Year: 2009

So why hasn’t UN weapons expert Hans Blix been called to give evidence at the Chilcot Inquiry?

By Tim Shipman and David Jones, 05th December 2009

Devastating critique: Former UN weapons expert Hans Blix says Bush and Blair showed ‘very bad judgement’

Tony Blair and George Bush were orchestrating a witch-hunt against Saddam Hussein that ended with the Iraq War, according to a former UN weapons inspector.

Hans Blix said the two leaders behaved like 17th century witchfinders in their willingness to oust the dictator.

In an interview with the Mail, he revealed that Mr Blair tried to force him to change his mind about the absence of WMDs in Iraq to placate the Americans.

The former Swedish diplomat, who headed the UN weapons inspection team in the run-up to war, concluded that Mr Blair and Mr Bush ‘misled themselves and then they misled the public’.

He said: ‘They were convinced they had their witch in front of them, and they searched for the evidence and believed it without critical examination.

‘I’m not saying they acted in bad faith [but] they exercised very bad judgment. A modicum of critical thinking would have made them sceptical. When you start a war which cost thousands of lives you should be more certain than they were.’

Mr Blix dismissed the ‘dodgy’ Downing Street dossier on Saddam’s weapons which made the case for war as ‘a politician’s twist’.

The claim that Iraq could fire chemical weapons in 45 minutes was ‘hyperbole’. Mr Blix’s inspectors viewed 700 supposed WMD sites in the months before the war but found nothing more than a handful of empty chemical munitions.

Five weeks before the invasion he revealed these findings to the UN and six days later Mr Blair told him his report had undermined American support for the UN process.

But Mr Blix stuck to his guns and warned the former prime minister not to invade, telling him: ‘It would prove paradoxical and absurd if 250,000 troops were to invade Iraq and find very little.’
The 81-year-old said Mr Blair could have slowed the rush to war had he wanted to.

‘If the UK had really insisted then on the UN path being exhausted, they could have slowed the military build-up … but that wasn’t the case,’ he said. ‘They eventually had so much military in the Gulf that they felt they had to invade.’

Obsessed: In an exclusive interview with the Mail, Blixen said George Bush and Tony Blair were guilty of misleading themselves and then the public

Mr Blix accused Mr Blair of ‘legal tap-dancing’ by claiming that existing UN resolutions gave the green light for war.

He added: ‘The war, in my view, was illegal, yes. The British knew the evidence [of weapons] was thin, and they should have remembered that before they started shooting.’

Asked whether Mr Blair could be tried for war crimes, Mr Blix said: ‘Well, yes, maybe so. Well, we’ll see. It’s not very likely to happen.’
Mr Blix said he would have been happy to testify to the Chilcot inquiry into the war but had not been asked to attend.

The inquiry heard yesterday that British troops were deliberately put in greater danger in order to increase Mr Blair’s influence with the Americans.

Lieutenant General Sir Anthony Pigott, a former deputy chief of the defence staff, said Britain committed a ‘meaty’ land force in the hope that it would buy influence.

‘You buy that on your contribution and your willingness to put – not just boots on the ground – people in danger,’ he said. ‘They know you are a serious player.’

The chances of Gordon Brown being called to give evidence increased yesterday when the inquiry heard he had refused to release additional funds to rebuild Basra following the invasion.

The claim was made by diplomat Dominic Asquith.

As a Swedish diplomat, Hans Blix is a man who chooses his words very carefully and very sparingly. But as he searches for the right way to describe the behaviour of Tony Blair and George Bush, as they prepared to wage war on Iraq, there is no mistaking the depth of feeling behind his analogy.

They were, he says, ‘like witch-hunters of the 17th century’ – men who were so desperately seeking to justify the invasion on the grounds that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, that they were deaf to reason and blind to logic.

‘They were convinced they had their witch (Saddam) in front of them, and they searched for the evidence and believed it without critical examination’.

The result, says the former UN weapons inspector, was that Blair and Bush ‘misled themselves, and then misled the public.

Daily Mail for more

JUSTYNA SZEWCZYK, Friday, December 4, 2009
ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

With six centuries of co-existence behind them, Poles and ‘their Muslims,’ an ethnic Turkic group also known as Polish Tatars, have a long history of peace in their communities and perhaps many lessons for the rest of Europe, where social tensions brewing between locals and Islamic immigrants have pushed people passed their boiling point at times

Much of Europe is questioning its ability to incorporate Muslims into its culture and identity, but the 600-year co-existence of Muslims and Catholics in Poland bucks the trend of cultural tension.

Polish Tatars, often referred to by Poles as “our Muslims,” are part of the country’s national history; even the post-Sept. 11 wave of Islamophobia that swept through other European countries did not bring significant disruption to Polish-Tatar ties.

“Islamophobia touched Poland only slightly,” said Selim Chazbijewicz, a political science professor of Tatar origin at the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland.

War refugees

The history of Tatar Muslims in Poland dates back to the 14th century, when Golden Horde khan Tokhtamysh, whose roots trace back to Genghis Khan’s empire, found refuge in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania after being defeated by Tamerlane, the Mongolian emperor who conquered Central Asia and parts of the Middle East. This event initiated the centuries-long presence of the Tatars, an ethnic Turkic group, in what later became the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The earliest Tatar settlements had a military character and were located in Lithuanian territories in what is now northeastern Poland. Though they were valued as great warriors, Tatars began settling in greater numbers and many left soldiering behind. By the 17th century, many Tatar families had begun to cherish the same aristocratic privileges as other nobility in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
This good relationship was complicated in the 1670s, when Tatar units joined Ottoman Turks during the Polish-Ottoman wars, but Polish King Jan III Sobieski soon regained the Tatars’ loyalty when he promised to pay them back salaries.

Tatars also fought in the Battle of Vienna in 1683, when united European powers defended the continent from further Ottoman invasion. In this, the Tatars sided along state, not religious, lines.
Becoming Polish

Hurriyet for more

Op-Ed Columnist

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Published: December 5, 2009

The battle over health care focuses on access to insurance, or tempests like the one that erupted over new mammogram guidelines.
Nicholas D. Kristof

But what about broader public health challenges? What if breast cancer in the United States has less to do with insurance or mammograms and more to do with contaminants in our water or air — or in certain plastic containers in our kitchens? What if the surge in asthma and childhood leukemia reflect, in part, the poisons we impose upon ourselves?

This last week I attended a fascinating symposium at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, exploring whether certain common chemicals are linked to breast cancer and other ailments.

Dr. Philip Landrigan, the chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Mount Sinai, said that the risk that a 50-year-old white woman will develop breast cancer has soared to 12 percent today, from 1 percent in 1975. (Some of that is probably a result of better detection.) Younger people also seem to be developing breast cancer: This year a 10-year-old in California, Hannah, is fighting breast cancer and recording her struggle on a blog.

Likewise, asthma rates have tripled over the last 25 years, Dr. Landrigan said. Childhood leukemia is increasing by 1 percent per year. Obesity has surged. One factor may be lifestyle changes — like less physical exercise and more stress and fast food — but some chemicals may also play a role.

Take breast cancer. One puzzle has been that most women living in Asia have low rates of breast cancer, but ethnic Asian women born and raised in the United States don’t enjoy that benefit. At the symposium, Dr. Alisan Goldfarb, a surgeon specializing in breast cancer, pointed to a chart showing breast cancer rates by ethnicity.

NYTimes for more

By Stephen Blank (11/26/2009 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Although they do not get a lot of attention abroad, water issues are truly vital in Central Asia. Since those states who have water do not have oil and gas and vice versa, a fundamental economic-political asymmetry exists between them. This has led to many continuing instances of disputes, rivalries, and clashes among them. However, as the quality of China’s water becomes an issue and given the geography of rivers in Central Asia (including Russia and China), China’s waste policies, which have hitherto been for the most part unilateral ones committed to development and heedless of other parties’ interests, have become an increasingly important issue in interstate relations. China’s policies also tell us a good deal of what its posture might be like on those and other issues as it ascends the power rankings and becomes an ever more important player there.

BACKGROUND: China’s Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection, Wu Xiaoqing, said that the area water and soil loss in China amounted to 37% of its land area or 3.56 million square kilometers. Thus it is already reaping the harvest of its environmental policies. The implication of those policies, and their results, greatly affect Central Asia. Indeed, environmental issues affect the relationships not just of Central Asian states but of these states and Russia with China.
For instance, China’s efforts to leverage its greater power for unilateral benefit also appear in environmental policies with major economic impacts. China plans to extract water from the Ili and Irtysh Rivers for Urumchi and oil field development in the Xinjiang autonomous Uyghur Region – a source of escalating inter-ethnic conflict between Han and Uyghur communities. While both rivers rise in China, the Ili passes through Kazakhstan before terminating in Lake Balkhash, and the Irtysh River travels through Kazakhstan before joining up with the Russian Ob River and Siberia. This proposal aims to stimulate Xinjiang’s economy, while eroding support for Uyghur unrest. But it will probably fail to meet its goals, even as it links environmental degradation and political activism, erosion of regime legitimacy, and instability.

This project will also probably generate outcomes resembling those we see in Central Asia. Xinjiang is already the most environmentally stressed area in China. This project will also negatively affect Kazakhstan, which is already involved in a host of water disputes with other neighbors in Central Asia, and other environmental concerns relating to oil and gas and Soviet biological and chemical warfare experiments. From Beijing’s standpoint, this is unfortunate. As of 2005 China had contravened both international law and bilateral agreements by not notifying Kazakstan of its intentions and not providing environmental impact assessments. Thus, as Stuart Horseman concluded, “it is evident that China is unwilling to engage in meaningful cooperation or compromise [in] the pursuit of its water demands.”

Simultaneously, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev has voiced several claims against China due to Kazakhstan’s grave concerns about some water projects being implemented by China. These concerns are readily understandable, since Kazakhstan is at the bottom of post-Soviet countries’ list of sufficiency in fresh water. China’s project of a canal that will siphon water from the Irtysh River to the Karamay oil province plants and farmlands in Xinjiang is close to completion. Beijing is also building up an intake of water in the upper reaches of he transborder Ili River that ensures 30% of the influx of water to Lake Balkhash. The expansion of the intake of the Ili’s waters in China from 3,500 to 5,000 cubic meters will increase the shallowing and salinization of Lake Balkhash. The Irtysh is also the largest tributary of Russia’s Ob River and yields water to Lake Zaysan in Kazakhstan.

IMPLICATIONS: Thus the consequences of this project are quite clear. It will slash freshwater inflow to eastern and Central Kazakhstan, putting the cities of Ust-Kamenogorsk, Semipalatinsk, and Pavlodar on the brink of full water deficiency, dry up the Irtysh-Karaganda canal, and lower the water level in the Irtysh around Russia’s city of Omsk by 0.6 meters. But China is doing this because it is short of water as 70% of its water supply is so polluted that it cannot be used even for technical purposes. Since Beijing conceals the extent of its pollution and of the resulting industrial accidents, its neighbors have no clear assessments and means of undertaking adequate countermeasures. So until there is a catastrophe that involves the neighbors, little can be done except consequence management which is clearly an inadequate response.

Many fear that such a catastrophe could sooner or later take place due to China’s continuing policies. Leading Kazakh environmentalist and two-time presidential candidate Mels Eleusizov in 2007 charged that China’s efforts to increase diversion of the Ili river will generate an “ecological catastrophe” around Lake Balkhash, especially if combined with the impact of climate change, i.e. melting glaciers. Although it is known that Beijing expects to develop the river and its tributaries for agriculture and electricity generation, the extent of Chinese plans for harnessing the Ili remain unclear. He also compares this outcome to the visible deterioration of the area of the Aral Sea. Specifically, Lake Balkhash could divide into several smaller lakes and the spread of desertification throughout the surrounding area. Then airborne salt, potentially produced by an evaporating Lake Balkhash, could be carried as far as glaciers in the Tien Shan Mountains that provide water for southern Kazakhstan, including Almaty, as well as portions of Xinjiang. He claims that if this outcome materializes, China’s glaciers will die and migrants into Xinjiang as part of the Go West campaign, he said, “will also be left without water.” Igor Malkovsky, Deputy Director of Kazakhstan’s Institute of Geography, agreed then with Eleusizov, contending that China’s rising exploitation of the Ili’s water represented the most immediate and dire threat to Balkhash. However, he gave his opinion that the evidence that salt from Central Asia’s disappearing lakes would speed glacial melt was inconclusive. Rather global warming bore the primary responsibility for glaciers melting at an average annual rate of one percent each year.

As the foregoing suggests, China has hitherto been unwilling or unable to show any consideration for the interests of its Central Asian neighobrs.

CACI Analyst for more

By Jeff Chang, November 25, 2009

Rich Benjamin’s new book leaves us wondering what could happen politically if the emerging majority-minority were joined by the white working class.

Running away to get away
Haha haha
You’re wearing out your shoes
—Sly Stone

Some time around the turn of the millennium, Rich Benjamin—a Black man from the milquetoast suburb of Potomac, Maryland and a senior policy analyst at the progressive think tank Demos—found himself in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Mark Fuhrman’s adopted home and a certified “Top 5 Best City To Live In.” He was having a beer summit of sorts, a round of tall ones with a white guy named Stan whom he’d just met. Stan was talking hunting, odd jobs, the girlfriend—basically his not-so-charmed life.

Benjamin decided to ask him about Idaho’s rep as a “Hate State.” By now cheerfully drunk, Stan said that the organizers of the annual Aryan Pride Parade were “a buncha clowns.” Yet, he admitted, “I want Idaho to stay pristine.” Like any lefty bicoastal Black man might, Benjamin replied: “Environmentally?”

Stan’s gut-laugh leads into one of the most fascinating passages in Benjamin’s new book, Searching For Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America (Hyperion):

…”We don’t hate Black people,” he announces. “We hate those yuppies from LA.”

…Keeping Idaho pristine, he says, means keeping it livable for people like him. In his only display of anger this charming, beer-sodden night, Stan acidly complains that he won’t be able to marry and raise kids in the very place he grew up.”

The image lingers.

For his book, Benjamin spent nine months living in the heart of whiteness, embedding himself in three of the fastest-growing white communities—Coeur d’Alene, Georgia’s Forsyth County, Utah’s St. George. He explored what he calls “Whitopias” not with an anthropologist’s distance but with Rob Corddry-as-investigative-reporter-type brio.

In Coeur d’Alene, he barbecued with a group of retired white LAPD officers—veterans of the riots of April 29, 1992—who spend their days fishing on Hayden Lake. He allowed a polo-and-khaki-clad congregation of Christian Identity white supremacists to stuff him with beef brisket and strawberry lemonade and help find him his car keys. But Stan was the one born and raised in Idaho, and his story shows how another’s piece of American Pastoral comes at a steep price for the white working poor.

Colorlines for more

Courtesy Cell Press and World Science staff

To maintain muscle strength with age, cells must get rid of garbage that slowly accumulates in them, just as a household does, according to a new study.

The cellular junk includes toxic clumps of malformed proteins, pathogens and spent organelles, which are cellular compartments used for specific functions.

The researchers studied mice deficient for a gene required for the tightly controlled process of degradation and recycling within cells known as autophagy. The rodents showed profound muscle shrinkage and weakening that worsened with age.

“If there is a failure of the system to remove what is damaged, and that persists, the muscle fiber isn’t happy,” said Marco Sandri of the University of Padova in Italy. The research by Sandri and colleagues appears in the December issue of the journal Cell Metabolism.

The muscle wasting in mice seems to bear some resemblance to certain forms of muscle-wasting diseases, Sandri said. He now suspects that this kind of mechanism may offer insight into some of those still-unexplained conditions, as well as the muscle weakening that comes with normal aging.

Researchers knew before that excessive autophagy could also lead to muscle loss and disease. The new findings highlight the importance of maintaining a normal level of autophagy. Although that seems to make sense in retrospect, Sandri said, it wasn’t what his team had initially expected.

“We thought if you reduced autophagy it might protect against” muscle shrinkage, he said. “Instead, it’s the opposite. We realized, OK, of course, if you don’t remove the damage, it triggers weakness.”

The findings may have clinical implications, he said. There has been interest in developing therapies to block proteins’ degradation for treating certain muscle-wasting disorders. But in some cases, at least, “it may be better to activate autophagy and remove the garbage in the cells,” Sandri said. The researchers think similar treatments might combat muscle weakness with aging as well, noting that another study has shown a decline in the efficiency of autophagy with age.

World Science for more

By VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN

The Liberhan Commission, which probed the Ayodhya demolition, slams the Sangh Parivar, but, surprisingly, exonerates the Narasimha Rao government.

DOUGLAS E CURRAN/FILES/AFP

December 6, 1992: Kar sevaks atop the Babri Masjid a few hours before many more joined them to demolish it.

An element of cynicism was always there as the central characteristic of the Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan Commission during the 17 long years that it took to probe the December 6, 1992, demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, perceptible in many ways – when the commission obtained 48 extensions from various Central governments, when allegations broke out of slow-pedalling of the inquiry against certain politicians, and when there was a rather public spat between the commission’s chief and its counsel.

Finally, the government tabled the report in Parliament on November 24 under tremendous pressure, after a newspaper published portions of it a day earlier. The government was left with no option but to forsake its six-month-long inertia since the submission of the report on June 30. This final sequence of events as well as the contents of the report have set in motion several debates and also controversies, in the political, legal and social realms.

Even so, the central conclusion of the four-volume report running into over 1,000 pages is by and large seen as a mere repetition of what has been common knowledge for long. It is that the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bajrang Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which make up the Sangh Parivar, were responsible for the demolition.

The commission has also held that the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, led by Kalyan Singh, and some of its officers colluded with the Sangh Parivar in a “duplicitous and under-handed manner” “not worthy of a democratically elected government”.

The report further states:

“When push came to shove, the senior police officers were at hand to ensure their men toed the line and that the demolition of the disputed structure was allowed to go ahead with military precision as orchestrated by the leaders present at the spot and carried out by their henchmen whom they refused to identify even before me.

“By far the worst sin of omission of the State government was leaking into public domain the information that the police personnel had been hobbled and would not react or retaliate under any circumstances. Emboldened by the self-confessed handicap of the law enforcement agencies of the State, the kar sevaks enjoyed a free hand, aware that they were at zero risk from them. Even the forces demanded by the State government and sent by the Central government for security purposes were intentionally taken away from the scene and deployed at far away places under the garb of meeting the threat of terrorism.”

At the individual level, the commission has listed 68 persons, including Sangh Parivar leaders and officials of the then Uttar Pradesh government, as responsible “for leading the country to the brink of communal discord”. The Sangh Parivar leaders listed include BJP stalwarts such as former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former Deputy Prime Minister and Ayodhya Rath Yatra leader Lal Krishna Advani and former Union Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi.

The commission terms these leaders “pseudo moderates” who were controlled by the diktats of the RSS. It also says that RSS, Bajrang Dal and VHP leaders such as Ashok Singhal, K.S. Sudarshan and Vinay Katiyar formed a “complete cartel” supported by icons of the Hindutva movement such as Advani, Joshi and Vajpayee.

The overall conclusion of the report, holding the Sangh Parivar responsible for the demolition, has been received with near-total approval by the main political organisations. But the emphasis it gives to certain players within the Sangh Parivar, such as Vajpayee, and the clean chit given to the P.V. Narasimha Rao-led Congress government at the Centre have not received the same level of acceptance. Reservations have been expressed not only in the political but also in judicial terms. While the BJP is naturally in the forefront of opposing the inclusion of Vajpayee among those held guilty, the centrist and Left opposition parties question the clean chit given to the Narasimha Rao government.

Anupam Gupta, former counsel of the commission, who left his position in 2007 owing to differences with Justice Liberhan, told Frontline that the inclusion of Vajpayee in the list of people with individual culpability was not legally tenable. He pointed out that the commission passed a detailed order on July 22, 2003, rejecting an application to summon Vajpayee on the grounds that there was no evidence on record against him.

“At that time, the controversial speech made by Vajpayee on December 5 at Lucknow, suggesting the demolition of the Babri Masjid, had not come to the commission’s notice. Even when the story about a CD containing that speech was published, it was not taken notice of by the commission. The right thing to do would have been to summon Vajpayee at that time. Without doing that, how can the commission arrive at such an astonishing finding?” Gupta asked.

He maintained that the clean chit given to the Narasimha Rao administration could only mean that the commission had failed to consider carefully all the documents and reports of various security and intelligence agencies it had access to. “The exoneration of the Narasimha Rao government points only towards a sell-out,” Gupta told Frontline (see interview).

The commission, on its part, has analysed the standards of culpability and categorised them as primary, secondary and tertiary. Those who had the primary and greatest responsibility for the demolition are those that had the means to prevent the assault. Many in the top leadership of the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the Shiv Sena come in this group.

Frontline for more

By Dr. Sarojini Sahoo

NDTV Imagine’s new reality show, “Raaz Pichhle Janam Ka” has been going on the air from 7 December 2009 at 9:30 p.m. and as a daily prime timeslot from Monday to Thursday. The show is based on Past Life Regression Therapy (PLRT), where some Bollywood celebrities like Shahrukh Khan, Sushmita Sen, Sanjay Dutt, Karishma Kapoor , Celina Jaitely, Shekhar Suman, and Monica Bedi will apper with other common people to subject themselves in PLRT. According to news source, Dr. Trupti Jain, the PLRT therapist of the reality show claims that she will use a meditative technique to take people back in time to rid them of their present-day fears, phobias, and physical ailments by finding their roots in their previous lives.

The idea of Past Life Regression is based on Hindu philosophy. In Bhagwat Gita, it is told that the soul can never be cut into pieces by any weapon, nor can he be burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind. According to this theory, the ‘atma’ or soul takes rebirth or reincarnation, as people often leave their old cloths to wear a new one. The ancient Indian Yoga philosopher Patanjali told about the soul being burdened with the accumulation of impressions (samskara) of karmas from previous existence. He advocates the practice of yoga meditation for alleviating the soul from such interminable encumbrances.

The Buddhist concept of Nirvana works along similar lines. The main motto of Nirvana is to stop this reincarnation.

Greco-Semitic religions do not believe in a past life. These religions believe that humans are only born once and only die once and that there is no endless cycle of life and death and rebirth, an idea inherent in reincarnation theory. These religions also believe that after death, we face final judgment, meaning that there is no second chance, like there is in reincarnation and karma, to live a better life. You get one shot at life and living it according to God’s plan; and that is it.

The idea of rebirth and reincarnation was introduced to the West through theosophy. Madame H.P. Blavatsky, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, introduced these ideas to the Western world. But much before the formation of Theosophical Society, Allan Kardec, a French spiritualist, wrote about reincarnation and karma in his book, The Book of the Spirits (1857). But the first person to use regression as a therapy was probably Dr Denys Kelsey.

A book co-authored with Joan Grant, Kelsey’s Many Lifetimes (1967) is the first book on PLRT and focuses more on the therapeutic aspect of the technique rather than on stories of relived experiences.
Practitioners of PLRT use methods of hypnosis for inducing patients to regress to their past lives and identify the root of their present problems. This is the first phase (the ‘realistic-cathartic’ stage according to Jungian psychotherapist, Roger J. Woolger). The next step (‘symbolic-archetypal’) is for the patient to project the present himself/herself onto a past personality. The third step is to come to terms with what has been relived through regression in this ‘integral-mystical’ stage. However, the therapy proves to be beneficial only when the patient is able to accept the past trauma and is ready to progress beyond that. If the patient does not accept that past trauma, the therapy fails.

It is highly debatable if there is any scientific basis of this process, though the experiences described by the ‘subjects’ may be ideas hiding within their sub-conscious mind.

NDTV Imagine may use this therapy in a reality show to increase their TRP, but I have some doubts about the truthfulness of this method:

1) Why does no one who subjects himself or herself to this therapy ever finds himself or herself as an animal or an insect or a bird or even a plant? Hindu reincarnation theory states that the atma can travel through different ‘yonis’ or species.

2) If we take it, then, as a hypothesis that humans reincarnate into humans only, then how does the population of humans increase from day-to-day? Even today, we find the birth rate is higher than the death rate.

3) In the show aired on 7th December 2009, therapist Trupti Jain asked the’subject,’ who had allegedly lost her past life in a plane crash in 1966, if there was a watch inside the plane near the dead body. How could Dr.Jain know that there would be a watch there inside the plane near the dead body?

4) Ravi Kishan, the host of the reality show, claims on the screen that no hypnosis is used for the programme, but viewers witnessed Dr. Jain hypnotize the ‘subject’ to apply her therapy.

Sarojini Sahoo can be reached at sarojinisahoo2003@yahoo.co.in
Her website is Sarojini Sahoo

By P. SAINATH

Ashok Chavan is the chief minister of the state of Maharashtra, whose prime city is Mumbai. He was reelected to that very powerful post in India’s state polls in October. Chief Minister Chavan received choice coverage in the days before the election. But any reader energetic enough to study Maharashtra’s newspapers would have noticed something curious and troubling. The same story on Ashok Chavan appeared in three rival dailies word for word (only the headline differed in one). It was bylined in Pudhari, attributed to “Special Correspodent” in Lokmat, and went without a byline in the Maharashtra Times. Nowhere did the word advertisement figure alongside these ‘news’ stories.

“Young dynamic leadership: Ashokrao Chavan,” read the headline of a prominent news item in the Marathi daily Lokmat (October 10). That was 72 hours before the people of Maharashtra went to vote in the State Assembly polls. The item was attributed to the newspaper’s “Special Correspondent,” making it clear this was a news story. The story showered praise on the Chief Minister of Maharashtra for having achieved so much for so many in so few months. The same story also appeared word for word the same day in the Maharashtra Times, a leading and rival Marathi daily. Two minds with but a single thought? Two hearts that beat as one?

A cute and comforting thought. Except that the very same story (again word for word, only with a different headline) had appeared three days earlier in the Marathi daily Pudhari (October 7). In that case, with a reporter’s name at the bottom of the item.

In the Maharashtra Times, the piece ran without a byline. But again, as a news story. There is no mention of the word advertisement or sponsored feature next to the item in any of the newspapers. And unless the bylined reporter of Pudhari moonlights as” Special Correspondent” for Lokmat, while also being a ghost-writer for the Maharashtra Times, the appearance of the same piece verbatim in the three rival newspapers does seem odd. But maybe not so odd? Mr. Chavan seems to have gained greatly from what is now called ‘package journalism’ or ‘coverage packages.’

A limited check by The Hindu turned up around 47 full pages of ‘news’ (quite a few of them in colour) centered on Mr. Chavan and his fine qualities as a leader. These mostly appeared between October 1 and 12 in more than one paper but mainly in multiple editions of Lokmat. (These 47 pages are barely a third of those actually published in that period.) The pattern seems to have been set with a launch on September 12 of a four-page colour supplement titled Ashok parv (The Era of Ashok). And then followed up with a full page almost every day in October till voting day (October 13) titled “Vikas parv” or The Era of Development. The Vikas parv pages, too, are centred on Mr. Chavan. And, of course, the achievements of Maharashtra under the Congress.

This flood of ‘news’ did not harm Mr. Chavan’s prospects. He won the Bhokar Assembly seat of Maharashtra’s Nanded district by defeating independent candidate Madhavrao Kinhalkar by a margin of over one lakh (120,849 against 13,346) votes. [In India 1 lakh = 100,000; 1 crore = 10 million. The current exchange rate is $1= 46.38 rupees.]

In strict terms, the unprecedented coverage the Chief Minister received during the poll campaign cannot be called advertising. None of those full pages bears that word. And his “day to day accounts of election expenditures” do not reflect any real spending on ads. All candidates are required by law to submit their campaign expenses accounts to the district election officer within 30 days of the declaration of results. Mr. Chavan’s accounts, which are in The Hindu’s possession thanks to an RTI application to which the appropriate authorities responded with commendable speed, claim a total expenditure of just Rs. 11,379 on advertising.

Indeed, he had a mere six advertisements in print and these cost a trifling Rs. 5,379. (The rest was spent on slots on cable television.) Moreover, all his print ads went to a single newspaper, Satyaprabha. That is a small daily in the district of Nanded. Yet Mr. Chavan was the focus of scores of full pages in very major dailies. If those had been ads, they would have cost crores of rupees. More so given the large newspapers they featured in.

Lokmat is a very popular Marathi daily newspaper. It ranks as the 4th largest circulated daily in India while being numero uno in Maharashtra, with more than ten million readers (NRS 2006). The Maharashtra Times is no small-town sheet either. It too has millions of readers and is part of India’s largest newspaper group. (Our limited check turned up ‘news’ of this kind in many other dailies. However, in some we were able to get through most of the issues between Oct. 1 and 12. Piles of the rest, from 18 other newspapers across the state, lie with us for scrutiny.) If Indian-language papers ran most of such ‘news,’ that was mainly because they were the preferred platform to reach voters during election time.

At market rates, say industry insiders, placing a four-page colour supplement in all 13 editions of a newspaper like Lokmat could cost an advertiser between Rs. 1.5 crore and 2 crore. “Also,” says an executive who has worked in this field, “this was election time. It comes once in five years. Forget about discounts, the rates climb higher in a seller’s market.” But never mind the supplements. The pages titled Vikas parv ran very frequently in Lokmat in October till almost voting day. (We have 35 such pages that ran between Oct. 1 and 12).

The cost of these alone, if they were advertising, would have been hugely above the election expenditure limit. Of course there could have been, as the executive concedes, special deals struck between the advertiser and the newspaper. (Incidentally, a member of the family owning Lokmat, Congress MLA Rajendra Darda, has joined the Ashok Chavan Ministry with full cabinet rank. He was a Minister of State in the earlier government. His website describes him as Vice Chairman & Joint Managing Director. It also calls him “a driving force behind Lokmat’s success for the last 35 years.”)

Two enterprising dailies handled their ‘paid news’ differently. They required each ‘advertiser’ to buy thousands of copies of the paper. That way, they made their money, while showing higher sale numbers. Crucially, not a single newspaper carrying this kind of material runs the word advertisement with such ‘news’ items.

The post-poll period has seen some debate in the State over what is now called the ‘paid news’ industry. Many believe that this time the news media went further than ever before in passing off advertising as news. And that the practice has moved from petty corruption of a few journalists to a media-run game worth hundreds of millions of rupees.

Govind Talwalkar, a distinguished leader of Marathi journalism, now retired, is amongst those deeply upset. He wrote in anguish from the United States to The Hindu saying “this is a perfect case for a CBI inquiry…Never in such a long career have I found journalism reduced to such a degrading and reprehensible state.” Mr. Talwalkar was active in the profession for over 50 years. For 27 of those, he served as editor of the Maharashtra Times.

Many others are disturbed. “But will those running the new ‘industry’ give it a name upfront?” asks one editor. How do we calculate in ad rates the value of what is nowhere marked as advertising? Even if a 30-40 per cent premium was tagged on for elections? When countless other ‘news stories’ like these often appear besides genuine news reports? This reporter, aided by journalists from different parts of Maharashtra, has acquired an impressive collection of such ‘news items.’ Besides, poll-time ‘coverage packages’ now include multiple exposure in print, on television — and online.

What can be done about this fairly new trend in electoral campaigning and media coverage of candidates?

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This year marks the 60th anniversary of ILO Convention No. 98 on the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining. While much has changed since the Convention was adopted in 1949, collective bargaining remains a fundamental right, an important tool to improve incomes and working conditions, and advance social justice. ILO Online spoke with Susan Hayter, senior ILO industrial relations expert, about recent trends and innovations in collective bargaining worldwide, including responses to the economic crisis, discussed at an ILO meeting in Geneva this month.

A recent ILO survey shows that trade union membership declined in many countries – how does this affect collective bargaining?

Susan Hayter: The ILO conducted a statistical inquiry into trade union membership and collective bargaining coverage in 2008-09. The preliminary results of this inquiry show that trade union membership declined in many countries. The number of workers covered by collective agreements, however, remained relatively stable in some countries while it fell in others, particularly those which deregulated labour markets and removed support for collective bargaining.

The data also shows a significant difference in the role that collective bargaining plays in regulating terms and conditions of work in higher and lower income countries. In higher income countries, the proportion of workers covered by collective agreements is either equal to or higher than trade union membership. In developing countries, institutions supporting industrial and employment relations are weak, and the proportion of workers engaged in and covered by the terms of collective agreements remains very low, often below that of union membership, particularly when those in informal employment are included.

What is the role of the ILO with respect to collective bargaining?

Susan Hayter: ILO standards promote collective bargaining and help to ensure that good labour relations benefit everyone. Adopted in 1949, the ILO’s Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 (No. 98) promotes the utilization of machinery for voluntary negotiation between employers and workers, with a view to the regulation of terms and conditions of employment by means of collective agreements. It was supplemented by Convention No. 151 on Labour Relations (Public Service) (1978) and Convention No. 154 on Collective Bargaining (1981). The ILO’s supervisory bodies – especially the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations and the Committee on Freedom of Association – continue to supervise the application of these fundamental rights at work. The ILO assists its constituents to establish institutions that can support the effective recognition of these rights, such as dispute resolution agencies. It also provides training and advisory services, and undertakes comparative research in support of these services.

Collective bargaining remains an important tool with which to improve incomes and working conditions and advance social justice. Through collective bargaining, innovative means are being found to address contemporary labour market challenges such as increasing employment insecurity and rising inequality. The ILO Global Jobs Pact adopted last June by the International Labour Conference to stem the global economic and jobs crisis calls for the “strengthened respect for, and use of, mechanisms of social dialogue, including collective bargaining”.

What role can collective bargaining play as an effective crisis response?

Susan Hayter: Collective bargaining can play an important role as part of a broader crisis response, keeping wages stable, maintaining aggregate demand and avoiding potentially deflationary wage developments which may delay recovery. Public policy plays an important role in protecting industrial relations systems from erosion and keeping wages stable.

It is worth noting that during the general economic depression in the 1930s, many governments instituted measures to extend collective agreements and protect collective bargaining from being undermined by intense cost-based competition. Established collective bargaining practices were also an element that allowed the Republic of Korea to weather the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s and enabled South Africa to make a relatively peaceful transition into the post-apartheid era.

Through collective bargaining, enterprises and trade unions are also finding practical ways to save jobs while at the same time facilitating the adaptability and longer term sustainability of enterprises.

How can collective bargaining contribute to innovation, productivity, competitiveness and enterprise sustainability?

Susan Hayter: Whereas wages and working time remain the primary issues for collective bargaining, negotiating agendas increasingly link pay to productivity and seek to implement flexible working time arrangements. This can be beneficial for both enterprises seeking to increase their flexibility – and workers seeking to share the benefits of productivity gains and balance work and family life. There is also evidence that where changes in work organization are negotiated with workers and their representatives, this contributes to improved enterprise performance.

One of the responses by the social partners to technological change and rising employment insecurity is to improve the skills of workers to ensure long-term employability. Thus, the inclusion of training and lifelong learning on the collective bargaining agenda is seen as an innovative development. Support for lifelong learning and training can be beneficial to both enterprises and workers, especially in the context of technological change or economic uncertainty.

This development has been particularly significant in Europe. Countries that have strong social partners and a strong institutional base for social dialogue and collective bargaining have had the most success in setting up collectively agreed frameworks for continuing vocational training.

How can collective bargaining contribute to better working conditions for non-regular workers?

Susan Hayter: Social partners in different countries are also using collective bargaining to improve the terms and conditions of employment of non-regular workers. These agreements include one or a combination of the following approaches: first, collective agreements include provisions that seek to regularize the employment of non-regular workers. Second, collective agreements seek to improve wages and benefits for non-regular workers.

In Europe, some collective agreements covering temporary agency workers place limits on the duration of temporary contracts, after which workers become eligible for an open ended contract. In Chennai in the Tamil Nadu region in India, a growing number of collective agreements include provisions to make contract workers permanent when a vacancy arises. In Uruguay, recent agreements in the manufacturing sector also include measures aimed at regularizing employment. In countries such as Argentina and Korea, industry/ sectoral agreements have been instrumental in ensuring wage parity between regular and non-regular workers.

ILO for more