Year: 2009

By Kevin Pina

The Haiti Information Project recently published a short article reporting that the Provisional Election Council (CEP) had allowed the Fanmi Lavalas party to register to run in elections scheduled for early 2010. According to reliable sources an original document requested by the CEP and signed by Aristide was delivered to the offices of the council shortly after 1:00 pm on November 23. There was no indication on the part of the CEP or the Fanmi Lavalas party that anything was amiss in the process and it appeared a fait accompli.

Three days later the CEP would publish the names of those political parties allowed to participate in the elections and the Fanmi Lavalas party did not appear on the list. The CEP now clings to the same flimsy excuses it used to exclude Lavalas in the Senatorial race. The party did not meet all the legal requirements to register followed by incoherent legal opinions masking their true political intent. We humbly apologize for the mistaken assumption in our reporting that the CEP was telling the truth and willing to play by the rules of the democratic game in Haiti. Apparently they have no shame.

This decision by the CEP is clearly another attempt to continue to punish Haiti’s poor majority, this time through exclusion, for their political choices and the probability of a Lavalas victory at the polls. Ninety percent of the electorate boycotted the last Senate race after Lavalas was excluded by the CEP. The highest figure for the turnout in the April election and June runoff combined was given by the UN who placed it at 11% . Many independent observers noted voter turnout well below that number throughout Haiti’s ten departments.

More importantly, this can only fan the flames for another boycott campaign and gives the impression of duplicity on the part of US foreign policy and the international community. One wonders what the response would be if the same were to happen in Venezuela or Zimbabwe. Reuters recently wrote that Fanmi Lavalas is “still considered the most popular political force in the impoverished Caribbean nation of 9 million people.” How can the US and the international community continue to sponsor and fund an electoral process that is built upon exclusion of the most popular political force in Haiti? It’s appears that democratic values as projected by the US State Department and its allies must be strictly upheld and enforced where the ruling party does not suit US objectives and they are otherwise ignored and given a pass when it does. The recent example of US and UN rapprochement over electoral fraud in Afghanistan comes to mind as an example of the latter.

Upside Down World for more

As the winter sets in, the book fair season has
started, and LeftWord will participate in two book
fairs in December:

Thiruvananthapuram Book Fair
18-28 December 2009
Kanakakkunnu Palace
and

Chennai Book Fair
30 December 2009- 10 January 2010
St. George Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School

Visit the LeftWord stalls and get a range of
exciting titles, bookmarks, and if you are a
member of the book club, get discounts on the
books!

This month, our website showcases two NEW titles
from Tulika Books:

OUR STAGE
Pleasures and Perils of Theatre Practice In India
Edited by Sudhanva Deshpande, Akshara K.V. and
Sameera Iyengar

Culture Studies/ Culture Histories/ Tulika Titles
978-81-89487-61-4, paperback, pp. 236, Rs 350 / $
15
For members: Rs 262.50 / $ 11.25

About the Book:
Theatre practice in India is like the country
itself – vast, diverse, pulsating. Theatre in
India happens anywhere and everywhere – in badly
designed auditoria, in schools and. . . Read more

ON SOCIALISM
Selections from Writings of Karl Marx, Frederick
Engles, V.I. Lenin, J.V. Stalin, Mao Zedong
Edited by Irfan Habib

Marxist Classics/ Tulika Titles
978-81-89487-63-8, paperback, pp. 196, Rs. 200/ $
10
For members: Rs. 150/ $ 7.5

About the Book:
While Marx and Engles wrote detailed critiques of
capitalism, they could only suggest the bare
outlines of what socialism as the order of
society. . . Read more

By Qurratulain Zaman

Brutal rule by Pakistan’s security agencies in Balochistan has radicalised moderate Balochs in this largest and poorest province. Now Pakistan’s government has offered a conciliation package. But it looks as if it is too little, too late.

“They ordered me to rape her. She was so thin and was crying when they brought her in the room. I was terrified to look at her, as I thought she was a spy or an agent”, says Munir Mengal, a 33- year- old Baloch, living in forced exile in Paris.

Munir Mengal spent 16 months in underground jails of the Pakistani intelligence agencies. “The low rank officers came back to the room and started beating me because I didn’t obey their orders. They took off my clothes by force, and hers too, and left us alone. In her sobs I heard her praying in Balochi language. She was praying for someone named Murad. That’s how I got to know she is my fellow Baloch. That gave me the courage to talk to her.” Munir says that, still sobbing, she told him her name was Zarina Marri. She used to be a school teacher. She and her son Murad, who was only a few months old, were picked up by the intelligence agencies from Kohlu.

Munir said, “Zarina was crying and asking me to kill her. Meanwhile, 3 or 4 low-ranking officers came in the room with a toolbox and told me that if I refused to rape her they would make me impotent. I didn’t have a clue why they were doing this to me. I fainted. In the morning, before the faj’r prayer they kicked me and took Zarina Marri with them. I have no idea what happened to her.”

Munir said he was tortured physically, mentally and emotionally every day. A chartered accountant by education and training, Munir wanted to open up a Baloch TV channel in Pakistan. He was working on his TV channel “Baloch Voice”, when he was picked up for the first time when he flew into Karachi international airport on April 4, 2006.

(Qurratulain Zam is a journalist who has worked with Pakistan’s leading daily “Daily Times” and Germany’s international broadcaster “Deutsche Welle”. She is currently working as a freelancer in Bonn, Germany“)

Open Democracy for more
(Submitted by reader)

The President just announced his plan to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Whether you agree or disagree with his plan, we all know that we need to bring our troops home quickly and safely.

That’s why I signed a petition urging Congress to push for a binding timeline and to keep the President to his word that our commitment won’t be open-ended. Will you join me at the link below?

http://pol.moveon.org/afghan_timeline/?r_by=18131-3053154-JFSqNrx&rc=confemail

I urge you to please consider it.Just imagine how Congress pinch at every penny when it comes to our healthcare, education, job creation. But not a word when it comes to war! 30,000 is just the beginning! In a pinned down insurgency, demand for troops will keep rising, so will demand for supplementary war budgets. Remember Vietnam! Do we want President Obama’s domestic agenda to be overshadowed by this war whose outcome is as good as rolling the dice! Please sign the petition.

Thanks!
(Submitted by Omar Huda)

Wed, 12/02/2009 – 02:57 by Glen Ford

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

President Obama has reached a watershed in his presidency: he has devolved to the intellectual level of George Bush, while retaining his world class powers of speech. History may remember Obama as just another vapid but predatory imperialist president who happens to be…superficially eloquent. Unfortunately, the clarity of Obama’s diction is not matched by coherence of policy. Af-Pak is at least as whack as Bush’s Iraq.

Obama’s Af-Pak is as Whack as Bush’s Iraq

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“More occupation means less occupation.”

Barack Obama’s oratorical skills have turned on him, revealing, as George Bush’s low-grade delivery never could, the perfect incoherence of the current American imperial project in South Asia. Bush’s verbal eccentricities served to muddy his entire message, leaving the observer wondering what was more ridiculous, the speechmaker or the speech. There is no such confusion when Obama is on the mic. His flawless delivery of superbly structured sentences provides no distractions, requiring the brain to examine the content – the policy in question – on its actual merits. The conclusion comes quickly: the U.S. imperial enterprise in Afghanistan and Pakistan is doomed, as well as evil.

The president’s speech to West Point cadets was a stream of non sequiturs so devoid of logic as to cast doubt on the sanity of the authors. “[T]hese additional American and international troops,” said the president, “will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.”

Obama claims that, the faster an additional 30,000 Americans pour into Afghanistan, the quicker will come the time when they will leave. More occupation means less occupation, you see? This breakneck intensification of the U.S. occupation is necessary, Obama explains, because “We have no interest in occupying your country.”

“The U.S. imperial enterprise in Afghanistan and Pakistan is doomed, as well as evil.”

If the Americans were truly interested in occupying Afghanistan, the logic goes, they would slow down and stretch out the process over many years, rather than mount an 18-month surge of Taliban-hunting. The Afghans are advised to hold still – the pulsating surge will be over before they know it.

At present, of course, the Americans have assumed all “responsibility” for Afghanistan – so much so that President Hamid Karzai only learned about Obama’s plans earlier on Tuesday during a one-hour tele-briefing. This is consistent with Obama’s detailed plans for Afghan liberation, under U.S. tutelage. The president is as wedded to high stakes testing of occupied peoples as he is for American public school children. “This effort must be based on performance. The days of providing a blank check are over,” said the Occupier-in-Chief. He continued:

“And going forward, we will be clear about what we expect from those who receive our assistance. We will support Afghan Ministries, Governors, and local leaders that combat corruption and deliver for the people. We expect those who are ineffective or corrupt to be held accountable.”

Such rigorous oversight of their country’s affairs should keep Afghan minds off the fact that they have been fighting to remain independent of foreign rule for centuries, if not millennia. If Obama is right, Afghans might also be distracted from dwelling on the question of who their “Ministries, Governors, and local leaders” are answerable to – the Afghan people or the Americans?

“Obama advises Afghans to be patient and trusting regarding their sovereignty.”

Although President Obama is anxious to bring U.S. troop levels above 100,000 as quickly as possible, he advises Afghans to be patient and trusting regarding their sovereignty. “It will be clear to the Afghan government, and, more importantly, to the Afghan people, that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country.” That is, it will become clear in the fullness of time, but hopefully no later than 18 months after the planned surge begins. If all goes well, the Taliban will be dead or nearly so, and the non-Taliban Afghans will be prepared to begin assuming “responsibility for their own country.” If not, then the Americans will be forced to continue as occupiers – reluctantly, of course, since, as the whole world and the more intelligent class of Afghans know, the Americans “have no interest in occupying your country” – unless they have to.

Should the Afghans become confused about American intentions, they might consult with their Pakistani neighbors, for whom President Obama also has plans.

“[We] have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe-haven for terrorists whose location is known, and whose intentions are clear,” the president declared. “America is also providing substantial resources to support Pakistan’s democracy and development. We are the largest international supporter for those Pakistanis displaced by the fighting.”

Obama did not mention that it was the Americans that coerced and bribed the Pakistani military into launching the attacks that displaced over a million people in the Swat region and hundreds of thousands more in border areas. How nice of them to join in humanitarian assistance to the homeless.

The Pakistanis, like the Afghans, were assured the Americans will not abandon them to their own, independent devices. Said Obama: “And going forward, the Pakistani people must know: America will remain a strong supporter of Pakistan’s security and prosperity long after the guns have fallen silent, so that the great potential of its people can be unleashed.”

Some Pakistanis might consider that a threat. According to polling by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, only 16 percent of Pakistanis held a favorable view of the United States in 2009. Actually, that’s a point or two higher than U.S. popularity in Occupied Palestine (15 percent) and Turkey (14 percent), the only other Muslim countries on the Pew list.

Black Agenda Report for more

By Eve Ensler (Author of The Vagina Monologues)

I have just returned from Pakistan where I was invited to support the efforts of women on the ground who are refusing to be terrified and silenced in the face of recent bombings and attacks. This was my fifth trip to Pakistan over the last fifteen years. I was there in 1994 when I followed a group of 500 Bosnian refugees who were promised swimming pools, bungalows and jobs, and ended up essentially stranded for five years at the Haji Complex, a barren site in Rawalpindi for pilgrims on the way to Mecca. That support offered by the Pakistani government to the Bosnian refugees was more than most were offering at the time. I went back to Pakistan in 1999 when I first met RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) and traveled with them into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, leaving from Peshawar, through the Khyber Pass. I have made this trip several times since then. I was there in 2003 when women activists and artists presented the first production of The Vagina Monologues, a clandestine production in Islamabad that afterwards moved to public performances in Lahore and Karachi.

I was not prepared for the new Islamabad that I met, a city essentially under siege. A maze of 50 check points. People hardly leaving their houses. Schools closed for a month at a time. The fancy Serena Hotel surrounded, a fortress. The U.S. embassy an enclave, protected by miles of stone barricades and elaborate barbed wire. Inside the embassy is another world, a getaway, a club, a café, Pilates classes, and a shopping bazaar imported for the 800 or so American employees the day I was there. No one allowed out. A resident of Islamabad told me, “There weren’t barricades and now there are. We’re appalled. We’re under threat… Because they’re targets, we’re targets. There were bomb blasts near us and all the windows were blown out of my house. My sister refuses to sleep in a room alone.”

There is sense of musical chairs. If you move fast enough and are clever enough, the suicide bomber will not land on you. Every place is a target. One woman told me that she has come to make arbitrary decisions. She doesn’t go to the Jinnah market. It feels central. This constant guessing and not knowing makes for terrible and constant anxiety. Everyone seems traumatized in one way or another.

I did a survey, asking people who they thought was doing the bombing and I got many answers. Most people said they had no idea. They did not know the political intentions of the bombings, didn’t know who the bombers were or what they wanted. One person told me “…with the Contras [in Nicaragua] and the Tamils [in Sri Lanka], their intent was clear. Here it is an invisible evil. No one is claming it.” Many thought it was the work of the Pakistani Taliban although no one thought all the bombings were done by them (the Taliban itself has only claimed responsibility for some of the bombings). There were many rumors and conspiracy theories. Since there is now talk of Blackwater operating in Pakistan, there are those who believe the U.S. is in cahoots with the Taliban (the theory is that if the U.S. has a deliberate foreign policy to keep the streets destabilized, they would have an excuse to intervene and occupy), or that the ISI (the Pakistani intelligence agency) is in cahoots with the U.S. and they are behind the bombings to turn the population against the Taliban. Some thought it was the Pakistani army, or the Taliban within the army. Several people talked about the fact they when they arrest people for the bombings, the stories die quickly and when there is a bomb blast police hose down the area and erase the evidence. Some thought the violence was sponsored by the Indian government. One woman from Swat told me, “We, the common people don’t know what’s going on. We are pawns. We are suffering at their hands. Whatever their plan is we wish they would get on with it.”

I traveled to Rawalpindi, a bustling and madly crowded town right next to the capital. Once outside Islamabad, where the international groups and embassies are stationed and where western hotels exist, there is hardly a checkpoint. No security, no protection for the majority of the population who seem to be on the frontlines of the killing. It is very reminiscent of Iraq and the Green Zone. I go to visit a safe house run by a long time activist Shahnaz Bukhari. The house provides support and refuge for women who have been acid burned — usually by their husbands. I meet Fauzia*, a 48-year-old woman, who is fully covered in a black chador. After we talk for a while and she begins to trust me, she removes the black veil and her face is a monstrous vision, melted and swollen, no ears, no eyes, she is completely blind. When she was young she married a man who did not like to work. She was working many jobs to support him and their family. She discovered he secretly got married to another women using her money. Eventually she asked for a divorce. After six years of being separated, he started blackmailing her to give him their kids or money. She had bought a plot of land. He was after it. She finally gave it to him, thinking he would leave her alone. She brought him the documents for the land. He said he was satisfied and wouldn’t take the kids. He sent them out to have sodas to celebrate. Then he burnt her with acid. Threw it in her face. She told me, “When I say my prayers, I pray that he has been crippled. I don’t want him to die. I want him to suffer.” She brought her case to court. Her husband came once and then he vanished. She is now speaking out, standing up, showing her face. She wants other women to punish these perpetrators. There are 2,000 burn cases a year. The government is not supporting these cases or women. She is trying to create a network to pressure hospitals and everyone involved to support the women.

*Names have been changed to protect their identity.

Eve Ensler, a playwright and activist, is the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.

THP for more

It is regrettable that the Chittagong Hill Tracts peace treaty has not yet been completely implemented although 12 years have passed since the previous Awami League government signed the agreement with the Parbatya Chhatagram Jana Sanghati Samiti, the political umbrella of the now-defunct Shanti Bahini on December 2, 1997. The treaty not only heralded the end to 22 years of guerrilla warfare but also marked, for the first time, the state’s theoretical recognition of the conflict of interest between the majority Bengalis and the minority ethnic communities and thus gave rise to the possibility of natural peace in the war-ravaged hill tracts. Subsequently, however, a combination of political opportunism of the AL government and political chauvinism of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance government has stalled the process of its implementation.

Indeed, the treaty has its own drawback. At least two of its provisions, both related to voter registration, are untenable and run counter to the constitution and the spirit of democracy. While a separate voter roll for the hill tracts is in direct contravention with the constitution, the suggestion that land ownership is a necessary precondition for registration as voters is completely unacceptable in a democratic polity, which does not discriminate between the landed and the landless with regard to their right to exercise their adult franchise. Yet, in spite of such drawbacks, the treaty offers a realistic chance to establish sustainable peace and harmony in the hill tracts. Even the United People’s Democratic Front, which has thus far opposed the treaty and marked December 2 as a ‘black day’, now believes ‘restoration of peace in the hills is possible through full implementation of the hills.’

Overall, these are auspicious times to let the seed of peace, so to speak, bloom in the hill tracts. However, to this end, the ruling class belonging to both sides of the political divide has a crucial decision to make. They have to decide whether they want to see Bangladesh as a nation-state shaped up by Bengali nationalism alone or recognise that the country is home to not only the Bengalis but also people of different ethnicities who have their own aspirations – political, economic, social and cultural. Global experience and our recent history teach us that deprivation and suppression of any ethnic group ultimately results in adverse impact on a state’s territorial integrity.

New Age for more

“Two brothers and former prisoners at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan give their testimony about the harsh abuse they witnessed while being captured. Their tale is an example of just how difficult and complex the situation in Afghanistan is. To watch other videos or to sign the petition urging President Obama to Rethink Afghanistan policy go to: rethinkafghanistan.com”

The Nobel Price price notwithstanding, Barack Obama’s presidency, contrary to the hopes of many, has not produced a big political space for the left, let alone “a seat at the table.” Most visibly, it has been the right wing that succeeded in seizing the initiative, in some truly grotesque ways that have thrown a spotlight on the deep paranoia — and straight-up old-style white racism — that persists in this society, and on the ways it can be opportunistically pandered to and manipulated. The tea-party mob phenomenon, however, cannot be dismissed as merely a freak show created by rightwing talk media and massive covert corporate funding, although that is certainly part of the story.

At the same time, we should resist the facile temptation to proclaim a “crisis” for the Obama administration. President Obama continues to have both considerable popular support, which emerges when he’s seen to come up fighting — leaving aside for the moment the miserable substance of what he’s fighting for — as he did with his health care speech to Congress or his October 17 radio address attacking the private insurance lobby. Above all, Obama continues to enjoy the support and gratitude of the capitalist class.

Are the blockages of reform — on health care, on labor law, on corporate plunder, on closing Guantanamo — products of institutional obstruction by reactionary Republicans and conservative Democrats, or of Obama’s own politics? We think the answer is clear: Both.

Solidarity for more

A few conservative Democrats, including Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman, are threatening to block health care reform — all of it — if the rest of the Democratic Caucus doesn’t agree to drop or weaken the public option.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Senate Majority Leader Reid can still stop this, if he continues to fight. Reid has shown that he’s willing to be a leader in fighting for the public option, and now we need him more than ever.

I signed a petition urging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to up the pressure on conservative Democrats who are threatening to tank health care reform over the public option. Can you join me at the link below?

http://pol.moveon.org/healthcare/reid/

Thanks! Please, do not let a few corrupt senators derail the hope of majority of Americans. Note that they are also amongst the staunchest war mongers!
Best regards,
Omar Huda