Month: February 2009

A song “jhanak Jhanak tori baje payaliya” in Brij Bhasha from film Mere Huzoor/actor Raj Kumar/singer Manna Dey/lyricist Hasrat Jaipuri/music Shankar Jaikishan

By IPS correspondents

While the Sri Lankan army has announced the capture of Mullaitivu, the last bastion of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the plight of more than 250,000 civilians caught in the fighting continues to be as grim as that of civilians in Gaza, say those involved in humanitarian work.
The defence ministry’s website said that the army had ‘’gained total control over the Mullaitivu township after completing mop up operations’’. However, there was no word that any of the leaders of the LTTE, including its elusive supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran, had been captured.
“We now have a high number of people concentrated in a small area and we are very concerned for their safety. They are close to the fighting and have poor access to healthcare and shelter as well as proper water and sanitation,” Philippe Duamelle, country representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund, told IPS.
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(from Hari Sharma, head of Vancouver, Canada, based organization Sansad)

By Anita Chang
BEIJING – The global economic crisis has taken hold deep in China’s impoverished countryside, as millions of rural migrants are laid off from factory jobs and left to scratch a living from tiny landholdings — creating unsettling prospects for a government anxious to avoid social unrest.
With demand for Chinese toy, shoe and electronics exports evaporating overseas, as many as 26 million of China’s estimated 130 million migrant workers are now unemployed, the government announced Monday. A day earlier, Beijing warned of “possibly the toughest year” this decade and called for development of rural areas to offset the economic fallout.
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South Asian Network (SAN) is a grassroots, community based organization dedicated to advancing the health, empowerment and solidarity of persons of South Asian origin in Southern California. Founded in 1990, the overall goal of SAN is to inform and empower South Asian communities by acting as an agent of change in eliminating biases, discrimination and injustices targeted against persons of South Asian origin and by providing linkages amongst communities through shared experiences. Together, volunteers and staff have created a multilingual, culturally appropriate approaches to community organizing encompassing community outreach and education, direct service, and policy advocacy in five focus areas: immigration, public health, violence prevention, hate crime/discrimination and civil liberties.
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By Moises Velasquez-Manof

When Sid Goodloe bought his ranch half a century ago in south-central New Mexico, it was a dry, desertified mess. The roads leading to homesteads abandoned since the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s had eroded into gullies. Overgrazing had stripped away soil-stabilizing ground cover. Where plowing had occurred, precious topsoil had dried up and blown away in the area’s fierce winds. Years of fire suppression had allowed pinyon-juniper forest to supplant grassland.
“There was little here except broom weed, cactus, and pinyon-juniper,” says Mr. Goodloe. “And yet, it had tremendous potential.”
The soil quality was good. Native American petroglyphs of beavers suggested that the area once supported a more productive ecosystem. With the proper care, the land could recover, Goodloe thought. But that would depend on bolstering its ability to retain water, the limiting factor in much of the semiarid Southwest.
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by B. R. GOWANI

For some years now we have been hearing declarations such as “Pakistan is a failed state” or is a country that is on the path to failure. A possibility cannot be ruled out that few pundits in the US may predict such an outcome and then those in power may work toward that goal and thus the prediction may come true. However, in Pakistan’s case, it is not in the US interest to do that, and so it would refrain from any such foolishness. Like that saying: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” the Bush government can’t afford to use up all its foolishness in the same region—there is another region, the Latin America, where Venezuela and Bolivia may expect such foolishness. (The word foolishness is used because the height of warmongering criminality can’t be addressed in any other manner.)

But the present state of affairs in Pakistan has brought that country to such a critical phase of its young but sickly deformed life that it can undo itself without any further interference from the United States.

The former prime minister who had tried to remove his chief of army General Pervez Musharraf back in 1999 but was instead himself overthrown and sent into exile to Saudi Arabia by the General is back in Pakistan because the Saudis didn’t want to hold him anymore. Another reason was that the secular and pro-US Benazir Bhutto had returned back to Pakistan from an exile. Sharif has accused Musharraf of carrying out orders from the United States and thus portraying himself as a man who won’t lend his ears to Washington.

Is it a sheer bravado to distinguish himself from Musharraf (and Bhutto) or is he in fact showing an independent stance? Only time will tell. It can happen that before long (if the elections are held and turns in his favor), he’ll change his tune—either on his own when he meets the US Ambassador to Pakistan or on the prodding of Saudi Arabia, who will, of course, be carrying out an order from the Bush administration. (Sharif already had a meeting with Ambassador Anne W. Patterson on December 3, 2007. She has been calling on many political leaders to make sure that whoever comes to power is well aware of the United States’ “interests” and its “war on terror.”)

How much difference the coming election will make is not an easy task to predict. The nature of things to come is difficult to foresee with any accuracy. Chances are slim that any leader will be able to control the Islamic militants; and rare are chances that she/he will be able to manage the country with their support because that would mean pushing Pakistan further down the religious drain.

Compare to Pakistan the United States is a piece of cake to predict things. You always know that every four years a corporate lackey belonging either to the Republican Party or the Democratic Party would be the next president without any ifs or buts.

Still, one has not much to lose in foreseeing few things that Pakistan could probably witness in the coming months, and they are:

Election, if held, ends without any clear winner and thus a weak coalition government gets formed. If that happens the chances are it could create Bangladesh style politics where the opposition boycotts the parliamentary proceedings as a regular ritual and eventually the army, Pakistan’s custodian, once again strikes back.

Another situation could be where Benazir Bhutto is the clear winner. However, she’ll have to fight on two fronts: the Muslim militants and the Sharif supporters. It would be hell of a job for her. The army would watch expectantly.

On the other hand if Sharif gets enough seats to implement his agenda, whatever it may be, for Pakistan he’ll prove to be a ghost of Zia. It would be a mixture of the seventh and the twenty-first centuries.

Sharif has in the past talked about introducing Islamic laws and so it wouldn’t be surprising if he goes ahead and brings back some of the seventh century into the twenty first century and keep content the traditional mullahs. Those mullahs will then try to convince the militant Muslims that the future of Islam is safe in Sharif’s hands. At the same time Sharif can’t ignore the US—who can sent Pakistan back “to the stone age”—and so he’ll go along with the army leadership in its US “war on terror.”

Of course, it could prove disastrous for Sharif. The army can always use Sharif’s coziness with the mullahs as an excuse to dump Sharif once again with, of course, the United States connivance.

It can happen that irrespective of the outcome, Pakistan slides further into chaos and stays in that condition for a long period with more areas gradually falling into the hands of militant groups and ultimately becoming an Islamistan—worse than the Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.

Or it can disintegrate—which would be the most tragic scenario with serious regional and international repercussions. The “failed state” would really fail and disappear from the globe.

In that case, the province of Sindh with its many grievances against the Center will try to become a “Sindhu Desh,” an independent country, which has been the dream of many Sindhis for so long. They can convince the Urdu speaking people (the ethnic group known as Muhajirs) to join them by offering that relations with India would be the first priority and thus they’ll have easy access to their relatives across the border. (Also, the Hindu Sindhis in India and Diasporas who feel special affinity with the land of Sindh will be frequent visitors.)

One imperialist power had divided the Pashtun people through the Durand Line; however, the present imperialist power through its “war on terror” is helping help them to become one. And if Pakistan fails, it will speed up the process.

Baluchistan, which wanted to be an independent entity, was forced to join the newly created nation of Pakistan in 1947. Since then its aspirations for more autonomy has been crushed by military many a times. So without doubt, it will try to carve out its own place on the world map.

(US Retired Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peter’s 2006 map which he designed to solve the problems plaguing the Middle East shows “Free Baluchistan,” made up of Pakistani Baluchistan and Irani Baluchestan.)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/images/harita_b.jpeg

Azad Kashmir, the Pakistani portion of the disputed territory of Kashmir can join the Indian held Kashmir to either become an autonomous region of India, or go for another prolonged war of independence from India.

Poor Punjab will then be left with no one to exploit but itself.

Turmoil will be an instant fate of Iran and Afghanistan (enhancing its present crisis). Many in India will be thanking all the gods and goddesses for Pakistan’s disappearance till the time the reality hits them—and it won’t be too long.

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

(The above article first appeared in Counter Currents.)

By Forugh Farrokhzad

From the summer of 1964 through December 1966, Farrokhzad published five poems in various issues of Arash. One of them was “Someone Who Is Not Like Anyone” (1966). In it, she scrutinizes the new Pahlavi Tehran of modern, Westernized, mechanized ways and goods, indicts upper class Tehranis, and calls for social justice for lower class Tehranis. In this poem, Farrokhzad presents a dream of an egalitarian Iranian society. The poem reads:

I’ve had a dream that someone is coming.
I’ve dreamt of a red star,
and my eyes lids keep twitching
and my shoes keep snapping to attention
and may I go blind
if I’m lying.
I’ve dreamt of that red star
when I wasn’t asleep.
Someone is coming,
someone is coming
someone better,
someone who is like no one,
not like Father,
not like Ensi,
not like Yahya
not like Mother,
and is like the person who he ought to be.
and his height is greater than the trees
around the overseer’s house,
and his face is brighter
than the face of the mahdi,
and he’s not even afraid
Of Sayyed Javad’s brother
who has gone
and put on a policeman’s uniform.
and he’s not even afraid of Sayyed Javad himself
who owns all the rooms of our house.
and his name just like Mother
says it at the beginning
and at the end of prayers
is either ‘judge of judges’
or ‘need of needs’.
And with his eyes closed
he can recite
all the hard words
in the third grade book,
and he can even take away a thousand
from twenty million without coming up short.
and he can buy on credit
however much he needs
from Sayyed Javad’s store.
And he can do something
so that the neon Allah sign
which was as green as dawn
will shine again
in the sky above the Meftahiyan Mosque.
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Women executives [in Copenhagen, Denmark] will buy up stock in order to bring shareholders’ attention to the lack of women on boards of directors.
In an effort to place women on company boards, a group known as Best.Women has announced that it intends to buy shares in seven major companies with one or no female board members. By buying the shares, the group hopes to be able to speak during the companies’ AGMs and draw attention to the lack of women in the boardroom.
In addition to its stock purchases, Best.Women intends to hold courses in being a board member.
‘We want to establish a trainee project for 10 women who want to be on boards. We intend to contact companies and urge them to allow one of the women to shadow the boards for a year – unpaid,’ said Susan Lund, a Best.Woman board member who heads the organisation’s training projects.
Best.Woman has purchased shares in Carlsberg, Novozymes, Lundbeck, GN Store Nord, DSV, FL Smith and IC Companys.
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One of the greatest comedians of the Twentieth Century, Charlie Chaplin made one of his finest movies, “Modern Times,” in 1936. The film’s theme is equally applicable in today’s world, where the fast paced life full of stress and tension has turned people into mental zombies.