Month: October 2009

By B. R. Gowani

Utho meri dunyA ke gariboN ko jagA do
KAkh-e-umrA ke dar-o-deewAr hilA do

Jis khet se dehkAN ko muyassar na ho rozi
Us khet ke har khosha-e-gandam ko jalA do

Rise and rouse my world’s wretched ones
Shake fiercely the palaces of the rich ones

Scorch every cluster of wheat in the field
That denies livelihood to the tilling ones

Poet/philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938)

The police, the government and the security machinery have become so strong that you can’t even think of such an uprising. The capitalists are not scared of the poor. No. The poor cannot reach them, but the rich can and do always to the poor — with their begging bowls that have a perpetual hole. With the poor people’s money, they’ll fill up the crack because, otherwise, the former’s future will slide down that hole.

What can the poor do? They’ll give the money because the leaders of two parties (probably, the only democracy in the world which has only two parties representation) declare that that’s the only option left. There is a South Asian saying: “They both defecate with one anus.” It applies perfectly to the Republicans and the Democrats, the permanently damaged and corrupt twins, always in sync in the way they govern, whether it is wars or bailouts.

The corporate-owned media has sung the lullaby of the capitalist system’s importance for so long that the majority of the people (bearers of brunt of the failed policies) are always in a state of political drowsiness due to the daily dose of this media-anesthesia. Hence, any collective voice of dissent by them is out of question.

These same capitalists are on a successful march in the developing countries with the help of their black and brown counterparts, who are also spreading their wings and flaunting their wealth shamelessly.

Ordinary people are fighting a losing battle. The power and cunningness of the capitalists is sure to succeed. (The Indian media can get first prize, if there was such a thing, as the best imitator of its US counterpart. Their media will thus lead the public to “manufactured consent.”)

The capitalists allow people to say or write whatever they want through outlets other than their own dominant media. This gives some room (more like a shack) for the frustrated people to vent out anger while easing their pain of being frequently screwed by the capitalists.

Nothing changes. The only thing that changes is the writer’s or speaker’s blood pressure readings.

Whatever crimes the Bush administration had committed and whatever crimes the Obama government is committing; and whatever miseries capitalism has caused, within and without the US, the following two great realities cannot be ignored:

1. The façade of United States being the “greatest democracy” and capitalism as the only suitable system for the human species, have lost their hijabs. The dire situation of the poor has continued to demonstrate the inefficacy of the capitalist system. In 1900, Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Henry L. Sprague: “I have always been fond of the West African proverb: “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” <1>

2. The second factor is the greed of the capitalists that extended to such an extent that the sick system not only imploded but it also exploded creating not only a national crisis but a global one too.

A very bold woman for her time, Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth, once said affectionately about her father: “My father wants to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening.” <2>

The United States should learn from Ms. Roosevelt-Longworth’s astute observation as this narcissism holds true today too.

The same politicians who never tire of preaching “less government” have opened up the public coffers to the people responsible for the economic mess: a humongous tragedy. Christopher Ketcham said: “Let the free market carry out their corpses to the gutter.” <3>

Here is a fair and equitable suggestion:

• Any time a corporation goes down, the top leadership and their family members should be stripped of all their wealth.
• That wealth should then be used to move one of the poorest inner city neighborhoods; to a newly built neighborhood.
• The neighborhood should be chosen by a lottery drawing.
• The vacant hood should then be populated with the top leadership and their families.
• They would serve their time here just like community service.
• They can move out when they’re able to financially.
• In this way, the cost and drama of the Congressional hearings can be avoided.
• Also in some cases, the guilty elite can avoid prison and now be free to live in the inner city slums.

In the current government bail-out big businesses prevailed as usual, while the common people lost, the wealthy won more. The US failed its people; and it is “business as usual”.

Iqbal was aware of the cunning traits of the capitalists.

He wrote:

Makar ki chAloN se bAzi le gayA sarmAedAr
IntehAi sAdgi se khA gayA mazdur mAt

With deceptive moves the capitalist was victorious
The worker lost his game due to his extreme simplicity

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

Notes

1 LG
2 WHW
3 CP

(Submitted by reader)

Via 3Quarks Daily

(Editorial MRZine)

The government of President Leonel Fernández, with the support of the powerful Catholic Church and the far right (known as the Nazionalistas), will soon adopt a new constitution that will set the country back decades.

The new constitution is part of a ruling class attack on working people in a desperate attempt to preserve the status quo in the midst of the biggest world economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Thus, the government seeks to legitimize racism, sexism and homophobia by banning abortion under any circumstance including rape, incest and if the health of the mother is at risk; stripping the children of undocumented Haitian immigrants of their Dominican citizenship; and finally, defining the institution of marriage as “the union between a man and a woman”, excluding same-sex relationships in the process. This is a blow to the fight for women’s and LGBT equality and immigrant rights in the island.

Resistance to the new constitution is spreading throughout the country. According to a new Gallup poll, 80% of the population supports abortion.

Furthermore, immigrant rights and women and LGBT organizations are demanding that the government do not go through with the constitution and that abortion be legalized. Activists are also demanding a referendum to re-write a new, democratic constitution for the people.

We, the undersigned, call on the Dominican government to amend the new constitutional provisions that will negatively impact women, undocumented Haitian immigrants and their descendants and LGBT people.

We call on social justice organizations and progressive individuals here in the United States and worldwide to express solidarity with all the sectors of the Dominican population affected by the new constitution by picketing the Dominican government diplomatic representations and consulates in every corner of the world.

MRZ

By Colm McNaughton

The war in Guatemala has never ceased. While the Peace Accords signed in 1996 demobilized some combatants and weapons – the killing, raping and torturing continues unabated. In 2009 the homicide rate for Guatemala, with a population of 13 million, is about 8,000 per year. Of these 8,000 murders approximately 10 percent are women and girls.

According to figures from Guatemala City based women’s group Grupo Guatemalteco de Mujeres (GGM) between January 2002 and January 2009 there were 197,538 acts of domestic violence, 13,895 rapes and 4,428 women were murdered. What is perhaps even more disturbing is that for this tsunami of violence there is a 97 percent impunity rate. One of the main reasons for near total impunity in the Guatemalan context is that the people responsible for the genocidal civil war against indigenous people in which 200,000 people were murdered and 50,000 disappeared have never, nor are they ever likely to be held accountable.

In August and September of 2009 I visited Guatemala, at least in part, to examine how the civil war has been superseded by an as yet undeclared social war, part of which is an ongoing femicide.

This journey really starts for me in early September 2009 in the Ixil triangle, which is an area in the western highlands framed by the three townships of Nebaj, Chajul and Cotzal. It is a fiercely indigenous region which has resisted the colonialism and brutal immiseration forced upon the region since the times of the Spanish invasion. Consequently, it bore the brunt of the genocidal ‘scorched earth’ policies enacted by the consecutive military dictatorships of Romeo Lucas Garcia and Rios Mont in the early 1980s. At this time there were more than 200 massacres and 16,000 deaths, which led to a population decrease of the region by a quarter.

I visited Finca Covabunga, which is just up the road from Chul, a bumpy, dusty, windy three hour trip through the mountains on the back of a pick up, north of Nebaj. On December 9, 1982, 75 men, women and children were massacred by the Guatemalan army. The exhumation of seven or so bodies from two graves – the rest had been eaten by dogs, birds and time – was organized by the Centre for Forensic Analysis and Scientific Application (CAFTA) and it was part of their ongoing campaign against impunity for genocide in Guatemala. In speaking with the folks from CAFTA they were not hopeful of a prosecution – there is no functioning legal system in Guatemala – but they keep on building the case anyway. Over the two days I was in the community, like everyone else I tried to find a little spot underneath the black plastic to watch the digging: a pair of gumboots here, a crumbling skull there, some paperwork in a pocket, all carefully collected, noted and packed. One of the most surreal experiences of my life is helping to clean up the site and carrying plastic bags full of clothing, body parts and personal affects of recently exhumed massacre victims to the four-wheel drive for further tests and safer storage. As the exhumation continued an old woman wept, someone let off fireworks, others cooked beans and tortillas, young boys played football and stony faced older men talked softly in conjobal, a Mayan language.

UDW

Judith Basutama/IRIN

By Fred Oluoch

Nairobi — The refugee situation in East Africa has reached alarming levels and the United Nations is urging members countries to adopt the Tanzanian formula of integration.

Even though there is no armed conflict in East Africa at the moment, there are about 880,000 refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.

This is because of civil war in Burundi prior to the peace talks, strife in Somalia and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, war between Ethiopia and Eritrea and the post election violence in Kenya.

The latest report by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) says people fleeing their home countries cite poor human rights record, discrimination on account of ethnicity, persecution for political beliefs, lack of sound democratic ideals, poor governance and intolerance to dissent.

Recently, Tanzania gave citizenship to 3,568 of 160,000 Burundi refugees who have lived in the country for over three decades.
Other EAC member states are being asked to emulate this example and absorb refugees who are not willing to return to their countries of origin, but who have useful skills.

Kenya’s hands could be tied by its immigration laws, even though top government officials say they are considering granting citizenship to refugees born in the country and those who have lived there for more than 20 years.

Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang’ recently told The EastAfrican that it is up to parliament to change the laws governing refugees.
He said the main problem is that some of the countries the refugees fled are still in active combat.

Tanzania and Rwanda are the only countries without IDPs.
According to George Kuchio, senior protection officer of UNHCR Uganda, EAC member states, in the spirit of the regional integration, should expedite their protocols on freedom of movement, not just for goods and services.

AA

THE ROVING EYE

By Pepe Escobar

Fasten your seat belts; it’s gonna be a bumpy ride. As a crucial subplot of the New Great Game in Eurasia, Balochistan – on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border – promises turbulence aplenty. Welcome to United States General Stanley McChrystal’s self-fulfillment prophecy – “Chaos-istan” in action.

There are few doubts the deadly (as many as 49 fatalities) suicide bombing on Sunday in Pishin, near Sarbaz, in the deserted, impoverished Iranian province of Sistan-Balochistan, was carried out by Pakistani Balochistan-based Jundallah (“Soldiers of God”).

This is being billed by Iranian state-controlled media as the worst suicide bombing ever in the country. Key casualties include the number two of the armed forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Brigadier Nour-Ali Shoushtari, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the provincial IRGC commander and assorted Sunni and Shi’ite tribal leaders.

The IRGC – the key component of the dictatorship of the mullahtariat currently in power in Tehran – is seething, to say the least. It is one thing to repress student protests in Tehran; but how could they not see this coming, and how could they not prevent it, considering their allegedly good ground intelligence on Jundallah’s support by the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia?

Ibrahim Raisi, the vice president of Iran’s judiciary, says there’s evidence the US and Britain support Jundallah not only with intelligence but with weapons. Conservative paper Resaalat denounces “Saudi money” and “American spies” who “have tried for years to raise ethnic tension in the region”.

Tehran’s paranoia does contain an element of truth: Iran is in effect encircled by the US in invaded Iraq and occupied Afghanistan, and it is a victim of terrorist attacks from outfits based in third countries. The head of the IRGC, General Mohammad-Ali Jafari, said that an Iranian team would go to Islamabad to “prove” that Jundallah was “supported by American and British intelligence services and unfortunately the Pakistani intelligence service”.

Meet the new contras

Jundallah was founded in 2003 by Nek Mohammad Wazir – a top, charismatic Pakistani Taliban commander killed by Islamabad’s forces in 2004. Its current leader is the youthful Abdel Malik Rigi, who studied at the famous Binori mosque in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi, the alma mater of many a Taliban luminary.

Approximately 2,000 strong, Jundallah claims to represent the Sunni Balochi struggle against the centralizing power of Tehran. Nonsense: pan-Balochi aspirations actually are better represented by other Balochi nationalist groups, such as the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) in Pakistan. Jundallah for its part does not threaten Islamabad; it is an ultra-sectarian, anti-Shi’ite outfit immersed in the intolerant Deobandi interpretation of Islam.

Jundallah has its headquarters in Karachi and bases in both Balochistans. It does have a firm connection to the South Waziristan tribal areas; it has been connected to the hardcore Sunni and viscerally anti-Shi’ite Lashkar-e-Jhangvi; and is definitely tactically connected to al-Qaeda, “talking” if not to the historic leadership ensconced, in theory, in South Waziristan, at least to the “new generation” al-Qaeda.

AT

By Paul Craig Roberts Countercurrents.org

The US has every characteristic of a failed state.

The US government’s current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation.

Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the US relies on terrorism and military aggression.

Costs are out of control, and priorities are skewed in the interest of rich organized interest groups at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. For example, war at all cost, which enriches the armaments industry, the officer corps and the financial firms that handle the war’s financing, takes precedence over the needs of American citizens. There is no money to provide the uninsured with health care, but Pentagon officials have told the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House that every gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $400.

“It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” said Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the subcommittee.

According to reports, the US Marines in Afghanistan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon, that comes to a $320,000,000 daily fuel bill for the Marines alone. Only a country totally out of control would squander resources in this way.

While the US government squanders $400 per gallon of gasoline in order to kill women and children in Afghanistan, many millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their homes and are experiencing the kind of misery that is the daily life of poor Third World peoples. Americans are living in their cars and in public parks. America’s cities, towns, and states are suffering from the costs of economic dislocations and the reduction in tax revenues from the economy’s decline. Yet, Obama has sent more troops to Afghanistan, a country half way around the world that is not a threat to America.

It costs $750,000 per year for each soldier we have in Afghanistan. The soldiers, who are at risk of life and limb, are paid a pittance, but all of the privatized services to the military are rolling in excess profits. One of the great frauds perpetuated on the American people was the privatization of services that the US military traditionally performed for itself. “Our” elected leaders could not resist any opportunity to create at taxpayers’ expense private wealth that could be recycled to politicians in campaign contributions.

Republicans and Democrats on the take from the private insurance companies maintain that the US cannot afford to provide Americans with health care and that cuts must be made even in Social Security and Medicare. So how can the US afford bankrupting wars, much less totally pointless wars that serve no American interest?

The enormous scale of foreign borrowing and money creation necessary to finance Washington’s wars are sending the dollar to historic lows. The dollar has even experienced large declines relative to currencies of third world countries such as Botswana and Brazil. The decline in the dollar’s value reduces the purchasing power of Americans’ already declining incomes.
…
An unmistakable sign of Third World despotism is a police force that sees the public as the enemy. Thanks to the federal government, our local police forces are now militarized and imbued with hostile attitudes toward the public. SWAT teams have proliferated, and even small towns now have police forces with the firepower of US Special Forces. Summons are increasingly delivered by SWAT teams that tyrannize citizens with broken down doors, a $400 or $500 repair born by the tyrannized resident. Recently a mayor and his family were the recipients of incompetence by the town’s local SWAT team, which mistakenly wrecked the mayor’s home, terrorized his family, and killed the family’s two friendly Labrador dogs.

If a town’s mayor can be treated in this way, what do you think is the fate of the poor white or black? Or the idealistic student who protests his government’s inhumanity?

In any failed state, the greatest threat to the population comes from the government and the police. That is certainly the situation today in the USA. Americans have no greater enemy than their own government. Washington is controlled by interest groups that enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.

The one percent that comprise the superrich are laughing as they say, “let them eat cake.”

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.

CC

The Lahore University of Management Sciences promises to prohibit public displays of affection after a highly publicized peck on the cheek exposed deep fissures in Pakistani society.

By Issam Ahmed

When an unsuspecting female student at Lahore University of Management Sciences turned to peck her boyfriend on the cheek during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan last month, she probably thought her private moment would remain just that.

Instead the kiss – which a fellow student witnessed, documented, and then blasted in an email to the entire university as part of her “dossier” on campus PDAs (public displays of affection) – has sparked a passionate, headline-grabbing debate about how conservative Pakistani society should be.

The vigilant student, Tajwar Tashfin Awan, sent the mass email in an effort to generate support from students and the administration, which has since promised to “see any PDA go the route of the dodo.” Instead, in the past several weeks it has generated hundreds of replies invoking anger, humor, and famous philosophers on what is normally a quiet listserv.

The brouhaha at LUMS, Pakistan’s premier educational institution, points to the drastically different ideological directions in which youths across the country are being pulled, says Asif Akthar, the Lahore-based blogger who first reported the story and is now a research assistant at the university.

“I think [the debate over the kiss] signifies a conflict between different cultural identities and shows there is something unresolved there,” he says.

LUMS’s leafy campus, located in a heavily fortified compound in the posh Defence neighborhood of Lahore, has stood out in Pakistan as a place where students of all stripes seem to coexist. Dressed in everything from burqas and shalwar kameez to tank tops and skinny jeans, and drawn mostly from the upper-middle class, the student body goes on to hold top jobs in finance, industry, law, and software engineering. Many continue their studies in the West.

“At LUMS, you’ll find people of all ideological persuasions studying and living together easily. There’s a deeply secular community. There are religious ascetics who believe in a more tolerant form of Islam. There are Deobandis [an ultraconservative branch of Islam], and there are Marxists,” says Ammar Rashid, a recent graduate and now research assistant in social sciences.

CSM
(Submitted by reader)

(Submitted by reader)