Janakeeya Manushyavakasa Prasthanam (People's Human Rights Organisation), has condemned the arrest of Porattam general convenor M.N.Ravunni. In a statement the organisation pointed out that the arrest of Ravunni, an ardent critic of state terror, is aimed at keeping him silent behind the bars.
The statement issued by the Organisation is posted here.
CONDEMN THE ARREST OF M.N.RAVUNNI
M.N.Ravunni General Convenor of Porattam - a mass organisation - was arrested by the police today.
On 31/8/2008 Agaly police arrested two Porattam activists Sunil Babu and Vinod from Goolikadavu following a quarrel with some local people. The Agaly police kept them under illegal detention for two days and also subjected them to custodial torture. They were produced before the Judicial First Class Magistrate, Mannarkkad on 2/9/2008 in crime no.183/2008 on the charges of sedition and conspiracy to wage war against state.
On 1/9/2008 M.N.Ravunni attended a press conference at Palakkad press club accusing the police officers for the violation of human rights and on 2/9/2008 M.N.Ravunni filed a complaint before the State Human Rights Commission praying for the intervention of the commission in this matter.
Two days before Agaly Dy. S.P contacted Mr. Ravunni and informed him to be present at Palakkad S.P Office for recording his statement as instructed by the State Human Rights Commission. Accordingly he went to Palakkad S.P Office on 29/09/2008 and the police took him under custody. He is now under custody of Agaly Dy. S.P and the police arrayed him as an accomplice in crime no.183/2008 under the charge of sedition and conspiracy to wage war against state. The arrest is a counterblast to the complaint raised by him before the Human Rights Commission.
Two weeks ago a Human Right Activist’s Fact Finding Team including Adv. P.A. Pouran, PUCL State Secretary Kerala, Dr. Abdul Salam State Secretary CHRO, Adv Thushar Nirmal Sarathy Convenor Janakeeya Manushyavakasa Prasthanam visited Goolikadavu and nearby places and collected facts behind the arrest of Sunil babu and Vinod. The fact finding team concluded unanimously that the arrest of Sunil and Vinod was illegal and demanded immediate withdrawal of false case registered against them. The Hon’ble High Court of Kerala later granted bail to Sunil and Vinod.
Now the arrest of Ravunni is clearly an act of retaliation, particularly for the role played by him in exposing the human rights violation of Agaly police and also with a larger intention to keep him silent behind bars as he is an ardent critic of the state.
‘JANAKEEYA MANUSHYAVAKASHA PRASTHANAM’ strongly condemns the arrest of M.N.Ravunni and appeal all the democratic forces all over the country to join hands against the STATE TERROR.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Revolutionary Feminist Movement to stage Dharna
Even as the CPI(M) led LDF government of Kerala playing all dirty tricks to foil the land struggle in Chengara, Viplava Streevadi Prasthanam(Revolutionary Feminist Movement), the women's wing of CPI(ML) Naxalbari has decided to stage a dharna in front of Pathanamthitta collectorate on 6th October. Sadhujana Vimochana Samyuktha Vedi Secretaty Celina Prakkanam will inagurate the dharna, which is held demanding an immediate settlement of the agitation. Dr.P.Geetha, Adv.Nandini, Rekha Raj, Anila George, Maya S., Radhamoni and syamala will speak on the occassion.
As part of the agitations being held by the Prasthanam, a solidarity march too will be held from October 1 to 5.
As part of the agitations being held by the Prasthanam, a solidarity march too will be held from October 1 to 5.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Social activists question the veracity of Delhi encounter killings
Few days back Indian capital Delhi witnessed a highly dramatic incident. Though nobody saw with their eyes any encounter, the Delhi police claimed that they shot dead two alleged terrorists Atif and Sajid at an apartment in Jamia Nagar in the afternoon of 20.09.2008 (Saturday).The police also claimed that Mohan Chand Sharma, an inspector of the Delhi Police's Special Cell also died in the operation while a third alleged terrorist was arrested.
Following the incident a team comprising activists, academicians and journalists visited the site of the police operation. And demanding a fair, impartial and independent probe into the incident they have raised a few questions and contradictions regarding the case. Given below are the questions posed by them.
On the basis of our interactions with the local residents, eye witnesses and the reports which have appeared in the media, we would like to pose the following questions:
1. It has been widely reported that in early August this year Atif, who is described by the Delhi Police as the mastermind behind the recent terrorist bombings in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi, underwent a police verification exercise along with his four roommates in order to rent the apartment they were staying in Jamia Nagar. All the five youth living in the apartment submitted to the Delhi police their personal details, including permanent address, driving license details, address of the house they previously stayed in, all of which were found to be accurate. Though the police is now denying the veracity of the verification form, Mr. Rehman, the caretaker of the flat, has vouched, on camera, that he accompanied Atif to the Police Station for the verification.
Is it conceivable that the alleged kingpin behind the terrorist Indian Mujahideen outfit would have wanted to undergo a police verification--for whatever purpose-- just a week after the Ahmedabad blasts and a month before the bombings in Delhi?
2. The four-storeyed house L-18 in Jamia Nagar, where the alleged terrorists were staying, has only one access point, through the stair case, which is covered by an iron grill. It is impossible to leave the house except from the staircase. By all reports, the staircase was taken over by the Special Cell and/ or other agencies during the counter-terror operation. The house, indeed the entire block, was cordoned off at the time of the operation. How then was it then possible, as claimed by the police, for two alleged terrorists to escape the premises during the police operation?
3. The media has quoted 'police sources' as having informed them that the Special Cell was fully aware about the presence of dreaded terrorists, involved in the bombings in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi, staying in the apartment that was raided.
Why was the late Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma, a veteran of dozens of encounter operations, the only officer in the operation not wearing a bullet proof vest? Was this due to over-confidence or is there something else to his mysterious death during the operation? Will the forensic report of the bullets that killed Inspector Sharma be made public?
4. There are reports that towards the end of the counter-terror operation, some policemen climbed on the roof of L-18 and fired several rounds in the air. Other policemen were seen breaking windows and even throwing flower pots to the ground from flats adjacent or opposite to L-18. Why was the police firing in the air and why did it indulge in destruction of property around L-18 after the encounter?
5. The police officials claim that an AK-47 and pistols were recovered from L-18. What was the weapon that killed Inspector Sharma? Was the AK-47 used at all and by whom? Going by some reports that have appeared (see 'Times of India', 20.09.08), the AK-47s have been used by the police only. Is it not strange that alleged terrorists did not use a more deadly and sophisticated weapon like the AK-47, which they purportedly possessed, preferring to use pistols?
We feel that there are far too many loose ends in the current story of the police encounter at L-18 in Jamia Nagar.We demand that a fair, impartial and independent probe into the incident be initiated at the earliest to answer the above questions as also any other ones that arise from the contradictions of the case.
Signed/-
Shabnam Hashmi (Anhad)
Satya Sivaraman (Independent Journalist)
Manisha Sethi (Forum for Democratic Initiatives)
Tanweer Fazal (Forum for Democratic Initiatives)
Arshad Alam (Jamia Millia Islamia)
Neshat Quaiser (Jamia Millia Islamia)
Pallavi Deka (General Secretary, JNU Students' Union)
Following the incident a team comprising activists, academicians and journalists visited the site of the police operation. And demanding a fair, impartial and independent probe into the incident they have raised a few questions and contradictions regarding the case. Given below are the questions posed by them.
On the basis of our interactions with the local residents, eye witnesses and the reports which have appeared in the media, we would like to pose the following questions:
1. It has been widely reported that in early August this year Atif, who is described by the Delhi Police as the mastermind behind the recent terrorist bombings in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi, underwent a police verification exercise along with his four roommates in order to rent the apartment they were staying in Jamia Nagar. All the five youth living in the apartment submitted to the Delhi police their personal details, including permanent address, driving license details, address of the house they previously stayed in, all of which were found to be accurate. Though the police is now denying the veracity of the verification form, Mr. Rehman, the caretaker of the flat, has vouched, on camera, that he accompanied Atif to the Police Station for the verification.
Is it conceivable that the alleged kingpin behind the terrorist Indian Mujahideen outfit would have wanted to undergo a police verification--for whatever purpose-- just a week after the Ahmedabad blasts and a month before the bombings in Delhi?
2. The four-storeyed house L-18 in Jamia Nagar, where the alleged terrorists were staying, has only one access point, through the stair case, which is covered by an iron grill. It is impossible to leave the house except from the staircase. By all reports, the staircase was taken over by the Special Cell and/ or other agencies during the counter-terror operation. The house, indeed the entire block, was cordoned off at the time of the operation. How then was it then possible, as claimed by the police, for two alleged terrorists to escape the premises during the police operation?
3. The media has quoted 'police sources' as having informed them that the Special Cell was fully aware about the presence of dreaded terrorists, involved in the bombings in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi, staying in the apartment that was raided.
Why was the late Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma, a veteran of dozens of encounter operations, the only officer in the operation not wearing a bullet proof vest? Was this due to over-confidence or is there something else to his mysterious death during the operation? Will the forensic report of the bullets that killed Inspector Sharma be made public?
4. There are reports that towards the end of the counter-terror operation, some policemen climbed on the roof of L-18 and fired several rounds in the air. Other policemen were seen breaking windows and even throwing flower pots to the ground from flats adjacent or opposite to L-18. Why was the police firing in the air and why did it indulge in destruction of property around L-18 after the encounter?
5. The police officials claim that an AK-47 and pistols were recovered from L-18. What was the weapon that killed Inspector Sharma? Was the AK-47 used at all and by whom? Going by some reports that have appeared (see 'Times of India', 20.09.08), the AK-47s have been used by the police only. Is it not strange that alleged terrorists did not use a more deadly and sophisticated weapon like the AK-47, which they purportedly possessed, preferring to use pistols?
We feel that there are far too many loose ends in the current story of the police encounter at L-18 in Jamia Nagar.We demand that a fair, impartial and independent probe into the incident be initiated at the earliest to answer the above questions as also any other ones that arise from the contradictions of the case.
Signed/-
Shabnam Hashmi (Anhad)
Satya Sivaraman (Independent Journalist)
Manisha Sethi (Forum for Democratic Initiatives)
Tanweer Fazal (Forum for Democratic Initiatives)
Arshad Alam (Jamia Millia Islamia)
Neshat Quaiser (Jamia Millia Islamia)
Pallavi Deka (General Secretary, JNU Students' Union)
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Dancing under the gun
I received this article from A World to Win News Service. It is posted here for those readers who are not subscribers to World to Win
"Anyone who is familiar with Holocaust archival photos remembers images of Nazis forcing Jews to dance in the ghetto as they laugh derisively."
This comment was made by Israeli blogger Richard Silverstein about an incident at the Tel Aviv international airport 7 September. The Alvin Ailey dance ensemble from New York arrived for a performance they were to give at one of Israel's main venues, the first stop in a six-country tour celebrating the famed New York African-American dance ensemble's fiftieth anniversary.
Abdur-Rahim Jackson, a senior dancer, passed through security with the rest of the troupe. Then he was pulled aside and taken to a holding room.
The problem, security police told him, was his name. "I explained to them," Jackson later recounted, "that my father converted to Islam and gave me that name. They repeatedly asked me what my father's name is, what my mother's name is and why they gave me that name." One security officer told him he should change his name.
But they weren't through with him. They said that his airline pre-flight passenger data, passport, prestige in the field of dance, his travelling with the troupe, his pictures in the dance company's brochures, etc., weren't enough. If he wanted to enter Israel, they said, he would have to dance for them, right there in the interrogation room, surrounded by mocking police. Unwillingly, and highly upset and embarrassed, he said later, he did. (Associated Press, 9 September)
Then he was interrogated by a second set of officers – and again, forced to dance. After about an hour of humiliation, they released him.
The incident made news in Israel for the wrong reasons. Jackson, it turns out, is not now and never has been a Moslem, and his fiancé, although classifiable as Black by zealous profilers, is Jewish. Her Israeli family were waiting at the airport. Nevertheless, Israeli officials adamantly refused to comment, let alone apologize.
Blogger Silverstein points out, "Perhaps it doesn't rise to the same level of humiliation [as the famous Polish ghetto photo]. But that's only because Israeli personnel knew this was an American citizen. You can be certain that if this had been an Israeli Arab dancer the treatment would've been much worse." (richardsilverstein .com)
Much worse: Mohammed Omer, a 24-year-old from Gaza, was one of two winners of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (along with Dahr Jamail). International governmental support, including Dutch diplomats who travelled to get him, forced Israel to let him out of Gaza so he could attend the award ceremony in London. Omer became a journalist as a teenager after an Israeli bulldozer crushed his home while his family was still inside, seriously injuring his mother. Yet, according to a former Dutch ambassador, "He is a moderating voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek peace with Israel." (johnpilger. com, 2 July)
But as with the dancer Jackson, Israel doesn't care if someone really poses a threat or not. They have a system to enforce. Part of that is that no one among those they consider subhuman is allowed to consider themselves as good as the master race. Nor can any of the master race's enforcers entertain the idea that those whose oppression their identity is based on are human beings. Their system stands or falls, ultimately, on guns, but this ideology is essential to its survival.
When Omer tried to re-enter Israel, at the Allenby Bridge from Jordan, again travelling with a Dutch diplomat for protection, eight Shin Bet (Israeli Gestapo) officers surrounded him and demanded his prize money. One put a gun to Omer's head. They forcibly stripped him and made him stand naked. They laughed when he complained that he was a human being. After twelve hours without water, food or a toilet, he vomited and passed out. Then the Shin Bet men used their thumbs to gouge under his eyes and the nerves under his ears and stepped on his throat to cut off his breathing – torture procedures designed not to leave marks. All the while, his Dutch diplomatic escort was waiting. Maybe that's why he ended up in a hospital instead of dead.
Before they tortured him, they made him dance.
"Anyone who is familiar with Holocaust archival photos remembers images of Nazis forcing Jews to dance in the ghetto as they laugh derisively."
This comment was made by Israeli blogger Richard Silverstein about an incident at the Tel Aviv international airport 7 September. The Alvin Ailey dance ensemble from New York arrived for a performance they were to give at one of Israel's main venues, the first stop in a six-country tour celebrating the famed New York African-American dance ensemble's fiftieth anniversary.
Abdur-Rahim Jackson, a senior dancer, passed through security with the rest of the troupe. Then he was pulled aside and taken to a holding room.
The problem, security police told him, was his name. "I explained to them," Jackson later recounted, "that my father converted to Islam and gave me that name. They repeatedly asked me what my father's name is, what my mother's name is and why they gave me that name." One security officer told him he should change his name.
But they weren't through with him. They said that his airline pre-flight passenger data, passport, prestige in the field of dance, his travelling with the troupe, his pictures in the dance company's brochures, etc., weren't enough. If he wanted to enter Israel, they said, he would have to dance for them, right there in the interrogation room, surrounded by mocking police. Unwillingly, and highly upset and embarrassed, he said later, he did. (Associated Press, 9 September)
Then he was interrogated by a second set of officers – and again, forced to dance. After about an hour of humiliation, they released him.
The incident made news in Israel for the wrong reasons. Jackson, it turns out, is not now and never has been a Moslem, and his fiancé, although classifiable as Black by zealous profilers, is Jewish. Her Israeli family were waiting at the airport. Nevertheless, Israeli officials adamantly refused to comment, let alone apologize.
Blogger Silverstein points out, "Perhaps it doesn't rise to the same level of humiliation [as the famous Polish ghetto photo]. But that's only because Israeli personnel knew this was an American citizen. You can be certain that if this had been an Israeli Arab dancer the treatment would've been much worse." (richardsilverstein .com)
Much worse: Mohammed Omer, a 24-year-old from Gaza, was one of two winners of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (along with Dahr Jamail). International governmental support, including Dutch diplomats who travelled to get him, forced Israel to let him out of Gaza so he could attend the award ceremony in London. Omer became a journalist as a teenager after an Israeli bulldozer crushed his home while his family was still inside, seriously injuring his mother. Yet, according to a former Dutch ambassador, "He is a moderating voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek peace with Israel." (johnpilger. com, 2 July)
But as with the dancer Jackson, Israel doesn't care if someone really poses a threat or not. They have a system to enforce. Part of that is that no one among those they consider subhuman is allowed to consider themselves as good as the master race. Nor can any of the master race's enforcers entertain the idea that those whose oppression their identity is based on are human beings. Their system stands or falls, ultimately, on guns, but this ideology is essential to its survival.
When Omer tried to re-enter Israel, at the Allenby Bridge from Jordan, again travelling with a Dutch diplomat for protection, eight Shin Bet (Israeli Gestapo) officers surrounded him and demanded his prize money. One put a gun to Omer's head. They forcibly stripped him and made him stand naked. They laughed when he complained that he was a human being. After twelve hours without water, food or a toilet, he vomited and passed out. Then the Shin Bet men used their thumbs to gouge under his eyes and the nerves under his ears and stepped on his throat to cut off his breathing – torture procedures designed not to leave marks. All the while, his Dutch diplomatic escort was waiting. Maybe that's why he ended up in a hospital instead of dead.
Before they tortured him, they made him dance.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
In Memory of September 11
Its yet another September 11; one of the darkest days in history. It was on on this day in 1973, the Chilean military, with the backing and under the direction of the U.S. government, murdered democracy in Chile. Just before his death the elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, made this speech over Chilean radio. As he spoke, nonfascist radio stations were being knocked off the air:
Santiago de Chile, 11 September 1973
My friends,
Surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the antennas of Radio Magallanes.
My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros [paramilitary police].
Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I am not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.
They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.
Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, together with the reaction, created the climate in which the Armed Forces broke their tradition, the tradition taught by General Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same social sector who today are hoping, with foreign assistance, to re-conquer the power to continue defending their profits and their privileges.
I address you, above all, the modest woman of our land, the campesina who believed in us, the mother who knew our concern for children. I address professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals who continued working against the sedition that was supported by professional associations, classist associations that also defended the advantages of capitalist society. I address the youth, those who sang and gave us their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile, the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be persecuted, because in our country fascism has been already present for many hours -- in terrorist attacks, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to act. They were committed. History will judge them.
Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced, and the calm metal instrument of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to his country.
The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either.
Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again and free men will walk through them to construct a better society.
Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!
These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.
To watch Allende speaking please click http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=WEmvWWQkzRM
Santiago de Chile, 11 September 1973
My friends,
Surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the antennas of Radio Magallanes.
My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros [paramilitary police].
Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I am not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.
They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.
Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, together with the reaction, created the climate in which the Armed Forces broke their tradition, the tradition taught by General Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same social sector who today are hoping, with foreign assistance, to re-conquer the power to continue defending their profits and their privileges.
I address you, above all, the modest woman of our land, the campesina who believed in us, the mother who knew our concern for children. I address professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals who continued working against the sedition that was supported by professional associations, classist associations that also defended the advantages of capitalist society. I address the youth, those who sang and gave us their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile, the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be persecuted, because in our country fascism has been already present for many hours -- in terrorist attacks, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to act. They were committed. History will judge them.
Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced, and the calm metal instrument of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to his country.
The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either.
Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again and free men will walk through them to construct a better society.
Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!
These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.
To watch Allende speaking please click http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=WEmvWWQkzRM
Nepal: Prachanda -- `No illusions on the ultimate goal of socialist communism'
In his first interview since he became Nepal's prime minister, Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) chairperson Pushpa Kamal Dahal ``Prachanda'' spoke to Rabindra Mishra of BBC's Nepali Service about the strategies of his new government.
BBC: In the past Maoist leaders had vowed not to keep any private property. They handed over their private properties to the party. Now, what will you do to your salary that you will be drawing as prime minister?
That (money) will go to the country and the people. It will be deposited in the party treasury. Except some amount for the general upkeep, the salary will be deposited in the party treasury.
Then, how can one be assured of the right to private property under your government when you are yourself are not keeping private property?
We do not believe that private property should be abolished. But we believe that the leadership must keep away from making money to ensure that the properties of the people are protected and promoted.
What three things you will do in the next three months that will make a difference to the people?
First, a special committee will be announced to facilitate the integration (of the army) and rehabilitation within six months as part of moves to take the peace process to a logical conclusion. Second, the process of constitution making will be expedited in three months. Third, programs to provide immediate and long-term relief will be announced.
Given that the army integration is being seen as a very sensitive issue will you let the current army chief General Rookmangud Katawal complete his tenure?
The demand of the time is to exercise maximum restraint. The country will suffer by any move that breeds bitterness at this juncture.
So the suspicions about the army chief being sacked are misplaced? He will not be sacked, will he?
That will not happen. As long as everyone including the army, the police and the other officials remain committed to the people's mandate on democracy, peace and change, no one needs to feel insecure. There will be no prejudice against any.
How will you handle the army integration? The Nepali Army seems to have its own ideas about this. How will you merge your combatants into the national army?
Now that I have become prime minister I have been travelling with the army security. I have found a serious commitment and sense of responsibility in the Nepali soldiers. I don't think that we will face any problem in taking this (integration) process to a conclusion.
If you had so much faith in Nepali Army, why did you distrust the NA and, instead, induct your combatants of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) for your personal security?
I never showed such distrust. I never wanted to show any bit of distrust towards NA or police or PLA or armed police. Since last two years armed police and PLA personnel had been providing security to my residence in Naya Bazaar. This was an issue that needed a technical solution. I do not want to suspect anyone or make anyone feel humiliated. The PLA also should not feel that they have been orphaned now that I have become Prime Minister. I am quite sensitive on this matter. Both PLA and NA understand the issue very well.
Among the 20,000 Maoist combatants in the cantonments, how many will be accommodated into the Nepali Army. What happens to the rest?
The PLA combatants who are staying in the cantonments and who have been verified by the United Nations are all eligible for rehabilitation and integration. According to our latest understanding each and every PLA combatant will be given the freedom to choose whether he/she wants to return home or engage in other professions. Therefore, I am not in a position to say how many PLA combatants will be integrated and how many of them will return home.
How long will the ex-King Gyanendra be allowed to stay in the Nagarjuna palace?
We are discussing this matter. The cabinet has just been expanded. It will take up the issue soon.
Will you re-open the probe into the palace killings (of 2001)?
This issue will be raised at the Constituent Assembly. There have been no satisfactory answers yet to the people's serious questions about the incident.
Perhaps the people could raise similar questions about you also?
Maybe. But the people of Nepal have already justified our action -- you call it civil war or people's war -- through the Constituent Assembly verdict. Have the people ever justified the palace killings?
Do you ever feel that you hands are stained with blood?
Sometimes in the event of grave mistakes on our part, I was emotional. But what is more important is the great process of transformation and the class, ethnic, regional and gender consciousness which have come about through our movement. So I do not feel the need to repent.
Would you have visited China first if it had not hosted the Olympic Games?
Let's not get into hypothetical questions. Since China is our neighbour and since we could not attend the inaugural ceremony of the Olympics I went there for the closing ceremony. Anyway, it would not have been easier for me to go there first if there had been no Olympic.
Since China is the land of your inspiration Mao Zedong, you must have harboured wishes to travel there?
I would be lying if I said no.
What do you want to do with the 1950 Indo-Nepal treaty?
Nepal has become a republic passing through big changes since the Rana regime. So, the 1950 treaty should be clearly reviewed. It cannot be kept in the present form.
What are the provisions that you do not like in the present treaty?
I am engaged in consultations on my visit to India soon. So, I do not want to reply to your question at this point.
When are you visiting to India?
I am going to attend the UN General Assembly. I will travel to India before that.
You used to claim that different power centres were blocking your ascent to power. Have you defeated those centres now?
I cannot use the same language as I am prime minister now. I have said on many occasions that had any other party won the election, nothing would have stopped the formation of a new government within a week. It took four months for us.
You have defeated the king and elbowed out Girija Prasad Koirala. Do you feel that you have mastered the policy of 'use and throw'?
I am pained by the allegations that we engage in ``use and throw''. I never think that I have cheated anyone. But in course of advancing my cause, I might have made compromises and come closer to one or another at different times. But there was never any conspiracy there. It was our philosophy of cooperating with others to defeat the primary enemy.
There are two schools of thoughts within your party -- one favouring the people's republic and the other favouring the democratic republic. Which one will prevail?
That is not the case. There is no illusion within our party regarding our ultimate goal of establishing a socialist communism. However, in the current national and international circumstances, we have decided to move ahead by institutionalising the federal democratic republic.
So, you want to establish a people's republic by means of the state of the democratic republic?
We will definitely attempt to establish a people's republic by institutionalising democratic republic and through the legitimate means like elections. Once we attain that, we will then work to achieve socialism and communism.
Will there be a people's republic if your party wins a majority in the next election?
Let's not understand this in a provocative manner. We will definitely try our best to ensure that the new constitution will be as close to the ideal of people's republic as possible. I believe that the constitution would pave the way for a people's republic, socialism and communism.
How can it pave the way for communism when you have said there will be guarantees of all kinds of political freedom?
We have concluded that socialism without multiparty competition and political freedoms cannot survive. We have learned this from the experiences of Russia and other countries.
What are you talking about, socialism or communism?
I am talking about socialism. A lively society can be built only if there are political freedoms and competitions within socialism. Communism is something like a heaven where there is neither a class nor a state nor an army. It will take hundreds of years to reach there.
You are not in a mood to step down as party chairman even after becoming PM. Why?
Certainly since I will not be able to devote adequate time and energy for the party after becoming the PM, other comrades will have to take more responsibility. But there is no rule anywhere in the world that the party chief has to step down when he becomes PM. Besides, ours is a party that believes in central and unified leadership. So there is no question of abandoning one responsibility when taking up another.
You once publicly said that top leaders will not join the government and act like Mahatma Gandhi?
What I said that that will happen only after a people's constitution and a stable government are put in place. We believe that a leader does not need to stick to the position of a prime minister or a president once the revolution is completed, constitution is written and the country cruises on a stable course.
Politicians are smart in playing with words, aren't they?
Not at all, I have only tried to reply in a very direct manner.
How long will your government survive?
It will continue till the constitution is written and the peace process is completed. I believe our party will win majority, even two-thirds majority in the next election. Then, our government will continue for another five years. We will improve our performance during that period. There will come a situation where people will start thinking that Maoists alone can run this country. In the subsequent election, we expect to win 90 percent votes and we will continue in power for many decades.
You have high expectations. Do you believe they will be fulfilled?
Definitely. We have strong faith in people. We are devoted to the nation and the people. No one can severe our relation with the people.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
In memory of Mahmoud Darwish
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died recenlty leaving behind a great legacy of poetic resistance. Following is an article received from A World to Win News Service
In memory of Mahmoud Darwish (13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008 )
A World to Win News Service
The celebrated Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died 9 August after complications from heart surgery. In life, he was one of the world’s very few people who could fill a football stadium with as many as 25,000 listeners for a poetry reading. He had a special place in the hearts of the masses of Palestinians and other Arab people, and this was matched by the high regard in which many intellectuals of all countries held him. His poetry captured the pulse of Palestinian pain in magical ways, making readers laugh and weep. In death, throngs of Palestinians gave homage to him as the symbol and expression of Palestinian aspirations for the return of their land, their country. Darwish put in words the collective passion felt by the women and men, rich or poor, educated or not who were and still are victims of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing and occupation of their lands by the Zionist state of Israel 60 years ago. His poems were put to music and became anthems for two generations of Palestinians and others.
He founded one of the Arab world’s top literary magazines, al-Karmel, in 1981. He wrote 20 volumes of poetry and was translated into more than 20 languages. His first collection of poems in the 1960s included “Identity Card”, which became something of a signature poem for him. It is written in the first person. A common practice among many Palestinians in those days was to respond to hostile Israeli authorities and Arab governments by simply giving an identity number. A few of the lines are:
Write it down!
I am an Arab
My number is 50,000
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged. …………….
At the time of the Nakba in 1948, he was seven. He fled with his family from Birweh, a village in Galilee. The family came back in 1949, risking death at the hands of Zionist militias that had murdered countless Palestinians who tried to return to their homes. He spent the rest of his youth living as a second-class Israeli citizen. His grandfather chose to live on a hill overlooking his land. Until he died, the grandfather watched Jewish immigrants from Yemen living in his home that he could not even visit. Darwish acquired a reputation as a precocious child poet, at age 12. He was asked to compose a poem for a public reading on Israel’s “Independence Day”. His poem described the feelings of a child who returns to his town to find other people sleeping in his bed and tilling his father’s lands. Summoned by the military governor, Darwish was told that if he continued to write subversive material his father’s work permit would be revoked. This incident marked Darwish for life.
His militant poems defined Palestinian existence in the face of Golda Meir’s assertion “There are no Palestinians”. He was jailed five times between 1961 and 1976. Eventually Israel stripped Darwish of his “citizenship” and he became part of the Palestinian diaspora. Once a member of the pro-Soviet revisionist Israeli Communist Party, he spent a year studying in the Soviet Union where he became disillusioned. He became one of many stateless persons wandering around first in Egypt, then Jordan, and finally Lebanon. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 marked another defining moment in Darwish’s life. In Beirut, he lived under the shelling and siege of the city amidst the world’s deafening silence. In the camps outside the city, the Israeli army stood guard while the Lebanese Christian Falangists conducted the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
In 1973 he joined the Palestine Liberation Organisation headed by Yassar Arafat. In 1987 he was appointed to the PLO’s Executive Committee, although he saw his role there as symbolic. In 1993 he broke with Arafat and resigned his position the day after the signing of the Oslo Accords, the U.S.-brokered deal between Israel and the PLO that was to lead to today’s “road map” to nowhere and the PLO’s current role as flunkies under the Israeli occupation. But with the Accords, he was able to return to Palestine in 1996. He lived in the West Bank town of Ramallah, and travelled throughout Palestine when he could, including Gaza.
In the early days of the second Intifada, the world reeled at the infamous photo of Muhammad al-Durrah, a 12 year-old boy crouching in the shelter of his father’s body during an Israeli Defence Force incursion in September 2000. Israeli bullets killed the boy, despite his father’s efforts. Darwish wrote: “We love life – if we can have it.”
In 2002 Ariel Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield, a barbarous reinvasion of West Bank cities, in particular Ramallah. At that time Darwish invited a number of Nobel Prize-winning authors (José Saramago, Wole Soyinka, Juan Goytisolo, Breyten Breytenbach and Russell Banks) to see the military occupation for themselves. Breytenbach recalled the former apartheid rule of South Africa. Banks compared it with American Indian reservations of the nineteenth century. The invasion inspired Darwish to write “A State of Siege”. Some of the lines address the Israeli soldiers shooting up his neighbourhood:
You, standing at the doorsteps, come in
And drink with us our Arabic coffee
For you may feel that you are human like us.
Other lines address the soldier/killer of a foetus:
If you had left the foetus thirty days,
Things would’ve been different
The occupation may end, and the toddler may not remember the time of the siege,
And he would grow up a healthy boy,
And study the Ancient history of Asia,
In the same college as one of your daughters.
And they may fall in love.
And they may have a daughter (who would be Jewish by birth).
What have you done now?
Your daughter is now a widow,
And your granddaughter is now orphaned.
What have you done to your scattered family,
And how could you have slain three pigeons with the one bullet?
Also in 2002, an Israeli reformist Education Minister tried to have five of Darwish’s poems introduced into a “multi-cultural” school curriculum. This aroused a maelstrom of controversy in the Israeli parliament where the proposal was roundly defeated. Darwish commented, “They teach pupils the country was empty. When they teach Palestinian poets, this knowledge is broken. Most of my poetry is about love for my country.” He added,” It is difficult to believe that the most militarily powerful country in the Middle East is threatened by a poem.” The Israeli government considered Mahmoud Darwish a dangerous foe to the end.
His poems expose a wide range of targets: the Israeli government (for instance, its pretending to be the victim (”You stole our tears, wolf”), the U.S. government (for giving every Palestinian child the “gift” of a cluster bomb to play with) and the Arab governments (who refrain from helping the Palestinians and hide their ineptitude behind anti-Semitic rhetoric).
A secular nationalist, Darwish was depressed and angered by Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian political organisations. He was unsparing in his criticism of their narrow power struggle, calling it “suicide in the streets”.
That makes it all the more significant that his funeral in Ramallah was attended by many thousands of people, making it the biggest mass political event in the West Bank since the burial of Arafat.
In memory of Mahmoud Darwish (13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008 )
A World to Win News Service
The celebrated Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died 9 August after complications from heart surgery. In life, he was one of the world’s very few people who could fill a football stadium with as many as 25,000 listeners for a poetry reading. He had a special place in the hearts of the masses of Palestinians and other Arab people, and this was matched by the high regard in which many intellectuals of all countries held him. His poetry captured the pulse of Palestinian pain in magical ways, making readers laugh and weep. In death, throngs of Palestinians gave homage to him as the symbol and expression of Palestinian aspirations for the return of their land, their country. Darwish put in words the collective passion felt by the women and men, rich or poor, educated or not who were and still are victims of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing and occupation of their lands by the Zionist state of Israel 60 years ago. His poems were put to music and became anthems for two generations of Palestinians and others.
He founded one of the Arab world’s top literary magazines, al-Karmel, in 1981. He wrote 20 volumes of poetry and was translated into more than 20 languages. His first collection of poems in the 1960s included “Identity Card”, which became something of a signature poem for him. It is written in the first person. A common practice among many Palestinians in those days was to respond to hostile Israeli authorities and Arab governments by simply giving an identity number. A few of the lines are:
Write it down!
I am an Arab
My number is 50,000
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged. …………….
At the time of the Nakba in 1948, he was seven. He fled with his family from Birweh, a village in Galilee. The family came back in 1949, risking death at the hands of Zionist militias that had murdered countless Palestinians who tried to return to their homes. He spent the rest of his youth living as a second-class Israeli citizen. His grandfather chose to live on a hill overlooking his land. Until he died, the grandfather watched Jewish immigrants from Yemen living in his home that he could not even visit. Darwish acquired a reputation as a precocious child poet, at age 12. He was asked to compose a poem for a public reading on Israel’s “Independence Day”. His poem described the feelings of a child who returns to his town to find other people sleeping in his bed and tilling his father’s lands. Summoned by the military governor, Darwish was told that if he continued to write subversive material his father’s work permit would be revoked. This incident marked Darwish for life.
His militant poems defined Palestinian existence in the face of Golda Meir’s assertion “There are no Palestinians”. He was jailed five times between 1961 and 1976. Eventually Israel stripped Darwish of his “citizenship” and he became part of the Palestinian diaspora. Once a member of the pro-Soviet revisionist Israeli Communist Party, he spent a year studying in the Soviet Union where he became disillusioned. He became one of many stateless persons wandering around first in Egypt, then Jordan, and finally Lebanon. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 marked another defining moment in Darwish’s life. In Beirut, he lived under the shelling and siege of the city amidst the world’s deafening silence. In the camps outside the city, the Israeli army stood guard while the Lebanese Christian Falangists conducted the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
In 1973 he joined the Palestine Liberation Organisation headed by Yassar Arafat. In 1987 he was appointed to the PLO’s Executive Committee, although he saw his role there as symbolic. In 1993 he broke with Arafat and resigned his position the day after the signing of the Oslo Accords, the U.S.-brokered deal between Israel and the PLO that was to lead to today’s “road map” to nowhere and the PLO’s current role as flunkies under the Israeli occupation. But with the Accords, he was able to return to Palestine in 1996. He lived in the West Bank town of Ramallah, and travelled throughout Palestine when he could, including Gaza.
In the early days of the second Intifada, the world reeled at the infamous photo of Muhammad al-Durrah, a 12 year-old boy crouching in the shelter of his father’s body during an Israeli Defence Force incursion in September 2000. Israeli bullets killed the boy, despite his father’s efforts. Darwish wrote: “We love life – if we can have it.”
In 2002 Ariel Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield, a barbarous reinvasion of West Bank cities, in particular Ramallah. At that time Darwish invited a number of Nobel Prize-winning authors (José Saramago, Wole Soyinka, Juan Goytisolo, Breyten Breytenbach and Russell Banks) to see the military occupation for themselves. Breytenbach recalled the former apartheid rule of South Africa. Banks compared it with American Indian reservations of the nineteenth century. The invasion inspired Darwish to write “A State of Siege”. Some of the lines address the Israeli soldiers shooting up his neighbourhood:
You, standing at the doorsteps, come in
And drink with us our Arabic coffee
For you may feel that you are human like us.
Other lines address the soldier/killer of a foetus:
If you had left the foetus thirty days,
Things would’ve been different
The occupation may end, and the toddler may not remember the time of the siege,
And he would grow up a healthy boy,
And study the Ancient history of Asia,
In the same college as one of your daughters.
And they may fall in love.
And they may have a daughter (who would be Jewish by birth).
What have you done now?
Your daughter is now a widow,
And your granddaughter is now orphaned.
What have you done to your scattered family,
And how could you have slain three pigeons with the one bullet?
Also in 2002, an Israeli reformist Education Minister tried to have five of Darwish’s poems introduced into a “multi-cultural” school curriculum. This aroused a maelstrom of controversy in the Israeli parliament where the proposal was roundly defeated. Darwish commented, “They teach pupils the country was empty. When they teach Palestinian poets, this knowledge is broken. Most of my poetry is about love for my country.” He added,” It is difficult to believe that the most militarily powerful country in the Middle East is threatened by a poem.” The Israeli government considered Mahmoud Darwish a dangerous foe to the end.
His poems expose a wide range of targets: the Israeli government (for instance, its pretending to be the victim (”You stole our tears, wolf”), the U.S. government (for giving every Palestinian child the “gift” of a cluster bomb to play with) and the Arab governments (who refrain from helping the Palestinians and hide their ineptitude behind anti-Semitic rhetoric).
A secular nationalist, Darwish was depressed and angered by Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian political organisations. He was unsparing in his criticism of their narrow power struggle, calling it “suicide in the streets”.
That makes it all the more significant that his funeral in Ramallah was attended by many thousands of people, making it the biggest mass political event in the West Bank since the burial of Arafat.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Marx on Money
Money is one of the greatest influences in human life. It can do anything. American empire can purchase parliament members of India with moeny. Money corrupts everything. Here in this post let's read what Karl Marx thought about money.
The Power of Money
If man’s feelings, passions, etc., are not merely anthropological phenomena in the (narrower) sense, but truly ontological affirmation of being (of nature), and if they are only really affirmed because their object exists for them as a sensual object, then it is clear that:
1. They have by no means merely one mode of affirmation, but rather that the distinct character of their existence, of their life, is constituted by the distinct mode of their affirmation. In what manner the object exists for them, is the characteristic mode of their gratification.
2. Wherever the sensuous affirmation is the direct annulment of the object in its independent form (as in eating, drinking, working up of the object, etc.), this is the affirmation of the object.
3. Insofar as man, and hence also his feeling, etc., is human, the affirmation of the object by another is likewise his own gratification
4. Only through developed industry — i.e., through the medium of private property — does the ontological essence of human passion come into being, in its totality as well as in its humanity; the science of man is therefore itself a product of man’s own practical activity.
5. The meaning of private property — apart from its estrangement — is the existence of essential objects for man, both as objects of enjoyment and as objects of activity.
By possessing the property of buying everything, by possessing the property of appropriating all objects, money is thus the object of eminent possession. The universality of its property is the omnipotence of its being. It is therefore regarded as omnipotent. . . . Money is the procurer between man’s need and the object, between his life and his means of life. But that which mediates my life for me, also mediates the existence of other people for me. For me it is the other person.
“What, man! confound it, hands and feet
And head and backside, all are yours!
And what we take while life is sweet,
Is that to be declared not ours?
Six stallions, say, I can afford,
Is not their strength my property?
I tear along, a sporting lord,
As if their legs belonged to me.”
Goethe: Faust (Mephistopheles)
Shakespeare in Timon of Athens:
“Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold?
No, Gods, I am no idle votarist! ...
Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair,
Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant.
... Why, this
Will lug your priests and servants from your sides,
Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads:
This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions, bless the accursed;
Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves
And give them title, knee and approbation
With senators on the bench: This is it
That makes the wappen’d widow wed again;
She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores
Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
To the April day again. Come, damned earth,
Thou common whore of mankind, that put’st odds
Among the rout of nations.”
And also later:
“O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce
‘Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler
Of Hymen’s purest bed! thou valiant Mars!
Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer,
Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow
That lies on Dian’s lap! Thou visible God!
That solder’st close impossibilities,
And makest them kiss! That speak’st with every tongue,
To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!
Think, thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue
Set them into confounding odds, that beasts
May have the world in empire!”
Shakespeare excellently depicts the real nature of money. To understand him, let us begin, first of all, by expounding the passage from Goethe.
That which is for me through the medium of money — that for which I can pay (i.e., which money can buy) — that am I myself, the possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money’s properties are my — the possessor’s — properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness — its deterrent power — is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has a power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?
If money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society to me, connecting me with nature and man, is not money the bond of all bonds? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not, therefore, also the universal agent of separation? It is the coin that really separates as well as the real binding agent — the [. . .] chemical power of society.
Shakespeare stresses especially two properties of money:
1. It is the visible divinity — the transformation of all human and natural properties into their contraries, the universal confounding and distorting of things: impossibilities are soldered together by it.
2. It is the common whore, the common procurer of people and nations.
The distorting and confounding of all human and natural qualities, the fraternisation of impossibilities — the divine power of money — lies in its character as men’s estranged, alienating and self-disposing species-nature. Money is the alienated ability of mankind.
That which I am unable to do as a man, and of which therefore all my individual essential powers are incapable, I am able to do by means of money. Money thus turns each of these powers into something which in itself it is not — turns it, that is, into its contrary.
If I long for a particular dish or want to take the mail-coach because I am not strong enough to go by foot, money fetches me the dish and the mail-coach: that is, it converts my wishes from something in the realm of imagination, translates them from their meditated, imagined or desired existence into their sensuous, actual existence — from imagination to life, from imagined being into real being. In effecting this mediation, [money] is the truly creative power.
No doubt the demand also exists for him who has no money, but his demand is a mere thing of the imagination without effect or existence for me, for a third party, for the [others], and which therefore remains even for me unreal and objectless. The difference between effective demand based on money and ineffective demand based on my need, my passion, my wish, etc., is the difference between being and thinking, between the idea which merely exists within me and the idea which exists as a real object outside of me.
If I have no money for travel, I have no need — that is, no real and realisable need — to travel. If I have the vocation for study but no money for it, I have no vocation for study — that is, no effective, no true vocation. On the other hand, if I have really no vocation for study but have the will and the money for it, I have an effective vocation for it. Money as the external, universal medium and faculty (not springing from man as man or from human society as society) for turning an image into reality and reality into a mere image, transforms the real essential powers of man and nature into what are merely abstract notions and therefore imperfections and tormenting chimeras, just as it transforms real imperfections and chimeras — essential powers which are really impotent, which exist only in the imagination of the individual — into real essential powers and faculties. In the light of this characteristic alone, money is thus the general distorting of individualities which turns them into their opposite and confers contradictory attributes upon their attributes.
Money, then, appears as this distorting power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be entities in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence, and intelligence into idiocy.
Since money, as the existing and active concept of value, confounds and confuses all things, it is the general confounding and confusing of all things — the world upside-down — the confounding and confusing of all natural and human qualities.
He who can buy bravery is brave, though he be a coward. As money is not exchanged for any one specific quality, for any one specific thing, or for any particular human essential power, but for the entire objective world of man and nature, from the standpoint of its possessor it therefore serves to exchange every quality for every other, even contradictory, quality and object: it is the fraternisation of impossibilities. It makes contradictions embrace.
Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a human one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must be a person with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return — that is, if your loving as loving does not produce reciprocal love; if through a living expression of yourself as a loving person you do not make yourself a beloved one, then your love is impotent — a misfortune.
The Power of Money
If man’s feelings, passions, etc., are not merely anthropological phenomena in the (narrower) sense, but truly ontological affirmation of being (of nature), and if they are only really affirmed because their object exists for them as a sensual object, then it is clear that:
1. They have by no means merely one mode of affirmation, but rather that the distinct character of their existence, of their life, is constituted by the distinct mode of their affirmation. In what manner the object exists for them, is the characteristic mode of their gratification.
2. Wherever the sensuous affirmation is the direct annulment of the object in its independent form (as in eating, drinking, working up of the object, etc.), this is the affirmation of the object.
3. Insofar as man, and hence also his feeling, etc., is human, the affirmation of the object by another is likewise his own gratification
4. Only through developed industry — i.e., through the medium of private property — does the ontological essence of human passion come into being, in its totality as well as in its humanity; the science of man is therefore itself a product of man’s own practical activity.
5. The meaning of private property — apart from its estrangement — is the existence of essential objects for man, both as objects of enjoyment and as objects of activity.
By possessing the property of buying everything, by possessing the property of appropriating all objects, money is thus the object of eminent possession. The universality of its property is the omnipotence of its being. It is therefore regarded as omnipotent. . . . Money is the procurer between man’s need and the object, between his life and his means of life. But that which mediates my life for me, also mediates the existence of other people for me. For me it is the other person.
“What, man! confound it, hands and feet
And head and backside, all are yours!
And what we take while life is sweet,
Is that to be declared not ours?
Six stallions, say, I can afford,
Is not their strength my property?
I tear along, a sporting lord,
As if their legs belonged to me.”
Goethe: Faust (Mephistopheles)
Shakespeare in Timon of Athens:
“Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold?
No, Gods, I am no idle votarist! ...
Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair,
Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant.
... Why, this
Will lug your priests and servants from your sides,
Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads:
This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions, bless the accursed;
Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves
And give them title, knee and approbation
With senators on the bench: This is it
That makes the wappen’d widow wed again;
She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores
Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
To the April day again. Come, damned earth,
Thou common whore of mankind, that put’st odds
Among the rout of nations.”
And also later:
“O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce
‘Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler
Of Hymen’s purest bed! thou valiant Mars!
Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer,
Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow
That lies on Dian’s lap! Thou visible God!
That solder’st close impossibilities,
And makest them kiss! That speak’st with every tongue,
To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!
Think, thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue
Set them into confounding odds, that beasts
May have the world in empire!”
Shakespeare excellently depicts the real nature of money. To understand him, let us begin, first of all, by expounding the passage from Goethe.
That which is for me through the medium of money — that for which I can pay (i.e., which money can buy) — that am I myself, the possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money’s properties are my — the possessor’s — properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness — its deterrent power — is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has a power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?
If money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society to me, connecting me with nature and man, is not money the bond of all bonds? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not, therefore, also the universal agent of separation? It is the coin that really separates as well as the real binding agent — the [. . .] chemical power of society.
Shakespeare stresses especially two properties of money:
1. It is the visible divinity — the transformation of all human and natural properties into their contraries, the universal confounding and distorting of things: impossibilities are soldered together by it.
2. It is the common whore, the common procurer of people and nations.
The distorting and confounding of all human and natural qualities, the fraternisation of impossibilities — the divine power of money — lies in its character as men’s estranged, alienating and self-disposing species-nature. Money is the alienated ability of mankind.
That which I am unable to do as a man, and of which therefore all my individual essential powers are incapable, I am able to do by means of money. Money thus turns each of these powers into something which in itself it is not — turns it, that is, into its contrary.
If I long for a particular dish or want to take the mail-coach because I am not strong enough to go by foot, money fetches me the dish and the mail-coach: that is, it converts my wishes from something in the realm of imagination, translates them from their meditated, imagined or desired existence into their sensuous, actual existence — from imagination to life, from imagined being into real being. In effecting this mediation, [money] is the truly creative power.
No doubt the demand also exists for him who has no money, but his demand is a mere thing of the imagination without effect or existence for me, for a third party, for the [others], and which therefore remains even for me unreal and objectless. The difference between effective demand based on money and ineffective demand based on my need, my passion, my wish, etc., is the difference between being and thinking, between the idea which merely exists within me and the idea which exists as a real object outside of me.
If I have no money for travel, I have no need — that is, no real and realisable need — to travel. If I have the vocation for study but no money for it, I have no vocation for study — that is, no effective, no true vocation. On the other hand, if I have really no vocation for study but have the will and the money for it, I have an effective vocation for it. Money as the external, universal medium and faculty (not springing from man as man or from human society as society) for turning an image into reality and reality into a mere image, transforms the real essential powers of man and nature into what are merely abstract notions and therefore imperfections and tormenting chimeras, just as it transforms real imperfections and chimeras — essential powers which are really impotent, which exist only in the imagination of the individual — into real essential powers and faculties. In the light of this characteristic alone, money is thus the general distorting of individualities which turns them into their opposite and confers contradictory attributes upon their attributes.
Money, then, appears as this distorting power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be entities in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence, and intelligence into idiocy.
Since money, as the existing and active concept of value, confounds and confuses all things, it is the general confounding and confusing of all things — the world upside-down — the confounding and confusing of all natural and human qualities.
He who can buy bravery is brave, though he be a coward. As money is not exchanged for any one specific quality, for any one specific thing, or for any particular human essential power, but for the entire objective world of man and nature, from the standpoint of its possessor it therefore serves to exchange every quality for every other, even contradictory, quality and object: it is the fraternisation of impossibilities. It makes contradictions embrace.
Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a human one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must be a person with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return — that is, if your loving as loving does not produce reciprocal love; if through a living expression of yourself as a loving person you do not make yourself a beloved one, then your love is impotent — a misfortune.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Book review: Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country
Following is a slightly abridged review of the book Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country by Sudeep Chakravarti (Penguin/Viking) from the Communist Party of India (Maoist) Information Bulletin (no. 2, 10 May 2008). Editor’s added clarifications are in brackets.
The Maoist movement in India is one of the oldest and longest-sustained revolutionary movements in the contemporary world. Spanning four decades beginning with the first earth-shaking volcanic eruption in a tiny village in Naxalbari, it has become part of folklore in some regions in the country. It had risen, phoenix-like, every time the political pundits had confidently pronounced its certain demise. Top political and police brass had time and again boasted that they had "finished off" the revolution, which, they claimed, had been "imported from abroad". They asserted that Maoist revolution is something alien to the conditions in Gandhi's India where, they claim, people are not prone to violent ways. The latest in this long list of liars, wishful thinkers and vicious propagandists is Mahendra Karma [Congress Party leader in the state of Orissa], who declared amidst much fanfare in June 2005 that he would decimate the Maoists within a year through his state-sponsored terrorist campaign christened salwa judum (peace campaign). When his armed gangsters and the state's khaki-clad goons took a beating in the hands of the Maoists, this scab of the imperialist- big business-feudal combine kept on barking over the past two years that he would finish off the Maoists within a short time. However, nailing all these lies and disgusting boasts by the mediocre politicians and police officials ruling the country, the resilience and growth of the Maoist movement had surprised many sceptics who see the Indian state as an almighty behemoth that can snuff out any armed resistance.
Surprisingly, given the great international significance of revolution in a vast country like India – the second most populous in the world – very few scholars have attempted any serious research into this social phenomenon and books dealing with this protracted insurgency are very few. But of late, several research scholars belonging to various persuasions and particularly so-called independent agencies have suddenly jumped into the fray. There is very less objectivity and realistic analysis in most of these writings. Many of these have begun to paint a scary picture of a rapidly growing “Red Terror” which is supposed to undermine development measures undertaken by the government. They talk of the Maoist movement spreading at an alarming speed to the majority of the states in India.
In Red Sun, published by Penguin (Viking) Books India in early 2008, the author, Sudeep Chakravarti, makes an attempt to understand and present the phenomenon of the Maoist movement in India. It is not, as the writer himself claims, a history of the Maoist movement, but a travelogue that tries to understand the Other India, as he christens it. The positive side of the book is the writer's attempt to present the conditions of the vast majority of the common people – their grinding poverty, excruciating indebtedness, horrific tales of their destitution and displacement by so-called development – leading to extreme helplessness and heart-rending suicides. The writer tries to focus on the aspirations of the majority in India that have been left out of every development scheme and model touted as great boons for the poor by the Indian ruling classes. Overall, the writer has been able to present in a lucid manner the explosive socio-economic milieu that gave rise to, and continues to nurture, the Maoist movement in India. And as a travelogue, this aspect often comes forcefully through conversations with people from various walks of life. He logically anticipates the inevitable spread of the Maoist movement to the urban areas, since similar conditions had pushed the vast majority of the urban poor into utter wretchedness.
Good exposure of state-sponsored terror campaign in Dandakaranya
The exposure of the state-sponsored terrorist campaign in Dandakaranya through the so-called salwa judum comes out forcefully in the book. It is here that the writer is seen at his best and he boldly exposes the havoc created by the state-sponsored vigilante gangs combined with the state and central [Delhi] forces. There is some amount of depth in the writer’s presentation of the movement in one of the crucial regions of the Maoists. He vividly describes the war theatre, the explosive situation and the strategies and plans of the state. As far as the writer’s description of the Maoist movement goes this is the best part in the entire book. After this, the presentation of the movement elsewhere is shallow and based more on hearsay.
None of the movements in other regions such as Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, or Andhra Pradesh are given any in-depth analysis. This reflects a lack of real interaction with the actual players. Even the conversations with such an eminent personality in the revolutionary camp like VV [prominent Andhra Pradesh intellectual Varavara Rao, accused of connections with CPI(M)] lack punch and analysis. The principal weakness of the travelogue is that the writer travelled more along the periphery of the war zone and had hardly any interaction with the Maoist fighters and leaders in any of these regions. Whether this is deliberately done, or the writer found no opportunity to meet the Maoist revolutionaries in the battlefield, is not clear. With the right contacts – and the writer claims to have many such contacts – it is, of course, not difficult to meet CPI (Maoist) underground cadre.
The excerpts from the Fact Finding Report by a team of democratic intellectuals released to
the media in December 2005 and from the Report of April 2006 entitled "When the State Makes War on Its Own People" [see AWTWNS 18 December 2006], Mahendra Karma's statement on the aim of salwa judum ("Unless you cut off the source of the disease, the disease will remain. The source is the people, the villagers.") , the presentation of the full text of Bijapur SP D.L. Manhar's instructions on the wireless to his men which was taped by the Maoists, the story of local journalist Kamlesh Paika, conversations with K.R. Pisda, Collector of Dantewara, the abuse of journalists in the most filthy and uncivilized manner by Alok Awasthi, additional director in Chattisgarh' s Directorate of Public Relations, etc., are well brought out. The aim of the salwa judum as admitted by the government in the official document is also quoted exhaustively.
The most chilling story of the evacuation and setting afire of the village of Darzo in Mizoram by the Indian Army during the early 1970s as part of the sordid plan of resettlement of the villages is very much relevant in the context of the salwa judum campaign and the planned resettlement of the tribals in Dantewara. The comparison with the Mizoram of the 1970s is a commendable job.
At several places in the book, during conversations with the revolutionaries, bureaucrats and police officials, the activities and viewpoints of the two opposing forces in this class conflict are brought into sharp contrast. Some of the remarks by top political and police brass make interesting, and at times, disgusting, reading. For instance, the health minister of Jharkhand, Bhanu Pratap Shahi, says in an interview: "One vasectomy in a Naxalite dominated village means that many potential comrades less… when you have too many mouths to feed and too little food to eat, you may turn into a Naxalite. All I want is to minimize the number of mouths."
The cynical revelation by an officer of the military intelligence of how he and his team had hacked off the heads of six militants just to petrify their Islamic colleagues and to serve as a spiritual insult makes chilling reading. "Then we heard these human rights chaps were coming. So we put the heads back on somehow, crudely stitched them up. We didn't bother with matching head and body." That cynical laughter of the officer while narrating this ghastly incident shows the general sadistic mindset of the police and security establishment, whether it is in Kashmir, the North East, Dandakaranya, Jharkhand, Andra Pradesh or elsewhere. Their proposed solution to the Naxalite issue is outright murder and fascist suppression, despite their occasional declarations to the contrary, meant only to please and appease civil rights activists and liberal-minded intellectuals.
Chattisgarh' s DGP OP Rathor (who died of heart attack on Anti-Terrorist Day) bursts out venom against the Naxals: "Bloody nuisance. There's not a socio-economic one, rather than a law and order problem. Khadi and Khaki bandits are all one and the same with regard to this. Marxism, Leninism or Maoism about them. When I was young I at least sensed some ideology about the Naxalites. But these chaps (now) are nothing but thugs and extortionists. " The Additional Chief Secretary (Home), Government of Chattisgarh, BKS Ray, shows the same abysmally crude attitude and approach towards the Naxalite movement. "These people are just thugs and extortionists. That's why in Chattisgarh you have a spontaneous popular movement against them – these tribals are fed up of the Naxals", he says. Why the tribals were not fed up with the Naxals for 25 years and why all of a sudden they became restive is something this arrogant bureaucrat will never be able to grasp or explain. And why will the tribals be angry with Naxals, even if one accepts the allegations of the rulers that they are extortionists, since the tribals have nothing to lose and everything to gain? Is it not only the big contractors, bureaucrats, traders and industrialists who have big property amassed through primitive methods of exploitation of tribals and loot and plunder of the entire region that actually fear the Maoists and try to snuff them out with all means at their disposal? No wonder, this bureaucrat with a police mind set can only think of exterminating the Maoists as the solution.
It has become a fashion for every police officer and political bigwig to express nostalgic feelings about the Naxals of yesteryears as if they really believed Naxals were sincere in the bygone times and had become a nuisance now. They say they were an educated lot in earlier times but now have lumpen elements in dominance. The fact is today Naxals have the real oppressed classes behind them, which is why it is becoming increasingly difficult for the reactionary ruling classes to suppress them. The change in the composition of the Naxalite movement shows the maturity and grass-roots strength of the movement.
Ideological biases
As is natural in a class-divided society, the presentation in the book, and the conclusions drawn, are subject to the limitations set by the class [outlook] of the writer, in addition to the inescapable influence of oft-repeated verdicts on the movement by earlier writers of various hues. It is not easy to wriggle oneself out of the shackles of ruling ideology, culture and long-inculcated values that continue to reinforce upon one's mind ever since one's childhood. Some of the remarks of the writer bring home this point. For instance, referring to VV's speech at the Tehelka summit in November 2006 in Delhi, the writer says: "Democracy, with all its ills, allows him this public space. I hope he realizes the irony that dogma and undemocratic institutions have no space for others, tolerate no dissent. Mao didn't. The bloom of a Hundred Flowers turned into deepest tragedy. Maybe when the Maoists talk about New India, they really need to talk about gentler Maoism – possibly an oxymoron – as their counterparts have done for Nepal's fragile peace." (p. 292)
The author also cites some instances of punishment given to informers in Dandakaranya, Jharkhand, Orissa by the "dreaded Jan Adalat, or People's Court, which is little more than kangaroo court" and concludes that "These acts are as gruesome, and gratuitous, as what the Maoists accuse state security of."
Another comment or rather conclusion of the author without any analysis runs thus: "In Dantewada, democracy is quite dead, on both sides of the battle line." Surprisingly, he cites the game of chor-police (cops and robbers) played by tribal children to arrive at such an obviously biased conclusion! The author's ideological biases can be seen also from his bland statements regarding the future postrevolutionary society and about Maoist China. He says: "What would it be like if ever revolution were to succeed in India, enough to impose its imprint beyond tribal and caste-roiled areas? Most probably, instant justice, dogmatic and Puritanical life, Soviet-style post-revolutionary rot, vast May Day parades." And he goes on: "Perhaps even brutal China-style state control and a repeat of the Cultural revolution of Mao himself, that ended up killing and damning millions of unbelievers. " He concludes: "From available historical evidence, a Maoist state might do little else but backslide all of India's hard-won victories despite the mire of grand corruption and the utter small-mindedness of administration. "
Needless to say, this writer, as any other writer without living links with the lives of the oppressed masses and the movement, has also become a victim to the almost inescapable influence of the imperialist and ruling class ideological biases as regards comrade Mao and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, post-revolutionary societies, and so on. From the opinions expressed by the writer such as the above one cannot but come to the conclusion that he prefers the status quo in place of a new revolutionary order where, he imagines, freedom will be the first casualty. He forgets that Maoists are also learning from the socialist experiments of the past and will certainly imbibe the positive aspects while rejecting the negative ones.
Some factual errors
There are a few minor factual errors in the book, which could have been avoided with a little more diligence and care by the writer [here the review cites a number of mistakes regarding the identification of individuals, organisational matters and historical questions].
Another problem with the presentation is that several allegations are made regarding the activities of the Maoists by some police officials and political leaders, while no opportunity is available to the former to refute these allegations. When an author quotes these officials it will also be the bounden duty to get the response from the Maoists. Or else, it would mislead the people and amounts to gross injustice to the other side in the ongoing war. For instance, the superintendent of police of Dantewada district, Prabir Kumar Das, alleges that Maoists are against development and do not allow bore-wells to be sunk in their stronghold villages. He is quoted as saying: "When we entered an area 50 kilometres from here, deep inside, we found they had broken hand pumps. Initially, we thought it was to deny police water. Later, when we went to areas we hadn't been to before, there too the pumps were broken. Villagers told us that they were asked by the Maoists to drink only from wells and other natural water sources." The rationale of the Maoists, behind this move, is attributed to their perception of bore-wells as a sign of oppression (!!) "Hand pumps were provided by the state or NGOs with state funding; they were a sign of oppression, and therefore taboo" says this gentleman.
Nothing could be farther from truth. This even goes against common sense, which the top police brains in India pitifully lack. How can the Maoists (the police can at least get their own mineral bottles), survive if they break the hand-pumps? If the author had verified the facts by touring the areas deep inside it would have been really useful in exposing the deliberate concoctions of the police chief. And all this is only to justify the brutal state-sponsored terror campaign in the name of salwa judum with the pretext that the villagers are fed up with Maoist attempts to block development schemes and such trash.
The writer comes to the conclusion that the Maoist movement will soon encompass the urban areas and mobilize the vast masses of the have-nots living in the most distressing conditions in the slums and factories. He rightly says that all the material conditions for the spread of Maoists to the urban areas exist there. He includes entire sections from the document of the CPI(Maoist), "Perspective of Urban Areas", as an appendix and quotes extensively from this document to prove how the Maoists will emerge as a strong urban force too.
The author also tries to place his own theories of In-Land, Out-Land, City States, etc., which he says will characterize the country’s social scenario in the future. Or in other words, that India will increasingly be divided into two: one inhabited by the haves and the other by have-nots, with continuous friction between the two. Although the essence of his thesis will be the unfolding reality – the pointers to this division are already emerging with the fast multiplying expressways, multiplexes, shopping malls, super fast trains, amusement parks, high cost of education, housing and health, drastic cuts in social welfare schemes, and so on – the emerging scenario will be one of acute class struggle with the vast majority of the Indian population locked up in bitter struggles, armed and unarmed, against the exploitative set-up, and fascist state dictatorship becoming the norm. In this cruel, bitter class war the Maoist movement is certain to gain ground and advance towards the goal of liberation of our country from the clutches of the imperialist marauders, decadent feudal forces and comprador big business sharks.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Free the Cuban Five
More than seven years have elapased since the conviction of the five Cuban men who have been languishing in U.S. prison. The empire is turning a deaf ear to the international calls to free Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González. On this occassion i would like to introduce those who dont know the great Five
Who are the Cuban Five?
The Cuban Five are five Cuban men who are in U.S. prison, serving four life sentences and 75 years collectively, after being wrongly convicted in U.S. federal court in Miami, on June 8, 2001.
They are Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González.
The Five were falsely accused by the U.S. government of committing espionage conspiracy against the United States, and other related charges.
But the Five pointed out vigorously in their defense that they were involved in monitoring the actions of Miami-based terrorist groups, in order to prevent terrorist attacks on their country of Cuba.
The Five’s actions were never directed at the U.S. government. They never harmed anyone nor ever possessed nor used any weapons while in the United States.
The Cuban Five’s mission was to stop terrorism
For more than 40 years, anti-Cuba terrorist organizations based in Miami have engaged in countless terrorist activities against Cuba, and against anyone who advocates a normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba. More than 3,000 Cubans have died as a result of these terrorists’ attacks.
Terrorist Miami groups like Comandos F4 and Brothers to the Rescue operate with complete impunity from within the United States to attack Cuba—with the knowledge and support of the FBI and CIA.
Therefore, Cuba made the careful and necessary decision to send the Five Cubans to Miami to monitor the terrorists. The Cuban Five infiltrated the terrorist organizations in Miami to inform Cuba of imminent attacks.
The aim of such a clandestine operation by the Cuban Five—at great personal risk—was to prevent criminal acts, and thus protect the lives of Cubans and other people.
But instead of arresting the terrorists, the FBI arrested the Cuban Five ANTI-terrorists on September 12, 1998. The Five were illegally held in solidarity confinement for 17 months in Miami jail.
The trial began in November 2000. With the seven-month trial based in Miami, a virtual witchhunt atmosphere existed. Defense attorneys’ motions for a change of venue were denied five times by the judge, although it was obvious that a fair trial was impossible in that city.
In a blow to justice, the Cuban Five were convicted June 8, 2001 and sentenced to four life terms and 75 years in December, 2001.
A victory in appeals, then a surprise reversal
On August 9, 2005, after seven years of unjust imprisonment, the Cuban Five won an unprecedented victory on appeal. A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the convictions of the Cuban Five and ordered a new trial outside of Miami.
However, in an unexpected reversal on Oct. 31, the 11th Circuit Court vacated the three-judge panel’s ruling and granted an “en banc” hearing before the full panel of 12 judges. Exactly one year after the victory that granted the Five a new trial, the panel voted 10 to 2 to deny the Five heroes a new trial, and instead affirmed the trial court.
Nine remaining issues of appeal are before the three-judge panel (it is actually two judges now, one has retired), and as of December 2006, final supplemental documents were submitted by defense and prosecution.
Your support is more important than ever
This case is a political case and the Cuban Five are political prisoners.
Their freedom will depend not only on the arduous work of the defense team but just as importantly on the public support that can be organized. Over 250 committees have been established in the United States and around the world, demanding immediate freedom for Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando and René.
Important declarations have been made by hundreds of parliamentarians in Britain, Italy, and the European and Latin American Parliaments. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, with five judges, ruled that there were irregularities in the Five’s trial and arrest, effectively denying them a fair trial and calls on the U.S. government to remedy this injustice.
In the United States, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five is working very hard to build broad support for these anti-terrorist heroes, with forums and video showings, media and publicity work, and a march that was held on Sept. 23, 2006 in front of the White House
For more details click http://www.freethefive.org/
Who are the Cuban Five?
The Cuban Five are five Cuban men who are in U.S. prison, serving four life sentences and 75 years collectively, after being wrongly convicted in U.S. federal court in Miami, on June 8, 2001.
They are Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González.
The Five were falsely accused by the U.S. government of committing espionage conspiracy against the United States, and other related charges.
But the Five pointed out vigorously in their defense that they were involved in monitoring the actions of Miami-based terrorist groups, in order to prevent terrorist attacks on their country of Cuba.
The Five’s actions were never directed at the U.S. government. They never harmed anyone nor ever possessed nor used any weapons while in the United States.
The Cuban Five’s mission was to stop terrorism
For more than 40 years, anti-Cuba terrorist organizations based in Miami have engaged in countless terrorist activities against Cuba, and against anyone who advocates a normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba. More than 3,000 Cubans have died as a result of these terrorists’ attacks.
Terrorist Miami groups like Comandos F4 and Brothers to the Rescue operate with complete impunity from within the United States to attack Cuba—with the knowledge and support of the FBI and CIA.
Therefore, Cuba made the careful and necessary decision to send the Five Cubans to Miami to monitor the terrorists. The Cuban Five infiltrated the terrorist organizations in Miami to inform Cuba of imminent attacks.
The aim of such a clandestine operation by the Cuban Five—at great personal risk—was to prevent criminal acts, and thus protect the lives of Cubans and other people.
But instead of arresting the terrorists, the FBI arrested the Cuban Five ANTI-terrorists on September 12, 1998. The Five were illegally held in solidarity confinement for 17 months in Miami jail.
The trial began in November 2000. With the seven-month trial based in Miami, a virtual witchhunt atmosphere existed. Defense attorneys’ motions for a change of venue were denied five times by the judge, although it was obvious that a fair trial was impossible in that city.
In a blow to justice, the Cuban Five were convicted June 8, 2001 and sentenced to four life terms and 75 years in December, 2001.
A victory in appeals, then a surprise reversal
On August 9, 2005, after seven years of unjust imprisonment, the Cuban Five won an unprecedented victory on appeal. A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the convictions of the Cuban Five and ordered a new trial outside of Miami.
However, in an unexpected reversal on Oct. 31, the 11th Circuit Court vacated the three-judge panel’s ruling and granted an “en banc” hearing before the full panel of 12 judges. Exactly one year after the victory that granted the Five a new trial, the panel voted 10 to 2 to deny the Five heroes a new trial, and instead affirmed the trial court.
Nine remaining issues of appeal are before the three-judge panel (it is actually two judges now, one has retired), and as of December 2006, final supplemental documents were submitted by defense and prosecution.
Your support is more important than ever
This case is a political case and the Cuban Five are political prisoners.
Their freedom will depend not only on the arduous work of the defense team but just as importantly on the public support that can be organized. Over 250 committees have been established in the United States and around the world, demanding immediate freedom for Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando and René.
Important declarations have been made by hundreds of parliamentarians in Britain, Italy, and the European and Latin American Parliaments. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, with five judges, ruled that there were irregularities in the Five’s trial and arrest, effectively denying them a fair trial and calls on the U.S. government to remedy this injustice.
In the United States, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five is working very hard to build broad support for these anti-terrorist heroes, with forums and video showings, media and publicity work, and a march that was held on Sept. 23, 2006 in front of the White House
For more details click http://www.freethefive.org/
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Release of Dr.Binayak Sen sought
A convention held in kochi the other day under the aegis of Dr.Binayak Sen Defense Committe demanded the immediate release of Dr.Binayak Sen. The Committe, an alliance of various organisations including Janakeeya Manushyavakasa Prasthanam (people's Human Rights Organisation)also sought the release of all other human rights activists languishing in various jails across the country.
The convention was inagurated by Ilina Sen, Dr.Sen's wife over phone. Adv.Madhusudanan, eminent journalist K.P.Sethunath, Adv.Chandrasekharan (PUCL), Geo Jose (PUCL) and Adv.Tushar Nirmal Sarathy, convener of the Committe spoke on the occassion.
A painting exhibition and documentary screening were also held as part of the programme.
The convention was inagurated by Ilina Sen, Dr.Sen's wife over phone. Adv.Madhusudanan, eminent journalist K.P.Sethunath, Adv.Chandrasekharan (PUCL), Geo Jose (PUCL) and Adv.Tushar Nirmal Sarathy, convener of the Committe spoke on the occassion.
A painting exhibition and documentary screening were also held as part of the programme.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Free Dr.Binayak Sen campaign
Demanding the immediate release of Dr.Binayak Sen and other political prisoners in India, Dr. Binayak Sen Defense Committee (Kerala) , a co-ordination committee of various organisations including Janakeeya Manushyavakasa Prasthanam (People’s Human Rights Organisation ), PUCL and CHRO has launched a state level campaign in Kerala. As part of this a signature campaign is going on in all districts. This will continue till July 20th. On 19th July an exhibition of paintings, photographs and posters of prominent artists will commence at KSEB Hall, Ernakulam (near Public Library). The works displayed at the exhibition, which is held in solidarity with the campaign will be taken to various college campuses. On 20th July a one day protest meet will be held at the same venue where the exhibition is held.
For further details of the campaign contact Ad.Tushar Nirmal Sarathy(convener, Dr.Binayak Sen Defense Committee). Ph: 9495218579
For further details of the campaign contact Ad.Tushar Nirmal Sarathy(convener, Dr.Binayak Sen Defense Committee). Ph: 9495218579
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Homage to Manuel Marulanda
Manuel Marulanda, one of the greatest revolutionary leaders of Latin America is no more. Few days back his death was confirmed by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia-Peoples Army (FARC-EP). Paying rich homages to the legendary leader,james Petras wrote this article
Homage to Manuel Marulanda
Pedro Antonio Marin, better know as Manuel Marulanda and 'Tiro Fijo (Sure Shot)', was the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples Army (FARC-EP). He was without a doubt the greatest revolutionary peasant leader in the history of the Americas.
Over a period of 60 years he organized peasant movements, rural communities and, when all legal democratic channels were effectively (and brutally) closed, he built the most powerful sustained guerrilla army and supporting underground militias in Latin America. The FARC at its peak between 1999-2005 numbered nearly 20,000 fighters, several hundred thousand peasant-activists, hundreds of village and urban militia units. Even today despite the regime's forced displacement of 3 million peasants resulting from scorched earth policies and scores of massacres, the FARC has between 10,000-15,000 guerrillas in its numerous 'fronts distributed throughout the country.
What make Marulanda's achievements so significant are his organizational abilities, strategic acuity and his intransigent and principled programmatic positions consisting of support of popular demands. Marulanda, more than any other guerrilla leader, had unmatched rapport with the rural poor, the landless, the subsistence cultivators and the rural refugees over three generations.
Beginning in 1964 with two-dozen peasants fleeing villages devastated by a US directed military offensive Marulanda methodically built a revolutionary guerrilla army without either foreign financial or material contributions. Marulanda, more than any other guerrilla leader, was a great rural political teacher. Marulanda's superb organizing skills were honed on the basis of his intimate ties with peasants – he grew up in a poor peasant family, lived among them cultivating and organizing, and spoke their language addressing their most basic daily needs and future hopes. Conceptually and through daily trial and error, Marulanda worked out a series of strategic political –military operations based on his brilliant understanding of the geographic and human terrain. Between 1964 to his recent death, Marulanda defeated or evaded at least seven major military offensives financed by over $7 billion dollars in US military aid, involving thousands of US 'Green Berets', Special Forces, mercenaries, over 250,000 Colombians Armed Forces and 35,000 member paramilitary death squads.
Unlike Cuba or Nicarangua, Marulanda built an organized mass base and trained a largely rural leadership; he openly declared his socialist program and never received political or material support from so-called 'progressive capitalists'. Colombia's armed forces were a formidable, highly trained and disciplined repressive apparatus, bolstered by murderous death squads, unlike Batista's and Somoza's corrupt and rapacious gangsters, who plundered and retreated under pressure. Marulanda, unlike many better-known 'poster-boy' guerrillas, was a virtual unknown among the elegant leftist editors in London, the nostalgic Parisian sixty-eighters and the New York Socialist scholars. Marulanda spent his time exclusively in 'Colombia profunda', the deep Colombia, preferring to converse and teach peasants and learn their grievances, rather than giving interviews to adventure-seeking Western journalists. Instead of writing grandiloquent 'manifestos' and striking photogenic poses, he preferred the steady, unromantic but eminently effective grass roots pedagogy of the disinherited. Marulanda traveled from virtually inaccessible valleys to mountain ranges, from jungles to plains, organizing, fighting…recruiting and training new leaders. He eschewed tripping off to 'World Forums' or following the route of international leftist tourists. He never visited a foreign capital and, it is said, never set foot in the nation's capital, Bogota. But he had a vast and profound knowledge of the demands of the Afro-Colombians of the Coast, the Indio-Colombians of the mountains and jungles, the land claims of millions of displaced peasants, the names and addresses of abusive landlords who brutalized and raped peasants and their kin.
Throughout the 1960's, 70's and 80's numerous guerrilla movements raised arms, fought with greater or lesser capacity and disappeared – killed, surrended (some even turned collaborator) or became immersed in electoral wheeling and dealing. Few in number, they fought in the name of non-existent 'peoples armies'; most were intellectuals who were more familiar with European narratives than the micro-history and popular culture and legends of the people they tried to organize. They were isolated, encircled and obliterated, perhaps leaving a well-publicized legacy of exemplary sacrifice, but changing nothing on the ground.
In contrast, Marulanda took the best punches thrown by the counter-insurgency Presidents in Bogota and Washington and returned them in spades. For every village that was razed, Marulanda recruited dozens of angry and destitute peasant fighters and patiently trained them to be cadres and commanders. More than any guerrilla army, the FARC became an army of the whole people: one-third of the commanders were women, over seventy percent were peasants although intellectuals and professionals joined and were trained by movement-led cadres. Marulanda was revered for his singularly simple life style: he shared the drenching rain under plastic canopies. He was deeply respected by millions of peasants, but he never in any way cultivated a personality cult-figure: He was too irreverent and modest, preferring to delegate important tasks to a collective leadership, with a good deal of regional autonomy and tactical flexibility. He accepted a diversity of views on tactics, even when he profoundly disagreed. In the early 1980's, many cadre and leaders decided to try the electoral route, signed a 'peace agreement' with the Colombian President, formed an electoral party – the Patriotic Union – and successfully elected numerous mayors and representatives. They even gained a substantial vote in Presidential elections. Marulanda did not publicly oppose the accord but he did not lay down his arms and 'go down from the mountains to the city'. Much better than the professionals and trade unionists who ran for office, Marulanda understood the profoundly authoritarian and brutal character of the oligarchy and its politicians. He clearly knew that Colombia's rulers would never accept any land reform just because a 'few illiterate peasants voted them out of office.' By 1987 over 5,000 members of the Patriotic Union had been slaughtered by the oligarchy's death squads, including three presidential candidates, a dozen elected congressmen and women and scores of mayors and city councilors. Those who survived fled to the jungles and rejoined the armed struggle or fled into exile.
Marulanda was a master in evading many encirclement and annihilation campaigns, especially those designed by the best and the brightest from the US Fort Bragg Special Forces counter-insurgency center and the School of the Americas. By the end of the 1990's the FARC had extended its control to over half the country and was blocking highways and attacking military bases only 40 miles from the capital. Severely weakened, the then President Pastrana finally agreed to serious peace negotiations in which the FARC demanded a de-militarized zone and an agenda that included basic structural changes in the state, economy and society.
Unlike the Central American guerrillas who traded arms for elected office, Marulanda insisted on land redistribution, dismantling of the death squads and dismissal of Colombian generals involved in massacres, a mixed economy largely based on public ownership of strategic economic sectors and large-scale funding for peasants to develop alternative crops to coca, prior to laying down arms.
In Washington President Clinton was hysterical and at first opposed the peace negotiations – especially the reform agenda as well as the open public debates and forums widely attended by Colombian civil society and organized by the FARC in the de-militarized zone. Marulanda's embrace of democratic debate, demilitarization and structural changes puts the lie to the charge by Western and Latin American social democrats and center-left academics that he was a 'militarist'. Washington probed to see if they could repeat the Central American peace process – co-opt the FARC leaders with the promise of electoral office and privilege in exchange for selling out the peasants and poor Colombians. At the same time Clinton, with bi-partisan support, pushed through a massive $2 billion dollar appropriation bill to fund the biggest and bloodiest counter-insurgency program since the war in Indochina, dubbed 'Plan Colombia'. Abruptly ending the peace process, President Pastrana rushed troops into the demilitarized zone to capture the FARC secretariat, but Marulanda and his comrades were long gone.
Between 2002 to the present the FARC alternated from offensive attacks and defensive retreats – mostly the latter since 2006. With an unprecedented degree of US financing and advanced technological support, the newly elected narco-partner and death squad organizer, President Alvaro Uribe took charge of a scorched earth policy to savage the Colombian countryside. Between his election in 2002 and re-election in 2006, over 15,000 peasants, trade unionists, human rights workers, journalists and other critics were murdered. Entire regions of the countryside were emptied – like the US Operation Phoenix in Viet Nam, farmland was poisoned by toxic herbicides. Over 250,000 armed forces and their partners in the paramilitary death squads decimated vast stretches of the Colombian countryside where the FARC exercised hegemony. Scores of US-supplied helicopter gun-ships blasted the jungles in vast search and destroy missions – (which had nothing to do with coca production or the shipment of cocaine to the United States). By destroying all popular opposition and organizations throughout the countryside and displacing millions Uribe was able to push the FARC back toward more defensible remote regions. Marulanda, as in the past, adopted a strategy of defensive tactical retreat, giving up territory in order to safeguard the guerrillas' capacity to fight another day.
Unlike other guerrilla movements, the FARC did not receive any material support form the outside: Fidel Castro publicly repudiated armed struggle and looked to diplomatic and trade ties with center-left administrations and even better relations with the brutal Uribe. After 2001, the Bush White House labeled the FARC a 'terrorist organization' putting pressure on Ecuador and Venezuela to tighten cross-border movements of the FARC in search of supply chains. The 'center-left' in Colombia was totally divided between those who gave 'critical support' to Uribe's total war against the FARC and those who ineffectively protested the repression.
It is hard to imagine any guerrilla movement surviving under conditions of massive US financed counter-insurgency, quarter million US-armed soldiers, millions displaced from its mass base and a psychopathic President allied directly to a 35,000 member chain-saw death squads. However Marulanda, cool and determined, directed the tactical retreat; the idea of negotiating a capitulation never entered his mind nor that of the FARC secretariat.
The FARC does not have contiguous frontiers with a supporting country like Vietnam had with China; nor the arms supply from a USSR, nor the international mass support of Western solidarity groups like the Sandinistas. We live in times where supporting peasant-led national liberation movements is not 'fashionable', where recognizing the genius of peasant revolutionary leaders who build and sustain authentic mass peoples armies is taboo in the pretentious, loquacious and impotent World Social Formus – which 'world' routinely excludes peasant militants and for whom 'social' means the perpetual exchange of e-mails between foundations funded by NGO.
It is in this hardly auspicious environment facing US and Colombian Presidents intent on pyrrhic victories, that we can appreciate the political genius and personal integrity of Latin America's greatest peasant revolutionary, Manuel Marulanda. His death will not generate posters or tee shirts for middle class college students, but he will live forever in the hearts and minds of millions of peasants in Colombia. He will be remembered forever as 'Tiro Fijo': the legend who was killed a dozen times and yet returned to the villages to share their simple lives. The only leader who was truly 'one of them', the one who confronted the Yankee military and mercenary machine for a half-century and was never captured or defeated.
He defied them all - those in their mansions, presidential palaces, military bases, torture chambers, and bourgeois editorial offices: He died at after 60 years of struggle of natural causes in the arms of his beloved peasant comrades.
Tiro Fijo presente!
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Three poems by Otto Rene Castillo
The other day i happend to read Guatemalan revolutionary Otto Rene Castillo's poems again. And i thought it would be apt to post some of them here.
Apolitical Intellectuals
One day
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.
They will be asked
what they did
when their nation died out
slowly,
like a sweet fire
small and alone.
No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long siestas
after lunch,
no one will want to know
about their sterile combats
with "the idea
of the nothing"
no one will care about
their higher financial learning.
They won't be questioned
on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
begins to die
the coward's death.
They'll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of the total life.
On that day
the simple men will come.
Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered
their bread and milk,
their tortillas and eggs,
those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them,
and they'll ask:
"What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness
and life
burned out of them?"
Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.
A vulture of silence
will eat your gut.
Your own misery
will pick at your soul.
And you will be mute in your shame.
Satisfaction
The most beautiful thing
for those who have fought a whole life
is to come to the end and say;
we believed in people and life,
and life and the people
never let us down.
Only in this way do men become men,
women become women,
fighting day and night
for people and for life.
And when these lives come to an end
the people open their deepest rivers
and they enter those waters forever.
And so they become, distant fires, living,
creating the heart of example
The most beautiful thing
for those who have fought a whole life
is to come to the end and say;
we believed in people and life,
and life and the people
never let us down.
Before the Scales, Tomorrow:
And when the enthusiastic
story of our time
is told,
who are yet to be born
but announce themselves
with more generous face,
we will come out ahead
--those who have suffered most from it.
And that
being ahead of your time
means much suffering from it.
But it's beautiful to love the world
with eyes
that have not yet
been born.
And splendid
to know yourself victorious
when all around you
it's all still so cold,
so dark.
For those who dont know Castillo , here is a brief description
Otto Rene Castillo was born on April 25th, 1934. He was the son of Juana de Dios Castillo Merida, from whom he inherited his personality and verbosity. These characteristics eventually led him to win the title of Revolutionary Poet of America. Castillo went to primary school in Quetzaltenango and later moved to Guatemala City to attend secondary school at the Central National Institute for Boys. In the Democratic Republic of Germany, he attended the University of Leipzig. He majored in cinematography, taught by Jorvis Ivens, and graduated with a Master's degree in Arts.
At age eighteen, he began his career writing articles for youth magazines. In 1953, poet Werner Ovalle Lopez gave a seminar called, "The Sunday Hour" and declared Castillo a "worthy youth" because at this time he was writing articles for a variety of magazines. As a youth, Castillo participated in the student's association and was president of a youth organization called the Work Party of Guatemala. In 1954, during the Proimperialistic counter revolution, this leading youth with some other democratic intellectuals, went into exile.
Otto Rene Castillo took refuge in El Salvador where he worked as a laborer, salesman and clerk. His life as an emigrant was hard and poor. But during this time, he met Oswaldo Escobar Velado, Roque Dalton Garcia, Roberto Armijo and other writers who encouraged him by reading and promoting his literary works. These were published in the "Daily Latino. " From that point, he went to the university to study law and then founded the University Literary Circle. His influences were Neruda, Hernandez and Vallejo. In 1955, Castillo received the poetry prize of Central America , which was shared by Roque Dalton. In 1956, he received another prize from Guatemalan university students in celebration of the poem, "Motherland, let's Walk." This work, according to his critics, is a reflection of the misery and sadness caused by immeasurable exploitation.
In 1957 after the death of dictator Castillo Armas, the people were, "allowed to breathe easily." Otto Rene Castillo returned to Guatemala to integrate himself into the cultural movement and study law at the University of San Carlos. In 1959, he left for Leipzig by means of the Filadelfo Salazar Scholarship. Between 1957 and 1959 his poems were released in the student editions of "The Student informer" and the "The Impartial." He traveled to Europe, Asia and Africa, acquiring an extensive humane world vision. In 1964, he returned to Guatemala to dedicate himself to cultural activities and the political actions of the Worker's Party. He founded the Experimental Theater of the Capital City Municipality, collaborating with the association of university students who published some of his sonnets in their book "Tecun Uman." Castillo was also published in the university magazine, "Spears and Letters." In 1964, he was put in jail by the Peralta Azurdia regime. Later he was expropriated, traveling to Europe where he organized the World Youth Festival. He later returned secretly to Guatemala to gather up a rebel force to combat the Montenegrista regime. In the distant and humid mountain ranges of Zacapa and Izabel, Catillo experienced the demanding limitations of the guerrilla insurrection and the intimidating, harsh Guatemalan system. Still young Castillo promised the motherland to drink her bitter cups of grief and affliction and become blind so that she can see, fulfilling the words in his poem, "Vamos Patria a Caminar," March 19th, 1967 . He was captured in the mountains of Sierra de las Minas, along with Nora Paiz. He was taken to the brutal estate of Arrana in Zacapa, where he was tortured and burned with various other plantation workers.
The people paid homage in Guatemala, great Britain and Costa Rica to Castillo after his death, by publishing his work "Report of Injustice."
In the final words of Oscar Arutro Palencia, "The thirty three years that Castillo lived with us is our evidence that the decent, intellectual, artistic, and scientific man should grow, raising himself up with his own people, with the humble".
Apolitical Intellectuals
One day
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.
They will be asked
what they did
when their nation died out
slowly,
like a sweet fire
small and alone.
No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long siestas
after lunch,
no one will want to know
about their sterile combats
with "the idea
of the nothing"
no one will care about
their higher financial learning.
They won't be questioned
on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
begins to die
the coward's death.
They'll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of the total life.
On that day
the simple men will come.
Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered
their bread and milk,
their tortillas and eggs,
those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them,
and they'll ask:
"What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness
and life
burned out of them?"
Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.
A vulture of silence
will eat your gut.
Your own misery
will pick at your soul.
And you will be mute in your shame.
Satisfaction
The most beautiful thing
for those who have fought a whole life
is to come to the end and say;
we believed in people and life,
and life and the people
never let us down.
Only in this way do men become men,
women become women,
fighting day and night
for people and for life.
And when these lives come to an end
the people open their deepest rivers
and they enter those waters forever.
And so they become, distant fires, living,
creating the heart of example
The most beautiful thing
for those who have fought a whole life
is to come to the end and say;
we believed in people and life,
and life and the people
never let us down.
Before the Scales, Tomorrow:
And when the enthusiastic
story of our time
is told,
who are yet to be born
but announce themselves
with more generous face,
we will come out ahead
--those who have suffered most from it.
And that
being ahead of your time
means much suffering from it.
But it's beautiful to love the world
with eyes
that have not yet
been born.
And splendid
to know yourself victorious
when all around you
it's all still so cold,
so dark.
For those who dont know Castillo , here is a brief description
Otto Rene Castillo was born on April 25th, 1934. He was the son of Juana de Dios Castillo Merida, from whom he inherited his personality and verbosity. These characteristics eventually led him to win the title of Revolutionary Poet of America. Castillo went to primary school in Quetzaltenango and later moved to Guatemala City to attend secondary school at the Central National Institute for Boys. In the Democratic Republic of Germany, he attended the University of Leipzig. He majored in cinematography, taught by Jorvis Ivens, and graduated with a Master's degree in Arts.
At age eighteen, he began his career writing articles for youth magazines. In 1953, poet Werner Ovalle Lopez gave a seminar called, "The Sunday Hour" and declared Castillo a "worthy youth" because at this time he was writing articles for a variety of magazines. As a youth, Castillo participated in the student's association and was president of a youth organization called the Work Party of Guatemala. In 1954, during the Proimperialistic counter revolution, this leading youth with some other democratic intellectuals, went into exile.
Otto Rene Castillo took refuge in El Salvador where he worked as a laborer, salesman and clerk. His life as an emigrant was hard and poor. But during this time, he met Oswaldo Escobar Velado, Roque Dalton Garcia, Roberto Armijo and other writers who encouraged him by reading and promoting his literary works. These were published in the "Daily Latino. " From that point, he went to the university to study law and then founded the University Literary Circle. His influences were Neruda, Hernandez and Vallejo. In 1955, Castillo received the poetry prize of Central America , which was shared by Roque Dalton. In 1956, he received another prize from Guatemalan university students in celebration of the poem, "Motherland, let's Walk." This work, according to his critics, is a reflection of the misery and sadness caused by immeasurable exploitation.
In 1957 after the death of dictator Castillo Armas, the people were, "allowed to breathe easily." Otto Rene Castillo returned to Guatemala to integrate himself into the cultural movement and study law at the University of San Carlos. In 1959, he left for Leipzig by means of the Filadelfo Salazar Scholarship. Between 1957 and 1959 his poems were released in the student editions of "The Student informer" and the "The Impartial." He traveled to Europe, Asia and Africa, acquiring an extensive humane world vision. In 1964, he returned to Guatemala to dedicate himself to cultural activities and the political actions of the Worker's Party. He founded the Experimental Theater of the Capital City Municipality, collaborating with the association of university students who published some of his sonnets in their book "Tecun Uman." Castillo was also published in the university magazine, "Spears and Letters." In 1964, he was put in jail by the Peralta Azurdia regime. Later he was expropriated, traveling to Europe where he organized the World Youth Festival. He later returned secretly to Guatemala to gather up a rebel force to combat the Montenegrista regime. In the distant and humid mountain ranges of Zacapa and Izabel, Catillo experienced the demanding limitations of the guerrilla insurrection and the intimidating, harsh Guatemalan system. Still young Castillo promised the motherland to drink her bitter cups of grief and affliction and become blind so that she can see, fulfilling the words in his poem, "Vamos Patria a Caminar," March 19th, 1967 . He was captured in the mountains of Sierra de las Minas, along with Nora Paiz. He was taken to the brutal estate of Arrana in Zacapa, where he was tortured and burned with various other plantation workers.
The people paid homage in Guatemala, great Britain and Costa Rica to Castillo after his death, by publishing his work "Report of Injustice."
In the final words of Oscar Arutro Palencia, "The thirty three years that Castillo lived with us is our evidence that the decent, intellectual, artistic, and scientific man should grow, raising himself up with his own people, with the humble".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)