Archive for September, 2008

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A Crisis of American Capitalism

September 20, 2008

Published on Friday, September 19, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

by Lawrence R. Velvel

You don’t have to be a socialist (and I certainly am not) to understand that this capitalistic country is confronting a crisis of capitalism.  This is not merely a matter of the huge losses and meltdowns that have taken place and have threatened to bring down the whole system with them.  It is also a matter of the failure of a culture, a culture that has grown and grown since the sainted Reagan introduced the twin pillars of his morning in America:  unchecked greed and militarism.

Militarism today holds high carnival:  in Iraq, on somewhere between 700 and 1,100 American bases around the world (the exact number being a secret, even if known to the Pentagon), on huge carriers patrolling seas all over the world, in Bush/Cheney ideas that we should intervene all over the world, in a Pentagon budget of what — something in the neighborhood of 500 billion dollars or more, I suppose?

Unchecked greed also held high carnival, as it drove the housing market ever higher by means visibly pregnant with failure because they defied history, economics, human comprehension and sense:  Adjustable rate mortgages, with initially low rates that one knew — I certainly knew, often said, acted accordingly, and wholly fail to grasp why everyone didn’t know — were pregnant with disaster because they would be unsustainable for the buyers when the interest rates increased, as inevitably they would because rates always rise and fall; securitization that gave rise to so-called tranches so complicated that nobody could understand what the risks and rights were; derivatives which may be even more complicated and which nobody has a real handle on apparently.  It was all nuts (as this writer often said to people), and now it has come crashing down, as was inevitable.  The acclaimed geniuses — like Alan Greenspan (who led the way) — who lived in and loved celebrification, who profited from it, have been shown the fools that they are.  In Greenspan’s case, this is at least the second burst bubble he promoted, the other being the high tech stock market which melted down at the beginning of the 2000s.  (Of course, in America, where nothing succeeds like failure, as is oft typified by celebrified coaches, baseball managers and university presidents, Greenspan remains a great man.)

The heads of major firms have likewise fallen, as their houses of cards collapsed.  The fall of titans represents a horrid, economy-threatening failure of the culture of greed, dishonesty (which often was a major part of pushing the insane instruments on uncomprehending buyers), and unchecked capitalism, the culture which has been pushed on us by conservative intellectuals, politicians and the uncomprehending mainstream media since Reagan took office in 1981.  This vile culture (and the militarism which is in some important ways associated with it (e.g., a war for oil, huge profits for contractors)), came to dominate much of the American nation.  Now the culture of unchecked greed and celebrification of its richest practitioners has come acropper (as did the war in Iraq).  That it would come acropper was inevitable, based as it was on stupidity.  Leaders have been exposed as fools — yet again.

Continued . . .

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Fidel Castro: The same lie twice over

September 19, 2008

Granma, Sep 19, 2008

Reflections of Fidel

READING the cables will suffice.


In the reflection I wrote the day before yesterday I stated that Cuba would not accept any donation from the government that is blockading us and that, in the Verbal Note handed over to the U.S. Interests Section, we had requested authorization so that U.S. companies could sell us construction materials; that same Note made no reference whatsoever to foodstuffs.  There was an additional request for trade in those materials to take place under normal conditions, including credits, something that is only logical considering that, for eight years, our country has been paying in cash for the few commodities that U.S. companies are authorized to export to Cuba.

Such a request was all the more justified in the face of the emergency situation created as a result of the ravages of the hurricanes.

It was precisely George W. Bush who, after Hurricane Michelle violently lashed the island on November 4, 2001, authorized the sale of agricultural produce to Cuba, which included lumber as a product derived from silviculture, which is highly developed in that nation.  He did not insist on any in situ inspection when, as is currently the case, we responded that we had already completed such an inspection. In the main, we imported foodstuffs.  Within a few weeks we had imported $4.4 million dollars worth, once all the relevant procedures were rapidly finalized.

In 2002, we purchased $173.6 million in goods; in 2003, $327 million; in 2004, $434.1 million; in 2005, $473 million; in 2006, $483.3 million; in 2007, $515.8 million, and during the first semester of 2008, $425 million.  As can be seen, the figures have increased year by year, and this year, after the devastating impact caused by two hurricanes, it is possible that the country would have to import a much higher volume from the United States alone, especially taking into account that prices have risen significantly and the colossal blow that has been dealt to agriculture.

The government of that country informed world public opinion that it had authorized the sale of foodstuffs and lumber, as if this was a new decision related to the two hurricanes, Gustav and Ike. A total and complete joke.
What did the State Department spokesperson say?

On Sunday, September 14 he declared that, as soon as Hurricane Gustav reached Cuba, the United States authorized $250 million in agricultural sales to the island, including lumber.  Prior to that, the U.S. secretary of commerce had ruled out any commercial credits.

Again on September 16, the State Department announced that the United States had authorized some licenses for food aid after the disaster caused by the two hurricanes, and that those agricultural licenses included “lumber, an important material for reconstruction.”

In addition to the lies, what were the arguments with which they tried to justify the prohibition on U.S. companies facilitating normal trade credits to Cuba? “The government of the United States has to respect Congress laws.” One would suppose that the blockade is a congressional law by virtue of a perfidious Platt Amendment-type provision.  The president of the United States can declare war without consulting Congress – something unheard of in the history of that country – but cannot, however, authorize a U.S. company to trade with Cuba under normal conditions.

In the message sent to Hugo Chávez, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which described some of the experiences of our Revolution, I wrote that, due to the “ruthless and absolute economic blockade, it is not possible to purchase one single kilogram of food.  This changed slightly 30 years later, due to pressure exerted by farmers, but this policy was accompanied by leonine financial and monetary obstacles.”  The Venezuelan revolutionary leader partially disclosed that message himself.

Everything is obvious and clear.

In resorting to the same lie twice over, the State Department has had no qualms over deceiving world public opinion, and it is doing so in a cynical manner.

Fidel Castro Ruz
September 18, 2008
12:20 p.m. •

– The financial Ike
– Reflections oF Fidel

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Right time for the freedom of Kashmir: Arundati Roy

September 19, 2008


-‘It is the biggest chance Kashmiris have’

Source: Kashmir Watch

Srinagar, September 18 (Newsline Monitoring Desk):  Arundati Roy, noted human rights activist and writer, in an interview, has suggested “the time has come for the people of Kashmir to ask for Azadi (freedom) from India”

“I think it’s the biggest chance Kashmiris have had in their struggle for Azadi in a very long time” she however said she is skeptical that “a spontaneous uprising can ‘down-rise’ just as spontaneously as it ‘up-rose’ and hence the people need to act fast”

Calling the security forces as “state forces” Arundhati opined the minute people retreat, these forces will take back the streets. “People cannot go on forever without a clear idea of where it’s all going. Right now the Coordination Committee is very fragile and the Intelligence Agencies are trying very hard to break it up” she said.

Arundati said New Delhi has still not learnt its lesson and instead used the same old methods to deal with the situation in Kashmir. “I don’t think the Indian state is even now willing to listen to what people are saying” she said “It is trying to work out a way to defuse the situation and how to manage crowds and send them back home”

The booker prize winner writer believes India does not want the vicious cycle of violence to end in Kashmir. “The United Jehad Council has unanimously declared that militants must silence their guns. But the Deep State in India wants nothing more than the return of an armed militancy” she averred “So if real militants don’t appear, I think the Deep State will manufacture some”

Arundati maintained that as a right thinking person of the society she will always try to speak out and reveal the truth about issues. Emphasising that sentiments of Kashmiris be respected she said “Some people said I should be charged for the offense of sedition. If so it implies millions of Kashmir’s should be charged too. Instead if only I am charged and not them, it would mean a tacit acceptance of the fact that Kashmir is not a part of India”

While stressing that anybody who has ever walked the streets of Srinagar cannot but see the moral legitimacy of what people are demanding she said “It’s the least I could do for those who have faced so many years of terror, torture and disappearances. I don’t think there could be a single Kashmiri in the valley who has not been humiliated in some way by the occupation

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The current importance of Marx, 150 years after the Grundrisse

September 19, 2008

Conversation with Eric Hobsbawm

ZNet, September 16, 2008

By Eric Hobsbawm
and Marcello Musto

Eric Hobsbawm is considered one of the greatest living historians. He is President of Birkbeck College (London University) and Professor Emeritus at the New School for Social Research (New York). Among his many writings are the trilogy about the “the long 19th century”: The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848 (1962); The Age of Capital: 1848-1874 (1975); The Age of Empire: 1875-1914 (1987), and the book The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 (1994).

Marcello Musto is editor of Karl Marx’s Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, London-New York: Routledge 2008.

1) M. M. Professor Hobsbawm, two decades after 1989, when he was too hastily consigned to oblivion, Karl Marx has returned to the limelight. Freed from the role of instrumentum regni to which he was assigned in the Soviet Union, and from the shackles of “Marxism-Leninism”, he has in the last few years not only received intellectual attention through new publication of his work, but also been the focus of more widespread interest. Indeed in 2003, the French magazine Nouvel Observateur dedicated a special issue to Karl Marx – le penseur du troisième millénaire? (Karl Marx – the thinker of the third millennium?). A year later, in Germany, in an opinion poll sponsored by the television company ZDF to establish who were the most important Germans of all time, more than 500,000 viewers voted for Marx; he came third in the general classification and first in the “current relevance” category. Then, in 2005, the weekly Der Spiegel portrayed him on the cover under the title Ein Gespenst kehrt zurück (A spectre is back), while listeners to the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time voted for Marx as their Greatest Philosopher.

In a recent public conversation with Jacques Attalì, you said that paradoxically “it is the capitalists more than others who have been rediscovering Marx”, and you talked of your astonishment when the businessman and liberal politician George Soros said to you “I’ve just been reading Marx and there is an awful lot in what he says”. Although weak and rather vague, what are the reasons for this revival? Is his work likely to be of interest only to specialists and intellectuals, being presented in university courses as a great classic of modern thought that should never be forgotten? Or could a new “demand for Marx” come in the future from the political side as well?

E. H. There is an undoubted revival of public interest in Marx in the capitalist world, though probably not as yet in the new East European members of the European Union. It was probably accelerated by the fact that the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party coincided with a particularly dramatic international economic crisis in the midst of a period of ultra-rapid free market globalization.

Marx had predicted  the nature of  the early 21st century world economy a hundred and fifty years earlier, on the basis of his analysis of “bourgeois society”. It is not surprising that intelligent capitalists, especially in the globalized financial sector, were impressed by Marx, since they were necessarily more aware than others of the nature and instabilities of the capitalist economy in which they operated. Most of the intellectual Left no longer knew what to do with Marx. It had been  demoralised by the collapse of the social-democratic project in most North Atlantic states in the 1980s and the mass conversion of national governments to free market ideology, as well as by the collapse of the political and economic systems that claimed to be inspired by Marx and Lenin. The so-called “new social movements” like feminism either had no logical connection with anti-capitalism (though as individuals their members might be aligned with it) or they challenged the belief in   endless progress in human control over nature, which both capitalism and traditional socialism had shared. At the same time the “proletariat”, divided and diminished, ceased to be  credible as Marx’s  historical agent of social transformation. It is also the case that since 1968 the most prominent radical movements have preferred direct action not necessarily based on much reading and theoretical analysis.

Of course this does not mean that Marx will cease to be regarded as a great and classical thinker, although for political reasons, especially in countries like France and Italy with once powerful   Communist parties, there has been a passionate intellectual offensive  against Marx and Marxist analyses, which was probably  at its height in the 1980s and 1990s. There are signs that it has now run its course.

Continued . . .

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The war they all agree on

September 19, 2008

America’s two ruling parties came together in August to plan the escalation of the U.S. war on Afghanistan.

Sharon Smith | Socialist Worker, September 11, 2008 | Issue 680

IN EARLY September, the Pentagon closed its investigation into allegations that U.S. bombs killed 92 Afghan civilians, including as many as 60 children, as they slept peacefully in the village of Nawabad on the night of August 21.

Columnist: Sharon Smith

Sharon Smith Sharon Smith is the author of Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States, a historical account of the American working-class movement, and Women and Socialism, a collection of essays on women’s oppression and the struggle against it. She is also on the board of Haymarket Books.

Despite protests from the UN, human rights organizations and the villagers themselves, Pentagon officials insisted for weeks that only seven civilians had been killed, along with 35 Taliban fighters, during a legitimate military operation aimed at capturing Taliban commander Mullah Sadiq.

Indeed, they claimed that the attack, which included bombardment with a C130 Specter gunship, was a necessary response to heavy fire emanating from a meeting of Taliban leaders in the village.

In its defense, the Pentagon cited evidence from an embedded Fox News correspondent who had substantiated its claims. Unfortunately, that correspondent turned out to be former Marine Lt. Oliver North, who has been known to bend the truth in the past.

North’s military career was cut short after his role was revealed in the Iran-contra scandal in the 1980s. At the time, North admitted to having illegally channeled guns to Iran while funneling the profits to the CIA-backed contra mercenary force fighting to overthrow Nicaragua’s democratically elected Sandinista government–and then lying to Congress about it. In recent years, North has nevertheless cultivated a lucrative broadcasting career at Fox.

U.S. soldiers take up positions in the town of Gangikhel in southeastern Afghanistan (Sgt. Sean Terry | U.S. Army)U.S. soldiers take up positions in the town of Gangikhel in southeastern Afghanistan (Sgt. Sean Terry | U.S. Army)

Although North assured Fox viewers, “Coalition forces…have not been able to find any evidence that non-combatants were killed in this engagement,” video footage taken on the scene by a local doctor showed scores of dead bodies and destroyed homes, documenting a civilian death toll at Nawabad that is the largest since the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan nearly seven years ago.

Thus, the U.S. military was forced to reopen its own investigation on September 8, only days after it had exonerated itself. A red-faced official told reporters that “emerging evidence” had convinced the Pentagon to investigate the matter further.

On that same day, Human Rights Watch issued a report that U.S. and NATO forces dropped 362 tons of bombs over Afghanistan during the first seven months of this year; bombings during June and July alone equaled the total during all of 2006.

The rising civilian death toll in Afghanistan rattled even the normally placid New York Times, which argued, “America is fast losing the battle for hearts and minds, and unless the Pentagon comes up with a better strategy, the United States and its allies may well lose the war.”

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

AS NEWS of the Nawabad massacre unfolded, another atrocity was also gaining media attention, further exposing the gangster state installed and maintained by U.S. forces to run Afghanistan since 2001.

President Hamid Karzai, the U.S.’s handpicked puppet, reportedly pardoned two men convicted of brutally raping a woman in the northern province of Samangan in September 2005.

At the time, Mawlawi Islam, the commander of a local militia, was running for a seat in Afghanistan’s first parliamentary elections. “The commander and three of his fighters came and took my wife out of our home and took her to their house about 200 meters away and, in front of these witnesses, raped her,” the woman’s husband told the Independent.

The couple has a doctor’s report that the rapists cut her private parts with a bayonet during the rape, and then forced her to stagger home without clothes from the waist down.

Mawlawi won a seat in parliament in September 2005, as the U.S. media celebrated the elections as proof that democracy was flourishing in Afghanistan thanks to U.S. occupation. But Mawlawi was assassinated, mafia-style in January of this year.

His past had caught up with him. Mawlawi had first fought as a mujahideen commander in the 1980s, but switched sides to become a Taliban governor in the 1990s. He switched sides yet again when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and re-joined the former mujahideen, which had morphed into the Northern Alliance–the group of warlords installed by the U.S. to run Afghanistan as a collection of private gangster fiefdoms.

Karzai issued a press statement expressing his “deep regret” in response to Mawlawi’s death in January. Bypassing the rape charge, he expressed nothing but praise: “Mawlawi Islam Muhammadi was a prominent jihadi figure who has made great sacrifices during the years of jihad against the Soviet invasion.”

Mawlawi’s three subordinates were finally convicted for the rape this year, and one died in prison. But although they were sentenced to 11 years, Karzai reportedly issued a pardon for the other two in May, claiming the men “had been forced to confess their crimes.”

The drug-running warlords who have controlled Afghanistan since 2001 have no interest in either democracy or women’s rights. Indeed, it is not uncommon for poor poppy farmers who cannot repay loans to local warlords to offer up their daughters for marriage instead.

Gang rapes and violence against women are on the rise, according to human rights organizations. As a member of parliament, Mir Ahmad Joyenda, told the Independent, “The commanders, the war criminals, still have armed groups. They’re in the government. Karzai, the Americans, the British sit down with them. They have impunity. They’ve become very courageous and can do whatever crimes they like.” In this situation, Afghan warlords again produce 90 percent of the world’s opium, without legal repercussion.

Women’s prisons, in contrast, are teeming once again. As Sonali Kolhatkar, the author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence, argued on Democracy Now! “Women are being imprisoned in greater numbers than ever before, for the crime of escaping from home or having, quote-unquote, ‘sexual relations’–‘illegal sexual relations.’ Most of these women are simply victims of rape.”

Continued . . .

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Family of Federico García Lorca agree to unearth Civil War secrets

September 19, 2008

The Times, UK, Sep 19, 2008

Laura Garcia Lorca with a bust of the poet

Laura García Lorca with a bust of the poet. The family has agreed to the dig

Thomas Catán in Madrid

One of Spain’s most enduring literary mysteries could soon be solved after the descendants of Federico García Lorca dropped their longstanding objections to unearthing the mass grave where the poet’s remains are believed to lie.

“We will not oppose it,” said Laura García Lorca, the poet’s niece.

“Although we would prefer it weren’t done, we respect the wishes of the other parties involved.”

The fate of Spain’s most celebrated poet and playwright, who vanished 72 years ago, has exemplified divisions over new efforts to find out what happened to those killed during the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s subsequent dictatorship.

Related Links

Last week, the families of several others thought to have been killed with Lorca asked a judge to allow the exhumation.

Until now the Lorca family preferred to let the matter lie, opposing efforts to determine exactly where he is buried. They said that they feared reopening old wounds and doubted it would provide any useful information.

But Lorca scholars said that the family’s decision not to oppose the exhumations would help to establish where he was buried and how he died.

“This is one of the happiest days of my life,” said the Irish author Ian Gibson, a leading Lorca scholar.

“Lorca is the most famous victim of the civil war. It’s a huge step in the right direction.” He added: “I think Lorca can be a symbol for reconciliation of the civil war.”

Judge Baltazar Garzón has yet to decide what to do with the site where Lorca is thought to be buried, in the author’s home province of Granada.

More than half a million people are thought to have been killed during the civil war of 1936-39, triggered by Franco’s armed uprising against the democratically elected Republican Government. After Franco’s victory, historians say that 50,000 Republicans were executed by Franco’s forces and tens of thousands locked up. His iron rule lasted until his death in 1975.

Although the Nationalist dead were honoured and given proper burials during Franco’s rule, Republican victims have lain in unmarked mass graves for seven decades.

After Franco’s death, political parties agreed to put the past behind them, granting a blanket amnesty for crimes committed under the dictator’s rule. For years, Spaniards subscribed to an unwritten “pact of silence” about the past in an attempt to let the country’s new democracy take root.

Last October José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish Socialist Prime Minister, passed the Historical Memory Law that made the search for those who disappeared during Franco’s rule the responsibility of the Government. Until now individual associations have been leading efforts to exhume mass graves.

Moves to discover the fate of those who disappeared have sparked fury among Spanish conservatives, who say that history is being rewritten by those who lost the civil war. Right-wing Spaniards often accuse Mr Zapatero – whose grandfather was killed by a firing squad – of acting out of vengeance.

Judge Garzón, who became internationally famous when he ordered the arrest of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London, has begun to compile a census of those who were killed by Franco’s men – further inflaming conservative opinion.

Lorca was hauled out and shot after being denounced as a Republican, a Communist and a homosexual. He became a martyr to the Republican Left.

BURIED PAST

— More than 500,000 people were killed during the Spanish Civil War

— A total of 75,000 were executed by the Nationalists and 25,000 died from malnutrition

— During the siege of the Alcázar of Toledo in July 1936, only 1,000 Nationalist troops withstood 8,000 Republican troops for more than two months

Sources: Times archives; Hugh Thomas – The Spanish Civil War

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Palestine Today 091808

September 19, 2008
IMEMC News | 18.09.2008 18:09
Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center http://www.imemc.org for Thursday September 18, 2008.

Audio Palestine Today 091808 – mp3 3.2M



Seven Palestinian residents from the West Bank were reportedly kidnapped on Thursday by Israeli soldiers, after as at least two Palestinians were reportedly killed in an underground tunnel collapse in the southern Gaza Strip. These stories and more are coming up, stay tuned.

The News Cast

Israeli soldiers detained at least seven Palestinians from the West Bank cities of Hebron, Bethlehem and Nablus, Palestinian sources and witnesses reported today.

The detentions took place in the form of military invasions into a number of villages. The soldiers also reportedly ransacked houses and forced out those inside, then kidnapped the claimed wanted residents.

In the Gaza Strip, at least two people were killed and several others wounded during a collapse of an underground tunnel in the southern part of the coastal region. On the Gaza-Egypt border, estimates suggest that there are hundreds of such tunnels which the besieged population of Gaza use to bring in essential supplies and commodities, made scarce due to the 15-month-old Israeli blockade.

Commenting on the victory of Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, during the ruling Kadima party elections, Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Fawzi Barhoum, believed that the Palestinians will face increased Israeli aggression with Livni in charge.

At the internal level, the armed wing of the Islamist Hamas party in Gaza, known as Ezzildin Elqassam brigade, called on its West Bank-based members to defy arrest attempts, which the Fatah-allied Palestinian Authority’s security services carry out against Hamas supporters in the area.

Staying in Gaza, Raed Al Harazeen, 31, died of his wounds on Wednesday two hours after being abducted by unknown gunmen who broke into his home and took him to an unknown destination.

Apparently Al Harazeen was tortured before he was dropped at an intersection in Gaza city. Bruises and cuts were obvious on several parts of his body. His family found him alive, but in a serious condition, two hours after he was abducted. Israeli authorities, however, denied him entry to Israel for treatment after also being turned away from the Gaza hospital due to the lack basic medical equipment because of the siege. Al-Harazeen died of his wounds at Erez military crossing to Israel.

Conclusion:
Thank you for joining us from occupied Bethlehem. You have been listening to Palestine Today from the International Middle East Media Center, http://www.imemc.org. This report has been brought to you by Rami Al-Meghari and Gorge Rishmawi.

IMEMC News
- e-mail: info@imemc.org

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Unarmed Kashmiri freedom fighters

September 19, 2008

Kashmiri Muslims have broken new ground by waging a non-violent separation struggle but the Indian authorities seem unsure how to respond

Flowing black beard, a headband with “Allahu akbar” (God is great) and a fluttering green flag. This has been the trademark picture of the recent azadi (freedom) processions of Kashmir, where hundreds of thousands marched the streets of this disputed Himalayan region seeking a separation from India.

From a distance, it seems as if the past has returned to Kashmir. But the present contains an irrefutable truth: in place of guns, the people carry slogans. The politics of protest this time is not about the argument of power, but about the power of argument.

Kashmir is the first conflict-ridden Muslim region in the world where people have consciously made a transition from violence to non-violence, and this includes the staunch Islamists too. In fact, the wisdom behind the use of arms to fight a political struggle was being silently debated within Kashmir ever since 9/11 blurred the lines dividing terrorism and genuine political movements. The deteriorating situation inside Pakistan too had tilted the balance towards a peaceful struggle.

Thus when Kashmiris decided to come out to demand azadi recently, there were no militant attacks or suicide bombings. It was through massive unarmed processions where people shouted slogans and waved flags. And when the government tried to halt them, the anger was only manifested through stone pelting. Sensing the overwhelming public mood, the militant groups immediately declared a unilateral ceasefire, admitting the insignificance of the gun for an unarmed people’s movement.

This major shift has not been registered even as it has already formed a new discourse for Kashmir’s separatist struggle. New Delhi’s response was usual – it again used its iron fist, killing 38 unarmed protesters and injuring more than a thousand and enforcing a strict curfew with a hope that the people will be ultimately cowed down. The separatist leadership too was rounded up.

This only shows that New Delhi is misreading the script. This time the authorities are not faced with gun-wielding men but unarmed people. A heavy clampdown keeping the population indoors only puts a temporary lid on the seething anger. Instead of a military intervention, New Delhi should have immediately attempted sincere political and democratic means to engage Kashmir and calm the tempers.

New Delhi’s approach to handling Kashmir for past two decades has been simple and straight: militancy is the only problem and that can be sorted out by stringent military measures. Though there have been several rounds of negotiations with a faction of the separatist leadership too, New Delhi used the process more as a photo-op than a serious effort to address the demands of the people. There have been half a dozen occasions when separatist leadership joined a dialogue with New Delhi to resolve the Kashmir problem amicably – only to find the exercise nothing more than a surrender and thus futile.

The distrust towards New Delhi had reached such proportions that when moderate separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq decided to join talks with New Delhi, his uncle was murdered in Kashmir. Despite a serious threat to his life, he joined the talks directly with the prime minister of India. Again, the non-serious approach of New Delhi derailed the process, further eroding the credibility of talks with New Delhi in the eyes of Kashmiris. The public standing of separatist leaders who had agreed to talk to New Delhi also diminished substantially.

The recent protests by hundreds of thousands of unarmed people too don’t seem to have changed the mindset of New Delhi’s ruling elite. Instead of acknowledging the intensity of the uprising and the depth of the sentiment in Kashmir, New Delhi again refuses to face the reality and delays engaging in a sincere dialogue with the separatist leadership. The Kashmiris have overwhelmingly announced that peaceful processions and not guns are now their favoured means of protest. This needs to be encouraged and allowed to take firm roots because it could help to put an end to the bloodshed in Kashmir and make an amicable resolution of the problem easy. The phenomenon could also have a positive influence over a dozen such violent conflicts in other Muslim regions across the world. But if peaceful protests are crushed like armed movements, another wave of violence will take root, reinforcing the idea that the gun is mightier than a slogan.

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Fighting Terror, the Far-Right Way

September 18, 2008

by: J. Sri Raman, t r u t h o u t | Perspective, Sep 17, 2008

photo
People participate in a silent candlelight march in New Delhi. (Photo: Reuters)

Newton’s Third Law of Motion now has nearly as neat a political parallel. Every non-state terror strike against human lives leads to an opposite and often more than equal state assault on human rights. The New Delhi blasts of September 13 have led to no different a sequel.

India has witnessed ten major serial explosions of this kind in the post-9/11 period, excluding the still mysterious attack on the country’s parliament on December 13, 2001, and militant offensives mainly targeting the army and security forces. The fallout of the calamity, which has become frequent and familiar, has been predictable every time. The reaction to terror-wrought tragedies, from powerful sections of the political spectrum and, particularly the far right, has been remarkably the same and twofold.

Every time, even before the blood at the site has dried and bodies are being counted, the far right and its friends – as well as even some of its avowed foes that are not free from its influence – hasten to point fingers at the usual suspects. No investigations are deemed necessary before “Islamic terror” is indicted, and the culprit is identified as “cross-border terrorism,” aided and abetted by local “sleeper cells.”

The second reaction, which follows within a split second, is to demand “more stringent anti-terror laws,” with less rights for the often arbitrarily accused than allowed under law for even a common criminal. Without severe curbs on human rights, it is asserted, inhuman terrorism cannot be combated.

The story has been repeated after the five blasts in crowded and central areas of New Delhi, claiming a toll of 22 lives so far and seriously injuring at least 98. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political front of the parivar or the far-right “family,” in fact, has outdone itself on this occasion. And for a good reason. Assembly elections are coming soon in New Delhi and other states, while the country’s general election is due in early 2009.

A couple of anti-minority riots have always been the party’s preferred method of campaigning for elections. The New Delhi explosions have given it on a platter a divisive issue of its heart’s desire.

BJP leader and former deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani surprised no one by calling immediately for a stringent “anti-terror law” again. He added two riders to the demand. He upheld, in the first place, such a law passed by the assembly in the State of Gujarat as a model for the rest of the nation. The Gujarat Control of Organised Crime (GUJCOC) Bill is a brainchild of Chief Minister Nerendra Modi, whose name is written in golden letters in the annals of a grateful Indian fascism, for the grisly anti-minority pogrom six years ago. Advani shared Modi’s indignation at New Delhi sitting on the bill and stalling its enactment.

Continued . . .

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Kashmir Interview by Arundhati Roy

September 18, 2008

by Roy, Arundhati
Briemberg, Mordecai

Source: Redeye

Arundhati Roy’s ZSpace Page

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Author and activist Arundhati Roy has visited Kashmir several times in the past two months. She says she has never seen anything like the non-violent mass movement that is filling the streets of Srinagar.

In this interview, she talks about the recent history of Kashmir and why Kashmiris have poured onto the streets in their hundreds of thousands to demand freedom.

22:04 minutes, 20.2 Mb
Host: Mordecai Briemberg

To find out more about Redeye, check out their website.

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