Hunger proliferates in a democracy; India tops the chart

Ground Reality

This is a chart that should put every Indian into shame. Not only an Indian, but also those who swear in the name of democracy. How can people's representatives remain immune to the growing scourge of hunger? Shouldn't this provoke you to ask the basic: why should hunger exist in a democracy?

The illustration above [released ahead of the Sept 20-22 Summit of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)] reflects the monumental failure of the global leadership to address the worst tragedy that a democracy can inflict. Amartya Sen had said that famine does not happen in a democracy, but let me add: hunger perpetuates in a democracy.

The hunger map above is also a reflection of the dishonesty shown by the international leadership to fight hunger. Hunger is the biggest scandal, a crime against humanity that goes unpunished. At the 1996 World Food Summit, political leaders had pledged to pull out half the world's hungry (at that time the figure was somewhere around 840 million) by the years 2015. This commitment was applauded by one and all, including the academicians, policy makers, development agencies and charities, and you name it.

This commitment alone demonstrated the political indifference to mankind's worst crime. Considering FAO's own projections of the number of people succumbing to hunger and malnutrition at around 24,000 a day, I had then said that by the year 2015, the 20 years time limit they had decided to work on, 172 million people would die of hunger. And when the world meets for the MDG Summit in a few days from now, almost 15 years since the WFS 1996, close to 128 million people have already died from hunger.

And you call this an urgency?

No one across the world stood up to call the bluff.

Hunger has instead grown. By 2010, the world should have removed at least 300 million people from the hunger list. It has however added another 85 million to raise the tally to 925 million. In my understanding, this too is a gross understatement. The horrendous face of hunger is being kept deliberately hidden by lowering the figures. In India, for instance, the map shows 238 million people living in hunger. This is certainly incorrect. A new government estimate points to 37.2 per cent of the population living in poverty, which means the hunger tally in India is officially at 450 million. Even this is an understatement. The poverty line is kept so stringent in India (at Rs 17 per person per day) that in the same amount you cannot even think of feeding a pet dog. I wonder how can the poor manage two-square meals a day under this classification.

Hunger is also growing in major democracies. In the US, it has broken a 14-year record, and one in every ten Americans lives in hunger. In Europe, 40 million people are hungry, almost equivalent to the population of Spain. Interestingly, most of the countries in the hunger chart are following democratic forms of governance. And yet, the only country which has made a sizable difference to global hunger is China, which as we all know is not a democracy.

Is it so difficult to remove hunger? The answer is No.

While there is no political will to fight hunger, the business of hunger is growing at a phenomenal rate. The economic growth paradigm that the world is increasingly following in principle aims at minimising hunger, poverty and inequality. But in reality acerbates hunger and inequality. Economists have programmed the mindset of generations in such a manner that everyone genuinely believes that the roadmap to remove hunger passes through GDP. The more the GDP the more will be the opportunities for the poor to move out of the poverty trap. Nothing could be further away from this faulty economic thinking. This is the biggest economic folly that a flawed education system has inflicted.

And it is primarily for this reason that after the 2008 economic meltdown, the international leadership pumped in more than $ 20 trillion to bail out the rich and crooked. On the other hand, removing hunger and poverty from the face of the Earth would cost the world only $ 1 trillion at the most, for which the resources are unavailable. But there is all the money in the world to fill the pockets of the rich, hoping that it would one day trickle down to the poor. Privatising the profits, and socialising the costs. Isn't this political and economic dishonesty?

Hungry stomach offers tremendous business opportunities. Rich economies are buttressed by speculation and free trade in food and agriculture. Opening up of the developing economies provides them opportunities to sell unwanted technologies/goods in the name of development. Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector sees the poor as a business opportunity to bail out the companies from sluggish growth. Micro-finance steps in to empty the pockets of the poor, again in the name of development. So much so that even Climate Change provides tremendous scope to milk the poor.

All this is happening in a democratic world.

The Case of Uttar Pradesh: Who Will Feed India in the Days to Come?

Survival instincts: Soni, 5, holding a lump of mud. Older children wait for the excavated moist mud to eat and the younger ones imitate them. Kamal Kishor/HT

[In April, the Wall Street Journal published an article, "With not enough food, children learn to eat mud" which revealed that "frail, malnourished children eating moist lumps of mud laced with silica—a raw material for glass sheets and soap—because they are not officially classified as poor and so ineligible for official help....in a village of eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP), under an unusually hot April sun, skinny, hungry children silently poked around on the dusty edges of a stone quarry in Ganne village...'It tastes like powdered gram, so we eat it,' said Soni, 5, a listless girl with a protruding belly.....With most families reduced to one or two daily meals of boiled rice and salt—with a watery vegetable on a lucky day—the mud is a free but deadly option at the 20 stone quarries sustaining the poorest villagers....Eating the mud worsens malnutrition and disease, but these families are not eligible for subsidized food and other state programmes." The system's structural crimes against the poor are further described below.

By Devinder Sharma

18 September, 2010, Ground Reality

Uttar Pradesh is the most populous State in the country, and is also the biggest producer of foodgrains. Land acquisitions will take away a third of the cultivable lands for non-farm use. Such huge diversion of farm lands will result in drastic cut in food production, and has threatening socio-political implications.

India is witnessing a thousand mutinies. Pitched battles are being fought across the country by poor farmers, who fear further marginalisation when their land is literally grabbed by the government and the industry. From Mangalore in Karnataka to Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh, from Singur in West Bengal to Mansa in Punjab, the rural countryside is literally on a boil. Large chunks of prime agricultural land are being diverted for non-agricultural purposes.

While the continuing struggle against land acquisition for instance by farmers in Aligarh, which took a violent turn, and became a political ploy is being projected as a battle by farmers for big money, the reality is that a majority of the farmers do not want to dispense with their ancestral land. They are being forced to do so. This has serious implications for food security.

Let us take the case of Uttar Pradesh. It is the most populous State in the country, and is also the biggest producer of foodgrains. Western parts of Uttar Pradesh, comprising the fertile Indo-Gangetic plains, have been considered part of the green revolution belt. According to the 2008 Statistical Abstracts of Uttar Pradesh, in addition to 41 million tonnes of foodgrains, the State produces 130 million tonnes of sugarcane and 10.5 million tonnes of potato.

Uttar Pradesh produces more foodgrains than Punjab but because of its huge population, it is hardly left with any surplus. What is however satisfying is that Uttar Pradesh has all these years been at least feeding its own population.

This is expected to change. And that is what I am worried about. The proposed eight Expressways and the townships planned along the route, along with land being gobbled by other industrial, real estate and investment projects are likely to eat away more than 23,000 villages, one fourth of the total number of villages. Although Mayawati government has dropped the townships along the Yamuna expressway, but the company that is investing in real estate claims that as per their pact with the State government, they have to be given land at an alternative location.

Former Agriculture Minister Ajit Singh has in a statement said that one-third of total cultivable land of Uttar Pradesh will be eventually acquired. The State government neither denies nor confirms this, but acknowledges that land diversion is ‘large’.

This means that out of the total area of 19.8 million hectares under foodgrain crops in Uttar Pradesh, one-third or roughly 6.6 million hectares will be shifted from agriculture to non-agriculture activity. Much of the fertile and productive lands of Western Uttar Pradesh will therefore disappear, to be replaced by concrete jungles. In addition to wheat and rice, sugarcane and potato would be the other two major crops whose production will be negatively impacted.

As per rough estimates, 6.6 million hectares that would be taken out of farming would mean a production loss of 14 million tonnes of foodgrains. In other words, Uttar Pradesh will be faced with a terrible food crisis in the years to come, the seeds for which are being sown now. Add to this the anticipated shortfall in potato and sugarcane production, since the area under these two crops will also go down drastically, the road ahead for Uttar Pradesh is not only dark but laced with social unrest.

Already a part of the BIMARU States, Uttar Pradesh will surely see surge in hunger, malnutrition and under-nourishment. I shudder to imagine the socio-economic and political fallout of the misadventure that the government is attempting with such a massive land takeover. If the State government’s can provide an incentive of Rs 20,000 per acre to those farmers whose lands are being taken away, I fail to understand why the same incentive cannot be provided to every farm family to protect agricultural land?

What is not being realised is that Uttar Pradesh alone will send all the estimates of the proposed National Food Security Act go topsy-turvy. At present, as per the buffer norms, the government keeps around 20 to 24 million tonnes as buffer stocks for distribution across the country through the Public Distribution System (PDS). In the last few years however the average foodgrain stocks with the government have been in the range of 45 to 50 million tonnes.

Even with such huge grain reserves, Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has expressed his inability to provide 35 kg of grain per month to every eligible family. Imagine, what will happen when Uttar Pradesh alone will put an additional demand of 14 million tonnes. Who will then feed Uttar Pradesh?

Policy makers say that with rapid industrialisation the average incomes will go up as a result of which people will have the money to buy food from the open market and also make for nutritious choices. But the bigger question is where will the addition quantity of food come from? Already, Punjab and Haryana, comprising the food bowl, are on fast track mode to acquire farm lands. Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab are building up ‘land banks’ for the industry and Rajasthan has allowed the industry to buy land directly from farmers setting aside the ceiling limit.

Internationally, the food situation is worsening ever since the 2008 food crisis when 37 countries were faced with food riots. Even now, food prices globally are on an upswing. As Russia extends the wheat export ban till the next year’s wheat harvest sending global prices on a hike, deadly food riots were witnessed last week in Mozambique killing at last seven people. According to news reports, anger is building up in Pakistan, Egypt and Serbia over rising prices.

Knowing that the world can witness a repeat of 2008 food crisis that resulted in food riots in 37 countries, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has called for a special meeting to discuss the implications.

Extended drought and resulting wildfires has caused a 20 per cent drop in wheat harvest in Russia sending the global wheat prices on a spiral. Wheat futures obviously would take advantage, and according to Financial Times wheat prices have gone up by 70 per cent since January. India may therefore find it difficult to purchase food from the global market if it thinks it can bank upon the international markets to bail it out. This is primarily the reason why several countries, mainly China and the countries of the oil rich Middle East are buying lands in Africa, Lain America and Asia to grow food to be shipped back home for domestic consumers.

Gone are the days when a worried Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, while addressing the nation on Aug 15, 1955 from the ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi said: “It is very humiliating for any country to import food. So everything else can wait, but not agriculture.” That was in 1955. Fifty-five years later, in 2010, UPA-II thinks that food security needs of the nation can be addressed by importing food. Land must be acquired for the industry, because the industrial sector alone will be the vehicle for higher growth. There can be nothing more dangerous than this flawed approach. Is India slipping back into the days of ‘ship-to-mouth’ existence?

Government Says It Will Break the “Maoist Grip on $80 Billion Investments in India by 2013″

This report from Bloomberg, a financial and business news service, traces the prospects for capital investment in India against the Indian government promise of eliminating the people's resistance, especially that of the Maoists and those labelled as Maoists

Bloomberg

Pillai to Unlock Maoist Grip on $80 Billion Investments in India by 2013

Union Home Secretary Gopal Krishna Pillai

By Bibhudatta Pradhan and Santosh Kumar – Sep 17, 2010

Maoist insurgents blocking $80 billion of investments will be subdued within three years as India pours security forces into contested regions, builds roads and opens schools, Home Secretary Gopal Krishna Pillai said.

“The tactic of keeping a hold on areas is working,” Pillai said in an interview at his office in New Delhi’s British-era government buildings yesterday. Security forces have clawed back 10,000 square kilometers (3,860 square miles) of territory where rebels operated almost one year into a major offensive, he said.

Pillai, 60, and Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram last October started the campaign against leftist rebels who have attacked security forces, railways and mining infrastructure in a third of India’s 626 administrative districts. India needs to clear the so-called “Red Corridor” to access deposits of iron ore, coal, bauxite, and manganese that London-based Execution Noble Ltd. says may secure investments of $80 billion.

To maintain control, India needs to recruit as many as 30,000 security personnel each year, Pillai, the top bureaucrat in the home ministry, and security analysts say. Ambushes by rebels in the jungles of central and eastern India have claimed 211 police lives up to mid-July this year.

“We are nowhere near the required policing, training, and technology to check the Maoists’ growth,” said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management. “There’s no reason to believe that the situation will suddenly improve in the next three years.”

Uprising’s Epicenter

The epicenter of the attacks lies in the forests of the eastern state of Chhattisgarh, which has accounted for almost half of the 573 police and civilians killed in Maoist violence in the first half of this year.

NMDC Ltd., Asia’s third-largest iron-ore producer, operates its biggest mine in the region, and Essar Steel Ltd., India’s fourth ranked producer of the alloy, plans to build a $1.5 billion steel plant there. The Maoists last year blew up Essar’s pipeline built to transport iron ore from NMDC’s mine.

As the rebels have pursued their revolution, Indian governments “ignored the problem for a decade, thinking it will go away,” Pillai said yesterday, conceding Maoist guerrillas targeted by police may have regrouped elsewhere.

Pillai said he doesn’t expect the rebels to agree to put down the guns in the next two years. “If you are comfortable, you are expanding and you are making money, why should you come for talks?” he said.

‘Peal of Thunder’

The leftwing insurgents are known as Naxalites after the West Bengal village of Naxalbari where demands for land reform coalesced into a radical uprising in 1967 inspired by Mao Zedong. The Indian revolt was greeted as “a peal of spring thunder” by China’s People’s Daily.

The Maoists say they are fighting for the rights of poor villagers and tribal communities whose resources are, the rebels argue, being exploited to propel India’s $1.3 trillion economy with few benefits for local people.

Pointing to what he says are newly opened police stations on a map of Bijapur district in Chhattisgarh, Pillai highlights the expanding area colored yellow, in contrast to a shrinking red region still patrolled by the insurgents.

In these areas, roads have been built, schools have started functioning and markets have been opened for the first time in years, he said.

In April, 76 policemen were killed in Dantewada district, the neighboring region to that displayed on Pillai’s computer, in the biggest strike on security forces in four decades of conflict.

Districts Gained

“The government strategy of clear-hold-develop is gaining the upper hand in some patches, mainly in Chhattisgarh,” N. Manoharan, an analyst at the Center for Land Warfare Studies in New Delhi, said today. “But the overall spread of the Maoists is increasing” with 10 to 15 more districts coming under their influence in the last year, he said.

The government needs to improve intelligence gathering, protection for informers and build its forces, Manoharan said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called the Maoists the greatest internal security threat to the world’s biggest democracy and its third fastest growing major economy.

India’s Insurgencies

None of the insurgencies at India’s margins — from a 21- year rebellion in Kashmir to even older separatist movements in the northeast — reach into the heart of the subcontinent.

Pillai, who as secretary in the Ministry of Commerce and Industries from Sept 2006 to June 2009 played a leading role in expounding India’s opposition to developed world farm subsidies at global trade talks, said four Maoist attacks that resulted in large numbers of police fatalities obscured the fact that overall deaths were just below those of a year ago.

In Dantewada, Pillai says, there are 1,500 police personnel, a fraction of the 45,000 based in the similarly sized northeastern state of Tripura, where a separatist insurgency is now largely dormant.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bibhudatta Pradhan in New Delhi at bpradhan@bloomberg.net

Anti Brahmanism week

Porattom, the mass organisation of one of the major Maoist parties in India, CPI(ML) NAXALBARI, has called for an Anti Brahmanism week starting from September 19th to 25th. Socialistplatform received the notice in connection with this via email

CPI(M) Dupes the People, Edits Bhagat Singh

Socialistplatform receieved this from prominent human rights activist Thushar Nirmal Sarathy.

"Let us declare that the state of war does exist and shall exist so long as the Indian toiling masses and the natural resources are being exploited by a handful of parasites. They may be purely British Capitalist or mixed British and Indian or even purely Indian. They may be carrying on their insidious exploitation through mixed or even on purely Indian bureaucratic apparatus. All these things make no difference."

These words are from the last petition written by the great Indian revolutionary Bhagat Singh. According to historian K.N.Panicker "Bhagat Singh was as widely known all over India and as popular as Gandhiji. He was an idol of the youth and a household name, which aroused admiration and respect"

The court which tried Bhagat Singh's case sentenced him and his comrades to death penalty.The charge against them was that they waged war against the British empire. In this letter written to the Punjab governor he discusses the charge against him and asserts that there exist a state of war and instead of stopping there he further goes on stating that such state of war shall exist as long as the toiling masses and natural resources are being exploited by a handful of parasites.

Communist party of India (Marxist) had published the Malayalam translation of this letter in 'Bhagat Singh therenjedutha kruthikal'.This book is translated from English, which was edited by veteran freedom fighter Siva Varma .Translators are K.E.K.Namboodiri,B.B.Nair and Rajasekharan Nair.It was first published in 1988 and second edition on june 2005.The translators simply omitted "shall exist "from the above passage and limited to the circumstances prevailing at the time of british rule. But the english version is self speaking and needs no explanation.

Is it an accidental mistake of translators or a deliberate attempt to edit Bhagat singh ?

Anyway the politics of CPI(M) and the omitted translation goes hand in hand.CPI(M) says that we India is a democratic state and parliament should be used.The above passage of Com.Bhagat Singh clearly contradicts this view. He says that as long as a handful of parasites exploits the toiling masses and the natural resources plundered there will remain a state of war in india.He clarifies that these parasites may be british capitalists or a mix of Indian and British or purely Indian.Being a real revolutionary Bhagat Singh remained true to his vision even at the time of his Martyrdom. The above passage explains/justifies the armed resistence of adivasis in central India today which the CPI(M) fails to acknowledge.

Following are the original letter and its Malayalam translation.

Bhagat Singh's last petition

To
The Punjab Governor

Sir,
With due respect we beg to bring to your kind notice the following:
That we were sentenced to death on 7th October 1930 by a British Court, L.C.C Tribunal, constituted under the Sp. Lahore Conspiracy Case Ordinance, promulgated by the H.E. The Viceroy, the Head of the British Government of India, and that the main charge against us was that of having waged war against H.M. King George, the King of England.
The above-mentioned finding of the Court pre-supposed two things:
Firstly, that there exists a state of war between the British Nation and the Indian Nation and, secondly, that we had actually participated in that war and were therefore war prisoners.
The second pre-supposition seems to be a little bit flattering, but nevertheless it is too tempting to resist the desire of acquiescing in it.
As regards the first, we are constrained to go into some detail. Apparently there seems to be no such war as the phrase indicates. Nevertheless, please allow us to accept the validity of the pre-supposition taking it at its face value. But in order to be correctly understood we must explain it further. Let us declare that the state of war does exist and shall exist so long as the Indian toiling masses and the natural resources are being exploited by a handful of parasites. They may be purely British Capitalist or mixed British and Indian or even purely Indian. They may be carrying on their insidious exploitation through mixed or even on purely Indian bureaucratic apparatus. All these things make no difference. No matter, if your Government tries and succeeds in winning over the leaders of the upper strata of the Indian Society through petty concessions and compromises and thereby cause a temporary demoralization in the main body of the forces. No matter, if once again the vanguard of the Indian movement, the Revolutionary Party, finds itself deserted in the thick of the war. No matter if the leaders to whom personally we are much indebted for the sympathy and feelings they expressed for us, but nevertheless we cannot overlook the fact that they did become so callous as to ignore and not to make a mention in the peace negotiation of even the homeless, friendless and penniless of female workers who are alleged to be belonging to the vanguard and whom the leaders consider to be enemies of their utopian non-violent cult which has already become a thing of the past; the heroines who had ungrudgingly sacrificed or offered for sacrifice their husbands, brothers, and all that were nearest and dearest to them, including themselves, whom your government has declared to be outlaws. No matter, it your agents stoop so low as to fabricate baseless calumnies against their spotless characters to damage their and their party's reputation. The war shall continue.
It may assume different shapes at different times. It may become now open, now hidden, now purely agitational, now fierce life and death struggle. The choice of the course, whether bloody or comparatively peaceful, which it should adopt rests with you. Choose whichever you like. But that war shall be incessantly waged without taking into consideration the petty (illegible) and the meaningless ethical ideologies. It shall be waged ever with new vigour, greater audacity and unflinching determination till the Socialist Republic is established and the present social order is completely replaced by a new social order, based on social prosperity and thus every sort of exploitation is put an end to and the humanity is ushered into the era of genuine and permanent peace. In the very near future the final battle shall be fought and final settlement arrived at.
The days of capitalist and imperialist exploitation are numbered. The war neither began with us nor is it going to end with our lives. It is the inevitable consequence of the historic events and the existing environments. Our humble sacrifices shall be only a link in the chain that has very accurately been beautified by the unparalleled sacrifice of Mr. Das and most tragic but noblest sacrifice of Comrade Bhagawati Charan and the glorious death of our dear warrior Azad.
As to the question of our fates, please allow us to say that when you have decided to put us to death, you will certainly do it. You have got the power in your hands and the power is the greatest justification in this world. We know that the maxim "Might is right" serves as your guiding motto. The whole of our trial was just a proof of that. We wanted to point out that according to the verdict of your court we had waged war and were therefore war prisoners. And we claim to be treated as such, i.e., we claim to be shot dead instead of to be hanged. It rests with you to prove that you really meant what your court has said.
We request and hope that you will very kindly order the military department to send its detachment to perform our execution.

Yours'
BHAGAT SINGH

And here is the scanned copies of Malayalam translation published by Chintha Publishers of CPI(M)

Iraq: Obama renames U.S. military bases as “enduring presence posts”

Business as Usual in Iraq

Marjorie Cohn

Huffington Post, September 12, 2010

Last week, President Obama ceremoniously announced that U.S. combat operations had ended in Iraq. As Democrats face an uphill battle in the upcoming midterm elections, Obama felt he had to make good on his campaign promise to move the fighting from Iraq to Afghanistan. But while he has escalated the killing in Afghanistan, it’s business as usual in Iraq.

The United States, with its huge embassy in Baghdad and five large bases throughout Iraq, will continue to pull the strings there. Last week, Vice President Biden delivered a power-sharing plan to the Iraqis, who have been unable to form a government in the six months since the March election resulted in a stalemate. “We think that’s better for the future of Iraq,” Biden declared. The New York Times speculated about whether “the Americans can close the deal.” But the United States will continue to do a lot more than simply make suggestions about how Iraqis should share political power.

The timing of Obama’s announcement that combat troops are leaving Iraq is based on the status of forces agreement (SOFA) the Bush administration negotiated with the Iraqis in 2008. It calls for U.S. combat troops to leave Iraq by August 31, 2010. The SOFA also requires the Pentagon to withdraw all of its forces by the end of 2011, but this date may be extended.

Obama’s speech about withdrawing combat troops from Iraq is an effort to demonstrate compliance with the SOFA as the midterm elections draw near. But events on the ground reveal that he is playing a political version of the old shell game. As Obama proclaimed the redeployment of a Stryker battalion out of Iraq, 3,000 combat troops from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment redeployed back into Iraq from Fort Hood, Texas. And that cavalry regiment will have plenty of company.

The State Department is more than doubling its “security contractors” to 7,000 to make sure U.S. interests are protected. And with them will come 24 Blackhawk helicopters, 50 Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles and other military equipment.

Fifty thousand U.S. military troops remain in Iraq. Forty-five hundred U.S. special forces troops continue to fight and kill with Iraqi special forces. American troops are still authorized to take preemptive action against any threat they perceive. The policy regarding air strikes and bombings will remain unchanged. And untold numbers of “civilian contractors” – more accurately called mercenaries – will stay in Iraq, unaccountable for their war crimes.

When Obama spoke to the nation about ending combat operations in Iraq, he delivered his message with a spin that would make George W. Bush proud. Obama renamed the U.S. occupation of Iraq “Operation New Dawn,” and talked of the sacrifices we made during “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” But he failed to mention the more than 100,000 dead Iraqis, the untold numbers of wounded Iraqis and the 2 million Iraqis who went into exile. He said nothing about the few hours per day that most Iraqis enjoy electricity. He neglected to note that unions have been outlawed and Iraq’s infrastructure is in shambles. And he omitted any reference to the illegality of Bush’s war of aggression – in violation of the UN Charter – and Bush’s policy of torture and abuse of Iraqis – in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Obama chose instead to praise his predecessor, saying, “No one could doubt President Bush’s . . . commitment to our security.” But foreign occupation of Iraq and mistreatment of prisoners never made us more secure.

Obama also failed to remind us that we went to war based on two lies by the Bush administration: that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that al Qaeda was in bed with Saddam Hussein.

Obama spoke of “credible elections” in Iraq. But “Iraq does not have a functional democracy,” said Raed Jarrar, Iraq consultant for American Friends Service Committee and a senior fellow at Peace Action. “We cannot expect to have a functional democracy from Iraq that was imposed by a foreign occupation,” he said on Democracy Now!

“The new Iraqi state is among the most corrupt in the world,” journalist Nir Rosen wrote in Foreign Policy. “It is only effective at being brutal and providing a minimum level of security. It fails to provide adequate services to its people, millions of whom are barely able to survive. Iraqis are traumatized. Every day there are assassinations with silenced pistols and the small magnetic car bombs known as sticky bombs.”

Obama put the cost of the wars at $3 trillion, an awesome sum that could well be used to provide universal health care, quality education, and improved infrastructure to create jobs in this country. But he overlooked the cost of treating our disabled veterans, many of whom return with traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder. “There is no question that the Iraq war added substantially to the federal debt,” Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes wrote in the Washington Post. “The global financial crisis was due, at least in part, to the war,” they added.

Regardless of how Obama tries to spin his message about the disaster the United States has created in Iraq, 60 percent of Americans think the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a mistake, 70 percent believe it wasn’t worth sacrificing American lives, and only one quarter feel it made us safer. The majority of Iraqis also oppose the U.S. occupation.

As I ponder events unfolding in Iraq, and Obama’s efforts to explain them to us, I am reminded of the highly decorated Marine Corps General Smedley Butler. Nearly 70 years ago he declared that, “War is a racket.” He was referring to the use of Marines in Central America during the early 20th Century to protect U.S. corporations like United Fruit, which were exploiting agricultural resources in that region. In my view, the Iraq war had a similar purpose – to secure the rich Iraqi oil fields and make them available to corporations that will continue to feed America’s petroleum addiction.

In a more honest speech, Obama would have said we successfully removed a leader who was unfriendly to American geopolitical and economic interests and replaced him with people beholden to U.S. money and materiel. U.S. forces have been downsized and re-branded. The “enduring presence posts” (new nomenclature for U.S. bases in Iraq) will ensure that we maintain hegemony in Iraq. Mission accomplished.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. The author of “Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law,” she is deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers

JOHN LENNON-ATTICA STATE

Attica Prison riot

What a waste of human power
What a waste of human lives
Shoot the prisoners in the towers
Forty-three poor widowed wives


Attica State, Attica State, we're all mates with Attica State


Media blames it on the prisoners
But the prisoners did not kill
"Rockefeller pulled the trigger"
That is what the people feel


Attica State, Attica State, we're all mates with Attica State


Free the prisoners, jail the judges
Free all prisoners everywhere
All they want is truth and justice
All they need is love and care


Attica State, Attica State, we're all mates with Attica State


They all live in suffocation
Let's not watch them die in sorrow
Now's the time for revolution
Give them all a chance to grow


Attica State, Attica State, we're all mates with Attica State


Come together join the movement
Take a stand for human rights
Fear and hatred clouds our judgement
Free us all from endless night


Attica State, Attica State, we're all mates with Attica State


Attica State, Attica State, we all live in Attica State


Attica State, Attica State, Attica, Attica, Attica State

Naomi Klein: How We Can Build a Movement So Radical, So Militant, So Powerful That It Becomes Irresistible

Alternet.org



"We have to build that independent left. It has to be so strong and so radical and so militant and so powerful that it becomes irresistible."

“In the name of development”

India: The Historic Struggles in Singur and Nandigram Against Displacement and Special Economic Zones

On the people’s historic struggles against the acquisition of fertile farm land by big Corporations, focused on Singur and Nandigram. The film is directed by Partha Sarathi Banerjee. The film is in বাংলা (Bengali) but has English subtitles.

Old Beijing Man on Mao Zedong & Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

WE have heard from all the rightwing crap-heads that claims Mao Zedong was a mass murderer who is hated by most people for the Cultural Revolution and his wife was a pariah. If that crap was all true, there wouldn’t be people like this guy. And there are a lot of people like this guy from China. If Mao was so murderous why do they still put him on money and put up his pictures in China? Why don’t majority of the Chinsese hate him the way Kampucheans hate Pol Pot?

India is a corporate, Hindu state: Arundhati

CNN-IBN

Hello and welcome to Devil's Advocate. At the end of a week when the Maoists have been on the front pages practically every day, we present a completely different perspective to that of the government's. My guest today is an author, essayist and Booker Prize winner, Arundhati Roy.

Karan Thapar: I want to talk to you about how you view the Maoists and how you think the government should respond, but first, how do you view the recent hostage taking in Bihar where four policemen were kidnapped and kept kidnapped for eight days, and one of them - Lukas Tete - murdered?

Arundhati Roy: I don't think there is anything revolutionary about killing a person that is in custody. I have made a statement where I said it was as bad as the police killing Azad, as they did, in a fake encounter in Andhra. But, I actually shy away from this atrocity-based analysis that's coming out of our TV screens these days because a part of it is meant for you to lose the big picture about what is this war about, who wants the war? Who needs the war?

Karan Thapar: I want very much to talk about the big picture. But, before I come to that, let me point out something else. In the last one year, the Maoists have beheaded Francis Induwar and Sanjoy Ghosh; they have killed Lokus Tete. They have kidnapped other policemen. There have been devastating attacks in Dantewada, there has been the sabotage of the Gyaneshwari Express. In your eyes, does it amount to legitimate strategy or tactics, or does it detract from the Maoist cause?

Arundhati Roy: You can't bundle them all together. For example the train accident. I don't think anybody knows who did it yet.

Karan Thapar: Everyone's convinced that the Maoists...

Arundhati Roy: Everyone can be convinced. But it is not enough to be convinced. You got to have facts and the facts are unravelling every day.

Karan Thapar: What about the Dantewada, the beheadings, the kidnappings?

Arundhati Roy: This thing is that now what's happening is that there is a situation of conflict, of war. So, you have set out a litany of the terrible acts of violence that have taken place inflicted by one side and left out the picture of what's going on the other side, which is that you have two hundred thousand paramilitary forces closing in on these poorest villages, evicting people, burning people. Of course, all violence is terrible but if you want to get into what actually is going on, we will have to discuss it in slightly more detail.

Karan Thapar: So what you are suggesting is that we have a spiral of violence where what one side does to the other justifies the response and, in a sense, you don't want to blame one or the other. You see them both as equally guilty?

Arundhati Roy: No I don't. I don't see both as equally guilty and I don't want to justify anything. I see a government breaking every sort of law in the Constitution that it has about tribal people and assault on the homelands of millions of people and some, there is a resistance force that is resisting that. Now, that situation is becoming violent, becoming ugly. And if you start trying to extract morality out of it, you are going to be in a mess.

Karan Thapar: But one thing that is crystal clear from what you said is you see the government as the first person, the first party, at fault. The bigger fault, the first fault, is the government's, you see the Maoists as just responding.

Arundhati Roy: I see the government absolutely, as the major aggressor. As far as the Maoists are concerned, of course, their ideology is an ideology of overthrowing the Indian state with violence. However, I don't believe that if the Indian state was a just state, if ordinary people had some minor hope for justice, the Maoists would just be a marginal group of militants with no popular appeal.

Karan Thapar: So the Maoists get support and strength from the fact that you don't believe that the Indian state is just.

Arundhati Roy: Let me tell you, forget the Maoists. Every resistance movement, armed or unarmed, and the Maoists today are fighting to implement the Constitution, and the government is vandalising it.

Karan Thapar: So the real constitutionalists are the Maoists and the real breakers of the Constitution is the government?

Arundhati Roy: Not only the Maoists, all resistance groups.

Karan Thapar: Let's focus for the moment on the Maoists because they are the ones that have been in the news all this week. The prime minister sees the Maoists as the single biggest security threat to the country. I take it that your perception of them is completely different. How do you perceive the Maoists?

Arundhati Roy: I perceive them as a group of people who have at a most militant end in the bandwidth of resistance movements that exist in the cities, in the planes and in the forests.

Karan Thapar: But what are they seeking to do? What is their justification?

Arundhati Roy: Well, their ultimate goal, as they say quite clearly, is to overthrow the Indian state and institute the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is their ultimate goal but...

Karan Thapar: Do you, Arundhati Roy, support that goal?

Arundhati Roy: I don't support that goal in the sense that I don't believe the solution to the problem the world is in right now will come from an imagination either communist or capitalist because...

Karan Thapar: That I understand but do you support any attempt to overthrow the Indian state?

Arundhati Roy: Well, I can't say I do because they will lead me from here, in chains.

Karan Thapar: That technicality apart, it sounds as if you do.

Arundhati Roy: However, I believe that the Indian state has abdicated its responsibility to the people. I believe that. I believe that when a state is no longer bound, neither legally nor morally by the Indian Constitution, either we should rephrase the preamble of the Indian Constitution which says...

Karan Thapar: Or?

Arundhati Roy: Which says we are a sovereign, democratic, secular republic. We should rephrase it and say we are a corporate, Hindu, satellite state.

Karan Thapar: Or?

Arundhati Roy: Or we have to have a government which respects the Constitution or we change the Constitution.

Karan Thapar: Let me be blunt. It sounds very much to the audience as if you are trying to find a clever, subtle way of saying that you do support the Maoists commitment to overthrow the state but you are scared to say it upfront because you are scared that you would be whisked away to jail.

Arundhati Roy: If I say that I support the Maoists' desire to overthrow the Indian State, I would be saying that I am a Maoist. But I am not a Maoist.

Karan Thapar: But you sympathise with them.

Arundhati Roy: I do sympathise with all the movements. I am on this side of the line with a group of people who are saying that here is a State that is willing to bring out the Army against the poorest people not just in the country but in the world. I cannot support that.

Karan Thapar: Let me put this to you. You sympathise with the Maoist cause, but what about the tactics that the Maoists use? The problem is that the Maoists want to trade a new democratic order not by persuading people, not by winning legitimate elections but by armed liberation struggle. To many, that is tantamount to civil war. Do you go that far with them?

Arundhati Roy: There is already a civil war. I don't believe that a resistance movement that believes only in violence will lead to a new democracy. I don't believe that. Neither do I believe that if you doctrinally say you must only be non-violent, I believe that is a twisted way of supporting the status quo. I believe that has to be a bandwidth of resistance and I certainly believe that when your village is surrounded by 800 CRPF men who are raping and burning and looting, you can't say I am going on a hunger strike. Then, I support people's right to resist that.

Karan Thapar: But put this to me. If you support, no matter what qualifications you add, the right of theMaoists to resist with violence: whether you call it armed liberation struggle or whatever.

Arundhati Roy: You keep on going to these Maoists.

Karan Thapar: If you support that, no matter with what qualification, how then can you deny the State the right to resort to arms to defend itself?

Arundhati Roy: The State doesn't have to defend itself. The State is supposed to represent the people and defend the people.

Karan Thapar: But if the State is under attack, it is the people that are under attack and...

Arundhati Roy: It is not under attack. The State is perpetrating the attack. That is what I am trying to say. The State is going in violation of its own Constitution and perpetrating an attack. If you look at the recent report, the censured chapter in a recent report by the Panchayati Raj, it says so clearly: the State is being completely illegal in its actions. What do you suggest people should do when an army, a police, a paramilitary, an air force is going to start making war on the poor? Do you suggest that they should leave and live in camps and allow the rich and the corporates and the mining sector to take over?

Karan Thapar: So you are saying that the Maoists and all the other resistance fighters are left with no option but to fight back?

Arundhati Roy: What I am saying is that if a State respects non-violent resistance as has been the case in years, but if you ignore non-violence, by default you privilege violence.

Karan Thapar: But are the Maoists actually pursuing their goal, which you share, non-violently, or are they pursuing it with violence? That's the problem. There is a real issue here that the end seems to justify the means. The question is: do they?

Arundhati Roy: You are not listening to me. I am saying that there is a juggernaut of injustice that has been moving forward, displacing millions of people. Why do we have 836 million people living in on less than Rs 20 a day? Why do we have 60 million displaced people? Because the government refuses. For the last 25 years, it has refused to listen to non-violence.

Karan Thapar: So you see the Maoists as victims?

Arundhati Roy: I see the people as victims of something. If you look at the ideology of the Maoists, they don't think of themselves as victims. But that ideology is getting purchased among people, in the popular imagination because of the incredible injustice that is being perpetrated by the Indian State.

Karan Thapar: In short, the fault is almost entirely on the government’s side?

Arundhati Roy: It is.

Karan Thapar: You say that boldly and bluntly?

Arundhati Roy: Absolutely.

Karan Thapar: I want very much to talk about the prospects of talks but first, let me ask you about Azad. In May, it emerged that the home minister had asked Swami Agnivesh to facilitate talks with the Maoistleadership, and in turn he established contacts with the Maoists leader Azad. But in July, in an unexplained police encounter, Azad suddenly died. Do you believe that was a deliberate ploy to bring Azad into the open and then murder him?

Arundhati Roy: Yes I do.

Karan Thapar: You really mean that? The government laid a trap to murder Azad?

Arundhati Roy: That's what, from all the facts that are emerging, that's what it seems to point to.

Karan Thapar: Why did they do this? Why would they kill the one man with whom they have rational expectations of talks?

Arundhati Roy: I have been saying this for few months now that you have to understand that the government needs this war. It needs this war to clear the land, to hand over, to actualise these MoUs that have been signed. If you read the business papers, they are very clear about that.

Karan Thapar: If the government wants war, how do you interpret the government's attempt to have talks? One is contradictory to the other.

Arundhati Roy: Yeah. It needs the war but it needs to keep this smiling benign mask of democracy. So, it offers talks on the one hand and undermines it on the other.

Karan Thapar: But even if you accept this strange theory that the government is Janus-faced, two-faced, why would it destroy that mask by killing Azad? Why would it destroy itself?

Arundhati Roy: Because if you look at what was happening, Azad was beginning to sound dangerously reasonable.

Karan Thapar: To whom?

Arundhati Roy: To all of us.

Karan Thapar: On the basis of one interview to The Hindu, you have come to the conclusion about Azad sounding reasonable?

Arundhati Roy: Come on Karan, we all know about Azad. He has been around for years. He has written a lot.

Karan Thapar: You may but people surely don't. To them, Azad is a mystery.

Arundhati Roy: No, not at all. For example, the piece that he wrote in Outlook, it was published after his death but it was sent around before.

Karan Thapar: But even if one accepts your theory that the government killed Azad because he was beginning to sound and look reasonable, that would only have made him a credible interlocutor and fit in better into their mask. Surely, that in a sense makes it even more ridiculously contradictory to kill him.

Arundhati Roy: Why would it be. Let's say there are two sides at war, there are more than two but everyone wants to make it binary so, for the sake of argument, accept it. When one side sends an envoy and the other side kills them, what does it mean? That one side does not want peace. That's what it means. That's a reasonable assumption.

Karan Thapar: So this is a duplicitous government?

Arundhati Roy: Absolutely.

Karan Thapar: In which case, let me come to the critical issue which I want to discuss. What are the prospects of talks? The government has repeatedly said that it would be willing to talk provided theMaoists abjure violence, not even asking the Maoists to lay down arms, and many people believe that that's a reasonable and perhaps, even a generous offer. How do you view the government's position on talks?

Arundhati Roy: I think that if you were to go down to those forests and see what's going on, when you have these two hundred thousand paramilitaries patrolling the tribal villages, the cordon and search operations are on, the killings are on, the siege is on, what do you mean to abjure violence? If you say that there should be a ceasefire, mutual ceasefire, which is I think the most reasonable thing, then we can be talking. But if you say you should abjure violence, what does that mean?

Karan Thapar: So one sided abjuring of violence is not what you think will be acceptable, but a mutual ceasefire on both sides?

Arundhati Roy: I think it's absolutely urgent that there should be a ceasefire on both sides.

Karan Thapar: Simultaneous?

Arundhati Roy: Yes. The government reports have said that these MoUs should be re-examined. Chidambaram himself promised in an interview that he would freeze them. Why doesn't he do that?

Karan Thapar: He is probably waiting for a sign from the Maoists that they will respond. He doesn't want to do it unilaterally.

Arundhati Roy: They responded in writing now; Azad responded in writing.

Karan Thapar: Azad is no more. Let me put this to you. You are beginning to suggest in this interview steps, which if they were taken simultaneously by both sides, will actually in some way facilitate talks. Would you be prepared, since you know the Maoists and trusted by the Maoists, to act as a mediator?

Arundhati Roy: Look, if you studied the peace-talks process in Andhra, you see that this business of picking one person and announcing it on the media, both sides have done it. Chidambaram has picked arbitrarily Swami Agnivesh. Maoists arbitrarily announced on the radio that we want this one or that one. That's not how it works. In Andhra, it took almost a year for this committee of citizens to form themselves as responsible people. It should not be one person.

Karan Thapar: Swami Agnivesh, who you say was arbitrarily picked, almost succeeded in bringing Azad to some talking point, except for the fact that as you say, he was killed. But he almost succeeded. So I come back, since you are trusted by the Maoists and since you speak a language, that at least in English, the government can understand, would you be prepared to act as a mediator?

Arundhati Roy: Look Karan, I don't think it should be one person. I think there should be a group of people who are used to taking decisions collectively.

Karan Thapar: Will a committee?

Arundhati Roy: Absolutely. That's what happened in Andhra. There was a committee of persons.

Karan Thapar: Isn't that a mess?

Arundhati Roy: No, it is absolutely vital.

Karan Thapar: Would you be a part of it?

Arundhati Roy: I don't think I am good at it. I am a maverick.

Karan Thapar: Would you be prepared to be one of that committee?

Arundhati Roy: Not really. I would not like to be because I don't think I have those skills. But I think there are people who would be very good at it.

Karan Thapar: In June, writing in The Hindu, Justice Krishna Aiyar publicly called on the Maoists to unconditionally come forward for talks. Would you make a similar statement?

Arundhati Roy: No. Not when there are two hundred thousand paramilitary forces closing in on the villages. I say unconditionally both sides should say there should be a ceasefire. Then you can see.

Karan Thapar: But you are not prepared to facilitate that being a mediator or, even part of the committee.

Arundhati Roy: I'll try.

Karan Thapar: Try! So suddenly you are changing your position.

Arundhati Roy: I don't know how to think about this.

Karan Thapar: If pushed and persuaded, you could accept.

Arundhati Roy: Look, you talk to me like you talk to politicians - will you stand for elections?

Karan Thapar: No, I am simply trying to get you to give me a clear answer. What I sense is that you are tempted but you are uncertain.

Arundhati Roy: I feel that all of us should do what we can but certainly, I don't feel that I'll be very good at it. But, I think there should be a committee of people with experience in negotiating, with experienced people like BD Sharma, who has such a long experience.

Karan Thapar: Let's come to a different issue. The government, particularly the home minister, often look upon people who are sympathetic to Maoists' cause as collaborators, sections of the press even call them traitors. Number one in that category is bound to be Arundhati Roy. How do you respond to such branding?

Arundhati Roy: Well, this is an old game.

Karan Thapar: But it continues forcefully every time.

Arundhati Roy: I think the reason they were also unnerved, the government as well as most of the press, which is clearly on one side in this, is that from being people who are marooned in the jungle in one sense, when operation Green Hunt happened, a number of activists, a number of intellectuals came forward and said look, it is not acceptable to us. And that undermined the position of this open and shut case that was going on all this time.

Karan Thapar: So the certainty of the government's position was weakened and undermined by the intellectuals who supported the government which is why the government branded them collaborators?

Arundhati Roy: Again you are saying the Maoists.

Karan Thapar: But that's why the government called them collaborators?

Arundhati Roy: What has happened is that the government has expanded the definition of Maoists to mean everyone who is disagreeing with it. What people like myself have done is to complicate the scenario. Say it's not that simple. Of course it doesn't upset me because I like to say what I think very clearly. I am not worried about being called names.

Karan Thapar: And in a sense the government calling you a collaborator is proof that you actually made the government uncomfortable.

Arundhati Roy: I am proud if I made the government uncomfortable because it should be bloody uncomfortable with what it's doing.

Karan Thapar: A pleasure talking to you.