Folks that read this space will know will know my eternal fondness for the VHP fascists (yes, I know what that word implies thank you). But, the current object of ire is state terror from a different party, one that claims to speak from the "left" but in practice has long abandoned any pretensions to communist ideology in favour of the authoritarian neo-liberal model favoured by the Congress - so-called "Communist" Party of India (Marxist). I should say that I write from the perspective of a "person of the left" and pretty much all the linked articles are critiques of the CPM from the left.

The state uses colonial laws to displace peasant farmers from their land which is acquired for Big Business, party cadres fire on and sexually abuse peasants while police stand by.. Yawn, this is such old hat, yet another repressive Indian government that doesn't give a hoot about poor farmers - yet this one is from the party of EMS Namboodripad - a man who stands head shoulders chest above any of our current "leaders". They have fallen to truly craven depths. For all the news and analysis you're ever likely to have the appetite to consume regarding the CPI(M)'s state thuggery and ideological bankruptcy do check out the quite excellent Sanhati. A very good summary of the CPI(M)'s political history in Bengal can be found in this well written article(pdf) by Sumanta Banerjee published in the EPW. To quote:

The rot started with the CPI(M)’s using the administration to spread and consolidate its party base by selectively distributing largesse, and forcibly doling out plots of land to sections of the farmers and peasantry, who ultimately became their apparatchiki and retainers. This privileged segment of the rural population has emerged as a tyrannical force in the West Bengal countryside – bullying the villagers into accepting their party dictates, persecuting those who refuse to toe their line, extorting money in the name of collecting party funds, and assuming the role of the sole arbiter in any village dispute....

And their "achievements" after being in power for 30 years:

At the turn of the 21st century, it was revealed that only15 per cent of the net arable land had been distributed in the state. Even among those who received land, on an average 13 per cent had lost it by 2001, and the number of landless rural households increased from 39.6 per cent in 1987-88 to 49.8 per cent in 2000 (according to the West Bengal government’s first Human Development Report). The Human Development Report of the Planning Commission brought to light far more devastating facts – in rural West Bengal 85 per cent of the population did not have pucca houses; women and children were more underfed and anaemic than in other states; 35.66 per cent of its population still remained below the poverty line – all these figures reducing the state to the 20th position in the list of 32 states and union territories in terms of the human development index.

The government’s tall claim of improving the lot of dalits and tribal people was also punctured soon when the Pratichi Trust, headed by no less a person than Amartya Sen, came out in 2002 with shocking revelations about the discrimination against students of scheduled castes and tribes in the primary schools of the state. As for the other Left proclamation of enhancing the status of the Muslim minority (which constitutes almost a quarter of the population of the state), the Sachar Committee found that its share in state jobs was only 4.2 per cent. We must add to this the dismal record of the government’s failure to prevent closure of factory after factory, leading to unemployment and suicide among industrial workers

. A couple more articles on Nadigram one from Ashok Mitra an old and disillusioned CPM member (well worth the time), and another a citizens report

The people of Bengal deserve better than this craven party, for those of the left this is a challenge we must meet. Sumanta Banerjee's article ends with with this lovely poem by Langston Hughes, that serves as a timely "or else"

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fetter like a sore -
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Tags: authoritarianism, politics

Snippet of random conversation about the Nobel Prizes:

"The iPod won the Physics prize and Powerpoint the Peace one!"

The whole institution of the Peace prize deserves a rant, but it shall be canned. It's been another long break for me from the blogging world, trust life's been treating y'all well..

Tags: nobel prize, politics

Nothing a few naked women can't solve apparently.

Women MPs in Israel's Knesset have criticised the foreign ministry for resorting to "pornography" to promote Israel abroad after a feature appeared in the men's magazine Maxim featuring four former soldiers photographed in their underwear.

The magazine carried the article, The Women of the Israel Defence Force, in its July issue after encouragement from the Israeli consulate in New York as part of its broader campaign to improve Israel's image abroad...

...Israel is keen to sell itself as a western country with beaches and nightclubs rather than a country full of religious zealots which has been in a permanent state of emergency since its creation.

...Staff at the consulate said that they decided a photoshoot would be a good way of promoting Israel to young Americans.

David Dorfman, an adviser at the consulate in New York, told the Associated Press: "Males that age have no feeling towards Israel one way or another, and we view that as a problem, so we came up with an idea that would be appealing to them." [source Guardian]

Sheesh...

Tags: politics, zionism

So, the evil Al-Qaeda honcho Khaled Sheikh-Mohammad has 'confessed' to being responsible for 31 different terrorist plots, 23 of which are listed here in the NYT. The list includes plotting the 9/11 attacks from A to Z, Richard Reid the shoe bomber, plotting to assassinate numerous people from Jimmy Carter to Pope John Paul.

Wonder why they stopped there, they might as well have gone the whole hog and had him responsible JFK's assassination (so maybe KSM was a kid in '63, but kids can be evil too), and being the father of Anna Nicole's baby (cheap shot). Given the US interrogators reputed charming ways, I'm sure everything gleaned from Gitmo is absolutely trustworthy. To quote an ABC news report from a year and a half back:

The CIA sources described a list of six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top Al Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are trained and authorized to use the techniques:...

...6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

The techniques are controversial among experienced intelligence agency and military interrogators. Many feel that a confession obtained this way is an unreliable tool.

KSM is no saint in all likelihood, but this whole episode is so farcical, it's hard to believe it's not a scene from Monty Python..

Tags: empire, politics, terrorism

Five years ago this past week Gujarat burned while its CM Modi played the fiddle, figuratively. Various historians doubt that Nero actually played the fiddle, yet stories abound about his use of human torches to light his parties. There were certainly quite a few human torches in Modi's pogrom. To quite Amnesty reports:

The violence [in Gujarat] left over 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead. Several hundred girls and women were stripped naked, raped or gang-raped, had their wombs slashed and were thrown into fires, some while still alive...

..Bilqis Yakoob Rasool, herself a victim of gang-rape who lost 14 family members reported: "They started molesting the girls and tore off their clothes. Our naked girls were raped in front of the crowd. They killed Shamin's baby who was two days old. They killed my maternal uncle and my father's sister and her husband too. After raping the women they killed all of them... They killed my baby too. They threw her in the air and she hit a rock. After raping me, one of the men kept a foot on my neck and hit me.
During the attacks, police stood by or even joined in the violence. When victims tried to file complaints, police often did not record them properly and failed to carry out investigations. In Bilqis Yakoob Rasool's case, police closed the investigation, stating they could not find out who the rapists and murderers were despite the fact that she had named them earlier

..officials of the state government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), claimed that a fire on a train on 27 February 2002 was planned and caused by Muslims. It then took no steps to prevent or stop the widespread and systematic attacks by Hindu mobs on members of the Muslim minority which followed, and indeed many party and state officials were seen to participate. In many cases, these human rights abuses constitute crimes against humanity. The central government (until May 2004 also led by the BJP) failed to censure the government of Gujarat during and after the violence...

The images of the pogrom horrified many at the time, there was a many poem and column written, yet a lot of us forgot.. As Mike Marqusee notes in the Guardian:

Five years on, Muslims in Gujarat still live in fear. About 50,000 remain in refugee camps. Most of the cases filed by victims of the violence have never been investigated. Witnesses have been intimidated. No more than a dozen low-level culprits have been convicted. None of the major conspirators has been brought before the courts.

...Modi remains chief minister and has become not only the BJP's most popular figurehead, but also a poster boy for big business, foreign and domestic. Gujarat, which contains 5% of India's population, now boasts 18% of its investment and 21% of its exports. At this year's Vibrant Gujarat conclave, the showpiece of the BJP regime, the great names of Indian capitalism - Ambani, Birla, Tata - sang Modi's praises, echoed by delegations from Singapore, Europe and the US. Anxieties about dealing with a politician accused of genocide have been allayed by the appeal of Gujarat's corporation-friendly environment, not least its labour laws, which give employers hire-and-fire rights unique in India.

Yeah yeah, the issue has been much commented on, but as long as bigotry lives we will continue to fight it..

Tags: hindutva, politics

Really, absent minded professors are handcuffed, arrested, and taken to jail by all of five armed officers for the cardinal sin of jaywalking.

The officer asked for identification. The professor asked for his, after which Officer Leonpacher told him he was under arrest and, the professor claims, kicked his legs from under him, pinned him to the ground and confiscated his box of peppermints.

Hmm, beware of those killer peppermints.. Maybe they were curiously strong? To continue:

Professor Fernandez-Armesto then spent eight hours in the cells before the charges were dropped. He told the Times that his colleagues now regard him as "as a combination of Rambo, because it took five cops to pin me to the ground, and Perry Mason, because my eloquence before a judge obtained my immediate release".

Not an academic you want to be messing with on that evidence, yet apparently in the true academic tradition

The bespectacled professor says he didn't realise the "rather intrusive young man" shouting that he shouldn't cross there was a policeman. "I thanked him for his advice and went on.

More seriously, The Great Leader made a Great Address to the Nation, he has a newish defence secretary, the Iraq Study report just came out recently, and taking all of this advice into consideration, he has a Plan. The Plan - to put 20,000 more troops into Iraq, and some more sabre-rattling at other "Axis of Evil" members. March Of Folly doesn't begin to describe this Hare brained plan. Do these folks live in some sort of Reality Distortion Vortex? Empire is losing it, I tell you..

Tags: empire, politics

One day long ago, when looking for usernames on livejournal, I settled on oldhen - less as a reference to aged poultry, and more as a nod to Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in J.D. Salinger's quite brilliant Catcher in the Rye. A lot of critics read Catcher as an expression on teenage angst, something every adolescent goes through, but not much else. To me there is so much in that book that is so true of life at large, but that's a topic to expound on at length. Like Holden, tend to find myself on the fringes of society, looking on at the phony world. I initially thought this was some sort of reaction to my undergrad days, but have to realise that it probably be thus for a while, so I might as well get used to it.. Of course, that's about where comparisons end, my english composition writing is nothing to write home about, and I doubt Holden Caulfield cared much for science or politics..

Alright, that's the last self-obsessed whine for a while, am going to try blocking out the D thoughts for a while, lead a pretty priviliged existence, could've been dealt a much worse hand..

Meanwhile, the latest round of the circus that is US democracy is just over. In all this media hype over close races, it's easy to forget that only 10% of the races are even competitive. Like Arundhati Roy puts it - voting in a US election is a bit like trotting down to the store to choose a brand of detergent, whether you pick Tide or Ivory Snow, they're both owned by Procter and Gamble. The media play up this "liberal" vs "conservative" bollocks, when in terms of actual policy it's more like "neo-liberal" pitted against (neo)"conservative". The Bush years have been horrible, near fascist years no doubt, but on many major issues from immigration to Israel to healthcare to welfare you'd be hard pressed to pick apart Bush the Elder and Clinton, for example.. And of course lest we forget the brave souls of the US Senate recently voted to suspense habeas corpus (the very basis of a civic society) and endorse torture - a vote that wasn't remotely close..

It looks like the Democrats might control the House at any rate, would love for them to do something radical and prove me wrong, but the odds certainly seem stacked against that. Screw electoral politics, the alternative to me seems to be to build a politicised populace that will not stand for this kind of bullshit, irrespective of which party is in power.

There are some who would question my criticism of US electoral system while being ineligible to participate in it, but I write this as a subject of and worker for Empire, who presumes to criticise his employer and master. :-)

Tags: angst, life, politics

Exhibit 1, is an interesting species indeed - unlike his reactionary counterparts in other lands, he portends to worship reason, and will champion rationality at any occassion. However, once he is faced with a confident, (politically) assertive young woman, all that reason baggage goes out the window. And, horror of horrors, if the said young woman has the impetuosity to say something about class or espouse other such Marxist rhetoric, then for Exhibit 1 it's all gloves off, and apparently he can say anything he wants and it's all fair game. Exhibit 1 is best ignored, but sometimes things like this drivel really stick in my craw.

Tags: male chauvinism, politics
Current Mood: Tangled Up In Blue..

A prominent politico recently visited campus, to rally students to his party in light of the coming elections to US Congress. Amidst the long line of folks waiting to get in to the auditorium to hear the gent speak were a bunch of my friends holding anti-war signs. The said politico's staffers, ever vigilant for the slightest sign of a potential embarrasment, instructed the cops on duty to obstruct the protesters from entering the hall. The first proferred reason - the signs were a violation of the University's picketing code. After being gently reminded that the picketing code said no such thing, and that in any case enforcing this code is not in the police's job description, a copy of the code is procured and waved in front of the officer's nose, who claims he's misplaced his glasses and cannot read the proferred writing! Moments later the glasses emerge, yet the students are still denied access and apparently the hall is full to capacity, this despite people walking out even as this was being said...

Students at a major public university are denied access to space that ostensibly belongs to the good people to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Welcome to democracy, US style. And the politico concerned: John Kerry - this is supposedly the opposition???

As sign of how freedom of political expression has changed, was going through an exhibit of campus activism in the '60s, and found this photograph of the racist, supremacist Strom Thurmond speaking from a camous pulpit in '69, with a student protester dressed in full (mock) KKK garb sitting right next to him..

Life over the past few weeks has hit some unexpectedly choppy waters. You'd think that at 27, there are few things about yourself that would suprise you, but I guess you learn every day.. It's been a microcosm of grad school in a way, all will be well if it ends well - just wish the process were less rudderless.. Anyways, have a great weekend y'all..

Tags: life, politics
Current Mood: life's a bitch

Some three years back, an independent NGO: the Center for Science and the Environment, found unsafe levels of pesticides in Coke and Pepsi in India, findings that were subsequently corrobarated by a parliamentary committee. Now more recently, a repeat study finds something like 25 times the EU standards of pesticide in Indian soft drinks [report here].

The study finds pesticide residues in all samples; it finds a cocktail of 3-5 different pesticides in all samples — on an average 24 times higher than BIS norms, which have been finalised but not yet notified. The levels in some samples — for instance, Coca-Cola bought in Kolkata — exceeded the BIS standards by 140 times for the deadly pesticide Lindane. Similarly, a Coca-Cola sample manufactured in Thane contained the neurotoxin Chlorpyrifos, 200 times the standard.

Various state governments seem to haven taken this seriously at face value and have issued bans.

The Bush administration of course, sees things differently.

"This kind of action is a setback for the Indian economy," Undersecretary for International Trade Franklin Lavin told AFP. "In a time when India is working hard to attract and retain foreign investment, it would be unfortunate if the discussion were dominated by those who did not want to treat foreign companies fairly." [ source Progressive Magazine]

The pesticide report is apparently somewhat controversial, with other newspaper columns suggesting that pesticide amounts in the colas are well within acceptable levels, and lower than those in other common foods [e.g. 1, 2 - thanks to birdonthewire]. Coke though, has had a stellar record of treating locals exemplarily, from drawing so much water at its bottling plants in Kerala that surrouding villages are left without drinking water, to passing off cadmium and lead leaden slush as "fertiliser" to farmers (also in Kerala) to murdering labour organisers at its bottling plants in Colombia [ sources India Resource Center, and Killer Coke]. India is not alone in resisting Coke, there is growing resistance to Coke's record in Colombia and India, within the US, with a few US universities banning Coke from their campuses. It is easy to explain this as yet another example of a multinational's colonial mindset, but a little anger of behalf of the Indians in Plachimada and elsewhere and Colombians who deserve justice is a good thing.

Tags: activism, corporatisation, india, labour, politics

These are frustrating times, politically to be living in the US, the past month has seen a state systematically target for mass punishment the civilian population of an entire country, and yet there appears to be almost universal political support for Israel. The fine people that populate the US Senate voted unanimously (pusillanimously) to endorse Israeli actions.

First, the bare facts – a 1000 + killed in Lebanon, the overwhelming majority civilians, and almost a million Lebanese displaced, something approaching a hundred Israeli dead, the vast majority soldiers. So, Israel's US supplied laser and divinty guided bombs and missiles killed mainly civilians (and many more of them) whereas Hezbollah's cold war vintage Katyusha rockets, which are about as precise as a catapault, took mainly military lives.. Hmm, I wonder why? Could it be that all the cluster bombs dropped on Beirut were actually intended to cripple Lebanon? Could be that all the milk factories, food factories, power plants, water plants, bridges, aid convoys, Red Cross ambulances, UN posts hit were not Hizbullah hideouts or shields? Israel claims they warned residents to flee before the bombs came – first you bomb the roads and bridges into Southern Lebanon (ostensibly to prevent to rockets from reaching Hizbullah) and then you ask people to leave, just where do they go – into Israel? Marwaheen will not be eaily forgotten:

All the civilians killed by the Israelis had been ordered to abandon their homes in the border village by the Israelis themselves a few hours earlier. Leave, they were told by loudspeaker; and leave they did, 20 of them in a convoy of civilian cars. That's when the Israeli jets arrived to bomb them, killing 20 Lebanese, at least nine of them children. The local fire brigade could not put out the fires as they all burned alive in the inferno

This is hardly the first time Israel was in Lebanon – they invaded Lebanon before in 1978, 1982, an invasion that involved the massacre of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians in refugee camps, and again in 1996. Hizbollah didn't even exist when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, it arose primarly as a resistance movement to Israeli occupation. (some more historical background from the Frontline . Israel was forced to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000, except of course it didn't, and continues to occupy parts of Lebanon – notably Shebba Farms (sp?), hold many Lebanese prisoners, and several thousand Palestinian prisoners hostage without trial in clear violation of the Geneva conventions, its aircraft have been persitently violating Lebanese air space since 2000 link. Since Hamas won the (free and fair) elections in Palestine in February, Gaza has been systematically blockaded and ghettoised. In the background of all of this Israeli soldiers were kidnapped, and offers were made to negotiate their release, in exchange for some of those Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners, lounging in Israeli jails, the response – all out war.. Like George Monbiot notes in the Guardian, this sort of skirmish is hardly unsual,

In October 2000, the Israel Defence Forces shot at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators on the border, killing three and wounding 20. In response, Hizbullah crossed the line and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. On several occasions, Hizbullah fired missiles and mortar rounds at IDF positions, and the IDF responded with heavy artillery and sometimes aerial bombardment. Incidents like this killed three Israelis and three Lebanese in 2003; one Israeli soldier and two Hizbullah fighters in 2005; and two Lebanese people and three Israeli soldiers in February 2006. Rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel several times in 2004, 2005 and 2006, on some occasions by Hizbullah. But, the UN records, "none of the incidents resulted in a military escalation"

So why this all out war now? The Palestinians had just elected Hamas recently, and Hizbollah also had seats in Lebanon's cabinet, could it be that Israel hoped that the oppressed would blame its politcal opponents for their oppression? This cold-blooded objective of gaining political mileage certainly seems plausible enough. It's certainly a heck of a lot more believable than all the religious bollocks that's being touted around, which entirely ignores the fact that the struggles in Palestine and Lebanon are primarily nationalistic struggles against oppression.

The Security Council is set to meet soon to vote on a second draft of a ceasefire resolution. Like noted here and here, the first draft was simply insulting in its premise that Israel has the right to defend itself, but its neighbours don't. I meant tp write to criticise the political philosophy of Zionism not to endorse the methods of Hamas and Hizbollah, but to put things in perspective - Palestine doesn't have an army, and Lebanon's "army" has all of three helicopters..

For further reading:

Aijaz Ahmad in the Frontline

Ira Chernus offers a dissenting Jewish view

Jonathan Cook writes a thoughtful piece on privilege and living on the margins of society.

Electronic Intifada - independent publication, with lots of info.

Lebanon Updates Blog

Lebanese writing from Beirut

Mosaic from Link TV - Digest of tv news from the Middle East..

Yes, it's a politically frustrating time, but at the same time, it's certainly a privilege to be in this position.. Comments, brickbats etc. welcome, as long as they're not accompanied by accusations of anti-Semitism or quotations from Tom Friedman - both of which I'm way too tired to deal with..

Tags: empire, politics
Current Mood: frustrated

Have been spending some time with the family, trying to avoid talking politics in the interests of familial harmony and for the most part it's succeeded. The sis though is applying for US citizenship, and said one of the questions on the form was something along the lines of "Have you been a member of a Communist party", which I'd be offended by (the qn that is). If you thought the days of Red Scares ended with Senator Mc Carthy, I guess think again.

Tags: politics

What covers 104 acres, reportedly has a 15ft thick perimeter wall, is big enough to accomodate four Millenium domes, will end up being bigger than Vatican City, and will supposedly be visible from space when it's all done?




Guess, Guess..


( To find out, click here )

Tags: empire, politics

The annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science, is typically everything the name suggests - a pretty staid affair with a room full of senior suited scientists, enjoying a drink or three, occassionally talking science - but mostly catching up on the gossip, with a lot of mutual back-scratching - hardly the venue for a scathing political speech. The president-elect of the Association David Baltimore (Nobel Laureate and arguably the most influential voice in American science today) chose this forum to deliver a no-holds-barred attack on the Bush administration very theory of government (emphasis mine):

Speaking last Saturday to a packed conference room, Baltimore — the president-elect of the AAAS — urged scientists to challenge perceived censorship of their research...
.. "It is no accident that we are seeing such extensive suppression of science," he said. "It is part of a theory of government, and I believe it is a theory that we must vociferously oppose." In particular, Baltimore condemned the "unitary executive" theory of government — the notion that a president can bypass Congressional and judicial oversight and run the country single-handedly.

Baltimore warned that the doctrine opens the way for "an exertion of executive hegemony over science". He called on researchers to "fight for a very different doctrine" under which "the executive's role is to defend intellectual freedom". In the light of the Bush administration's adherence to this philosophy, he added: "It is no accident that we are seeing such an extensive suppression of science." [sources - 1, 2 - both links from Nature, subscription unfortunately required]

Strong words those from someone of Baltimore's influence and standing.

President Dubya, of course has spent the past week in India and Pakistan, which in itself is quite a change for a man who in 2000 presidential debate had not the faintest idea who India's PM was. I know he's hardly the avid newspaper reader, so he probably missed this coruscating article by Arundhati Roy in the Hindu:

now we're into Plan Three: President George Bush speaks from Purana Qila, the Old Fort.

Ironic isn't it, that the only safe public space for a man who has recently been so enthusiastic about India's modernity, should be a crumbling medieval fort?

Since the Purana Qila also houses the Delhi zoo, George Bush's audience will be a few hundred caged animals and an approved list of caged human beings who in India go under the category of "eminent persons."....

... on the 2nd of March, Bush will be taken to visit Gandhi's memorial in Rajghat. He's by no means the only war criminal who has been invited by the Indian Government to lay flowers at Rajghat. (Only recently we had the Burmese dictator General Than Shwe — no shrinking violet himself.) But when George Bush places flowers on that famous slab of highly polished stone, millions of Indians will wince. It will be as though he has poured a pint of blood on the memory of Gandhi.

I didn't much fancy God of Small Things and she may be a bit shrill at times - but I like her political writings, she usually has a good point, and has no qualms about using her considerable literary talents to make it forcefully. A younger Bob Dylan may well have added:

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul [from Masters of War]

Dubya might ignore the newspapers, but I'm sure he found it harder to ignore the 100,000+ protesters that greeted his visit on India's streets (pictures here). I've written about the Masters of War before, Dubya really is a soft target now - this military-industrial complex goes a lot deeper than the neo-con cartel. I'm all this bonhomie is a two-way street, and that Manmohan Singh's government is just as complicit in actively seeking an alliance with the US. That said, good to see the mass protests anyways..

Tags: politics, protests, science, war

is the title of an 1890s era book, on the lives of the "other" half of New York, and is also the title of an interesting new team blog, that seeks to focus on the India that the mainstream news media tends to ignore.Sometimes I think nothing going to change for this “other India” until they're empowered to demand change for themselves, this blog doesn't address that, but I guess it's targetted more at changing middle-class apathy, which it's certainly a good first attempt at. I particularly enjoyed this post by Vikrum - Examining the Assumptions, which goes a long way towards correcting some common misconceptions about the left in the blogosphere.. Would highly reccomend checking it out:



From blogging world to the real world – many thanks to all for the phone calls, emails and comments from near and far – they really made my day.. But, for now it's back to the lab bench grindstone, and to another biting cold night on the lab sofa..

Tags: india, life, politics
Current Mood: pooped..
Current Music: Bob Dylan - My Back Pages

Sloth can get boring – 'tis true, didn't really think I'd see the day when the traditionally lazy Bangalorean would get bored of inaction.. There's Indo-Pak cricket to look forward to, something to turn the idiot box on for..

For now, there's a proliferation of religious channels on the telly. There's an evangelical Christian channel called simply "God", any number of so-called spiritual channels.. Found one of my all-time favourite God-men – Double Sri on last night. Dressed in all his silk finery he was expounding the virtues of a simple life, and of One-consciousness (one consciousness and one Ram temple at Ayodhya, wink, wink).

He was followed by testimonials from his enraptured devotees – one of whom was recounting her first meeting with the great man. The great man apparently asked her how she was planning to get home, and upon being told that it involved taking the evening's Lucknow Mail, with a piercing look told her it was unsafe and that she should take the next day's train home. Being the trusting soul she dutifully obliged and called the doubting hubby the next morning to tell him of the change – to find him all tearfully apologetic for having questioned Double Sri's infinite wisdom, as the previous night's Mail train had an accident and the very bogie that the woman was supposed to be on derailed.. Let's leave the veracity of this testimonial alone for a moment, what I want to know is why the Prescient One kept his counsel to his devotees given that he his self-declared penchant for "seeing the goodness in every human being" ?(a statement made specifically in refence to that sterling human being Narendra Modi) .

My real issue with Double Sri lies with his tacit support of Sangh-Parivar politics, just thought that incident was too funny not too share.. Pseudo-Spirituality ("pseudo-secular"'s lefitist cousin) is good business these days, and Double Sri is certainly a savvy marketer, who's cleverly packaged his (patented) brand of sprituality to suit the yuppie lifestyle. To paraphrase Shakespeare:

Upon what meat does this our Dbl Sri feed
That he is grown so great?
How ill-informed is B'lore, how gullible and how naive,
When it serves as the base-matter to illuminate so ordinary a person as Dbl-Sri?

I know he has a biggish fan following amongst middle-class Indians, indeed perhaps even amongst some readers of this post. Perhaps they're too taken in by his aura to question his politics, or perhaps they share his political views. I'd like to think it's the former, but then again what do I know – after all in the words of the great man himself, yours truly is "anti-Hindu" and "unreasonable".. Of course, this is presenting but one side of the man and his organisation, the "other" side has already had reams of newsprint, and many hundreds of html pages, it isn't going to get more than this sentence in this space..
Needless to say, this is intended to criticise the man and his politics, not his followers – misguided though they maybe..

Tags: cynicism, hindutva, politics

God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'
Harold Pinter as Bush's speechwriter[link]

I meant to write about Harold Pinter, a brilliant Beckett-like playwright with black humour, and a love for cricket, when the Nobel Literature Prize was announced, but got too busy to post. He just delivered a Nobel acceptance speech from his wheelchair - where he brought the full weight of his considerable intellect and wit to bear on US foreign policy.

Some excerpts from a coruscating lecture:

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer...
( More on Harold Pinter - the man and his politics )
Anyways, will end by contrasting reports of Pinter's speech in the British newspaper The Guardian and the American paper The New York Times - which is supposedly "too liberal" whatever that means. The NYT writer says -

The playwright Harold Pinter turned his Nobel Prize acceptance speech on Wednesday into a furious howl of outrage against American foreign policy

The literature prize has in recent years often gone to writers with left-wing ideologies. These include the European writers José Saramago of Portugal, Günter Grass of Germany and Dario Fo of Italy.[link]

I'm not a big fan on the NYT, which I think is not critical enough pro-establishment in its news coverage.
Links to Pinter's speech text and 46 min video

Tags: politics, war

Hindu nationalism was born many decades ago, but it was thirteen years ago today, that it really forcefully thrust itself on India's consciousness... A moment of silence for all the victims of the mindless violence of Hindu Nationalism. It's sad to see so many rational level-headed folks get so stirred up with nationalistic fervour, there probably was a time for nationalism - pre-independence, but even my mom was born in Independent India, so certainly for this new generation, that time is long gone. I'm sure there are numerous theories for the rise of nationalism in post-colonial societies, but seriously folks history is littered with too many examples of rulers of various hues rousing nationalistic passions for exploitative gain. Will end with a quote from Nehru:

"When a country is under foreign domination, nationalism is a strengthening and unifying force. But a stage arrives when it might well have a narrowing influence.

"Sometimes, as in Europe, it becomes aggressive and chauvinistic and wants to impose itself on other countries and other people. Every people suffers from the strange delusion that they are the elect and better than all others.

"When they become strong and powerful, they try to impose themselves and their ways on others. In their attempt to do so, sometime or other, they overreach themselves, stumble and fall." [link]

Tags: hindutva, nationalism, politics
Current Music: Woody Guthrie - Pretty boy Floyd

The area has been abuzz this past couple of weeks, with folks braving the sometimes wet, sometimes bitterly cold New England weather to take to the streets and rally. The enthusiasm has been infectious, sometimes literally, was laid low by the flu after one rally in the rain, good to see people with so much spirit.

The last week saw a series of events called the Week on the War, timed appropriately enough to coincide with Veteran's Day. The week concluded with a silent march last Saturday to end the war occupation of Iraq. Rallies are typically boisterous, colourful events, the silence of this march only served to emphasise the gravitas of the protest. The week also featured a really thoughtful exhibit on the human cost of the war called Eyes Wide Open - rows and rows of military boots, a pair for every soldier killed in the war with a name tag attached, shoes of different shapes, sizes and hues symbolising the many tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians slain to date in the name of "liberation", simple concept, yet one that is visually so effective.

On the sidelines of the Week on the War was a talk by Pakistani peace activist Prof. Zia Mian titled "Pakistan and India in the Nuclear Shadow". I've written before on the US military-industrial establishments Masters of War, this talk only served to re-inforce those impressions. De-classified documents apparently offer strong evidence that the US offered to arm India with nuclear weapons in the late '40s and again with the supposedly dovish JFK in the early '60s, but were repudiated both times by the strong pacifist Nehru. This time around Bush seems to have found a willing ally in Manmohan Singh's government, and under the recent US-India agreement, the US has agreed to sell India nuclear fuel. Of course, it is supposedly intended for "peaceful" purposes, but the onus of separating military from civilian use lies on India under this agreement. All of which basically means that the Bushies privately want to arm India, to develop India as a military counterweight to still-Red China. Of course, Mian Musharaff isn't going to take all these nuke sales to India lying down, so then the US would, grudgingly of course, (wink-wink) arm Pakistan, to keep its traditional South Asian ally happy, and thus begins yet another arms race.

I've ranted and raved against the Bush adminstration as much as anyone, yet they are not the only problem, the whole system rots. This military-industrial complex runs deep, much deeper than neo-con ideology. The US has been at war pretty much non-stop since World War II - Korea, Vietnam, any number of Latin American countries, Bosnia, the list is endless. Which is why I'm a little sceptical when Jimmy Carter writes in the Guardian of -

... our tradition of espousing peace as a national priority unless our security is directly threatened [link]

. I agree with everything else in that article, it's an interesting read coming from of the stature of Jimmy Carter, just think that the problem runs a lot deeper than this administration.

What is it going to take to effect real policy change? I have no definitive answers.. Indeed, at the end of Zia Mian's talk there was a really frail lady in the audience, who was questioning the effectiveness of talks in conference rooms when concerned folks should be trying to get people out on the streets. She ended by saying in this quavering

"I think opposition without revolution is ineffective"

. So much spirit in someone probably of my grandmother's age has to be inspiring..

Tags: politics, war

I'm always thinking of Russia
I can't keep her out of my head.
I don't give a damn for Uncle Sham.
I'm a left wing radical Red.

- Harold Harwell (H. H.) Lewis (c. 1932)

Amusing little ditty - I like the "left wing radical red" tag, it fits well.. Have spent the better part of this fine Saturday evening removing some particularly execrable passages from different Wikipedia articles relating to the Sangh, for an "alternative" view from the radical Hindu-right do check out Hindutva.org (that's the first and last Hindu supremacist link on this space). A small sample of the excised passages, emphasis mine:

"Also the incident happened just after the afternoon prayers on a Friday, globally recognized to be an islamic prime time for terrorist attacks."

"National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of India which is also known to be a bastion of communist anti-Hindus. "

"who had converted to Christianity and hated Hindus to the core" - speaking of former president K.R. Narayanan.

Hope you, dear reader have had a more productive Saturday night..

Tags: hindutva, poetry, politics
Current Music: Joan Baez- And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda