rs 1.5 lakh (Rs 150,000) to Rs 1.6 lakh (Rs 160,000). For women, the rise was from Rs 1.8 lakh (Rs 180,000) to 1.9 lakh (Rs 190,000). For senior citizens, the limit was increased from Rs 2.25 lakh (Rs 225,000) to Rs 2.4 lakh (Rs 240,000), a rise of Rs 15,000.
However, the important move was to do away with the 10 per cent surcharge imposed on annual income of above Rs 10 lakh.
All About Tax Proposals
This means the government has returned Rs 11,700 crore (Rs 117 billion) to individual taxpayers. This amount was slated to be collected from the 10 per cent surcharge, according to the interim Budget estimates.
“While the hike of Rs 10,000 was not too significant, the removal of 10 per cent surcharge would allow an additional benefit of 3 per cent a year and increase the investible surplus,” said NC Hegde, partner, Deloitte, Haskins and Sells.
The benefits kick in as soon as your salary crosses Rs 10 lakh. That is, for persons who have taxable income of Rs 10 lakh, the saving is only Rs 1,030 a year.
If the income rises by even Rs 1 from there, the tax burden falls from Rs 232,265 to Rs 210,120, a saving of Rs 22,145. And for incomes of Rs 15 lakh-50 lakh, the savings would be between Rs 37,000 and Rs 145,000.
The New Tax Slabs
Another reason to smile for taxpayers in the higher income strata has been the hike in the wealth tax limit from Rs 15 lakh (Rs 1.5 million) to Rs 30 lakh (Rs 3 million).
At present, wealth tax is charged at 1 per cent. The highest bracket (30 per cent tax limits) starts at Rs 500,000. However, 80 per cent of Indians live on less than Rs 10,000 per year. And thereby hangs a shameful tale.
Thanks to the 2009-10 Budget proposals will have people in the higher income strata laughing their way to the bank or mall for LCDs which are now cheaper. Indeed, the richest must be doing cartwheels after Finance Minister Pranab Mukerjee on Monday raised the basic exemption limits for all income groups.
For men and women, the basic exemption limit was hiked by Rs 10,000. For men, the hike is from Rs 1.5 lakh (Rs 150,000) to Rs 1.6 lakh (Rs 160,000). For women, the rise was from Rs 1.8 lakh (Rs 180,000) to 1.9 lakh (Rs 190,000). For senior citizens, the limit was increased from Rs 2.25 lakh (Rs 225,000) to Rs 2.4 lakh (Rs 240,000), a rise of Rs 15,000.
However, the important move was to do away with the 10 per cent surcharge imposed on annual income of above Rs 10 lakh.
All About Tax Proposals
This means the government has returned Rs 11,700 crore (Rs 117 billion) to individual taxpayers. This amount was slated to be collected from the 10 per cent surcharge, according to the interim Budget estimates.
“While the hike of Rs 10,000 was not too significant, the removal of 10 per cent surcharge would allow an additional benefit of 3 per cent a year and increase the investible surplus,” said NC Hegde, partner, Deloitte, Haskins and Sells.
The benefits kick in as soon as your salary crosses Rs 10 lakh. That is, for persons who have taxable income of Rs 10 lakh, the saving is only Rs 1,030 a year.
If the income rises by even Rs 1 from there, the tax burden falls from Rs 232,265 to Rs 210,120, a saving of Rs 22,145. And for incomes of Rs 15 lakh-50 lakh, the savings would be between Rs 37,000 and Rs 145,000.
The New Tax Slabs
Another reason to smile for taxpayers in the higher income strata has been the hike in the wealth tax limit from Rs 15 lakh (Rs 1.5 million) to Rs 30 lakh (Rs 3 million).
At present, wealth tax is charged at 1 per cent. The highest bracket (30 per cent tax limits) starts at Rs 500,000. However, 80 per cent of Indians live on less than Rs 10,000 per year. And thereby hangs a shameful tale.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Aam Aadmi or Mota Seth: Whose Budget Is It Anyway?
Watching the “Budget Specials” today, I was struck by the monotony of the responses coming from most panellists. Most were circumspect. Many were plain “disappointed. Reason being that finance minister Pranab Mukerjee failed to enthuse the stock market. In fact the market tanked by 870 points on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
But once you crunch the numbers, it is evident that once again India Inc has been given more sweeteners than they deserve. For example, the series of direct and indirect tax concessions in the wake of the global economic crisis has led to the tax revenue forgone – taxes that India Inc should be paying - reach as much as Rs. 4.18 lakh crore (Rs 4.18 trillion) in 2008-09.
Rather than withdrawing these concessions to enable greater resource mobilisation and spending in critical areas, Mukerjee has chosen to extend these concessions for the entire financial year of 2009-10.
In fact, the abolition of the Fringe Benefit Tax and Commodities Transaction Tax will also adversely impact tax mobilisation. Despite the welcome increase in the Minimum Alternative Tax levied on corporates from 10 per cent to 15 per cent of their profits, the Budget is revenue neutral on the direct tax front and direct tax revenues are expected to increase by 7 per cent only, which is much less than the nominal growth of GDP.
Not surprisingly, India Inc is mighty pleased. HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh proclaimed on a TV show: "I think I am overall very happy with the Budget." Stating that he did not see any reason for being negative on the Budget, Parekh noted that the Finance Minister mentioned the role of the private sector and private finance in the speech.
Indeed, looking at the fine print it comes as no surprise that contributors to the Congress Party's kitty have been rewarded in ample measure. For example, Mukesh Ambani has come out a winner – Mukerjee has restored the seven-year tax break on natural gas production. “We are very happy about the clarification as it ends the ambiguity," said PMS Prasad, President and CEO (Oil & Gas) of Reliance Industries.
Similarly, the finance minister's has extended fiscal benefits available to the IT-BPO sector under Section 10A/10B for one year to “help the industry mitigate the impact of the current economic environment and help India retain its competitiveness.” Translated in plain language it means companies like Infosys, Wipro and Mahindra Tech (Satyam) will continue with the tax holiday they have enjoyed for the past decade.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sees nothing wrong with granting largess to these companies, which have not contributed to innovation and have no patents to their names. Instead, he trotted out a lame explanation: “The main aim of the Budget is to minimise the impact of global recession,” adding that its focus was to ensure that short-term requirements of the economy as well as medium-term goals were achieved.
Really? Is foregoing revenues to the extent of Rs 4.18 trillion minimise the impact of the global recession? The Prime Minister may hail the Budget as an “admirable job”, but the hosannas are being sung by the fat cats on business channels and pink papers, not the much-vaunted aam admi.
“It is essentially a rural development-oriented Budget," claims the Prime Minister. And the likes of Montek Singh Ahluwalia, P Chidambaram, and Kapil Sibal – the neo-liberal cabal that guides government policy nowadays – are shouting from the rooftops that in the Budget handsome additional allocation has been made for inclusive growth and other flagship programmes like Urban Renewal Mission and National Rural Health Mission.
Those who had hoped to make a fast buck in these times are complaining that there was no announcement on privatisation of PSUs, banking “reforms” and throwing open the insurance sector to foreign finance capital. “Nothing that was expected has happened except for some bit of focus on infra. But he (Mukerjee) did not say anything about divestment, he did not say anything about insurance. All of that are having an impact on the market,” complained Saurabh Nanavati, CEO of Religare Asset Management.
But talk of the Budget being “socialist” or “populist” is sheer bunkum. In fact Parekh was being honest when he said, "You must understand that he (Mukerjee) mentioned the role of the private sector and private finance...Disinvestment will happen. The government needs more money...I don't see any reason for (being) negative at all."
In fact the “captains of industry” openly said on TV that disinvestment and other “reforms” were not mentioned in the Budget precisely because Mukerjee did not want to raise a storm in Parliament – he would do all this, and much more, without much fuss at a later date, preferably when Parliament is not in session.
So where does that leave you and me? Sure, some crumbs have been thrown to the middle class by way of raising personal tax exemption limits marginally. LCD TVs may become slightly cheaper and mobile handsets could go the same way. So what?
Looking at the big picture - After all, India is a billion strong country - the numbers tells us the Budget is grossly inadequate in meeting the challenges of economic recession, growing job losses and declining purchasing power of the masses.
The total expenditure is slated to increase by a mere 2 per cent of GDP only, essentially to meet non-developmental expenditures like interest payments and implementing Sixth Pay Commission recommendations. So this Budget neither provides a stimulus for growth nor meets the needs of “inclusive growth” for the aam admi.
While Mukerjee has failed to provide the resources required to stimulate the economy, the neglect of its role in terms of allocations is more significant in areas that touch on the lives of the mass of the people.
Crucial sectors, like agriculture and rural development, where the effects of the prolonged agrarian crisis and the agricultural growth slowdown of 2008-09 have been severe, have been provided little support in terms of Plan outlays. The required lowering of interest rates to 4 per cent on farm loans has not been done. Instead, only an incentive to repay loans on time has been announced.
The allocation required to implement the Right to Education is shockingly absent in the Budget. The increase in budgetary allocation for elementary education is less than Rs 200 crore. In fact the non-seriousness of the Government for the universalisation the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) is seen in the meagre increase in allocation of only Rs. 360 crore.
The allocation for the social security schemes for the unorganised sector workers is only Rs. 100 crore more than last year, belying the claims made by the Finance Minister. While the increase in minimum wage for the NREGA to Rs 100 makes sense in States where the wage rate is lower, a meaningful expansion of NREGA would have required a much larger allocation than the Rs. 2350 crore increase over what was spent in 2008-09.
Similarly, the Rural Health Mission has been allocated only Rs 1730 more than what was spent last year. And it is indeed unfortunate that the Finance Minister has given his stamp of approval to an increase in the price of foodgrains by Re 1 per kg for Antodaya families and a cut in the allocation of food quotas by 10 kg to BPL families in the name of the Food Security legislation. None of the promises made to women including the widow pension scheme has received increased allocations. All this even as the well off get tax exemptions, cheaper LCD TVs and, of course, BMWs.
Indeed, far from meeting the requirements of the people, the Budget will further widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Mind you, this is the first Budget of this government. There are four more to go. For the aam admi, the struggle to protect and improve his livelihood has just begun.
Yet the fat cats are whining. “Somehow I was thinking that the Railway Budget was a little populist. Now this one seems to have outdone that. Honestly, there seems to be too much of social spending," complained Saurabh Nanavati of Religare Asset Management. Yeh dil mange more?
But once you crunch the numbers, it is evident that once again India Inc has been given more sweeteners than they deserve. For example, the series of direct and indirect tax concessions in the wake of the global economic crisis has led to the tax revenue forgone – taxes that India Inc should be paying - reach as much as Rs. 4.18 lakh crore (Rs 4.18 trillion) in 2008-09.
Rather than withdrawing these concessions to enable greater resource mobilisation and spending in critical areas, Mukerjee has chosen to extend these concessions for the entire financial year of 2009-10.
In fact, the abolition of the Fringe Benefit Tax and Commodities Transaction Tax will also adversely impact tax mobilisation. Despite the welcome increase in the Minimum Alternative Tax levied on corporates from 10 per cent to 15 per cent of their profits, the Budget is revenue neutral on the direct tax front and direct tax revenues are expected to increase by 7 per cent only, which is much less than the nominal growth of GDP.
Not surprisingly, India Inc is mighty pleased. HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh proclaimed on a TV show: "I think I am overall very happy with the Budget." Stating that he did not see any reason for being negative on the Budget, Parekh noted that the Finance Minister mentioned the role of the private sector and private finance in the speech.
Indeed, looking at the fine print it comes as no surprise that contributors to the Congress Party's kitty have been rewarded in ample measure. For example, Mukesh Ambani has come out a winner – Mukerjee has restored the seven-year tax break on natural gas production. “We are very happy about the clarification as it ends the ambiguity," said PMS Prasad, President and CEO (Oil & Gas) of Reliance Industries.
Similarly, the finance minister's has extended fiscal benefits available to the IT-BPO sector under Section 10A/10B for one year to “help the industry mitigate the impact of the current economic environment and help India retain its competitiveness.” Translated in plain language it means companies like Infosys, Wipro and Mahindra Tech (Satyam) will continue with the tax holiday they have enjoyed for the past decade.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sees nothing wrong with granting largess to these companies, which have not contributed to innovation and have no patents to their names. Instead, he trotted out a lame explanation: “The main aim of the Budget is to minimise the impact of global recession,” adding that its focus was to ensure that short-term requirements of the economy as well as medium-term goals were achieved.
Really? Is foregoing revenues to the extent of Rs 4.18 trillion minimise the impact of the global recession? The Prime Minister may hail the Budget as an “admirable job”, but the hosannas are being sung by the fat cats on business channels and pink papers, not the much-vaunted aam admi.
“It is essentially a rural development-oriented Budget," claims the Prime Minister. And the likes of Montek Singh Ahluwalia, P Chidambaram, and Kapil Sibal – the neo-liberal cabal that guides government policy nowadays – are shouting from the rooftops that in the Budget handsome additional allocation has been made for inclusive growth and other flagship programmes like Urban Renewal Mission and National Rural Health Mission.
Those who had hoped to make a fast buck in these times are complaining that there was no announcement on privatisation of PSUs, banking “reforms” and throwing open the insurance sector to foreign finance capital. “Nothing that was expected has happened except for some bit of focus on infra. But he (Mukerjee) did not say anything about divestment, he did not say anything about insurance. All of that are having an impact on the market,” complained Saurabh Nanavati, CEO of Religare Asset Management.
But talk of the Budget being “socialist” or “populist” is sheer bunkum. In fact Parekh was being honest when he said, "You must understand that he (Mukerjee) mentioned the role of the private sector and private finance...Disinvestment will happen. The government needs more money...I don't see any reason for (being) negative at all."
In fact the “captains of industry” openly said on TV that disinvestment and other “reforms” were not mentioned in the Budget precisely because Mukerjee did not want to raise a storm in Parliament – he would do all this, and much more, without much fuss at a later date, preferably when Parliament is not in session.
So where does that leave you and me? Sure, some crumbs have been thrown to the middle class by way of raising personal tax exemption limits marginally. LCD TVs may become slightly cheaper and mobile handsets could go the same way. So what?
Looking at the big picture - After all, India is a billion strong country - the numbers tells us the Budget is grossly inadequate in meeting the challenges of economic recession, growing job losses and declining purchasing power of the masses.
The total expenditure is slated to increase by a mere 2 per cent of GDP only, essentially to meet non-developmental expenditures like interest payments and implementing Sixth Pay Commission recommendations. So this Budget neither provides a stimulus for growth nor meets the needs of “inclusive growth” for the aam admi.
While Mukerjee has failed to provide the resources required to stimulate the economy, the neglect of its role in terms of allocations is more significant in areas that touch on the lives of the mass of the people.
Crucial sectors, like agriculture and rural development, where the effects of the prolonged agrarian crisis and the agricultural growth slowdown of 2008-09 have been severe, have been provided little support in terms of Plan outlays. The required lowering of interest rates to 4 per cent on farm loans has not been done. Instead, only an incentive to repay loans on time has been announced.
The allocation required to implement the Right to Education is shockingly absent in the Budget. The increase in budgetary allocation for elementary education is less than Rs 200 crore. In fact the non-seriousness of the Government for the universalisation the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) is seen in the meagre increase in allocation of only Rs. 360 crore.
The allocation for the social security schemes for the unorganised sector workers is only Rs. 100 crore more than last year, belying the claims made by the Finance Minister. While the increase in minimum wage for the NREGA to Rs 100 makes sense in States where the wage rate is lower, a meaningful expansion of NREGA would have required a much larger allocation than the Rs. 2350 crore increase over what was spent in 2008-09.
Similarly, the Rural Health Mission has been allocated only Rs 1730 more than what was spent last year. And it is indeed unfortunate that the Finance Minister has given his stamp of approval to an increase in the price of foodgrains by Re 1 per kg for Antodaya families and a cut in the allocation of food quotas by 10 kg to BPL families in the name of the Food Security legislation. None of the promises made to women including the widow pension scheme has received increased allocations. All this even as the well off get tax exemptions, cheaper LCD TVs and, of course, BMWs.
Indeed, far from meeting the requirements of the people, the Budget will further widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Mind you, this is the first Budget of this government. There are four more to go. For the aam admi, the struggle to protect and improve his livelihood has just begun.
Yet the fat cats are whining. “Somehow I was thinking that the Railway Budget was a little populist. Now this one seems to have outdone that. Honestly, there seems to be too much of social spending," complained Saurabh Nanavati of Religare Asset Management. Yeh dil mange more?
Gay Rights: Us & Them
Indians are devastated. There is an urgency to address issues of public morality and answer questions like, "What are we going to say to our children?" People of all faith and religion are flocking together to understand the ugliness of the statement made by the Delhi High Court legalising gay relationships.
The viciousness of the LGBT (Lesbian, Guy, Bisexual and Transgender) community is being celebrated on all television channels across the country. In a recent debate on a prominent TV channel, a retired police commissioner lambasted a gay rights activist.
Imagine, morality pouring out of the mouth of a police commissioner! How ridiculous could that be? In fact, by the most rough estimates, the High Court statement stands to ablactate our police force of significant money which was routinely extracted as hafta (weekly extortion sum) from hijras and transgender on our streets.
It is a different matter that the police in India are too chic to be let down by the diction of an old judge of the High Court. This brings us to the broader question. How justified are we in condemning legalisation of LGBT rights?
Legalising LGBT relationships have two entirely divergent angles. It is both an issue of religious faith and a matter of human rights. Unfortunately, as a bystander, I have seen on more than a single occasion that religion and human rights don’t go hand in hand. Our experiences with Taliban in Afghanistan, with Church’s posturing on abortion and in recent times with forces of hindutva in Gujarat are more than ample evidence to prove the point.
So do we expect that major religions of this country would go all out to embrace the LGBT community with open arms? Not really. Hinduism is full of verses depriving those who indulge in a homosexual relationship. Manusmriti talks of loss of caste or Gatibhramsa for those who are in such rapport.
Being a Muslim I know that Islam prohibits homosexual relationships. But then Islam also prohibits alcohol, pork and idol worship. Should the Muslims go all out in India asking the government to ban these? The restrictions imposed by a vibrant democracy teach us to rein our religious thoughts and practices to a more personal level.
Whenever the boundaries of personal and public discourse on issues of faith get blurred, the country is engulfed by a squall of blood. How commonly have we seen the eruption of violent conflicts started by the carcass of a cow in a temple or a pig in a mosque?
Expectedly, the most severe condemnation on the High Court judgment has come from the Islamic seat of Deoband. Having said this, it’s interesting to note that Muslim scholars in the US and Europe have never spoken in such harsh and ruthless language against the LGBT community in these regions. Possibly, the acceptance of a practice takes time and the scholars in those countries are more evolved on the social understanding of sexual orientation of people.
This brings us to the issue of public morality. How many times have we heard the use of this word in all public debates on legalisation of LGBT relationships? Public morality in India, as I understand, is a weapon of a class to be used without much justification on the most downtrodden creatures of the society.
Public morality goes for a toss when a girl is burnt alive by petty eve teasers. Public morality is thrown out of the window when issuing censure certificates to bollywood movies which would be good enough to be labeled as pornographic. Public morality is raped and molested each day on Indian buses, Goan beaches and red light areas. Public morality is burnt and thrashed in the name of dowry and female foeticide.
Yet we Indians accept public morality as a shield against any act of human upliftment and social change. Change which does not suite our style, our culture, our values and our petty needs can be easily sacrificed at the altar of public morality without any questions asked or eyebrows raised.
It is interesting to see that there has not been a single case of conviction in last twenty years in accordance with Article 377 in this country. Public morality is a Rip Van Winkle, awake after 20 years of deep stupor.
In my opinion, the real context of the LGBT issue is a matter of human rights. We live in a democratic country, governed by a constitution which imparts equal rights to all irrespective of their religious faith, class, gender or age.
Although the impartiality of this statement can be questioned, the essence of the Constitution remains pristine. In legalising guy rights in India, the Delhi High Court has shown its abject acceptance of a community which has long been eschewed in our society.
To me, this is an empowerment of kinds. It has nothing to do with religious decrees and narrow social fiats through which our lives are governed. This is accepting those who live life as they think is good and natural for them. If we cannot accept this change then we should have reservations on orders prohibiting sati and child marriage. It is a matter of serious thinking that in a complex dynamic world, are we ready to accept social change as and when it comes or are we still trapped in our past.
By supporting the legalisation of gay rights we do not accept the practice, we accept a broader relevance of human rights. Some of these rights might not be acceptable and palatable to us but if they give freedom to a big chunk of society, they should be relevant and meaningful.
It is wrongly felt that by legalising the LGBT community, the Delhi High Court has opened the flood gates for such relationships. "Oh my God, my son will be a gay now", screamed a man from inside his new Skoda on a TV channel. I wish I could tell him that his son will be a gay or a heterosexual not because of the High Court order but because of his sexual orientation and preferences.
These are misconceptions which make our society handicap to accepting change. It’s high time that we change our attitudes and preferences for social acceptability. Our morality should not be based on bigotry.
Intolerance can destroy civilisations. Social change is the sine qua non of survival. Good or bad, social changes need time to manifest their full impact. As a democratic country we need to give this time.
Shah Alam Khan/CounterCurrents
The viciousness of the LGBT (Lesbian, Guy, Bisexual and Transgender) community is being celebrated on all television channels across the country. In a recent debate on a prominent TV channel, a retired police commissioner lambasted a gay rights activist.
Imagine, morality pouring out of the mouth of a police commissioner! How ridiculous could that be? In fact, by the most rough estimates, the High Court statement stands to ablactate our police force of significant money which was routinely extracted as hafta (weekly extortion sum) from hijras and transgender on our streets.
It is a different matter that the police in India are too chic to be let down by the diction of an old judge of the High Court. This brings us to the broader question. How justified are we in condemning legalisation of LGBT rights?
Legalising LGBT relationships have two entirely divergent angles. It is both an issue of religious faith and a matter of human rights. Unfortunately, as a bystander, I have seen on more than a single occasion that religion and human rights don’t go hand in hand. Our experiences with Taliban in Afghanistan, with Church’s posturing on abortion and in recent times with forces of hindutva in Gujarat are more than ample evidence to prove the point.
So do we expect that major religions of this country would go all out to embrace the LGBT community with open arms? Not really. Hinduism is full of verses depriving those who indulge in a homosexual relationship. Manusmriti talks of loss of caste or Gatibhramsa for those who are in such rapport.
Being a Muslim I know that Islam prohibits homosexual relationships. But then Islam also prohibits alcohol, pork and idol worship. Should the Muslims go all out in India asking the government to ban these? The restrictions imposed by a vibrant democracy teach us to rein our religious thoughts and practices to a more personal level.
Whenever the boundaries of personal and public discourse on issues of faith get blurred, the country is engulfed by a squall of blood. How commonly have we seen the eruption of violent conflicts started by the carcass of a cow in a temple or a pig in a mosque?
Expectedly, the most severe condemnation on the High Court judgment has come from the Islamic seat of Deoband. Having said this, it’s interesting to note that Muslim scholars in the US and Europe have never spoken in such harsh and ruthless language against the LGBT community in these regions. Possibly, the acceptance of a practice takes time and the scholars in those countries are more evolved on the social understanding of sexual orientation of people.
This brings us to the issue of public morality. How many times have we heard the use of this word in all public debates on legalisation of LGBT relationships? Public morality in India, as I understand, is a weapon of a class to be used without much justification on the most downtrodden creatures of the society.
Public morality goes for a toss when a girl is burnt alive by petty eve teasers. Public morality is thrown out of the window when issuing censure certificates to bollywood movies which would be good enough to be labeled as pornographic. Public morality is raped and molested each day on Indian buses, Goan beaches and red light areas. Public morality is burnt and thrashed in the name of dowry and female foeticide.
Yet we Indians accept public morality as a shield against any act of human upliftment and social change. Change which does not suite our style, our culture, our values and our petty needs can be easily sacrificed at the altar of public morality without any questions asked or eyebrows raised.
It is interesting to see that there has not been a single case of conviction in last twenty years in accordance with Article 377 in this country. Public morality is a Rip Van Winkle, awake after 20 years of deep stupor.
In my opinion, the real context of the LGBT issue is a matter of human rights. We live in a democratic country, governed by a constitution which imparts equal rights to all irrespective of their religious faith, class, gender or age.
Although the impartiality of this statement can be questioned, the essence of the Constitution remains pristine. In legalising guy rights in India, the Delhi High Court has shown its abject acceptance of a community which has long been eschewed in our society.
To me, this is an empowerment of kinds. It has nothing to do with religious decrees and narrow social fiats through which our lives are governed. This is accepting those who live life as they think is good and natural for them. If we cannot accept this change then we should have reservations on orders prohibiting sati and child marriage. It is a matter of serious thinking that in a complex dynamic world, are we ready to accept social change as and when it comes or are we still trapped in our past.
By supporting the legalisation of gay rights we do not accept the practice, we accept a broader relevance of human rights. Some of these rights might not be acceptable and palatable to us but if they give freedom to a big chunk of society, they should be relevant and meaningful.
It is wrongly felt that by legalising the LGBT community, the Delhi High Court has opened the flood gates for such relationships. "Oh my God, my son will be a gay now", screamed a man from inside his new Skoda on a TV channel. I wish I could tell him that his son will be a gay or a heterosexual not because of the High Court order but because of his sexual orientation and preferences.
These are misconceptions which make our society handicap to accepting change. It’s high time that we change our attitudes and preferences for social acceptability. Our morality should not be based on bigotry.
Intolerance can destroy civilisations. Social change is the sine qua non of survival. Good or bad, social changes need time to manifest their full impact. As a democratic country we need to give this time.
Shah Alam Khan/CounterCurrents
Friday, July 3, 2009
Indian Railways' Surplus Evaporates; Where Has The Money Gone?
Spending five days in a week in Kolkata to fight the Left Front government rather than behind her desk in Rail Bhawan in New Delhi, Mamata Banerjee certainly did not have any time to prepare the Railway Budget, which she presented in Parliament today. Not surprisingly, her Budget does not bear her imprimatur but that of the technocrats running Indian Railways.
So once again, as in other branches of the new government, neo-liberal thinking dominated the Budget-making exercise. This will include not only developing “50 world class” railway stations but go down the line, as it were, to cover even developing Railway medical colleges along with rail hospitals on public-private partnership (PPP) basis. Besides, there is the par for course tokenism like availability of 'Janata Khana', in which national and regional cuisines will figure on the menu.
Alarmingly, Mamata's first Railway Budget reflects a marked deterioration in the financial position of the Indian Railways. Lalu Prasad's Railway Budget of 2008-09 had reported a cash surplus of around Rs 23,000 crore. However, this surplus came down to Rs. 13,532 crore in this year's interim Railway Budget (February 2009) presented just before the Lok Sabha elections.
Now, in a short span of six months the surplus has come down further to just Rs 8,631 crore in the current Budget. Where has the money gone? Mamata owes an explanation for this serious deterioration of performance. Why has the cash surpluses of the Railways depleted so rapidly in such a short span of time?
To be fair, it seems the economic slowdown has adversely affected Railway revenues, especially from freight traffic. Estimates for Receipts have been revised downwards from the targets set by the interim Railway Budget presented by Lalu Prasad earlier this year, which Mamata Banerjee termed “unrealistically high” in her speech.
However, Mamata has failed to come up with any fresh ideas in tackling the situation and turnaround the declining revenue situation. Rather she has chosen to take recourse to the same flawed route of privatisation through PPP projects in a host of areas. Indeed, privatisation and outsourcing in the Railways has received a major thrust in this year’s Budget. Is this the beginning of the privatisation of Indian Railways?
Mamata's reliance on several PPP projects, from development of 50 “world class stations”, new freight and coach terminals, logistics parks, special purpose rolling stocks, perishable cargo centres etc., seems completely misplaced at a time of economic recession when private investment is hardly forthcoming.
Mamata admitted in her speech that out of Rs 3400 crore earmarked in the Annual Plan for 2009-10, for resource mobilization through PPP, “Rs 3300 crore would just not materialise”. The allocations for crucial areas like railway modernisation, safety, electrification etc are also inadequate.
Thankfully, there are some positive measures in the Railway Budget 2009-10 like no hike in passenger fares, Rs 25 monthly ticket for people earning less than Rs. 1500 per month or a special recruitment drive to fill up vacancies in railway posts for SC/STs, physically challenged, minorities and women.
We can only hope Mamata devotes more time to Indian Railways in the larger national interest and not limit herself to West Bengal politics. If the latter is more important to her, she must relinquish charge and let someone else take over. Indian Railways is too important to be left to the technocrats on the Railway Board.
Roger And Out
So once again, as in other branches of the new government, neo-liberal thinking dominated the Budget-making exercise. This will include not only developing “50 world class” railway stations but go down the line, as it were, to cover even developing Railway medical colleges along with rail hospitals on public-private partnership (PPP) basis. Besides, there is the par for course tokenism like availability of 'Janata Khana', in which national and regional cuisines will figure on the menu.
Alarmingly, Mamata's first Railway Budget reflects a marked deterioration in the financial position of the Indian Railways. Lalu Prasad's Railway Budget of 2008-09 had reported a cash surplus of around Rs 23,000 crore. However, this surplus came down to Rs. 13,532 crore in this year's interim Railway Budget (February 2009) presented just before the Lok Sabha elections.
Now, in a short span of six months the surplus has come down further to just Rs 8,631 crore in the current Budget. Where has the money gone? Mamata owes an explanation for this serious deterioration of performance. Why has the cash surpluses of the Railways depleted so rapidly in such a short span of time?
To be fair, it seems the economic slowdown has adversely affected Railway revenues, especially from freight traffic. Estimates for Receipts have been revised downwards from the targets set by the interim Railway Budget presented by Lalu Prasad earlier this year, which Mamata Banerjee termed “unrealistically high” in her speech.
However, Mamata has failed to come up with any fresh ideas in tackling the situation and turnaround the declining revenue situation. Rather she has chosen to take recourse to the same flawed route of privatisation through PPP projects in a host of areas. Indeed, privatisation and outsourcing in the Railways has received a major thrust in this year’s Budget. Is this the beginning of the privatisation of Indian Railways?
Mamata's reliance on several PPP projects, from development of 50 “world class stations”, new freight and coach terminals, logistics parks, special purpose rolling stocks, perishable cargo centres etc., seems completely misplaced at a time of economic recession when private investment is hardly forthcoming.
Mamata admitted in her speech that out of Rs 3400 crore earmarked in the Annual Plan for 2009-10, for resource mobilization through PPP, “Rs 3300 crore would just not materialise”. The allocations for crucial areas like railway modernisation, safety, electrification etc are also inadequate.
Thankfully, there are some positive measures in the Railway Budget 2009-10 like no hike in passenger fares, Rs 25 monthly ticket for people earning less than Rs. 1500 per month or a special recruitment drive to fill up vacancies in railway posts for SC/STs, physically challenged, minorities and women.
We can only hope Mamata devotes more time to Indian Railways in the larger national interest and not limit herself to West Bengal politics. If the latter is more important to her, she must relinquish charge and let someone else take over. Indian Railways is too important to be left to the technocrats on the Railway Board.
Roger And Out
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Foie Gras: Eating Diseased Giblets
Foie Gras (fatty duck/goose liver) is a much “prized” delicacy. And terribly expensive to boot. Food writers try to outdo each other extolling the virtues of the dish. Indeed, a “gourmet” restaurant is not worth its self-proclaimed status if it does not boast foie gras on its menu.
The story is not much different in Mumbai. One self-proclaimed “foodie” Prashant Rajkhowa reviewing Cafe Prato in the Four Seasons hotel in Mumbai in his blog 'Healthy Living In India' (ha, haa!) where he ate (probably for free) actually writes: “The Foie Gras was excellent and if I was ever reborn a goose, that's the way I want to go.” This guy is certainly asking for it, so I must grant him his last wish.
Okay mate, here's what we'll do: We will begin with shoving a pipe down your throat several times a day and pump you so full of food that your liver becomes diseased and balloons up. If you're not already dead by the time we're through with you, we'll cut you up, extract your bloated liver (throwing the rest of you away as animal feed) and serve you up to your earlier avatar in a “fine dining” restaurant. (Waiting for the next review, Prashant).
Anyway, back to foie gras. A European Union's Scientific Committee on Animal Health study shows that duck/geese death rates during force feeding skyrocket by 10 to 20 times - imagine any process that causes a population's death rate to be 1000 to 2000 percent greater than normal. Of course, every animal is in misery for the entire horrid ordeal.
According to scientific studies, the birds who don't die suffer from impaired liver function, skeletal disorders, and other serious illnesses. Many become so sick they can barely move. Carcasses show wing fractures and severe tissue damage to the throat muscles.
Dr Ian Duncan, a consultant to the Canadian government and poultry industry who literally wrote the poultry regulations in Canada, explains that “force feeding quickly results in birds that are obese and in a pathological state, called hepatic lipidosis or fatty liver disease. There is no doubt, that in this pathological state, the birds will feel very ill.”
Dr Duncan further explains that the regular insertion of a feeding tube damages the birds' oesophagi, which exacerbates the painfulness of each force feeding, and that “the birds' obesity will lead to myriad other problems from skeletal disorders to difficulties in coping with heat stress, and all of which are accompanied by feelings of malaise.”
Dr Christine Nicol, a consultant to the British poultry industry and government, and a professor at the School of Veterinary Science at the University of Bristol, says, “My view on the production of foie gras is clear and supported by biological evidence. This practice causes unacceptable suffering....It causes pain during and as a consequence of the force feeding, feelings of malaise as the body struggles to cope with extreme nutrient imbalance, and distress due to the forceful handling. The most extreme distress is caused by loss of control of the birds' most basic homeostatic regulation [survival] mechanism as their hunger control system is over-ridden.”
In other words: All the birds are sick, vast numbers to the point of death. And it's these scientific facts that explain why every reputable animal protection group in the world, including many that do not advocate vegetarianism, condemns foie gras as cruel.
No one who professes to care about animal welfare can defend forcing pipes down birds' throats two or three times a day and pumping up to 2 kg of grain and fat into their stomachs until their livers enlarge to ten times their natural size (livers expand from about 70 grams to about 700 grams).
Biological facts - which have been completely lacking from a few recent articles defending the industry - show beyond any doubt that foie gras production is cruel. Kind people are duty bound to oppose it.
Enjoy your Foie Gras, Prashant! Bon Appetit!
Roger And Out
The story is not much different in Mumbai. One self-proclaimed “foodie” Prashant Rajkhowa reviewing Cafe Prato in the Four Seasons hotel in Mumbai in his blog 'Healthy Living In India' (ha, haa!) where he ate (probably for free) actually writes: “The Foie Gras was excellent and if I was ever reborn a goose, that's the way I want to go.” This guy is certainly asking for it, so I must grant him his last wish.
Okay mate, here's what we'll do: We will begin with shoving a pipe down your throat several times a day and pump you so full of food that your liver becomes diseased and balloons up. If you're not already dead by the time we're through with you, we'll cut you up, extract your bloated liver (throwing the rest of you away as animal feed) and serve you up to your earlier avatar in a “fine dining” restaurant. (Waiting for the next review, Prashant).
Anyway, back to foie gras. A European Union's Scientific Committee on Animal Health study shows that duck/geese death rates during force feeding skyrocket by 10 to 20 times - imagine any process that causes a population's death rate to be 1000 to 2000 percent greater than normal. Of course, every animal is in misery for the entire horrid ordeal.
According to scientific studies, the birds who don't die suffer from impaired liver function, skeletal disorders, and other serious illnesses. Many become so sick they can barely move. Carcasses show wing fractures and severe tissue damage to the throat muscles.
Dr Ian Duncan, a consultant to the Canadian government and poultry industry who literally wrote the poultry regulations in Canada, explains that “force feeding quickly results in birds that are obese and in a pathological state, called hepatic lipidosis or fatty liver disease. There is no doubt, that in this pathological state, the birds will feel very ill.”
Dr Duncan further explains that the regular insertion of a feeding tube damages the birds' oesophagi, which exacerbates the painfulness of each force feeding, and that “the birds' obesity will lead to myriad other problems from skeletal disorders to difficulties in coping with heat stress, and all of which are accompanied by feelings of malaise.”
Dr Christine Nicol, a consultant to the British poultry industry and government, and a professor at the School of Veterinary Science at the University of Bristol, says, “My view on the production of foie gras is clear and supported by biological evidence. This practice causes unacceptable suffering....It causes pain during and as a consequence of the force feeding, feelings of malaise as the body struggles to cope with extreme nutrient imbalance, and distress due to the forceful handling. The most extreme distress is caused by loss of control of the birds' most basic homeostatic regulation [survival] mechanism as their hunger control system is over-ridden.”
In other words: All the birds are sick, vast numbers to the point of death. And it's these scientific facts that explain why every reputable animal protection group in the world, including many that do not advocate vegetarianism, condemns foie gras as cruel.
No one who professes to care about animal welfare can defend forcing pipes down birds' throats two or three times a day and pumping up to 2 kg of grain and fat into their stomachs until their livers enlarge to ten times their natural size (livers expand from about 70 grams to about 700 grams).
Biological facts - which have been completely lacking from a few recent articles defending the industry - show beyond any doubt that foie gras production is cruel. Kind people are duty bound to oppose it.
Enjoy your Foie Gras, Prashant! Bon Appetit!
Roger And Out
The Significance Of Washington's Coup Attempt In Honduras
There should be no doubts about the US’ decisive role behind the now-crumbling military coup in Honduras. As commander and chief of the US armed forces, the blame for this intervention lies solely on President Obama.
The White House, however, would like you to believe that they “attempted to convince the Honduran military not to intervene.”
Rubbish.
When it comes to the Honduran military, the US government needn’t ask permission for anything. The decades long relationship between the two institutions is one of dependence — Honduras’ military has long been financed and trained by the US. The New York Times explains:
“The two nations have long had a close military relationship, with an American military task force stationed at a Honduran air base about 50 miles northwest of Tegucigalpa. The unit focuses on training Honduran military forces, counternarcotics operations, search and rescue, and disaster relief missions throughout Central America.” (June 28, 2009)
And from Latin American expert Eva Gollinger:
“The US Military Group in Honduras trains around 300 Honduran soldiers every year, provides more than $500,000 annually to the Honduran Armed Forces and additionally provides $1.4 million for a military education and exchange program for around 300 more Honduran soldiers every year.”
This year US aid to Honduras was $43 million.
It is utterly unimaginable that the Honduran military would act against the wishes of the hemisphere’s military and economic superpower.
In fact, the chief military leader of the Honduran coup — Joint Chief of Staff Romeo Orlando Vasquez Velasquez — lived and was trained at the notorious School of Americas (SOA), a US military base that trains Latin American military officers to act in the best interests of United State’s corporations. It is no coincidence that another coup leader — Air Force head Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo — is also an SOA graduate.
When Honduran President Manuel Zelaya realized that Vasquez was acting against him, he was fired — the rest of the military chiefs resigned in protest; and the coup was on.
The highly conservative Honduran Supreme Court then gave the military the “legal” cover it needed to pursue the coup, a fact the US media uses to justify the events.
The reason for the coup lies in President Zelaya’s recent foreign policy shift — away from the United States towards Venezuela and the rest of Latin America. This turn was the result of the United States largely ignoring Honduras, after a long lasting, villainous relationship had ended: the US had, for years, funneled large amounts of cash and arms to the Honduran government to kill the regions political leftists, the high point being the regions turbulent 1980’s.
After Zelaya was elected in 2006 (he still has one year left in his term), he promised to shift Honduras’ politics toward helping the poorer layers. He realized that he could not achieve any of his promises with the scant amount of aid from the US and looked instead to the Latin American trade association, ALBA. Zelaya explained:
"I have been looking for projects from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, Europe and I have received very moderate offers ... that forces us to find other forms of financing like ALBA." ( Rueters, April 26,2008 )
The US government did not like this move, since it prefers US banks to dominate the economies of Latin American countries. The New York Times confirms:
“…[Washington’s] relations with Mr Zelaya…had recently turned colder because of the inclusion of Honduras in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA, a leftist political alliance led by Venezuela.” (June 28, 2009)
Nearly all of the US media’s writing about the Honduran coup is littered with negative references to Hugo Chavez, the “socialist project,” and other buzzwords meant to influence the reader toward acceptance of the coup.
For example:
“…[Zelaya] has the support of labor unions and the poor. But the middle class and the wealthy business community fear he wants to introduce Mr. Chávez’s brand of socialist populism into the country, one of Latin America’s poorest.” (New York Times, June 28, 2009)
Obama himself does nothing to condemn the coup. Yes, he is “deeply concerned” about the events in Honduras, but his vague comments about “dialogue” and respecting “legal procedures” is full of loopholes — big enough for a coup to squeeze through.
If Obama immediately refused to recognize the newly installed coup government in Honduras, while threatening to withdraw US military and financial aide — along with the US ambassador — the coup would dissolve in seconds. Strong actions like these, however, were completely absent.
Eva Gollinger comments:
“I think a clear coup d'etat against a democratic government that also happens to be a major dependent on US economic and political aid should provoke a more firm and concise statement by the US Government.”
Such a statement did come not only from the General Assembly of the United Nations, but from the formerly US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS). Both organizations are refusing to recognize the new coup government in Honduras and are demanding the return of Zelaya. This is a big blow to Washington, who in better times could rely on the OAS and UN to turn a blind eye to a US-sponsored coup, such as the one in Haiti in 2004.
Now, however, the OAS has largely broken from the U.S. stranglehold, emboldened by the independent path taken by numerous Latin American countries, though especially Venezuela.
And this is the broader motive for the coup. The US banks and other corporations that once dominated Latin America are being quickly pushed aside, so that governments may use their country’s wealth for social services and real economic development — not foreign for-profit plunder.
The US coup attempt in Honduras is thus a sign of desperation. It was also a huge gamble. Obama had hoped that the UN and OAS would let this one slide. It was also hoped that the Honduran people would be intimidated by martial law and a communications blackout. Neither was the case.
Huge protests have defied the military-ordered curfew. Latin American countries have united in defiance of a tyrannical US policy. It is reported that these happenings are causing splits in the Honduran military, while also a general strike was being prepared by the nation’s trade unions.
In consequence, the coup is likely to crumble, and Obama’s first attempt to re-tame Latin America will have failed. The actions of the UN and OAS are striking examples of the shrinking international influence of the US, meaning that future interventions — both military and economic — are likely to be more direct to restore US hegemony. Obama’s more-subtle attempts to uphold US “influence” in the world will ultimately require blunter, Bush-like tactics.
If the Honduran coup fails, Obama will eloquently discuss how pleased he is that “democracy was restored” — while refusing to admit that he tried to kill it.
Shamus Cooke/CounterCurrents.Org
The White House, however, would like you to believe that they “attempted to convince the Honduran military not to intervene.”
Rubbish.
When it comes to the Honduran military, the US government needn’t ask permission for anything. The decades long relationship between the two institutions is one of dependence — Honduras’ military has long been financed and trained by the US. The New York Times explains:
“The two nations have long had a close military relationship, with an American military task force stationed at a Honduran air base about 50 miles northwest of Tegucigalpa. The unit focuses on training Honduran military forces, counternarcotics operations, search and rescue, and disaster relief missions throughout Central America.” (June 28, 2009)
And from Latin American expert Eva Gollinger:
“The US Military Group in Honduras trains around 300 Honduran soldiers every year, provides more than $500,000 annually to the Honduran Armed Forces and additionally provides $1.4 million for a military education and exchange program for around 300 more Honduran soldiers every year.”
This year US aid to Honduras was $43 million.
It is utterly unimaginable that the Honduran military would act against the wishes of the hemisphere’s military and economic superpower.
In fact, the chief military leader of the Honduran coup — Joint Chief of Staff Romeo Orlando Vasquez Velasquez — lived and was trained at the notorious School of Americas (SOA), a US military base that trains Latin American military officers to act in the best interests of United State’s corporations. It is no coincidence that another coup leader — Air Force head Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo — is also an SOA graduate.
When Honduran President Manuel Zelaya realized that Vasquez was acting against him, he was fired — the rest of the military chiefs resigned in protest; and the coup was on.
The highly conservative Honduran Supreme Court then gave the military the “legal” cover it needed to pursue the coup, a fact the US media uses to justify the events.
The reason for the coup lies in President Zelaya’s recent foreign policy shift — away from the United States towards Venezuela and the rest of Latin America. This turn was the result of the United States largely ignoring Honduras, after a long lasting, villainous relationship had ended: the US had, for years, funneled large amounts of cash and arms to the Honduran government to kill the regions political leftists, the high point being the regions turbulent 1980’s.
After Zelaya was elected in 2006 (he still has one year left in his term), he promised to shift Honduras’ politics toward helping the poorer layers. He realized that he could not achieve any of his promises with the scant amount of aid from the US and looked instead to the Latin American trade association, ALBA. Zelaya explained:
"I have been looking for projects from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, Europe and I have received very moderate offers ... that forces us to find other forms of financing like ALBA." ( Rueters, April 26,2008 )
The US government did not like this move, since it prefers US banks to dominate the economies of Latin American countries. The New York Times confirms:
“…[Washington’s] relations with Mr Zelaya…had recently turned colder because of the inclusion of Honduras in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA, a leftist political alliance led by Venezuela.” (June 28, 2009)
Nearly all of the US media’s writing about the Honduran coup is littered with negative references to Hugo Chavez, the “socialist project,” and other buzzwords meant to influence the reader toward acceptance of the coup.
For example:
“…[Zelaya] has the support of labor unions and the poor. But the middle class and the wealthy business community fear he wants to introduce Mr. Chávez’s brand of socialist populism into the country, one of Latin America’s poorest.” (New York Times, June 28, 2009)
Obama himself does nothing to condemn the coup. Yes, he is “deeply concerned” about the events in Honduras, but his vague comments about “dialogue” and respecting “legal procedures” is full of loopholes — big enough for a coup to squeeze through.
If Obama immediately refused to recognize the newly installed coup government in Honduras, while threatening to withdraw US military and financial aide — along with the US ambassador — the coup would dissolve in seconds. Strong actions like these, however, were completely absent.
Eva Gollinger comments:
“I think a clear coup d'etat against a democratic government that also happens to be a major dependent on US economic and political aid should provoke a more firm and concise statement by the US Government.”
Such a statement did come not only from the General Assembly of the United Nations, but from the formerly US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS). Both organizations are refusing to recognize the new coup government in Honduras and are demanding the return of Zelaya. This is a big blow to Washington, who in better times could rely on the OAS and UN to turn a blind eye to a US-sponsored coup, such as the one in Haiti in 2004.
Now, however, the OAS has largely broken from the U.S. stranglehold, emboldened by the independent path taken by numerous Latin American countries, though especially Venezuela.
And this is the broader motive for the coup. The US banks and other corporations that once dominated Latin America are being quickly pushed aside, so that governments may use their country’s wealth for social services and real economic development — not foreign for-profit plunder.
The US coup attempt in Honduras is thus a sign of desperation. It was also a huge gamble. Obama had hoped that the UN and OAS would let this one slide. It was also hoped that the Honduran people would be intimidated by martial law and a communications blackout. Neither was the case.
Huge protests have defied the military-ordered curfew. Latin American countries have united in defiance of a tyrannical US policy. It is reported that these happenings are causing splits in the Honduran military, while also a general strike was being prepared by the nation’s trade unions.
In consequence, the coup is likely to crumble, and Obama’s first attempt to re-tame Latin America will have failed. The actions of the UN and OAS are striking examples of the shrinking international influence of the US, meaning that future interventions — both military and economic — are likely to be more direct to restore US hegemony. Obama’s more-subtle attempts to uphold US “influence” in the world will ultimately require blunter, Bush-like tactics.
If the Honduran coup fails, Obama will eloquently discuss how pleased he is that “democracy was restored” — while refusing to admit that he tried to kill it.
Shamus Cooke/CounterCurrents.Org
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
An Old Honduran Coup on a Different Stage
The Presidential residence is surrounded; the president is kidnapped and flown out of the country. The opposition says the president has resigned and a conservative pro-business leader is appointed de-facto president, immediately shutting down the state television and cracking down on the dissidence. Unconfirmed reports say arrest warrants have been issued for all mayors in support of the defunct government. Thousands take to the streets, but the mainstream television stations report nothing.
No, this is not Venezuela in 2002. Nor is it Haiti, 2004. It's Honduras, 2009, but roughly the same story is once again being told, on a different stage with different actors. But that difference could mean everything.
Even as of halfway through last week, both the Civic Council of Indigenous and Grassroots Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) and Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales had already denounced the impending coup.
For months, Zelaya had been planning a non-binding consultative referendum to take place this Sunday that would have asked the Honduran people if the issue of a 2010 constitutional assembly should be added to the ballot of this November's upcoming elections.
Then, last week, a politically motivated Honduran Supreme Court ruled the referendum "illegal." General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, head of the Armed Forces, refused to distribute the ballot boxes. Last Thursday, June 25th,Zelaya removed the general from his post, and accompanied by members of the country's grassroots social movements, Zelaya went personally to recover the 15,000 the ballot boxes.
But Defense Minister Ángel Edmundo Orellana resigned in solidarity with Vásquez Velásquez and soldiers took to the streets. An emergency session of the Organization of American States (OAS) was called to evaluate the deteriorating situation.
Despite opposition in the National Congress, the Supreme Court, the majority of the major parties, the chamber of commerce, and the Catholic Church, Zelaya was steadfast. Supported by the grassroots movements, the non-binding referendum would go on.
Just a day later, the world has changed.
President Zelaya is now in Nicaragua, after having been "kidnapped", and thrown on a plane to Costa Rica in the early hours of Sunday morning. The head of the National Congress, Roberto Micheletti was sworn in as de facto President of Honduras on Sunday afternoon, declaring, "I did not reach this position because of a coup. I am here because of an absolutely legal transition process."
Like Pedro Carmona-the head of the Venezuelan chamber of commerce, Fedecameras, who took power when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was briefly ousted on April 11, 2002-Micheletti received a round of applause as he was sworn in. Like Carmona, outside, the people protested.
But unlike Carmona, the rest of the planet doesn't buy it. That is the difference. Not one country has recognized the de facto Micheletti government. On Sunday, the U.S. ambassador to Honduras declared, "The only president the United States recognizes is President Manuel Zelaya."
US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton declared, "The action taken against Honduran President Mel Zelaya violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and thus should be condemned by all."
The OAS, which held an emergency meeting on Sundayafternoon, issued a resolution condemning the coup and calling for the immediate reinstatement of Zelaya as president. The president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, called the Honduran military intervention a "criminal action."
Although the Micheletti government has not been recognized, that hasn't stopped the international media from acting as though it has. CNN Online is airing an interview with the conservative former Venezuelan Ambassador Diego Arria, who blames not the military, but Zelaya for "attempting a coup against the [Honduran] constitution."
The BBC asked their English-speaking readers in Honduras if they thought the Honduran Constitution should be changed. By reading many of the comments, it would also appear as though Zelaya was the criminal: "The events that ocurred today ARE NOT an attack to the Honduran democracy. There is no coup in Honduras. Finally we have peace in our country."
Many in opposition to Sunday's non-binding referendum feared Zelaya was attempting to alter the constitution in order to eliminate term limits and be re-elected beyond the end of his term early next year. Brazil's largest media chain, Rede Globo, echoed the fears in an article on Sunday evening.
Nevertheless, Sunday's non-binding referendum was simply meant to test the waters for the possibility for a referendum for a Venezuela-style Constitutional Assembly. Since the 1999 Constitution, Ecuador and Bolivia have followed, holding Constitutional Assemblies in each of their countries and passing democratically written constitutions with large participation. Zelaya's re-election was not on Sunday's ballot.
"Today's proposed referendum was non-binding and merely consultative. Thus no one could argue that allowing it to go forward could cause irreparable harm," said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research on Sunday. "There was no excuse for the Honduran military to intervene, regardless of the constitutional issues at stake."
Meanwhile, in Honduras, thousands have been in the streets protesting.
COPINH wrote in a communiqué, "We tell everyone that the Honduran people are carrying out large demonstrations, actions in their communities, in the municipalities; there are occupations of bridges, and a protest in front of the presidential residence, among others. From the lands of Lempira, Morazán and Visitación Padilla, we call on the Honduran people in general to demonstrate in defense of their rights and of real and direct democracy for the people, to the fascists we say that they will NOT silence us, that this cowardly act will turn back on them, with great force."
Mexico-based reporter, Kristin Bricker, has been reporting for Narco News that according to Radio Es Lo De Menos, the military has set up road blocks all over the country in an attempt to prevent Zelaya supporters from reaching the capital. The soldiers are also reportedly attempting to shut down public transportation.
Honduran labor leader Ángel Alvarado told TeleSUR that he has called a national strike for Monday in Honduras to protest the coup. According to Daniel Ortega, President of Nicaragua, the Honduran military has closed the border between the two countries.
Only time will tell what course the next few days will bring, but the around the clock coverage by Telesur, and the immediate international solidarity echoed around the globe may have changed the face of military coup d'etats in Latin America.
Only a few short decades ago, military dictatorships ruled much of the region, and in Central America, those that weren't, were steeped in brutal civil wars. In less than 24 hours after the Honduran coup, President Zelaya was joined by the countries of the progressive trading block, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, (ALBA) in Nicaragua for an emergency presidential summit. The Presidents of Ecuador, Rafael Correa; Venezuela, Hugo Chávez; Bolivia, Evo Morales; Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega and others joined together with Zelaya and demanded the Honduran president be returned to power.
This is the new face of Latin America, and only with this international solidarity, and overwhelming repudiation against the blatant disregard for the rule of law, will these actions be isolated, overturned and hopefully never again repeated.
That is the difference. It is the same story as before. Told with similar actors-some of whom even studied at the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia (http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/06/key-leaders-of-honduras-military-coup-trained-in-us.html)-- [5] only this time we live in a different age; under a shifting geo-political backdrop. On the presidential level, the coup has been denounced across the planet, and governments are standing behind Zelaya. On the local level, Honduras' Radio Es Lo De Menos has called on international activists to march on Honduran embassies across the globe. There is a necessary active roll for all to play. The difference could mean everything.
Like in Venezuela, where the people remembering the way they flooded into the streets to demand the return of their President Hugo Chavez just two days after he had been taken from office, "Every April 11thhas its April 13th".
No, this is not Venezuela in 2002. Nor is it Haiti, 2004. It's Honduras, 2009, but roughly the same story is once again being told, on a different stage with different actors. But that difference could mean everything.
Even as of halfway through last week, both the Civic Council of Indigenous and Grassroots Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) and Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales had already denounced the impending coup.
For months, Zelaya had been planning a non-binding consultative referendum to take place this Sunday that would have asked the Honduran people if the issue of a 2010 constitutional assembly should be added to the ballot of this November's upcoming elections.
Then, last week, a politically motivated Honduran Supreme Court ruled the referendum "illegal." General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, head of the Armed Forces, refused to distribute the ballot boxes. Last Thursday, June 25th,Zelaya removed the general from his post, and accompanied by members of the country's grassroots social movements, Zelaya went personally to recover the 15,000 the ballot boxes.
But Defense Minister Ángel Edmundo Orellana resigned in solidarity with Vásquez Velásquez and soldiers took to the streets. An emergency session of the Organization of American States (OAS) was called to evaluate the deteriorating situation.
Despite opposition in the National Congress, the Supreme Court, the majority of the major parties, the chamber of commerce, and the Catholic Church, Zelaya was steadfast. Supported by the grassroots movements, the non-binding referendum would go on.
Just a day later, the world has changed.
President Zelaya is now in Nicaragua, after having been "kidnapped", and thrown on a plane to Costa Rica in the early hours of Sunday morning. The head of the National Congress, Roberto Micheletti was sworn in as de facto President of Honduras on Sunday afternoon, declaring, "I did not reach this position because of a coup. I am here because of an absolutely legal transition process."
Like Pedro Carmona-the head of the Venezuelan chamber of commerce, Fedecameras, who took power when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was briefly ousted on April 11, 2002-Micheletti received a round of applause as he was sworn in. Like Carmona, outside, the people protested.
But unlike Carmona, the rest of the planet doesn't buy it. That is the difference. Not one country has recognized the de facto Micheletti government. On Sunday, the U.S. ambassador to Honduras declared, "The only president the United States recognizes is President Manuel Zelaya."
US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton declared, "The action taken against Honduran President Mel Zelaya violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and thus should be condemned by all."
The OAS, which held an emergency meeting on Sundayafternoon, issued a resolution condemning the coup and calling for the immediate reinstatement of Zelaya as president. The president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, called the Honduran military intervention a "criminal action."
Although the Micheletti government has not been recognized, that hasn't stopped the international media from acting as though it has. CNN Online is airing an interview with the conservative former Venezuelan Ambassador Diego Arria, who blames not the military, but Zelaya for "attempting a coup against the [Honduran] constitution."
The BBC asked their English-speaking readers in Honduras if they thought the Honduran Constitution should be changed. By reading many of the comments, it would also appear as though Zelaya was the criminal: "The events that ocurred today ARE NOT an attack to the Honduran democracy. There is no coup in Honduras. Finally we have peace in our country."
Many in opposition to Sunday's non-binding referendum feared Zelaya was attempting to alter the constitution in order to eliminate term limits and be re-elected beyond the end of his term early next year. Brazil's largest media chain, Rede Globo, echoed the fears in an article on Sunday evening.
Nevertheless, Sunday's non-binding referendum was simply meant to test the waters for the possibility for a referendum for a Venezuela-style Constitutional Assembly. Since the 1999 Constitution, Ecuador and Bolivia have followed, holding Constitutional Assemblies in each of their countries and passing democratically written constitutions with large participation. Zelaya's re-election was not on Sunday's ballot.
"Today's proposed referendum was non-binding and merely consultative. Thus no one could argue that allowing it to go forward could cause irreparable harm," said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research on Sunday. "There was no excuse for the Honduran military to intervene, regardless of the constitutional issues at stake."
Meanwhile, in Honduras, thousands have been in the streets protesting.
COPINH wrote in a communiqué, "We tell everyone that the Honduran people are carrying out large demonstrations, actions in their communities, in the municipalities; there are occupations of bridges, and a protest in front of the presidential residence, among others. From the lands of Lempira, Morazán and Visitación Padilla, we call on the Honduran people in general to demonstrate in defense of their rights and of real and direct democracy for the people, to the fascists we say that they will NOT silence us, that this cowardly act will turn back on them, with great force."
Mexico-based reporter, Kristin Bricker, has been reporting for Narco News that according to Radio Es Lo De Menos, the military has set up road blocks all over the country in an attempt to prevent Zelaya supporters from reaching the capital. The soldiers are also reportedly attempting to shut down public transportation.
Honduran labor leader Ángel Alvarado told TeleSUR that he has called a national strike for Monday in Honduras to protest the coup. According to Daniel Ortega, President of Nicaragua, the Honduran military has closed the border between the two countries.
Only time will tell what course the next few days will bring, but the around the clock coverage by Telesur, and the immediate international solidarity echoed around the globe may have changed the face of military coup d'etats in Latin America.
Only a few short decades ago, military dictatorships ruled much of the region, and in Central America, those that weren't, were steeped in brutal civil wars. In less than 24 hours after the Honduran coup, President Zelaya was joined by the countries of the progressive trading block, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, (ALBA) in Nicaragua for an emergency presidential summit. The Presidents of Ecuador, Rafael Correa; Venezuela, Hugo Chávez; Bolivia, Evo Morales; Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega and others joined together with Zelaya and demanded the Honduran president be returned to power.
This is the new face of Latin America, and only with this international solidarity, and overwhelming repudiation against the blatant disregard for the rule of law, will these actions be isolated, overturned and hopefully never again repeated.
That is the difference. It is the same story as before. Told with similar actors-some of whom even studied at the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia (http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/06/key-leaders-of-honduras-military-coup-trained-in-us.html)-- [5] only this time we live in a different age; under a shifting geo-political backdrop. On the presidential level, the coup has been denounced across the planet, and governments are standing behind Zelaya. On the local level, Honduras' Radio Es Lo De Menos has called on international activists to march on Honduran embassies across the globe. There is a necessary active roll for all to play. The difference could mean everything.
Like in Venezuela, where the people remembering the way they flooded into the streets to demand the return of their President Hugo Chavez just two days after he had been taken from office, "Every April 11thhas its April 13th".
Friday, June 26, 2009
Are Indians Racist?
Racist attacks on Indians in Australia continue. The press continues to raise a hue and cry. And Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been forced to denounce the attacks to safeguard the interests of the education sector that is Australia's second biggest export revenue earner after iron ore.
But now questions are being asked here if we Indians are racist as well. Speaking at a seminar in Singapore on June 25, Mizoram chief minister Pu Lalthanhawla startled delegates to conference on water by claiming he too was a victim of racism – in India!
“In India, people ask me if I am an Indian. When I go south, people ask me such questions. They ask me if I am from Nepal or elsewhere. They forget that the northeast is part of India. I have told many that see, I am an Indian like you. I am a victim of racism,” he said. Indians consist of three races - “Dravidians, Aryans and we in the northeast,” Lalthanhawla said, airing his angst.
Lalthanhawla has certainly touched a raw nerve. How good are we in treating our fellow citizens? In a recent article, an assistant professor at AIIMS Dr Shah Alam Khan wondered whether Indians practice equality at all.
He points out we take the wrong sides in our strife against dalits. Protests against the killing of harijans in Haryana and UP in the recent past don't go beyond a few gratuitous editorials. The Khairlanji massacre is only an “dalit atrocity”.
Indeed, very few upper caste Indian are willing to eat on the same table with an “untouchable”. (Working in AIIMS - the epicentre of the anti-reservation protests and where SC/ST students are forced to stay in separate wings and are discriminated against by the upper caste faculty members who fail them regularly – Shah Alam should know.)
In fact, inequalities are a common or rather a daily occurrence in our country. Abhorrence of people of different faith, low caste and different races is incredible and phenomenal and we even believe and differentiate on the basis of colour.
On the other hand, “fair and lovely” brides are much sought after in a land which was once dominated by the Dravidians, the real inhabitants of India whose DNA can be traced to black Africa.
Shah Alam laments we live through these atrocities as if they are a natural consequence of race and creed. “Unfortunately, our belief in inequalities of caste, creed and religion are so strong that we refuse to raise questions and protest. It is an abject submission to the power of inequality which is rampant in India.”
Contradictions in the Indian society are not new. We preach morality but rank highest amongst the most corrupt nations of the world. We preach Gandhism but stage pogroms to annihilate ethnic minorities (that too in the land of Gandhi!). We claim we have never attacked another country, but we were busy attacking our own churches, our own dalits, our own adivasis, our own peasants, our own men, women and children in the name of caste, religion and race.
These are very important questions. Maybe once things cool down in Australia, we can get down to providing answers to ourselves.
But now questions are being asked here if we Indians are racist as well. Speaking at a seminar in Singapore on June 25, Mizoram chief minister Pu Lalthanhawla startled delegates to conference on water by claiming he too was a victim of racism – in India!
“In India, people ask me if I am an Indian. When I go south, people ask me such questions. They ask me if I am from Nepal or elsewhere. They forget that the northeast is part of India. I have told many that see, I am an Indian like you. I am a victim of racism,” he said. Indians consist of three races - “Dravidians, Aryans and we in the northeast,” Lalthanhawla said, airing his angst.
Lalthanhawla has certainly touched a raw nerve. How good are we in treating our fellow citizens? In a recent article, an assistant professor at AIIMS Dr Shah Alam Khan wondered whether Indians practice equality at all.
He points out we take the wrong sides in our strife against dalits. Protests against the killing of harijans in Haryana and UP in the recent past don't go beyond a few gratuitous editorials. The Khairlanji massacre is only an “dalit atrocity”.
Indeed, very few upper caste Indian are willing to eat on the same table with an “untouchable”. (Working in AIIMS - the epicentre of the anti-reservation protests and where SC/ST students are forced to stay in separate wings and are discriminated against by the upper caste faculty members who fail them regularly – Shah Alam should know.)
In fact, inequalities are a common or rather a daily occurrence in our country. Abhorrence of people of different faith, low caste and different races is incredible and phenomenal and we even believe and differentiate on the basis of colour.
On the other hand, “fair and lovely” brides are much sought after in a land which was once dominated by the Dravidians, the real inhabitants of India whose DNA can be traced to black Africa.
Shah Alam laments we live through these atrocities as if they are a natural consequence of race and creed. “Unfortunately, our belief in inequalities of caste, creed and religion are so strong that we refuse to raise questions and protest. It is an abject submission to the power of inequality which is rampant in India.”
Contradictions in the Indian society are not new. We preach morality but rank highest amongst the most corrupt nations of the world. We preach Gandhism but stage pogroms to annihilate ethnic minorities (that too in the land of Gandhi!). We claim we have never attacked another country, but we were busy attacking our own churches, our own dalits, our own adivasis, our own peasants, our own men, women and children in the name of caste, religion and race.
These are very important questions. Maybe once things cool down in Australia, we can get down to providing answers to ourselves.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Another US-Orchestrated ‘Colour Revolution’
By Paul Craig Roberts
(If you think my Iran election posts are a left-wing rant, read this piece. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honour by French President Francois Mitterrand.)
A number of commentators have expressed their idealistic belief in the purity of Mousavi, Montazeri, and the westernised youth of Tehran. The CIA destabilization plan, announced two years ago (see below) has somehow not contaminated unfolding events.
The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed.
This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the pre-emptive declaration of victory and the announcement of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick.
As for the grand ayatollah Montazeri’s charge that the election was stolen, he was the initial choice to succeed Khomeini, but lost out to the current Supreme Leader. He sees in the protests an opportunity to settle the score with Khamenei.
Montazeri has the incentive to challenge the election whether or not he is being manipulated by the CIA, which has a successful history of manipulating disgruntled politicians.
There is a power struggle among the ayatollahs. Many are aligned against Ahmadinejad because he accuses them of corruption, thus playing to the Iranian countryside where Iranians believe the ayatollahs' lifestyles indicate an excess of power and money.
In my opinion, Ahmadinejad's attack on the ayatollahs is opportunistic. However, it does make it odd for his American detractors to say he is a conservative reactionary lined up with the ayatollahs.
Commentators are “explaining” the Iran elections based on their own illusions, delusions, emotions, and vested interests. Whether or not the poll results predicting Ahmadinejad's win are sound, there is, so far, no evidence beyond surmise that the election was stolen. However, there are credible reports that the CIA has been working for two years to destabilize the Iranian government.
On May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News: “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News.”
On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”
A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”
On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to $400 million, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”
The protests in Tehran no doubt have many sincere participants. The protests also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in Georgia and Ukraine.
It requires total blindness not to see this.
Daniel McAdams has made some telling points. For example, neo-conservative Kenneth Timmerman wrote the day before the election that “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.”
How would Timmerman know that unless it was an orchestrated plan? Why would there be a ‘green revolution’ prepared prior to the vote, especially if Mousavi and his supporters were as confident of victory as they claim? This looks like definite evidence that the US is involved in the election protests.
Timmerman goes on to write that “the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars promoting ‘colour’ revolutions . . . Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.”
Timmerman’s own neocon Foundation for Democracy is “a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.”
(If you think my Iran election posts are a left-wing rant, read this piece. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honour by French President Francois Mitterrand.)
A number of commentators have expressed their idealistic belief in the purity of Mousavi, Montazeri, and the westernised youth of Tehran. The CIA destabilization plan, announced two years ago (see below) has somehow not contaminated unfolding events.
The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed.
This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the pre-emptive declaration of victory and the announcement of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick.
As for the grand ayatollah Montazeri’s charge that the election was stolen, he was the initial choice to succeed Khomeini, but lost out to the current Supreme Leader. He sees in the protests an opportunity to settle the score with Khamenei.
Montazeri has the incentive to challenge the election whether or not he is being manipulated by the CIA, which has a successful history of manipulating disgruntled politicians.
There is a power struggle among the ayatollahs. Many are aligned against Ahmadinejad because he accuses them of corruption, thus playing to the Iranian countryside where Iranians believe the ayatollahs' lifestyles indicate an excess of power and money.
In my opinion, Ahmadinejad's attack on the ayatollahs is opportunistic. However, it does make it odd for his American detractors to say he is a conservative reactionary lined up with the ayatollahs.
Commentators are “explaining” the Iran elections based on their own illusions, delusions, emotions, and vested interests. Whether or not the poll results predicting Ahmadinejad's win are sound, there is, so far, no evidence beyond surmise that the election was stolen. However, there are credible reports that the CIA has been working for two years to destabilize the Iranian government.
On May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported on ABC News: “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell ABC News.”
On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: “Mr. Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”
A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”
On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to $400 million, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”
The protests in Tehran no doubt have many sincere participants. The protests also have the hallmarks of the CIA orchestrated protests in Georgia and Ukraine.
It requires total blindness not to see this.
Daniel McAdams has made some telling points. For example, neo-conservative Kenneth Timmerman wrote the day before the election that “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.”
How would Timmerman know that unless it was an orchestrated plan? Why would there be a ‘green revolution’ prepared prior to the vote, especially if Mousavi and his supporters were as confident of victory as they claim? This looks like definite evidence that the US is involved in the election protests.
Timmerman goes on to write that “the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars promoting ‘colour’ revolutions . . . Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.”
Timmerman’s own neocon Foundation for Democracy is “a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.”
Monday, June 22, 2009
The End Of Objective Journalism: The Iran Election And The Corporate Media
In my last post I had pointed out how the Western corporate media has abandoned any pretence of journalistic objectivity in its coverage of the Iran presidential election. And as the days pass and more protest marches are reported from Tehran, we can see how major news outlets have stooped to brazen propaganda aimed at discrediting the election result.
It is not uncommon for election results to end in charges of fraud by the losing party that trigger mass demonstrations and even armed clashes. Just last April, elections in Moldova ended in violent protests, with the losing party claiming fraud and the winning one saying it was the victim of an attempted coup.
In November of last year in Nicaragua, nationwide local elections in which the opposition claimed irregularities led to confrontations involving thousands of people armed with bats, rocks, machetes and guns.
Last July, charges of election fraud led to mass rioting in the capital of Mongolia. There is no record of the corporate media becoming particularly exercised about any of these events.
But the corporate media uses a different yardstick while reporting Iran. Relying mainly on 'tweets' from 'citizen journalists' who are partisan at best, leading newspapers and channels – many of who do not even have a reporter on the scene - have not even bothered to report, much less analyse, the vote totals, which are readily available by both city and province and refute the claims made that the ballots were rigged to give Ahmadinejad a 60 per cent margin across the board.
Besides, they have simply ignored commentary from prominent analysts of the region who have suggested that the claims of a rigged election are not supported by the evidence. Mind you, these are men whose motto is “USA First” and they would willingly give an arm and leg to see the Ayatollahs out.
These men include chief military strategy and Middle East analyst for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies Anthony Cordesman, former chief Iran analyst on George W Bush’s National Security Council Hillary Mann Leverett, the and her husband Flynt Leverett, a long time CIA analyst and National Security Council (NSC) staffer, who together wrote a column entitled 'Ahmadinejad won. Get over it', and George Friedman, the head of the Stratfor private intelligence service.
All of them said Ahmadinejad retained substantial popular support in Iran, particularly among the rural poor and more oppressed social layers, and warned against 'Iran experts' who based their analyses on wishful thinking and contact with a more affluent, English-speaking minority in Iran.
Of course, the US has intense interests in Iran, with the country fighting wars on its eastern and western borders. There is, moreover, the long history of hostility between the two countries, stemming from Washington’s previous domination of Iran and its oil wealth through its dictatorial client regime under the Shah, and the revolution that brought that regime to an end.
But given these interests and this history, conscientious coverage of Iranian politics calls for not only objectivity, but also sensitivity to Washington’s intervention in Iran’s affairs and attempts to influence its politics.
The coverage, however, exhibits no such objectivity whatsoever. Instead, it typifies a presentation of Ahmadinejad's victory over Mousavi as a “fraud” without providing a scintilla of proof to back it up. Instead, the corporate media is uncritically repeating the insistence of the Mousavi camp that it is so.
It is sought to be portrayed that Mousavi won, in some cases, by a 2-1 margin precisely in the areas - the wealthier suburbs of Tehran, Shiraz and elsewhere - that are now the centre of the election protests.
Indeed, the New York Times has actually demanded a new election, portraying Iran's Guardian Council’s call for recounting ballots a “cynical gesture.” The newspaper is not interested in correcting vote fraud, but rather in bringing pressure to bear within the Iranian state to effect a political coup.
In this context it is particularly instructive to remember the corporate media's attitude toward the disputed 2006 presidential election in Mexico, when the conservative candidate Felipe Calderon - with just 36 per cent of the vote and amid substantiated charges of gross electoral fraud - claimed victory over his left-nationalist opponent Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
There was no call for a new election then, and the corporate media was largely indifferent to the evidence that the election had been rigged. While the massive crowds that took to the streets of Mexico City were comparable to those seen in Tehran, there was only disdain for the protesters.
On July 7, just five days after the contested vote totals were announced, the New York Times haughtily editorialised: “Mr Lopez Obrador has occasionally furthered his political career by inviting supporters to take to the streets... but he should resist inciting mass protests, which would harm Mexico’s stability and add to his image as a less-than-committed democrat.”
In Mexico, the victim of vote fraud was told to stand down in the interests of “stability,” while mass protests by his supporters were portrayed as a threat to democracy - the exact inverse of the newspaper’s approach to the Iranian events.
Why the difference? In Mexico, the candidate favoured by Washington won, and in Iran, the White House seeks not stability, but destabilisation.
And therein lies a tale.
(Based on a WSWS report by BV Auken)
It is not uncommon for election results to end in charges of fraud by the losing party that trigger mass demonstrations and even armed clashes. Just last April, elections in Moldova ended in violent protests, with the losing party claiming fraud and the winning one saying it was the victim of an attempted coup.
In November of last year in Nicaragua, nationwide local elections in which the opposition claimed irregularities led to confrontations involving thousands of people armed with bats, rocks, machetes and guns.
Last July, charges of election fraud led to mass rioting in the capital of Mongolia. There is no record of the corporate media becoming particularly exercised about any of these events.
But the corporate media uses a different yardstick while reporting Iran. Relying mainly on 'tweets' from 'citizen journalists' who are partisan at best, leading newspapers and channels – many of who do not even have a reporter on the scene - have not even bothered to report, much less analyse, the vote totals, which are readily available by both city and province and refute the claims made that the ballots were rigged to give Ahmadinejad a 60 per cent margin across the board.
Besides, they have simply ignored commentary from prominent analysts of the region who have suggested that the claims of a rigged election are not supported by the evidence. Mind you, these are men whose motto is “USA First” and they would willingly give an arm and leg to see the Ayatollahs out.
These men include chief military strategy and Middle East analyst for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies Anthony Cordesman, former chief Iran analyst on George W Bush’s National Security Council Hillary Mann Leverett, the and her husband Flynt Leverett, a long time CIA analyst and National Security Council (NSC) staffer, who together wrote a column entitled 'Ahmadinejad won. Get over it', and George Friedman, the head of the Stratfor private intelligence service.
All of them said Ahmadinejad retained substantial popular support in Iran, particularly among the rural poor and more oppressed social layers, and warned against 'Iran experts' who based their analyses on wishful thinking and contact with a more affluent, English-speaking minority in Iran.
Of course, the US has intense interests in Iran, with the country fighting wars on its eastern and western borders. There is, moreover, the long history of hostility between the two countries, stemming from Washington’s previous domination of Iran and its oil wealth through its dictatorial client regime under the Shah, and the revolution that brought that regime to an end.
But given these interests and this history, conscientious coverage of Iranian politics calls for not only objectivity, but also sensitivity to Washington’s intervention in Iran’s affairs and attempts to influence its politics.
The coverage, however, exhibits no such objectivity whatsoever. Instead, it typifies a presentation of Ahmadinejad's victory over Mousavi as a “fraud” without providing a scintilla of proof to back it up. Instead, the corporate media is uncritically repeating the insistence of the Mousavi camp that it is so.
It is sought to be portrayed that Mousavi won, in some cases, by a 2-1 margin precisely in the areas - the wealthier suburbs of Tehran, Shiraz and elsewhere - that are now the centre of the election protests.
Indeed, the New York Times has actually demanded a new election, portraying Iran's Guardian Council’s call for recounting ballots a “cynical gesture.” The newspaper is not interested in correcting vote fraud, but rather in bringing pressure to bear within the Iranian state to effect a political coup.
In this context it is particularly instructive to remember the corporate media's attitude toward the disputed 2006 presidential election in Mexico, when the conservative candidate Felipe Calderon - with just 36 per cent of the vote and amid substantiated charges of gross electoral fraud - claimed victory over his left-nationalist opponent Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
There was no call for a new election then, and the corporate media was largely indifferent to the evidence that the election had been rigged. While the massive crowds that took to the streets of Mexico City were comparable to those seen in Tehran, there was only disdain for the protesters.
On July 7, just five days after the contested vote totals were announced, the New York Times haughtily editorialised: “Mr Lopez Obrador has occasionally furthered his political career by inviting supporters to take to the streets... but he should resist inciting mass protests, which would harm Mexico’s stability and add to his image as a less-than-committed democrat.”
In Mexico, the victim of vote fraud was told to stand down in the interests of “stability,” while mass protests by his supporters were portrayed as a threat to democracy - the exact inverse of the newspaper’s approach to the Iranian events.
Why the difference? In Mexico, the candidate favoured by Washington won, and in Iran, the White House seeks not stability, but destabilisation.
And therein lies a tale.
(Based on a WSWS report by BV Auken)
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Education & Students: Commodity & Consumers
By Roger Alexander
The admission season has started with a bang, literally. Stories of colleges demanding capitation fees up to Rs 2 crore, principals auctioning 'management seats', college clerks demanding bribes, and the UGC granting 'deemed university' status without adequate audit are dominating the front pages of newspapers as the admission season opens.
Education is now a purchasable commodity!
Thanks to the blinkered vision of middle class parents, education is no longer a learning process. Instead, it is now all about “job-oriented” courses. A B.A,, B,Sc, or B,Com degree is “useless” as it does not “equip” youngsters for the “needs of industry”. (Check out the 'Education Supplements' in leading newspapers, magazines and TV shows.)
As a result, while mainstream education has become passé, courses like BMM, BMS, Catering and Hospitality, Computer Training and even Air Hostess training have parents queuing up to pay lakhs to teaching shops affiliated to unknown 'foreign universities' for a seat. Is this what education all about?
If 'counsellors' at many of today's so-called institutions of higher learning are asked what they can expect, students are offered a straightforward answer: “a better job, higher salary, more marketable skills, and more impressive credentials.”
In the new scenario, even the University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education Commission (AICTE) say that recognising the desperate need of most college students to land jobs, courses should be utilitarian, vocational, and narrow.
But in the quest to churn out 'graduates' suited for 'industrial needs', the present system is not preparing them for life, challenging them to think beyond the confines of their often parochial and provincial upbringings. (One reason why the Raj Thackerays can sell the 'Marathi Manoos' spiel so easily.)
But what is forgotten is the fact that if you view education in purely instrumental terms as a way to a higher-paying job - if it's merely a mechanism for mass customisation within a marketplace of ephemeral consumer goods - you effectively give a free pass to the prevailing machinery of power and those who run it. The status quo remains unchallenged and unquestioned!
Today's college students are being indoctrinated in the idea that they need to earn “degrees that work”. They're being taught to measure their self-worth by the salary they'll earn after college. They're being urged to be lifelong learners, not because learning is transformative or even enjoyable, but because to “keep current” is to “stay competitive in the global marketplace.” Of course, there's no guarantee that keeping current won't get you a pink slip as so many 'techies' are learning to their dismay.
Indeed, these so-called techies are programmed to believe that technical skills are the key to success as well as life itself, and those who find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide are doomed to lives of misery.
Parents and students are recruited or retained with authoritative-looking data: job placement rates, average starting salaries of graduates, and even alumni satisfaction rates through glossy ads and government pronouncements. They are led to believe that these courses are a panacea to solve the problem of unemployment.
The new courses, therefore, are smart courses, not smart teachers interacting with curious students. Canned lessons are offered with PowerPoint efficiency, and students are programmed to respond robotically to “questions” posed to what are supposed to be inquisitive minds. Now it all about “credits, projects and presentations”. Check out the syllabi of the new-age institutions and you'll know what I mean.
Now that this mindset is official policy, the old-fashioned idea that education is about moulding character, forming a moral and ethical identity, or even becoming a more self-aware person has been flushed down the toilet.
After all, how can you quantify such elusive traits as assessable goals, or showcase such non-measurements in the glossy marketing brochures, glowing press releases, and gushing TV ads that compete to entice prospective students and their anxiety-ridden parents to hand over ever larger sums of money to ensure a lucrative future?
As long as we continue to treat students as customers and education as a commodity, our hopes for truly substantive changes in our country's direction are likely to be dashed. As long as education is driven by industry imperatives and the tyranny of the practical, our students will fail to acknowledge that the goal of education is to know yourself - and so your own limits and those of your country as well.
To know how to get by or get ahead is one thing, but to know yourself is to struggle to recognise your own limitations as well as illusions. Indeed, education should help us to see ourselves and our world in fresh, even disturbing, ways.
As parents we must know that if we want a better future for our children and grandchildren, we must resist accepting the world as it's being packaged and sold to us by those who lead us to believe that education is nothing but a potential passport to material success.
Roger And Out
The admission season has started with a bang, literally. Stories of colleges demanding capitation fees up to Rs 2 crore, principals auctioning 'management seats', college clerks demanding bribes, and the UGC granting 'deemed university' status without adequate audit are dominating the front pages of newspapers as the admission season opens.
Education is now a purchasable commodity!
Thanks to the blinkered vision of middle class parents, education is no longer a learning process. Instead, it is now all about “job-oriented” courses. A B.A,, B,Sc, or B,Com degree is “useless” as it does not “equip” youngsters for the “needs of industry”. (Check out the 'Education Supplements' in leading newspapers, magazines and TV shows.)
As a result, while mainstream education has become passé, courses like BMM, BMS, Catering and Hospitality, Computer Training and even Air Hostess training have parents queuing up to pay lakhs to teaching shops affiliated to unknown 'foreign universities' for a seat. Is this what education all about?
If 'counsellors' at many of today's so-called institutions of higher learning are asked what they can expect, students are offered a straightforward answer: “a better job, higher salary, more marketable skills, and more impressive credentials.”
In the new scenario, even the University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education Commission (AICTE) say that recognising the desperate need of most college students to land jobs, courses should be utilitarian, vocational, and narrow.
But in the quest to churn out 'graduates' suited for 'industrial needs', the present system is not preparing them for life, challenging them to think beyond the confines of their often parochial and provincial upbringings. (One reason why the Raj Thackerays can sell the 'Marathi Manoos' spiel so easily.)
But what is forgotten is the fact that if you view education in purely instrumental terms as a way to a higher-paying job - if it's merely a mechanism for mass customisation within a marketplace of ephemeral consumer goods - you effectively give a free pass to the prevailing machinery of power and those who run it. The status quo remains unchallenged and unquestioned!
Today's college students are being indoctrinated in the idea that they need to earn “degrees that work”. They're being taught to measure their self-worth by the salary they'll earn after college. They're being urged to be lifelong learners, not because learning is transformative or even enjoyable, but because to “keep current” is to “stay competitive in the global marketplace.” Of course, there's no guarantee that keeping current won't get you a pink slip as so many 'techies' are learning to their dismay.
Indeed, these so-called techies are programmed to believe that technical skills are the key to success as well as life itself, and those who find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide are doomed to lives of misery.
Parents and students are recruited or retained with authoritative-looking data: job placement rates, average starting salaries of graduates, and even alumni satisfaction rates through glossy ads and government pronouncements. They are led to believe that these courses are a panacea to solve the problem of unemployment.
The new courses, therefore, are smart courses, not smart teachers interacting with curious students. Canned lessons are offered with PowerPoint efficiency, and students are programmed to respond robotically to “questions” posed to what are supposed to be inquisitive minds. Now it all about “credits, projects and presentations”. Check out the syllabi of the new-age institutions and you'll know what I mean.
Now that this mindset is official policy, the old-fashioned idea that education is about moulding character, forming a moral and ethical identity, or even becoming a more self-aware person has been flushed down the toilet.
After all, how can you quantify such elusive traits as assessable goals, or showcase such non-measurements in the glossy marketing brochures, glowing press releases, and gushing TV ads that compete to entice prospective students and their anxiety-ridden parents to hand over ever larger sums of money to ensure a lucrative future?
As long as we continue to treat students as customers and education as a commodity, our hopes for truly substantive changes in our country's direction are likely to be dashed. As long as education is driven by industry imperatives and the tyranny of the practical, our students will fail to acknowledge that the goal of education is to know yourself - and so your own limits and those of your country as well.
To know how to get by or get ahead is one thing, but to know yourself is to struggle to recognise your own limitations as well as illusions. Indeed, education should help us to see ourselves and our world in fresh, even disturbing, ways.
As parents we must know that if we want a better future for our children and grandchildren, we must resist accepting the world as it's being packaged and sold to us by those who lead us to believe that education is nothing but a potential passport to material success.
Roger And Out
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Ambani Land Grab Ploy Fails
By Roger Alexander
The Supreme Court's refusal on June 5 to extend the deadline for land acquisition for Mukesh Ambani's MahaMumbai Special Economic Zone (SEZ) has come not a day too soon. It unambiguously provides major relief to thousands of farmers in Maharashtra's Raigad district who stand to lose their farms to land sharks disguised as a corporate entity.
The bench said it was not inclined to interfere with the Bombay High Court order, which had refused to stay the land acquisition process initiated by the Maharashtra government in June 2005 for the SEZ.
As per the law, the requisite land had to be acquired within two years of the notification. But the Raigad district administration and Reliance have failed to acquire the land despite two extensions to the deadline.
The latest deadline expires on Monday, June 8. After that date if the Ambani group still wants to go ahead, the land acquisition process will have to start all over again. However, it is being speculated that the promoters along with the State Government may work out a strategy to retrieve the situation.
The Mumbai SEZ, which envisages an investment of Rs 40,000 crores, is slated to come up in a 10,000 hectares area in Raigad. The project, which has already been given two extensions, was given clearance in 2005. It was in this context that the company wanted to speed up the acquisition procedure so that it would not lapse.
However, it has not got relief either from the High Court or the apex court.
The Maharashtra government had conducted public referendum on the project in September 2008. In the referendum conducted in 22 villages nearly 24,000 farmers took part and 91 per cent voted against the SEZ.
Why are the farmers protesting, ask supporters of SEZs, especially since they are being offered “hefty compensation.” Besides, SEZs will create spaces with good infrastructure and simplified procedures that will assist industrialization, they argue.
What is not said is that owning a SEZ means tax breaks, highly subsidized land and little or no compulsory worker protection. Proponents argue that these concessions are essential to attract investment, in a world of increasingly mobile capital but the farmers know better - once they give up their land, they will lose their livelihood.
That's why farmers of 22 villages of Raigad district opposed the land acquisition process in a referendum initiated by the state government last year. Though the government did not act, the farmers sent a clear message – they defeated sitting Congress MP and Cabinet minister AR Antulay and handed a victory Shiv Sena's Anand Gite. The Shiv Sena had spearheaded a protest against the Ambani SEZ last year.
It is well known that as it is the land acquisition law and process is extremely unjust (ask the farmers displaced by the Narmada project). But at least there is a need to prove the existence of a strong public interest. In the case of the SEZs, the rules have been dispensed with.
The Special Economic Zones Act, 2005 (Act No. 28 of 2005, dated June 23, 2005), is, in its own words, “an Act to provide for the establishment, development and management of the Special Economic Zones for the promotion of exports and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.” Indeed, the SEZ Act is nothing but a legislation for legal plunder.
In addition to the massive fiscal concessions, there is plenty of room for huge profits to be made from real estate deals within these gated and walled enclaves of privileges where the elite can lead Western life-style without even a shadow of the poverty and squalor of other parts of the country.
And the land acquisition means everyone - not just those with property titles – will be affected, especially tenants and agricultural labourers, who do not have to be compensated.
Besides, exemptions, direct or indirect, from various protective laws (for example, laws to protect environment and labour) mean that the industrial units here will be able to function in a very arbitrary way, unencumbered by responsibilities normally expected from them.
This means that even farmers who agree to sell their land have no protection of labour laws applicable in the country if they find employment in the SEZ. Ambani will also have privileged reach to farmers outside the SEZ areas, so one can expect faster spread of “modern” agriculture (read Reliance Fresh).
The worst feature, however, is the huge revenue losses - 100 per cent exemption from income tax on profits for the first five years and 50 per cent for the next five years. Even land developers get tax breaks!
Indeed, according to a government press release, the SEZ is a specifically delineated duty free enclave and shall be deemed to be foreign territory for the purpose of trade operations, duties and tariffs. To give up such huge resources is a major crime, given the needs of Indian society and the utter lack of social provision.
With state Assembly elections due in a few months, it is unlikely that the Maharashtra government will come to Ambani's rescue. The experience of West Bengal where even die-hard supporters of the Left Front voted against it over the question of land acquisition is fresh in every politician's memory.
Roger And Out
The Supreme Court's refusal on June 5 to extend the deadline for land acquisition for Mukesh Ambani's MahaMumbai Special Economic Zone (SEZ) has come not a day too soon. It unambiguously provides major relief to thousands of farmers in Maharashtra's Raigad district who stand to lose their farms to land sharks disguised as a corporate entity.
The bench said it was not inclined to interfere with the Bombay High Court order, which had refused to stay the land acquisition process initiated by the Maharashtra government in June 2005 for the SEZ.
As per the law, the requisite land had to be acquired within two years of the notification. But the Raigad district administration and Reliance have failed to acquire the land despite two extensions to the deadline.
The latest deadline expires on Monday, June 8. After that date if the Ambani group still wants to go ahead, the land acquisition process will have to start all over again. However, it is being speculated that the promoters along with the State Government may work out a strategy to retrieve the situation.
The Mumbai SEZ, which envisages an investment of Rs 40,000 crores, is slated to come up in a 10,000 hectares area in Raigad. The project, which has already been given two extensions, was given clearance in 2005. It was in this context that the company wanted to speed up the acquisition procedure so that it would not lapse.
However, it has not got relief either from the High Court or the apex court.
The Maharashtra government had conducted public referendum on the project in September 2008. In the referendum conducted in 22 villages nearly 24,000 farmers took part and 91 per cent voted against the SEZ.
Why are the farmers protesting, ask supporters of SEZs, especially since they are being offered “hefty compensation.” Besides, SEZs will create spaces with good infrastructure and simplified procedures that will assist industrialization, they argue.
What is not said is that owning a SEZ means tax breaks, highly subsidized land and little or no compulsory worker protection. Proponents argue that these concessions are essential to attract investment, in a world of increasingly mobile capital but the farmers know better - once they give up their land, they will lose their livelihood.
That's why farmers of 22 villages of Raigad district opposed the land acquisition process in a referendum initiated by the state government last year. Though the government did not act, the farmers sent a clear message – they defeated sitting Congress MP and Cabinet minister AR Antulay and handed a victory Shiv Sena's Anand Gite. The Shiv Sena had spearheaded a protest against the Ambani SEZ last year.
It is well known that as it is the land acquisition law and process is extremely unjust (ask the farmers displaced by the Narmada project). But at least there is a need to prove the existence of a strong public interest. In the case of the SEZs, the rules have been dispensed with.
The Special Economic Zones Act, 2005 (Act No. 28 of 2005, dated June 23, 2005), is, in its own words, “an Act to provide for the establishment, development and management of the Special Economic Zones for the promotion of exports and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.” Indeed, the SEZ Act is nothing but a legislation for legal plunder.
In addition to the massive fiscal concessions, there is plenty of room for huge profits to be made from real estate deals within these gated and walled enclaves of privileges where the elite can lead Western life-style without even a shadow of the poverty and squalor of other parts of the country.
And the land acquisition means everyone - not just those with property titles – will be affected, especially tenants and agricultural labourers, who do not have to be compensated.
Besides, exemptions, direct or indirect, from various protective laws (for example, laws to protect environment and labour) mean that the industrial units here will be able to function in a very arbitrary way, unencumbered by responsibilities normally expected from them.
This means that even farmers who agree to sell their land have no protection of labour laws applicable in the country if they find employment in the SEZ. Ambani will also have privileged reach to farmers outside the SEZ areas, so one can expect faster spread of “modern” agriculture (read Reliance Fresh).
The worst feature, however, is the huge revenue losses - 100 per cent exemption from income tax on profits for the first five years and 50 per cent for the next five years. Even land developers get tax breaks!
Indeed, according to a government press release, the SEZ is a specifically delineated duty free enclave and shall be deemed to be foreign territory for the purpose of trade operations, duties and tariffs. To give up such huge resources is a major crime, given the needs of Indian society and the utter lack of social provision.
With state Assembly elections due in a few months, it is unlikely that the Maharashtra government will come to Ambani's rescue. The experience of West Bengal where even die-hard supporters of the Left Front voted against it over the question of land acquisition is fresh in every politician's memory.
Roger And Out
Friday, June 5, 2009
The Grim Picture Of Obama's Middle East
By Noam Chomsky
A CNN headline, reporting Obama's plans for his June 4 Cairo address, reads 'Obama looks to reach the soul of the Muslim world.' Perhaps that captures his intent, but more significant is the content hidden in the rhetorical stance, or more accurately, omitted.
Keeping just to Israel-Palestine -- there was nothing substantive about anything else -- Obama called on Arabs and Israelis not to 'point fingers' at each other or to 'see this conflict only from one side or the other.'
There is, however, a third side, that of the United States, which has played a decisive role in sustaining the current conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change or even be considered.
Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama will continue in the path of unilateral US rejectionism.
Obama once again praised the Arab Peace Initiative, saying only that Arabs should see it as 'an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities.' How should the Obama administration see it?
Obama and his advisers are surely aware that the Initiative reiterates the long-standing international consensus calling for a two-state settlement on the international (pre-June '67) border, perhaps with 'minor and mutual modifications,' to borrow US government usage before it departed sharply from world opinion in the 1970s, vetoing a Security Council resolution backed by the Arab 'confrontation states' (Egypt, Iran, Syria), and tacitly by the PLO, with the same essential content as the Arab Peace Initiative except that the latter goes beyond by calling on Arab states to normalize relations with Israel in the context of this political settlement.
Obama has called on the Arab states to proceed with normalization, studiously ignoring, however, the crucial political settlement that is its precondition. The Initiative cannot be a 'beginning' if the US continues to refuse to accept its core principles, even to acknowledge them.
In the background is the Obama administration's goal, enunciated most clearly by Senator John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to forge an alliance of Israel and the 'moderate' Arab states against Iran. The term 'moderate' has nothing to do with the character of the state, but rather signals its willingness to conform to US demands.
What is Israel to do in return for Arab steps to normalize relations? The strongest position so far enunciated by the Obama administration is that Israel should conform to Phase I of the 2003 Road Map, which states: 'Israel freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).' All sides claim to accept the Road Map, overlooking the fact that Israel instantly added 14 reservations that render it inoperable.
Overlooked in the debate over settlements is that even if Israel were to accept Phase I of the Road Map, that would leave in place the entire settlement project that has already been developed, with decisive US support, to ensure that Israel will take over the valuable land within the illegal 'separation wall' (including the primary water supplies of the region) as well as the Jordan Valley, thus imprisoning what is left, which is being broken up into cantons by settlement/infrastructure salients extending far to the East.
Unmentioned as well is that Israel is taking over Greater Jerusalem, the site of its major current development programs, displacing many Arabs, so that what remains to Palestinians will be separated from the center of their cultural, economic, and sociopolitical life.
Also unmentioned is that all of this is in violation of international law, as conceded by the government of Israel after the 1967 conquest, and reaffirmed by Security Council resolutions and the International Court of Justice. Also unmentioned are Israel's successful operations since 1991 to separate the West Bank from Gaza, since turned into a prison where survival is barely possible, further undermining the hopes for a viable Palestinian state.
It is worth remembering that there has been one break in US-Israeli rejectionism. President Clinton recognized that the terms he had offered at the failed 2000 Camp David meetings were not acceptable to any Palestinians, and in December, proposed his 'parameters,' vague but more forthcoming.
He then announced that both sides had accepted the parameters, though both had reservations. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Taba, Egypt to iron out the differences, and made considerable progress.
A full resolution could have been reached in a few more days, they announced in their final joint press conference.
But Israel called off the negotiations prematurely, and they have not been formally resumed. The single exception indicates that if an American president is willing to tolerate a meaningful diplomatic settlement, it can very likely be reached.
It is also worth remembering that the Bush I administration went a bit beyond words in objecting to illegal Israeli settlement projects, namely, by withholding US economic support for them.
In contrast, Obama administration officials stated that such measures are 'not under discussion' and that any pressures on Israel to conform to the Road Map will be 'largely symbolic,' so the New York Times reported (Helene Cooper, June 1).
There is more to say, but it does not relieve the grim picture that Obama has been painting, with a few extra touches in his widely-heralded address to the Muslim World in Cairo on June 4.
,
A CNN headline, reporting Obama's plans for his June 4 Cairo address, reads 'Obama looks to reach the soul of the Muslim world.' Perhaps that captures his intent, but more significant is the content hidden in the rhetorical stance, or more accurately, omitted.
Keeping just to Israel-Palestine -- there was nothing substantive about anything else -- Obama called on Arabs and Israelis not to 'point fingers' at each other or to 'see this conflict only from one side or the other.'
There is, however, a third side, that of the United States, which has played a decisive role in sustaining the current conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change or even be considered.
Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama will continue in the path of unilateral US rejectionism.
Obama once again praised the Arab Peace Initiative, saying only that Arabs should see it as 'an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities.' How should the Obama administration see it?
Obama and his advisers are surely aware that the Initiative reiterates the long-standing international consensus calling for a two-state settlement on the international (pre-June '67) border, perhaps with 'minor and mutual modifications,' to borrow US government usage before it departed sharply from world opinion in the 1970s, vetoing a Security Council resolution backed by the Arab 'confrontation states' (Egypt, Iran, Syria), and tacitly by the PLO, with the same essential content as the Arab Peace Initiative except that the latter goes beyond by calling on Arab states to normalize relations with Israel in the context of this political settlement.
Obama has called on the Arab states to proceed with normalization, studiously ignoring, however, the crucial political settlement that is its precondition. The Initiative cannot be a 'beginning' if the US continues to refuse to accept its core principles, even to acknowledge them.
In the background is the Obama administration's goal, enunciated most clearly by Senator John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to forge an alliance of Israel and the 'moderate' Arab states against Iran. The term 'moderate' has nothing to do with the character of the state, but rather signals its willingness to conform to US demands.
What is Israel to do in return for Arab steps to normalize relations? The strongest position so far enunciated by the Obama administration is that Israel should conform to Phase I of the 2003 Road Map, which states: 'Israel freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).' All sides claim to accept the Road Map, overlooking the fact that Israel instantly added 14 reservations that render it inoperable.
Overlooked in the debate over settlements is that even if Israel were to accept Phase I of the Road Map, that would leave in place the entire settlement project that has already been developed, with decisive US support, to ensure that Israel will take over the valuable land within the illegal 'separation wall' (including the primary water supplies of the region) as well as the Jordan Valley, thus imprisoning what is left, which is being broken up into cantons by settlement/infrastructure salients extending far to the East.
Unmentioned as well is that Israel is taking over Greater Jerusalem, the site of its major current development programs, displacing many Arabs, so that what remains to Palestinians will be separated from the center of their cultural, economic, and sociopolitical life.
Also unmentioned is that all of this is in violation of international law, as conceded by the government of Israel after the 1967 conquest, and reaffirmed by Security Council resolutions and the International Court of Justice. Also unmentioned are Israel's successful operations since 1991 to separate the West Bank from Gaza, since turned into a prison where survival is barely possible, further undermining the hopes for a viable Palestinian state.
It is worth remembering that there has been one break in US-Israeli rejectionism. President Clinton recognized that the terms he had offered at the failed 2000 Camp David meetings were not acceptable to any Palestinians, and in December, proposed his 'parameters,' vague but more forthcoming.
He then announced that both sides had accepted the parameters, though both had reservations. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Taba, Egypt to iron out the differences, and made considerable progress.
A full resolution could have been reached in a few more days, they announced in their final joint press conference.
But Israel called off the negotiations prematurely, and they have not been formally resumed. The single exception indicates that if an American president is willing to tolerate a meaningful diplomatic settlement, it can very likely be reached.
It is also worth remembering that the Bush I administration went a bit beyond words in objecting to illegal Israeli settlement projects, namely, by withholding US economic support for them.
In contrast, Obama administration officials stated that such measures are 'not under discussion' and that any pressures on Israel to conform to the Road Map will be 'largely symbolic,' so the New York Times reported (Helene Cooper, June 1).
There is more to say, but it does not relieve the grim picture that Obama has been painting, with a few extra touches in his widely-heralded address to the Muslim World in Cairo on June 4.
,
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Attacks On Students Reveal Deeper Malaise
The recent assaults on Indian students are an expression of the deepening social crisis in Australia
Indian students have long complained of police not taking their complaints of racist attacks seriously. Reports have emerged of officers refusing to formally lodge reports of criminal incidents; one student was told to simply move to another suburb to avoid further trouble.
Surprisingly, a few days ago deputy police commissioner Kieran Walshe’s absurdly claimed that there was no evidence that recent assaults and robberies were racially motivated.
In reality, the political establishment has nothing but contempt for the well-being of ordinary students, whether they are from India, Australia, or anywhere else. The attacks have been going on for months, with nothing of substance being done or said until now.
The real concern is to ensure that the highly lucrative flow of education tuition payments into the country continues. International students are ruthlessly exploited, having to pay tens of thousands of dollars in tuition fees while being denied basic rights afforded to Australian students, such as concession fares on public transport.
Education is now worth more than $12 billion annually and ranks as Australia’s third largest export, ahead of tourism and just behind coal and iron ore. Nearly 100,000 Indian youth are studying in Australia, second in number only to those from China.
That's why Trade Minister Simon Crean has held discussions with his Indian counterpart Anand Sharma admitting his fear that recent violence threatened to undermine Australia’s education sector. “It’s not just the quality of the product, it’s the safe environment in which we bring people,” he declared.
Reactionary forces in Australia are exploiting the attacks on Indian students to advance their own agenda. Victorian Liberal leader Ted Baillieu has launched a “law and order” campaign, demanding that the government bolster police numbers and enhance their powers.
Such measures, which the state Labour government of Premier John Brumby will likely implement, will not resolve the situation confronting Indian students and will only result in even worse police harassment and violence against working class youth.
Indian students are left vulnerable because of their precarious situation. Many are unable to live anywhere near their university, due to low incomes and high inner-city accommodation costs, and are forced to travel from the more affordable outer suburbs.
To support themselves, students are typically compelled to combine full time study with long hours of paid employment as convenience store workers, taxi drivers, and other low-paid shift work. This often involves taking public transport late at night.
Most of the perpetrators of the violence against the students are reportedly young people from Melbourne’s working class western suburbs. Many parts of this region have been devastated over the last two decades by mass job losses due to manufacturing plant closures. Tens of thousands of secure and full time jobs have gone, along with apprenticeships, replaced with little more than a few dwindling opportunities for young people in low paid and typically casual sectors such as retail.
Deindustrialisation and permanently high unemployment has inevitably been accompanied by a slew of social problems, including alcohol and drug abuse. Many of those who have recently targeted Indian students were reportedly drug users looking to fund their addiction.
Intersecting with all this is a toxic political atmosphere in which the major parties have all promoted various forms of national chauvinism, invariably involving an undercurrent of White Australia racism. The Rudd Labour government, for example, has recently slashed the immigration intake in response to the economic crisis, thereby implying that lost jobs in Australia are the fault of too many “foreigners”.
At the same time, both politicians and the media have embarked on a new scare campaign over “illegal” refugees. It is no surprise, moreover, that international students have been targeted given that they have long been the victims of systematic and institutionalised discrimination in the tertiary education system. Moves are already underfoot to pre-empt any discussion of these issues.
In the final analysis the attacks on Indian students reveal the tense and violent state of social relations in contemporary capitalist Australia.
Indian students have long complained of police not taking their complaints of racist attacks seriously. Reports have emerged of officers refusing to formally lodge reports of criminal incidents; one student was told to simply move to another suburb to avoid further trouble.
Surprisingly, a few days ago deputy police commissioner Kieran Walshe’s absurdly claimed that there was no evidence that recent assaults and robberies were racially motivated.
In reality, the political establishment has nothing but contempt for the well-being of ordinary students, whether they are from India, Australia, or anywhere else. The attacks have been going on for months, with nothing of substance being done or said until now.
The real concern is to ensure that the highly lucrative flow of education tuition payments into the country continues. International students are ruthlessly exploited, having to pay tens of thousands of dollars in tuition fees while being denied basic rights afforded to Australian students, such as concession fares on public transport.
Education is now worth more than $12 billion annually and ranks as Australia’s third largest export, ahead of tourism and just behind coal and iron ore. Nearly 100,000 Indian youth are studying in Australia, second in number only to those from China.
That's why Trade Minister Simon Crean has held discussions with his Indian counterpart Anand Sharma admitting his fear that recent violence threatened to undermine Australia’s education sector. “It’s not just the quality of the product, it’s the safe environment in which we bring people,” he declared.
Reactionary forces in Australia are exploiting the attacks on Indian students to advance their own agenda. Victorian Liberal leader Ted Baillieu has launched a “law and order” campaign, demanding that the government bolster police numbers and enhance their powers.
Such measures, which the state Labour government of Premier John Brumby will likely implement, will not resolve the situation confronting Indian students and will only result in even worse police harassment and violence against working class youth.
Indian students are left vulnerable because of their precarious situation. Many are unable to live anywhere near their university, due to low incomes and high inner-city accommodation costs, and are forced to travel from the more affordable outer suburbs.
To support themselves, students are typically compelled to combine full time study with long hours of paid employment as convenience store workers, taxi drivers, and other low-paid shift work. This often involves taking public transport late at night.
Most of the perpetrators of the violence against the students are reportedly young people from Melbourne’s working class western suburbs. Many parts of this region have been devastated over the last two decades by mass job losses due to manufacturing plant closures. Tens of thousands of secure and full time jobs have gone, along with apprenticeships, replaced with little more than a few dwindling opportunities for young people in low paid and typically casual sectors such as retail.
Deindustrialisation and permanently high unemployment has inevitably been accompanied by a slew of social problems, including alcohol and drug abuse. Many of those who have recently targeted Indian students were reportedly drug users looking to fund their addiction.
Intersecting with all this is a toxic political atmosphere in which the major parties have all promoted various forms of national chauvinism, invariably involving an undercurrent of White Australia racism. The Rudd Labour government, for example, has recently slashed the immigration intake in response to the economic crisis, thereby implying that lost jobs in Australia are the fault of too many “foreigners”.
At the same time, both politicians and the media have embarked on a new scare campaign over “illegal” refugees. It is no surprise, moreover, that international students have been targeted given that they have long been the victims of systematic and institutionalised discrimination in the tertiary education system. Moves are already underfoot to pre-empt any discussion of these issues.
In the final analysis the attacks on Indian students reveal the tense and violent state of social relations in contemporary capitalist Australia.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Yechury Admits Leadership's Failure
Sitaram Yechury's interview to Karan Thapar for the programme Devil’s Advocate
Karan Thapar: Prakash Karat has accepted that the election results are a major setback, but the truth is actually much worse than that. Can you deny that this is the worst electoral performance in your party's 45-year-history?
Sitaram Yechury: Not at all. I don’t deny it. This is the worst debacle we have had. Soon after we were formed in 64, the first election we contested in 1967 we won 19 seats--today we won 16.
Karan Thapar: So you have literally gone back below your starting point.
Sitaram Yechury: And this is a serious matter. It is a matter which the politburo has admitted is a very big debacle and we have to understand why this happened and seriously introspect.
Karan Thapar: Let’s for a moment pause over the statistics of your performance. You have gone from your best ever electoral performance to your worst ever in just five straight years. This time around you have lost 63 per cent of the seats you had, or to put it differently you have lost 68 percent more seats than you have won. Those statistics are worrying and actually they are appalling.
Sitaram Yechury: Statistics are statistics and you can always manipulate them but that is not the point. The fact is that you cannot escape from this reality that this has been a very big debacle for us. It’s been the worst performance electorally by the party.
Karan Thapar: Let’s then come to why you did so badly. To begin with, can you accept that breaking with the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) was a mistake? The voters didn't understand why you did it and worst of all it made CPI-M look like a party which was promoting instability.
Sitaram Yechury: All these issues we have decided will be discussed--both national and state-level issues—introspected upon and a very serious, honest, self-critical review will be made by us.
Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you what your defeated MPs are saying. Prashant Pradhan, your defeated MP from Kontai, says: "People have not taken kindly to the withdrawal of support from the UPA government. The poor and the farmers never understood why we wanted to topple the government."
Sitaram Yechury: You see these are points of views which have come across. As I said all issues will be discussed by us and on all of them we will come to some honest, self-critical conclusion.
Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you Amitabh Nandi, a defeated MP from Dumdum. He says: "From day one of withdrawing support from UPA our slogans, our activities have proved we are against stability."
Sitaram Yechury: These are opinions that have come and as I said all these issues will be discussed thoroughly and that process has already begun. By the middle of June I think we will come to our conclusion.
Karan Thapar: But can you accept that these are very valid opinions?
Sitaram Yechury: These issues will be discussed, definitely.
Karan Thapar: These are not inexperienced, foolish people talking. These are some of your most senior, cherished MPs, now defeated. They know what they are talking about.
Sitaram Yechury: They have been our leaders in Parliament. There is no way we are going to discount anything anybody says within the party. Everything will be taken seriously and discussed.
Karan Thapar: Now the second problem with breaking with the UPA was that you forced the Congress into the arms of the Trinamool Congress, thus creating a coalition that was able to attract the anti-Left votes in West Bengal at a time when you were yourself suffering from Nandigram, Singur and beginning to realise that the Muslim population could be disaffected. Rather than divide your opponents you ended up uniting and strengthening them.
Sitaram Yechury: But remember that the Congress and the Trinamool always had a ground-level understanding even without an alliance. What happened this time was that the de facto converted itself into de jure.
Karan Thapar: Which was a disaster for you...
Sitaram Yechury: This had its impact, definitely. There’s no doubt about it. We anticipated that this would have an impact on the marginal seats, but there are other reasons why this defeat has occurred in Bengal and those have to be seriously examined.
Karan Thapar: Absolutely. No one denies there are other reasons in Bengal. But given those other reasons, the worst tactic for you was to unite your opponents on a single platform. You should have divided them, not united them.
Sitaram Yechury: Like I said we will review all of this.
Karan Thapar: But can you accept this was bad tactics?
Sitaram Yechury: Not just this, all other questions will be discussed and reviewed. All that I can say right now is that on any one of these issues we have not come to any conclusive decision.
Karan Thapar: But you accept that given that you already had problems in Bengal, devising a strategy that unites your opponents was a pretty silly thing to do?
Sitaram Yechury: But it could well be that our opponents were going to unite any way?
Karan Thapar: Maybe but you prodded them into it. If you hadn’t broken with Congress they might not have gone with Trinamool and then you would have faced a divided opposition not a united one.
Sitaram Yechury: In the last elections, remember, of the 61 Left MPs 54 came to the Lok Sabha defeating Congress candidates. So going into elections with the Congress was never the issue.
Karan Thapar: But the problem was that this time, by breaking with the UPA, you pushed the Congress into the arms of the TMC and thus created a platform of unity against you which otherwise would have been two divided parties.
Sitaram Yechury: That is the reason why I am saying that what was de facto has become de jure.
Karan Thapar: And that was a disaster...
Sitaram Yechury: We will review that...
Karan Thapar: Is it true that Jyoti Basu advised the CPI-M leadership not to break with the UPA?
Sitaram Yechury: He may have had his opinions within the committees but there is no advice that has come to us.
Karan Thapar: What opinion did he express in the committees?
Sitaram Yechury: That I can't tell you. That is something which even he won't tell you.
Karan Thapar: Can I infer that within the committees he expressed a measure of dissent about breaking with the UPA?
Sitaram Yechury: You see breaking from the UPA was not a one-time decision or which happened one-off. It was a series of developments which were taking place as a result of which it culminated in our withdrawing support. On various steps in this process he had some issues to tell us which he told.
Karan Thapar: So there were various moments when he expressed his opinion; there were issues he had to speak about which he did speak about.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes, definitely. Inside the party all of us will give our opinion but once we collectively decide that is our party matter.
Karan Thapar: Thank you, I think you have said it all. You can't confirm it but within the party at various stages he had opinions to express and he did express them.
Sitaram Yechury: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times.
Karan Thapar: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times, not (just) once or twice.
Sitaram Yechury: Even today he does.
Karan Thapar: The second biggest mistake was in fact the Third Front. We all knew what it didn't stand for--it was anti-Congress, anti-BJP—but no one actually knew what it stood for. As a result of which it lacked credibility and it projected negativity.
Sitaram Yechury: We in the politburo have come to the conclusion that the Third Front …. you understand how this Third Front emerged? It was state-level alliances in various states. Now this was brought together as a national alternative, which people obviously found had neither credibility or viability. Both were lacking. Thus the result. That is what we have accepted.
Karan Thapar: Finish the sentence you half began before you interrupted yourself: “We in the Politburo have to come a conclusion about the Third Front” and then you stopped. What is that conclusion?
Sitaram Yechury: That it was neither viable nor credible...
Karan Thapar: Would you therefore say that it was a mistake?
Sitaram Yechury: The way it was projected was a mistake. I’ll tell you why. The CPI-M always had this opinion, which we still continue to have, that India requires a third political alternative. This third political alternative will have to bring about a shift in the policy trajectory in the country. But that cannot be a cut-and-paste job on the eve of elections.
Karan Thapar: This was a hastily put together cut-and-paste job?
Sitaram Yechury: A cut-and-paste job, and to achieve our objective of a third alternative there are no short cuts. It will have to be done through sustained, prolonged, popular struggles. .
Karan Thapar: This was an attempt at putting together a Third Front, not just by cut and paste but by short-cut methods and that was a mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes. That is something which will be a subject of our review in the central committee (of the CPI-M).
Karan Thapar: But in fact it was not just the projection of the Third Front, it was not just the haste and the cut-and-paste manner in which it was put together. Even the composition of the Third Front was wrong. To begin with, almost all its members were former BJP allies. Two of them, Jayalalithaa and Mayawati, face serious charges of corruption. As a result of its composition this front undermined your cherished principles of probity and secularism. These people should have never been your allies.
Sitaram Yechury: That is why in retrospect we are saying that people didn't find it credible. They did not find this front credible.
Karan Thapar: No doubt the people did not find it credible. The election results prove that. But can you accept that at a prior stage you chose the wrong allies? You should not have approached people like Jayalalithaa, like Mayawati.
Sitaram Yechury: In the states we had electoral understandings—with Jayalalithaa it was an understanding in Tamil Nadu; with the TDP it was an understanding in Andhra Pradesh. But we brought all this together as a national alternative. That did not find credibility with the people.
Karan Thapar: You’re accepting that projecting a state level understanding into a national understanding was a mistake. But even at the state level it was a mistake. Just look at the speed with which Jayalalithaa left you. She left you immediately after the elections and before the counting. The TRS left you after the voting and before the counting. As soon as the counting was over the JD-S and the BSP left you. They showed no loyalty to you at the state or national level.
Sitaram Yechury: The AIADMK has not left us formally, but you are right about the BSP, JD-S and TRS. That is precisely the point I am making--the front was neither credible nor viable. This (election result) has only confirmed that.
Karan Thapar: One other thing. At a time when the country was yearning for a strong and stable government, no one believed that the Third Front could offer it and more importantly the prospect of Mayawati as Prime Minister put a lot of people off, maybe even frightened them.
Sitaram Yechury: I don't think it was only a question of stability that people wanted. If it was stability then they would have found little to choose between the UPA and the NDA. They wanted stability with a commitment to the secular, democratic foundations of India. This was the combination which they found the Third Front lacked the credibility to give. And Commitment to secular, democratic foundations the NDA would never give. Hence the result.
Karan Thapar: The reason you lacked credibility in terms of secular foundations of India is not just because of the composition of the Third Front. But if you look at what your party did in Kerala your alliance with (PDP leader) A N Madhani was another mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: There was no alliance with Madhani.
Karan Thapar: Your own local partymen in Kerala have called it an alliance and say it is a mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: In Kerala, not only Madhani, various other issues that have impacted on these elections, all of them will be reviewed.
Karan Thapar: Let us briefly talk about the manner in which your two bastions--of West Bengal and Kerala--undermined your performance. To begin with, how did you permit yourself to go into an election when your entire Kerala unit was not just feuding but acrimoniously tearing itself apart?
Sitaram Yechury: But remember in Kerala this sort of situation prevailed in the 2006 elections and that time there were street-level demonstrations (as well).
Karan Thapar: Except that the situation had got much worse. On the eve of elections your state secretariat wanted V S Achutanandan removed as Chief Minister.
Sitaram Yechury: No, that was not true. That was only a media-created rumour. But the point is in 2006 what was seen as acrimony between our leaders resulted in a two-third majority victory in the Assembly.
Karan Thapar: Except that by 2009 you were no longer the beneficiary of doubts in the minds of the people. They were convinced by then 3 years of feuding meant that you were tearing yourself apart and you were allying with people like Madani. You were losing credibility.
Sitaram Yechury: Remember the elections in 2009 were for the Central government not state government. In Kerala and Bengal people are very conscious, they know what choices they want and whom they want where (i.e. at the Centre).
Karan Thapar: All right let me quote to you Hanan Mollah, one of your defeated MPs. This is what he told several papers: "We have been severely punished. Did we lose touch with ground reality?" What is your answer to that question?
Sitaram Yechury: That is precisely what we are examining. That is the answer we will give in our Central Committee when we meet in June.
Karan Thapar: What is your hunch? You are a political man, no doubt a definitive answer will come after the analysis but what is your instinct?
Sitaram Yechury: Obviously we have lost touch otherwise this sort of result would not have come. But to what degree, why we lost touch, what were the inadequacies, that is something we are seriously examining.
Karan Thapar: But you agree that you lost touch?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course, the results show that.
Karan Thapar: Now let’s come to the question: where does responsibility lie. I want to quote to you what one of your defeated candidates, Amitabh Nandy, has said. He says: "When we complete our introspection it will certainly emerge that the party's top leadership has failed." Would you agree?
Sitaram Yechury: Please understand one thing that this has been a very big debacle for us. Also understand the fact that this is for the first time in the last two decades that a secular government is being formed in India in which the CPI-M has no role. This is a big setback. People, therefore, are expressing their disappointment. All these sentiments
will be taken into account by us.
Karan Thapar: When you say this is the first time a secular government is being formed in India for two decades without any role or presence of CPI-M, you are underlining how irrelevant or marginalised you have become. So let us come back to Amitabh Nandy. Will you accept that the party's top leadership has failed?
Sitaram Yechury: That is what we are examining. Of course the top leadership of the party will have to take the leaderships role, I mean play the leaderships role. That it will.
Karan Thapar: Will the question when you do your examination be raised:has the leadership failed? Will that question be raised?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course it will come. Of course it will be discussed. Remember a Communist party functions by what we call the Leninist principles of organisation, where it is collective functioning with individual responsibility.
Karan Thapar: Both the collective functioning of the leadership will be inquired into as well as the issue of individual responsibility?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course. Yes. All of this will come in to the review. Definitely.
Karan Thapar: Your allies have absolutely no compunction at all in pointing the finger of blame straight at the Delhi leadership of CPI-M. Debabrata Biswas has done it, Abani Roy has done it and now increasingly AB Bardhan is doing it. They say the CPI-M leadership was arrogant and it had lost touch with the masses.
Sitaram Yechury: We have also heard these comments but all of them were party to all the decisions that were taken together in the Left parties' meeting.
Karan Thapar: No doubt but is there any truth in their claim that your leadership was arrogant?
Sitaram Yechury: If our allies are saying all this we will definitely take that into account in our review. Definitely.
Karan Thapar: You won’t turn a deaf ear?
Sitaram Yechury: No, definitely not.
Karan Thapar: You won't sweep it under the carpet?
Sitaram Yechury: No, it is for our own survival to get back the people who have been alienated from us and to advance further that we have to be candid, honest and rigorously honest in this self-critical examination.
Karan Thapar: If you want to be candid and rigorously honest then I put this to you: after facing a similar disastrous electoral performance, LK Advani offered his resignation to the BJP as Leader of Opposition. Why in similar circumstances in the CPI-M has Prakash Karat not found fit to make a similar gesture?
Sitaram Yechury: Leader of Opposition is a position in Parliament and that Parliament has ceased - the 14th Lok Sabha. And that Parliament has ceased to be. So whether he resigns or not that Parliament has finished.
Karan Thapar: We are talking about the need for candidness, for transparency and for winning back the people you have lost. Surely therefore Prakash Karat must make the gesture of accepting responsibility as General Secretary.
Sitaram Yechury: The point again here is that it will have to be a collective assessment that we will make of these results, of why these results have resulted in this sort of manner. And remember, resignation also can be escape from responsibilities.
Karan Thapar: You said a very interesting thing. A collective assessment will be made.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes.
Karan Thapar: Now your Central Committee is due to meet in June. At that meeting what are the chances that Prakash Karat will either step down voluntarily or be stripped of his responsibilities.
Sitaram Yechury: Again let me tell you the Central Committee is going to discuss the reasons for our debacle.
Karan Thapar: And they are going into the question of leadership?
Sitaram Yechury: Leadership of course. In that process. But it will not be on the basis of who is going to resign or not--that is not the issue. The issue is what are the mistakes, why were they committed and how can they be corrected.
Karan Thapar: But can you rule out the possibility of Prakash Karat accepting responsibility at that stage and resigning?
Sitaram Yechury: The Central Committee, as I said, will comprehensively review. Beyond that I cannot go today.
Karan Thapar: Let me put this to you. There is no doubt that the two issues on which you ended up losing seats were the break with the UPA and creation of a less than credible Third Front. Of both those Prakash Karat was the central architect. Is it not therefore the case that, as the Press is saying, he has the greatest measure of direct responsibility for this defeat?
Sitaram Yechury: Prakash Karat is the General Secretary of the CPI-M. These were the decisions of the CPI-M and he as General Secretary will articulate these decisions, naturally.
Karan Thapar: In most organisations when things go wrong the man at the top takes the responsibility.
Sitaram Yechury: But I think that is also one way of escaping responsibility.
Karan Thapar: Are you going to hold him to the job to punish him rather than let him go?
Sitaram Yechury: It is not a question of an individual. As I said, we will collectively assess what are our mistakes.
Karan Thapar: And therefore if you are going to collectively assess his future depends on the outcome and decisions of the central committee.
Sitaram Yechury: Well, the future of the party depends on it.
Karan Thapar: Prakash Karat has accepted that the election results are a major setback, but the truth is actually much worse than that. Can you deny that this is the worst electoral performance in your party's 45-year-history?
Sitaram Yechury: Not at all. I don’t deny it. This is the worst debacle we have had. Soon after we were formed in 64, the first election we contested in 1967 we won 19 seats--today we won 16.
Karan Thapar: So you have literally gone back below your starting point.
Sitaram Yechury: And this is a serious matter. It is a matter which the politburo has admitted is a very big debacle and we have to understand why this happened and seriously introspect.
Karan Thapar: Let’s for a moment pause over the statistics of your performance. You have gone from your best ever electoral performance to your worst ever in just five straight years. This time around you have lost 63 per cent of the seats you had, or to put it differently you have lost 68 percent more seats than you have won. Those statistics are worrying and actually they are appalling.
Sitaram Yechury: Statistics are statistics and you can always manipulate them but that is not the point. The fact is that you cannot escape from this reality that this has been a very big debacle for us. It’s been the worst performance electorally by the party.
Karan Thapar: Let’s then come to why you did so badly. To begin with, can you accept that breaking with the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) was a mistake? The voters didn't understand why you did it and worst of all it made CPI-M look like a party which was promoting instability.
Sitaram Yechury: All these issues we have decided will be discussed--both national and state-level issues—introspected upon and a very serious, honest, self-critical review will be made by us.
Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you what your defeated MPs are saying. Prashant Pradhan, your defeated MP from Kontai, says: "People have not taken kindly to the withdrawal of support from the UPA government. The poor and the farmers never understood why we wanted to topple the government."
Sitaram Yechury: You see these are points of views which have come across. As I said all issues will be discussed by us and on all of them we will come to some honest, self-critical conclusion.
Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you Amitabh Nandi, a defeated MP from Dumdum. He says: "From day one of withdrawing support from UPA our slogans, our activities have proved we are against stability."
Sitaram Yechury: These are opinions that have come and as I said all these issues will be discussed thoroughly and that process has already begun. By the middle of June I think we will come to our conclusion.
Karan Thapar: But can you accept that these are very valid opinions?
Sitaram Yechury: These issues will be discussed, definitely.
Karan Thapar: These are not inexperienced, foolish people talking. These are some of your most senior, cherished MPs, now defeated. They know what they are talking about.
Sitaram Yechury: They have been our leaders in Parliament. There is no way we are going to discount anything anybody says within the party. Everything will be taken seriously and discussed.
Karan Thapar: Now the second problem with breaking with the UPA was that you forced the Congress into the arms of the Trinamool Congress, thus creating a coalition that was able to attract the anti-Left votes in West Bengal at a time when you were yourself suffering from Nandigram, Singur and beginning to realise that the Muslim population could be disaffected. Rather than divide your opponents you ended up uniting and strengthening them.
Sitaram Yechury: But remember that the Congress and the Trinamool always had a ground-level understanding even without an alliance. What happened this time was that the de facto converted itself into de jure.
Karan Thapar: Which was a disaster for you...
Sitaram Yechury: This had its impact, definitely. There’s no doubt about it. We anticipated that this would have an impact on the marginal seats, but there are other reasons why this defeat has occurred in Bengal and those have to be seriously examined.
Karan Thapar: Absolutely. No one denies there are other reasons in Bengal. But given those other reasons, the worst tactic for you was to unite your opponents on a single platform. You should have divided them, not united them.
Sitaram Yechury: Like I said we will review all of this.
Karan Thapar: But can you accept this was bad tactics?
Sitaram Yechury: Not just this, all other questions will be discussed and reviewed. All that I can say right now is that on any one of these issues we have not come to any conclusive decision.
Karan Thapar: But you accept that given that you already had problems in Bengal, devising a strategy that unites your opponents was a pretty silly thing to do?
Sitaram Yechury: But it could well be that our opponents were going to unite any way?
Karan Thapar: Maybe but you prodded them into it. If you hadn’t broken with Congress they might not have gone with Trinamool and then you would have faced a divided opposition not a united one.
Sitaram Yechury: In the last elections, remember, of the 61 Left MPs 54 came to the Lok Sabha defeating Congress candidates. So going into elections with the Congress was never the issue.
Karan Thapar: But the problem was that this time, by breaking with the UPA, you pushed the Congress into the arms of the TMC and thus created a platform of unity against you which otherwise would have been two divided parties.
Sitaram Yechury: That is the reason why I am saying that what was de facto has become de jure.
Karan Thapar: And that was a disaster...
Sitaram Yechury: We will review that...
Karan Thapar: Is it true that Jyoti Basu advised the CPI-M leadership not to break with the UPA?
Sitaram Yechury: He may have had his opinions within the committees but there is no advice that has come to us.
Karan Thapar: What opinion did he express in the committees?
Sitaram Yechury: That I can't tell you. That is something which even he won't tell you.
Karan Thapar: Can I infer that within the committees he expressed a measure of dissent about breaking with the UPA?
Sitaram Yechury: You see breaking from the UPA was not a one-time decision or which happened one-off. It was a series of developments which were taking place as a result of which it culminated in our withdrawing support. On various steps in this process he had some issues to tell us which he told.
Karan Thapar: So there were various moments when he expressed his opinion; there were issues he had to speak about which he did speak about.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes, definitely. Inside the party all of us will give our opinion but once we collectively decide that is our party matter.
Karan Thapar: Thank you, I think you have said it all. You can't confirm it but within the party at various stages he had opinions to express and he did express them.
Sitaram Yechury: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times.
Karan Thapar: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times, not (just) once or twice.
Sitaram Yechury: Even today he does.
Karan Thapar: The second biggest mistake was in fact the Third Front. We all knew what it didn't stand for--it was anti-Congress, anti-BJP—but no one actually knew what it stood for. As a result of which it lacked credibility and it projected negativity.
Sitaram Yechury: We in the politburo have come to the conclusion that the Third Front …. you understand how this Third Front emerged? It was state-level alliances in various states. Now this was brought together as a national alternative, which people obviously found had neither credibility or viability. Both were lacking. Thus the result. That is what we have accepted.
Karan Thapar: Finish the sentence you half began before you interrupted yourself: “We in the Politburo have to come a conclusion about the Third Front” and then you stopped. What is that conclusion?
Sitaram Yechury: That it was neither viable nor credible...
Karan Thapar: Would you therefore say that it was a mistake?
Sitaram Yechury: The way it was projected was a mistake. I’ll tell you why. The CPI-M always had this opinion, which we still continue to have, that India requires a third political alternative. This third political alternative will have to bring about a shift in the policy trajectory in the country. But that cannot be a cut-and-paste job on the eve of elections.
Karan Thapar: This was a hastily put together cut-and-paste job?
Sitaram Yechury: A cut-and-paste job, and to achieve our objective of a third alternative there are no short cuts. It will have to be done through sustained, prolonged, popular struggles. .
Karan Thapar: This was an attempt at putting together a Third Front, not just by cut and paste but by short-cut methods and that was a mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes. That is something which will be a subject of our review in the central committee (of the CPI-M).
Karan Thapar: But in fact it was not just the projection of the Third Front, it was not just the haste and the cut-and-paste manner in which it was put together. Even the composition of the Third Front was wrong. To begin with, almost all its members were former BJP allies. Two of them, Jayalalithaa and Mayawati, face serious charges of corruption. As a result of its composition this front undermined your cherished principles of probity and secularism. These people should have never been your allies.
Sitaram Yechury: That is why in retrospect we are saying that people didn't find it credible. They did not find this front credible.
Karan Thapar: No doubt the people did not find it credible. The election results prove that. But can you accept that at a prior stage you chose the wrong allies? You should not have approached people like Jayalalithaa, like Mayawati.
Sitaram Yechury: In the states we had electoral understandings—with Jayalalithaa it was an understanding in Tamil Nadu; with the TDP it was an understanding in Andhra Pradesh. But we brought all this together as a national alternative. That did not find credibility with the people.
Karan Thapar: You’re accepting that projecting a state level understanding into a national understanding was a mistake. But even at the state level it was a mistake. Just look at the speed with which Jayalalithaa left you. She left you immediately after the elections and before the counting. The TRS left you after the voting and before the counting. As soon as the counting was over the JD-S and the BSP left you. They showed no loyalty to you at the state or national level.
Sitaram Yechury: The AIADMK has not left us formally, but you are right about the BSP, JD-S and TRS. That is precisely the point I am making--the front was neither credible nor viable. This (election result) has only confirmed that.
Karan Thapar: One other thing. At a time when the country was yearning for a strong and stable government, no one believed that the Third Front could offer it and more importantly the prospect of Mayawati as Prime Minister put a lot of people off, maybe even frightened them.
Sitaram Yechury: I don't think it was only a question of stability that people wanted. If it was stability then they would have found little to choose between the UPA and the NDA. They wanted stability with a commitment to the secular, democratic foundations of India. This was the combination which they found the Third Front lacked the credibility to give. And Commitment to secular, democratic foundations the NDA would never give. Hence the result.
Karan Thapar: The reason you lacked credibility in terms of secular foundations of India is not just because of the composition of the Third Front. But if you look at what your party did in Kerala your alliance with (PDP leader) A N Madhani was another mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: There was no alliance with Madhani.
Karan Thapar: Your own local partymen in Kerala have called it an alliance and say it is a mistake.
Sitaram Yechury: In Kerala, not only Madhani, various other issues that have impacted on these elections, all of them will be reviewed.
Karan Thapar: Let us briefly talk about the manner in which your two bastions--of West Bengal and Kerala--undermined your performance. To begin with, how did you permit yourself to go into an election when your entire Kerala unit was not just feuding but acrimoniously tearing itself apart?
Sitaram Yechury: But remember in Kerala this sort of situation prevailed in the 2006 elections and that time there were street-level demonstrations (as well).
Karan Thapar: Except that the situation had got much worse. On the eve of elections your state secretariat wanted V S Achutanandan removed as Chief Minister.
Sitaram Yechury: No, that was not true. That was only a media-created rumour. But the point is in 2006 what was seen as acrimony between our leaders resulted in a two-third majority victory in the Assembly.
Karan Thapar: Except that by 2009 you were no longer the beneficiary of doubts in the minds of the people. They were convinced by then 3 years of feuding meant that you were tearing yourself apart and you were allying with people like Madani. You were losing credibility.
Sitaram Yechury: Remember the elections in 2009 were for the Central government not state government. In Kerala and Bengal people are very conscious, they know what choices they want and whom they want where (i.e. at the Centre).
Karan Thapar: All right let me quote to you Hanan Mollah, one of your defeated MPs. This is what he told several papers: "We have been severely punished. Did we lose touch with ground reality?" What is your answer to that question?
Sitaram Yechury: That is precisely what we are examining. That is the answer we will give in our Central Committee when we meet in June.
Karan Thapar: What is your hunch? You are a political man, no doubt a definitive answer will come after the analysis but what is your instinct?
Sitaram Yechury: Obviously we have lost touch otherwise this sort of result would not have come. But to what degree, why we lost touch, what were the inadequacies, that is something we are seriously examining.
Karan Thapar: But you agree that you lost touch?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course, the results show that.
Karan Thapar: Now let’s come to the question: where does responsibility lie. I want to quote to you what one of your defeated candidates, Amitabh Nandy, has said. He says: "When we complete our introspection it will certainly emerge that the party's top leadership has failed." Would you agree?
Sitaram Yechury: Please understand one thing that this has been a very big debacle for us. Also understand the fact that this is for the first time in the last two decades that a secular government is being formed in India in which the CPI-M has no role. This is a big setback. People, therefore, are expressing their disappointment. All these sentiments
will be taken into account by us.
Karan Thapar: When you say this is the first time a secular government is being formed in India for two decades without any role or presence of CPI-M, you are underlining how irrelevant or marginalised you have become. So let us come back to Amitabh Nandy. Will you accept that the party's top leadership has failed?
Sitaram Yechury: That is what we are examining. Of course the top leadership of the party will have to take the leaderships role, I mean play the leaderships role. That it will.
Karan Thapar: Will the question when you do your examination be raised:has the leadership failed? Will that question be raised?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course it will come. Of course it will be discussed. Remember a Communist party functions by what we call the Leninist principles of organisation, where it is collective functioning with individual responsibility.
Karan Thapar: Both the collective functioning of the leadership will be inquired into as well as the issue of individual responsibility?
Sitaram Yechury: Of course. Yes. All of this will come in to the review. Definitely.
Karan Thapar: Your allies have absolutely no compunction at all in pointing the finger of blame straight at the Delhi leadership of CPI-M. Debabrata Biswas has done it, Abani Roy has done it and now increasingly AB Bardhan is doing it. They say the CPI-M leadership was arrogant and it had lost touch with the masses.
Sitaram Yechury: We have also heard these comments but all of them were party to all the decisions that were taken together in the Left parties' meeting.
Karan Thapar: No doubt but is there any truth in their claim that your leadership was arrogant?
Sitaram Yechury: If our allies are saying all this we will definitely take that into account in our review. Definitely.
Karan Thapar: You won’t turn a deaf ear?
Sitaram Yechury: No, definitely not.
Karan Thapar: You won't sweep it under the carpet?
Sitaram Yechury: No, it is for our own survival to get back the people who have been alienated from us and to advance further that we have to be candid, honest and rigorously honest in this self-critical examination.
Karan Thapar: If you want to be candid and rigorously honest then I put this to you: after facing a similar disastrous electoral performance, LK Advani offered his resignation to the BJP as Leader of Opposition. Why in similar circumstances in the CPI-M has Prakash Karat not found fit to make a similar gesture?
Sitaram Yechury: Leader of Opposition is a position in Parliament and that Parliament has ceased - the 14th Lok Sabha. And that Parliament has ceased to be. So whether he resigns or not that Parliament has finished.
Karan Thapar: We are talking about the need for candidness, for transparency and for winning back the people you have lost. Surely therefore Prakash Karat must make the gesture of accepting responsibility as General Secretary.
Sitaram Yechury: The point again here is that it will have to be a collective assessment that we will make of these results, of why these results have resulted in this sort of manner. And remember, resignation also can be escape from responsibilities.
Karan Thapar: You said a very interesting thing. A collective assessment will be made.
Sitaram Yechury: Yes.
Karan Thapar: Now your Central Committee is due to meet in June. At that meeting what are the chances that Prakash Karat will either step down voluntarily or be stripped of his responsibilities.
Sitaram Yechury: Again let me tell you the Central Committee is going to discuss the reasons for our debacle.
Karan Thapar: And they are going into the question of leadership?
Sitaram Yechury: Leadership of course. In that process. But it will not be on the basis of who is going to resign or not--that is not the issue. The issue is what are the mistakes, why were they committed and how can they be corrected.
Karan Thapar: But can you rule out the possibility of Prakash Karat accepting responsibility at that stage and resigning?
Sitaram Yechury: The Central Committee, as I said, will comprehensively review. Beyond that I cannot go today.
Karan Thapar: Let me put this to you. There is no doubt that the two issues on which you ended up losing seats were the break with the UPA and creation of a less than credible Third Front. Of both those Prakash Karat was the central architect. Is it not therefore the case that, as the Press is saying, he has the greatest measure of direct responsibility for this defeat?
Sitaram Yechury: Prakash Karat is the General Secretary of the CPI-M. These were the decisions of the CPI-M and he as General Secretary will articulate these decisions, naturally.
Karan Thapar: In most organisations when things go wrong the man at the top takes the responsibility.
Sitaram Yechury: But I think that is also one way of escaping responsibility.
Karan Thapar: Are you going to hold him to the job to punish him rather than let him go?
Sitaram Yechury: It is not a question of an individual. As I said, we will collectively assess what are our mistakes.
Karan Thapar: And therefore if you are going to collectively assess his future depends on the outcome and decisions of the central committee.
Sitaram Yechury: Well, the future of the party depends on it.
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