Year: 2009

By Nivedita Menon

This article critiques the Maoist strategy of systematic armed struggle against the state with the aim of replacing it with a socialist state. The Maoists do not expand the democratic space available for mass movements but rather mirror the repressive structures of the very state they are fighting. Genuine resistance to exploitation and oppression has come from radical mass movements which have built diverse coalitions on the ground and which have experimented with alternatives to the state. Anarchist is not an abuse which can be hurled at the Maoists, rather it is a resource for people fighting power structures.

There is over a century of discussion on political violence within the Marxist tradition and outside, but that is not my focus here. I also set aside arguments that condemn all violence as morally unacceptable, except to note that these do not always address the fact that the modern state has monopoly over legitimate means of coercion, thus establishing a visible horizon of violence within which we live.In this article, I will quickly outline my own views on violence in order to reflect on the possibilities for democratic politics today.

At the most obvious level, violence is associated with physical coercion and injury. Even here I distinguish between violence to person and to property, and within this, between violence to private property and to state-owned property, placing on a descending scale of magnitude, physical violence against the person, to private property and to state property. Structures of capitalist property, patriarchy or caste ensure that physical violence is not required to maintain inequality and injustice on a daily basis, because they successfully hegemonise public notions of morality. Thus, the violence carried out on the sense of self and on the bodies of the powerless in these structures and through these discourses, is invisible, while acts of resistance or counter-formations appear to be violent because they threaten the stability of the social order. Foucault might say that the very production of subjectivity through various discourses and practices of governmentality renders actual violence unnecessary unless faced with counter-formations of self – the feminist within patriarchy, the non-heterosexual within heteronormativity, the indisciplined body within capitalist work practices and the militant dalit within caste practices.

Such an understanding of structural violence underlies Ambedkar’s support in 1951, to the amendment to Article 19 limiting the right to freedom of expression. In this debate over the first amendment to the Constitution, Ambedkar argued that calls for social boycott of scheduled castes by caste Hindus, or campaigns to prevent them from using wells, constituted “incitement to violence”, and should not be protected under freedom of speech and expression.

An understanding of structural arrangements that leave some sections permanently empowered, and others permanently weak, would recognise that violent acts by the latter are unavoidable, and therefore tries to outline the kinds of violence that are morally justified, “self-defence” being the simplest of these. It is within this framework that the term “political violence” arises, as distinguished from criminal acts of violence. However, this distinction is impossible to sustain, beyond a point, for example theft by a person employed as a domestic servant, who may injure someone in the process. It cannot be understood simply as “criminal” if you place it within the violence involved in the very institution of “domestic servants”, rooted in feudal relations of power and patriarchal sexual division of labour. Nevertheless, “political violence” continues to be a useful conceptual device to differentiate an act of violence arising from a structure of violence that pre-exists and frames the act. A parallel distinction is often made that accepts the greater morality of violence of the weak against the strong.

Structural Violence of Property Relations

Political and Economic Weekly for more

The genomes of lung and skin cancer have been decoded by scientists at the UK-based Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge, which is the first time an entire cancer gene map has been created.

The scientists say they have pinpointed specific DNA errors that may cause tumors in these two cancers, both of which have direct known causes—smoking for lung cancer and sun exposure for skin cancer. Researchers predict these maps will offer patients a personalized treatment option that ranges from earlier detection to the types of medication used to treat cancer. The genetic maps will also allow cancer researchers to study cells with defective DNA and produce more powerful drugs to fight the errors, according to the the study’s scientists [CNN]. News reports are heralding the new research as revolutionary, however it will be years, perhaps decades, before the full implications of the work are understood.

The lung cancer and skin cancer studies, which were published in the journal Nature, found the DNA code for a skin cancer called melanoma contained more than 30,000 errors almost entirely caused by too much sun exposure. The lung cancer DNA code had more than 23,000 errors largely triggered by cigarette smoke exposure [BBC News]. The bullet point grabbing most headlines is that the scientists say for every 15 cigarettes a person smokes, they acquire a new mutation in their DNA. Not all of those mutations will be in areas of a person’s DNA related to cancer, but some will.

According to Mike Stratton, of the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, “these catalogues of mutations are telling us about how the cancer has developed, so they will inform us on prevention. They tell us about all the processes which are disrupted in cancer cells, which we can try to influence through our treatments. So this is a really fundamental moment in the history of cancer research. I can envisage a time a decade or more hence when these catalogues will become routine, and influential in selecting treatment for that individual. That’s what we’re expecting—every cancer patient will have one of these charts” [London Times]. However, just because scientists now possess this genetic information, it doesn’t necessarily mean a cure for cancer is around the corner. The sequencing of the human genome almost 10 years ago had many researchers giddy about the possibility of personalized medicine and gene therapy, but it’s been much harder to translate the genomic data into treatments than many anticipated.

The study is a part of the International Cancer Genome Consortium, which involves countries around the world working on similar cancer-genome-sequencing projects. The UK is looking at breast cancer; the U.S. at brain, ovary, and pancreatic cancer; China at stomach cancer; Japan at the liver; and India at mouth cancer. The completion of all this work is at least five years—and several hundreds of thousand dollars—into the future, say the researchers.

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Interview with Rastko Mocnik*, by Lucien Perpette

On September 12-13, 2009 a Forum of Resistances took place in Sarajevo, on the initiative of DOSTA. The DOSTA movement was started by young people in Sarajevo who had organized two radical demonstrations protesting against the inertia of the government in the face of criminality and the assassination of a teenager by petty criminals. The participants who were invited to the Forum of Resistances came from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia, as well as from France, Greece and Poland. Activists in Croatia, involved at the same time in a demonstration against the government, sent a message of sympathy.

Lucien Perpette: Can you indicate the reasons for becoming involved and participating in the Forum?

Rastko Mocnik: In recent years, there have been demonstrations of students and young people in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Zagreb and Ljubljana. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, these young people have established a resistance network which covers the whole country – quite an exploit in this republic, which is torn apart by nationalist politics. In April-May 2009, students occupied several faculties in the big cities of Croatia [1]. In the Faculty of Arts of Zagreb, capital of the country, the “blockade”, during which the students organized an alternative university, lasted more than a month. In Ljubljana, in autumn 2007, young global justice campaigners took part in the big trade-union demonstration against the neoliberal policies of the government and for a wages policy indexed on the evolution of profits [2] At that time, the economy was experiencing considerable growth, whereas wages were stagnating. In addition, young people are among the groups in society who are most affected by the neo-liberal restoration of peripheral capitalism: sociologists speak about “discriminatory flexibilisation of young people”. In Slovenia, 37.2 per cent of the jobs occupied by young people between 14 and 29 years old were precarious in 2001 (as against 10.1 per cent for those aged 30 and above) 3]. The situation is particularly unfavourable for university graduates of the Universities: in Slovenia, the demand for jobs requiring a university degree is almost double of that of the number of jobs on offer.

The youth of ex-Yugoslavia have responded to the deterioration of their situation by a growing politicization. In Ljubljana, last April, young people organized an antifascist demonstration on the anniversary of the foundation of the antifascist front in 1941: this very successful demonstration targeted local neo-fascism as well as the attempts at historical revisionism which are being conducted in Slovenia by the bourgeois political establishment.

The revolt of youth in Greece opened new perspectives for questions that concern the whole of Europe. In ex-Yugoslavia, there is a strong convergence between movements: they defend the gains of the socialist Welfare State and demand their reintroduction, as in Croatia where the slogan of the students still remains: “Free Education for All!”

The exchange of information and points of view between those involved in these initiatives was thus an event not to be missed. Especially since the problems which they confront cannot be dealt with within the framework of one only country.

Lucien Perpette: What do you think of the emergence and the activities of the movement DOSTA in Sarajevo?

Rastko Mocnik: This movement is impressive: whereas at the beginning, it seemed to be just a quasi spontaneous movement of street riots, it was very quickly organized into a network which links together the most important cities in the country. At this point in time, it is probably the only politicized network which breaks through the barriers imposed by nationalist politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Although it is recent and composed of young people of whom the majority did not have any previous political experience, it is a politically mature movement, and one which thinks in a strategic way: their demands are radical (re-establishment of the social state), but they have succeeded in avoiding any kind of adventurous extremism.

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For 400 years the delivery of letters has been integral to British life. As Royal Mail confronts an uncertain future, Susan Whyman charts the Post Office’s development and discovers, through the correspondence of ordinary people, just how much letter writing meant to them.

The Post Office has aroused passions in every century and it still does today. This was demonstrated by the response to the government’s recent plans to sell off part of the Royal Mail. Email may have transformed the way we send messages, yet efforts to save local post offices reveal deep-seated attachments. They suggest that the Post Office is a cherished social institution whose service means more than just the delivery of a letter.

This was as true in the 18th century,when developments in literacy, trade, transport and growth of empire heightened the need for mail. The experiences of a young Scot, Joseph Morton, illustrate this point. In 1765 he left his family in Kelso to settle in a Cumbrian village where he hoped to find work as a gardener. Throughout his 124-mile journey to Kendal he carried letters to friends and received sorely needed meals in return.Morton’s first two letters to his family gave detailed instructions on how to address his mail so as not to incur the double postage that was charged if more than one sheet of paper were included: ‘Write at the Bottom (Single Sheet),’ he instructed his family,‘as you see I have done.’ One letter was sent part way by the local carrier,who delivered goods privately; the other wholly by post: ‘Let me know,’ he wrote with a concern for cost,‘whither this or the other was Dearest.’

Morton’s knowledge of postal practices was not unusual for his time and class. Over the next 21 years, though he was often out of work, he wrote constantly to his parents, spelling his words out phonetically. Letter writing was a normal and indispensable part of the way he coped with life. In fact Morton adjusted his own routines to mesh with the rhythms of the post. Even in times of severe poverty, he and others like him, found makeshift ways to send letters, assisted by friends, servants, porters, newsmen, hawkers or carriers. When Morton fell into debt and his prospects seemed poor, his letters brought emotional comfort and family assistance. In better times they helped him to find stable employment as a clerk for a coalmine owner.

Similar enthusiasm for the post is reflected in contemporary novels. It was only natural for Jane Fairfax to remark in Jane Austen’s Emma (1815):
The post-office is a wonderful establishment … So seldom that a letter, among the thousands that are constantly passing about the Kingdom, is ever carried wrong – and not one in a million, I suppose actually lost! And when one considers the variety of hands, and of bad hands too, that are to be deciphered, it increases the wonder.
In the eyes of middling sort of people, like Jane Fairfax and workers like Joseph Morton, the Post Office was, indeed, a wonder of the world.

Yet the postal service was not originally designed for public use. It emerged haphazardly in the 16th century to provide horses and messengers in times of war for Henry VIII. A major aim was to establish a government monopoly over the gathering and censoring of information and mail.As well as controlling the flow of intelligence, it would oversee the delivery of diplomatic correspondence, support foreign and domestic policy and help to raise revenue. The king’s first Master of the Posts, Sir Brian Tuke (d.1545), selected local postmasters and divided the six major roads from London into stages.

Increased literacy, trade and an interest in news soon led merchants and the public to demand access to the post. But it wasn’t until 1635 that a London merchant Thomas Witherings (d.1651) offered a proposal to organise the first postal system for public use.A Royal Proclamation for the ‘settling of the Letter-Office of England and Scotland’ gave Witherings the authority to establish fixed, regular posts. Each post town had its own mail bag to and from London,while foot posts carried letters further on. The central London office at Bishopsgate co-ordinated mail on six main roads, charging 2d a letter for up to 80 miles.

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After hearing Punjabi music for the first time Anita Lerche dove headfirst into the genre and became an unlikely star

Cars stop on the street in India and children sing when they see her. But Anita Lerche still hasn’t quite got used to the attention.

The girl from suburban Herlev who went on a backpacking trip with friends to the Asian country in 2005 has just won a Danish World Award for her Bollywood soundtracks and is now a star in the industry.

It was at a 2006 press conference in India when Lerche understood that her life would change forever. At the time, she was a stranger in the country with no source of income and with her entire belongings in a rucksack.

But after having spent a year in India, she became fascinated with music from the northern Punjab province and decided to record her own CD of the style.

She held a press conference to present the new CD of Punjabi music, ‘Heer from Denmark’.

‘I was really nervous and thought for sure there wouldn’t be a soul at the event,’ she told Metroxpress newspaper.

But she was wrong. Around 50 journalists poured in, including the major Indian television stations.

‘I think they just wanted to see if I could even perform the music right,’ she said. ‘So I sang for them and the day after it was in all the newspapers.’

She soon was offered a record contract and became a phenomenon. And it wasn’t long before children were coming up to her in the street and singing her songs.

‘Things happened very fast in India and suddenly everyone knew me. But their media reaches Indians all over the world, so England, Canada and all sorts of places got to know me as well. When I started my tour in Southall, England, which has a large Indian population, cars stopped on the street because people wanted my autograph,’ she said.

Until she travelled to India in 2005, Lerche had never heard Punjabi music.

‘It went right into me. It made me so happy that I just sat rocking back and forth to it.’

But Lerche was no ordinary traveler when she discovered her life’s passion. She studied at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London and is a trained vocalist who can sing in 14 languages.

She attributes much of her success to Indians’ fascination with a blonde European being able to sing Punjabi music.

‘I found out there weren’t any other blondes in the world who sang in Punjabi. And for the Indians that’s very exotic,’ said Lerche.

‘When I released the CD, the newspapers wrote that when you close your eyes, it sounds like a Punjabi girl.’

At the Copenhagen Jazzhouse this week, Lerche was presented with the Danish World Award for her song ‘Maahiya’ as the ‘Year’s World Track’.

She is currently performing at various venues in Denmark as part of her world tour.

CP for more

By Tamara Pearson – Venezuelanalysis.com

Merida, December 16th, 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – After two years of debate, the Brazilian senate voted on Tuesday to admit Venezuela to the Common Market of the South trade bloc, Mercosur.
Following a five hour session, 35 senators voted in favour and 27 against. A Telesur journalist in Brazil, Gabriel Fialho, reported that the Brazilian opposition had been against approving Venezuela because, according to them, Venezuela is still undemocratic.

Government factions responded that Venezuela’s membership in the bloc goes beyond its government’s politics, and that its economic, social and cultural contributions should be taken into consideration. Others highlighted the advantages of free trade with Venezuela, and opposition senators responded that the supposed undemocratic nature of the government of President Hugo Chavez would threaten the possibility of agreements with other countries and blocs.

The protocol for Venezuela to become a full member was signed by the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay on 4 June 2006, but until Tuesday only the parliaments of Argentina and Uruguay had ratified it.

Now only the Paraguayan parliament needs to vote in order for Venezuela to formally become a complete member of Mercosur. However Paraguay’s senate chamber is controlled by the right wing opposition and is unlikely to approve Venezuela’s entry soon. Last August president Fernando Lugo withdrew the request to add Venezuela to Mercosur from the parliament; given the unlikelihood it would be passed. The Paraguayan foreign relations minister was also worried if it wasn’t approved it could “generate problems in bilateral relations with Venezuela”.

The Brazilian minister for foreign affairs, Celso Amorim, said Venezuela’s entry into Mercosur will “strengthen the effort in advancing towards [regional] integration.”

He also said that once Venezuela joined the bloc, it would then include 270 million people and represent almost 76% of South America’s GDP.
The president of Mercosur, Juan Dominguez said the addition of Venezuela would widen already existing relations and commercial exchange, and that the possibility of other countries participating in the exploitation of the Orinoco Oil Belt in Venezuela would contribute to the development of those countries.

Venezuela’s foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, agreed, saying that Venezuela’s admission to the bloc, “will multiply the incentives for economic and commercial relations,” and would be a step towards “the construction of the a large economic zone of South American development.”

The Mercosur trade bloc was established by the four current member countries in 1991, and is now a key economic force on the continent. It’s formally stated objective is to “expand the dimensions of their national markets, through integration, as a fundamental condition in order to accelerate the processes of economic development with social justice.”

VA for more

Bulgaria’s Cabinet has approved amendments to the Road Traffic Act aimed against fraudulent issuing of driving licences and roadworthy certificates.

Transport Minister Aleksander Tsvetkov told journalists that every year in Bulgaria, about 15 000 people get driving licences without sitting the required written examination or even without putting in the regulation number of hours with a driving instructor.

Motor vehicles get roadworthy certificates without having undergone proper tests, in some cases with inspectors accepting money to issue the certificate without even having seen the vehicle.

Penalties for illegally issuing driving licences or roadworthy certificates will include fines of up to 5000 leva and withdrawal of licences to conduct such tests.

Written examinations will be recorded on camera, and web cameras will be installed for use during driving licence practical examinations.

Records of roadworthy tests will have to be kept in an electronic register, to be available for investigation if required.

Tsvetkov said that introducing the use of electronic surveillance of driving tests and vehicle inspections would mean that there would be no need to increase the fees for driving tests and roadworthy checkups.

He was confident that the new measures, which will be tabled in Parliament for approval, would substantially reduce abuses, Tsvetkov said.

SE for more

By Noam Chomsky

November marked the anniversary of major events in 1989: “the biggest year in world history since 1945,” as British historian Timothy Garton Ash describes it.

That year “changed everything,” Garton Ash writes. Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms within Russia and his “breathtaking renunciation of the use of force” led to the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9—and to the liberation of Eastern Europe from Russian tyranny.

The accolades are deserved; the events, memorable. But alternative perspectives may be revealing.

German chancellor Angela Merkel provided such a perspective—unintentionally—when she called on all of us to “use this invaluable gift of freedom to overcome the walls of our time.”

One way to follow her good advice would be to dismantle the massive wall, dwarfing the Berlin wall in scale and length, now snaking through Palestinian territory in violation of international law.

The “annexation wall,” as it should be called, is justified in terms of “security”—the default rationalization for so many state actions. If security were the concern, the wall would be built along the border and made impregnable.

The purpose of this monstrosity, constructed with U.S. support and European complicity, is to allow Israel to take over valuable Palestinian land and the main water resources of the region, thus denying any viable national existence for the indigenous population of the former Palestine.

Another perspective on 1989 comes from Thomas Carothers, a scholar who served in “democracy enhancement” programs in the administration of former President Ronald Reagan.

After reviewing the record, Carothers concludes that all U.S. leaders have been “schizophrenic”—supporting democracy if it conforms to U.S. strategic and economic objectives, as in Soviet satellites but not in U.S. client states.

This perspective is dramatically confirmed by the recent commemoration of the events of November 1989. The fall of the Berlin wall was rightly celebrated, but there was little notice of what happened one week later: on Nov. 16, in El Salvador, the assassination of six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, along with their cook and her daughter, by the elite, U.S.-armed Atlacatl battalion, fresh from renewed training at the JFK Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, N.C.

The battalion and its cohorts had already compiled a bloody record through the grisly decade in El Salvador that began in 1980 with the assassination, by much the same hands, of Archbishop Oscar Romero, known as “the voice of the voiceless.”

During the decade of the “war on terror” declared by the Reagan administration, the horror was similar throughout Central America. The reign of torture, murder and destruction in the region left hundreds of thousands dead.

The contrast between the liberation of Soviet satellites and the crushing of hope in U.S. client states is striking and instructive—even more so when we broaden the perspective.

The assassination of the Jesuit intellectuals brought a virtual end to “liberation theology,” the revival of Christianity that had its modern roots in the initiatives of Pope John XXIII and Vatican II, which he opened in 1962.

ITT for more

The idea to move the capital, raised recently by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is actually not a new one, because from time to time the relocation issue has been brought up by our leaders. One of the more ridiculous plans, to move the capital to Jonggol in Bogor, was almost implemented by the son of then president Soeharto in the 1990s.

Yudhoyono’s idea, however, remains intriguing, and his ministers need to follow up on it. The government needs to decide on the timeline and the new location to ensure that the long-delayed idea will no longer stay stalled, because there are many valid reasons for this country to have a new capital.

One of the most valid reasons is Jakarta’s overburdening. Many urban planners believe nothing can be done to solve existing problems – traffic chaos, environmental damage, worsening annual flooding, water shortage, air pollution, poor sanitation, etc. – except to relocate some of its burdens elsewhere in the country.

“Going forward, the idea of moving the center of the administration must again be considered and developed, considering Jakarta has become exceedingly crowded,” President Yudhoyono said in Central Kalimantan when meeting with governors from 33 provinces ahead of a recent national working meeting.

It is probably high time for the leaders of this country to make a historical decision to move the capital. Jakarta is no longer able to shoulder the excessive flow of people from across the country. The green spaces are decreasing to only less than 10 percent of the city’s total area of 661.52 square kilometers – far from the ideal 30 percent of the green space as stipulated in zoning laws. In such a condition, the city can no longer conserve rainwater properly. Land subsidence and seawater intrusion into the groundwater are serious environmental problems.

We realize we cannot expect the creation of a new capital to be implemented in the near future, due to financial constraints in particular. But this time we should at least talk about when and where. Apart from talking about the timeline, the leaders need to decide where the new capital should be built.

Should Indonesia consider Malaysia’s example of moving its capital to Putrajaya, just a few kilometers outside Kuala Lumpur, or should we look to Brazil, which built Brasilia in the middle of the rainforest and far away from the old capital of Rio de Janeiro?

If we go the Brazilian way – moving the capital to outside Java, to Kalimantan, Sumatra or Sulawesi – it would be more than just an effort to ease the heavy burden of Jakarta. It is a further effort to create a new center of economic growth outside Java, and at the same time will answer criticism of Indonesia’s development being centered in Java.

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By Serge Halimi

Crisis over. Thanks to generous injections of public money, the banks are fighting fit again: bigger than ever, and even more likely to take the state hostage when the next storm blows up.

Once again it’s expedient for western governments and central banks to sound the alarm on debt. Expedient to raise the spectre of financial failure, temporarily set aside when unimaginable sums had to be paid to rescue Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and BNP-Paribas. Expedient to introduce the notion of profit and commercial practice in areas that had been spared. The problem of debt, exacerbated by the economic breakdown, is being used once again as an excuse for cuts in social security and public services. Endless claims that there is no more money have been a wake-up call for dormant liberals.

Their political revival is gathering pace. In Germany, the deficit will amount to nearly 6.5% of GDP next year (almost double the maximum authorised under the EU stability €24bn ($36bn) in additional tax breaks. The UK Conservatives have undertaken to decrease corporation tax. In France, the right has abolished tax on overtime, established a tax shield for unearned income and reduced death duties since Sarkozy was elected. And it is to abolish the business tax payable to local authorities.

Conservatives were once so keen to balance the books they could even agree to tax hikes. But over the past 30 years, they have deliberately created public deficits in order to stifle any public impulse to intervene. This policy of easy money and reduced revenue is accompanied by alarmist calls for cuts in the cost of the welfare state.

“Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter,” Vice-President Dick Cheney told the US Treasury Secretary in 2002 when he expressed concern about further tax cuts. What Cheney really meant was that deficits don’t necessarily harm those who create them: Reagan was re-elected by a comfortable majority in 1984, despite a three-fold increase in the US deficit during his first term. But their successors are subject to tighter financial constraints, especially when they are suspected of being spendthrift lefties. So, in order to have some chance of getting his healthcare measures adopted, Obama had to promise that they would not increase the national debt by a single cent. Are military ventures ever subject to this kind of condition?

The French government recently reduced VAT payable in cafés and restaurants by two-thirds, a loss of $3.6bn in tax revenue. A few weeks later, to restore the “balance”, it recovered $225m by introducing a tax on compensation paid to victims of industrial accidents. It is clearly a very promising pupil but it still has a long way to go to catch up with Reagan, who slashed taxes on the rich and then, to reduce the deficit he had created, ordered school canteens to count ketchup as a vegetable when assessing the nutritional value of the meals they provided for the kids.

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